I have often wondered in my life if I were a happy person or an unhappy person. That story made my happy.
Thanks for helping me clear that up, Fred.

Almost first – for once!
Great item – love Blake’s poetry & your line :
self-destructive people always have bad aim
Thanks Fred for your superb commentary on life the universe and everything – I’ll say it before & I’ll say it again, thanks.

“I wish I was a prisoner so my kids could have it easy like prisoner’s kids do.”
Hee hee. This reminds me of all the people who complain about how unfairly the rich are treated and how they’re tyrannized by the poor. I’ve always wondered, if that is the case, why the rich don’t just give away a lot of money, drop a few tax brackets, and join the ruling elite?

Fox is quite skillful, usually, at the fine balancing act this requires. Cultivating, teaching and nurturing perpetual resentment involves a measure of restraint. The story in today’s paper can be used to encourage this resentment, but take it too far and you arrive at something more obviously absurd. “I wish *I* was a prisoner so my kids could have it easy like prisoner’s kids do.” Unless one is extremely far gone, the silliness of that notion will cause the swelling resentment to burst like an over-filled balloon, forcing the Resenter to acknowledge that he or she actually is much better off than the supposed objects of resentment and exposing him or her to gratitude and empathy — the antidotes for the disease of perpetual resentment. The happiness that gratitude and empathy carry cannot be tolerated by the politics of resentment. It requires — and generates — unhappiness.
(Emphasis added.)
This. So true. So well said.

Some people are just prone to take lemonade and make lemons out of it.
Is this the same phenomenon as when people make the extra effort to litter or boast of leaving their SUV idling, or otherwise just want to shove their ‘freedom’ in your face?

“The politics of resentment is clearly illiberal, but it is not conservative either. It doesn’t present a coherent political ideology.”
…you seem to be saying here that if it were conservative, then it would present a coherent political ideology. I think you’re mistaken. As near as I can tell (as I’ve said before, here and elsewhere), conservatism boils down to: “winners should win and losers should lose”. I’ve looked for years but I’ve never been able to see any more coherent philosophy in there. Taking offense at a prisoner’s joy seems quite consistent with that world-view.

I think there is an element of self righteousness necessary in order for the politics of resentment to resonate with a person.

If you think there isn’t plenty of resentment and bitterness to be found on the other side of the traditional aisle, all I want to know is: What color is the sky, in that world you come from?
A lot of liberal-to-left “thought” and “philsophy” is built on pure, raw envy: “Why should that guy have goodies, and not me?” Even if the “other guy” got his goodies by working his tailfeathers off and, among other things, avoiding a lot of the things that make college fun for so many—the whole “let’s outdo Animal House! thing—you can still easily find people who’d take the whole lot away and give it to someone who majored in Fraternity, with a minor in Throwing Up.
I’m happy for those kids. I’d be even happier if those “fathers” were out of their lives. Growing up with Daddy behind bars is very difficult, and often leads a kid right down the path that took Daddy to the stripey hole.

“Why should that guy have goodies, and not me?”
That is a good question! I think it leads to the question “Is there a way that EVERYONE can have goodies?”

“Why should that guy have goodies, and not me?”

As a straight, cisgender, half-White, upper-middle-class male, I would propose that the question is, “Why should I have goodies, and not them?”

I think you have a lot of it, but not all of it. The thing that’s always confused me is the absolute glee taken when someone is punished – no matter if the punishment is completely out of line for the offense. I think it’s anger distorting the normal desire for justice into a thirst for vengeance wherever it can be found – to make up for the imagined injustices that go unpunished. But it’s not simply a matter of being happy or unhappy, this kind of extreme emotional reaction can be very, very dangerous.

Oh, and quite thin.

T-nomad would be happier if those kids’ fathers were OUT OF THEIR LIVES? Nice to see the “family-values” crowd remains consistent in its inconsistency.
As for me, the story made me both happy and sad — happy for the kids and parents enjoying a rare day of family joy, and sad because why in the hell is this guy Moore incarcerated for 3 years, away from his fiancee and small children, for something as innocuous as possession of marijuana?
So, really it depends on what you see here as “the story” — I read it not just as a story of poor kids getting school supplies, but of our (in)justice system tossing a few crumbs to those on the bottom.
BTW, how does a guy who’s been incarcerated for 3 years end up as the father of 2 toddlers?

But Aurolyn, you didn’t make the mental leap to realizing that everyone in prison can be assumed to be PURE EVIL and can never be trusted with their own children even.

I immediately thought of the laborers in the Vinyard. “Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
I think its a pretty natural reaction to feel this resentment – the issue is when, given the choice of feeding your resentment or letting it go, you chose to embrace the resentment.

As for me, the story made me both happy and sad — happy for the kids and parents enjoying a rare day of family joy, and sad because why in the hell is this guy Moore incarcerated for 3 years, away from his fiancee and small children, for something as innocuous as possession of marijuana?

The keywords here are “with intent to deliver.” Antidrug laws (insomuch as it has any coherency) are heaviest against dealing, and are written in such a way such as the law itself presumes possession of certain amounts of drugs is proof of dealing. The idea is to disincentive profiting off of illegal drugs, and/or being part of the illegal drug trade.

I think that there are injustices in the world, and that there are things that are offensive. The world does contain nastiness and terribleness, and these things are worth condemning and holding in disdain. The problem is that if you are an adult, you should understand the difference between condemnation that comes from deeply-held conviction and condemnation that comes from being goaded into resentment.
Restated: Individuals have a certain amount of power. They can use that power, or they can cede their power over to someone else’s goals. The problem is that a lot of people end up ceding their power without really understanding that’s what’s going on.

@TNomad:
I don’t know where you went to college. The frat boys I knew were always Young Republicans. Most of us budding liberals lived in the co-ops, which cost less because we worked to cover things that would otherwise cost money.
But I don’t get the feeling you’ve met any actual liberals, based on your summation of what we believe. Your hypothetical earner didn’t earn that money all by his lonesome; he used community facilities like public education to get to where he was capable of earning it, then used publicly-funded infrastructure like roads and police to build his business (or even get to it). Is it insane to ask him to pay to maintain those things?
And what of the woman whose business didn’t succeed, not because she wasn’t working hard, but because she didn’t get the contracts (Women, you know, go off and have babies at unpredictable times, so she can’t be trusted.)? What about the black or Hispanic guy whose business didn’t go anywhere because he didn’t look enough like the guy awarding contracts to get considered (He’ll just steal the contract money and spend it on drugs. You know what these people are like.)? These situations put the lie to the idea that your idealized society really rewards honest effort. It rewards honest effort by the right people.
Is that really the society you’re defending?

oh thank god a new post, I had to drop out of the discussion on the last one.
Now I’ll read the post.

The thing I find the most appalling about treatment of prisoners in the USA is that there’s this absolute WALL of the most base, coarse, vicious hatred you can feel coming off some people when they actively wish for prisoners to be ever worse off; no matter what new deprivation or shackling is put on prisoners, there’s always this seething desire for someone to do something even worse.
It’s why we have absurd situations like:
Constant petty enforcement of rules and regulations at the whim of prison guards; Sol Wachtler wrote about the time he was sent to jail and they refused to let his glasses go in with him. He had to have all his stuff mailed to him and it took a month or more to finally get processed down to his cell.
All sorts of legal restrictions which effectively void the right of appeal for many prisoners if they make even minor procedural mistakes in preparing their lawsuits (and this happens even when lawyers try to prep the documentation). This is a direct consequence of politicians finding an easy punching bag in banning alleged “frivolous lawsuits” by prisoners.
Ongoing harrassment, physical and sexual, as well as the de facto use of prison rape as a social control tool.
Ongoing games-playing with basic prison privileges as another social control tool. Television is a real lightning rod, even though the prisoners often pool their funds and purchase televisions themselves, usually at grossly inflated prices from the commissary. Yet prison guards often arbitarily bestow or withdraw TV privileges to ensure docility.

The list could go on, but the point is clear: prisoners in the USA are forced into this culture so unlike our own that they become desocialized to the point that when they’re released, they can’t function properly and this promotes recidivism.
It is not helped by the systematic discrimination ex-prisoners experience in job prospects.
It is definitely not helped by politicians and their voters who love taking cheap shots at the people least able to defend themselves on the social totem pole.
The only minor saving grace – and it is so minor as to not be really worthy of comment – is that the prison guard unions are adamantly and violently against prison privatization, any time, any where, and will exert considerable political muscle to prevent it.
This means that should the electorate ever wish it, governments could change the entire philosophy of the prison system and will have been inadvertently helped by the very prison guards whose vested interest is manifestly not in changing an utterly blockheaded and backwards prison system.
But the electorate does not so wish it, and so all that one can be mildly thankful for is that the sand in the wheels of prison privatization has kept it under government control to a limited extent.
Blaaaagh.

BTW, how does a guy who’s been incarcerated for 3 years end up as the father of 2 toddlers?
Conjugal visits. To wit: playing with the goodies.
Also, happy story, for sure.
I personally know some Resenters from the Deep South. Health care reform is Bad, they said- Very Bad. Nobody should be forced to have insurance, even if it’s being paid for by tax dollars, they said. Unfortunately for them, the seminary school they wished to attend required them to purchase health insurance. Also unfortunately for them, they are decidedly in the “can’t very easily afford to drop a few hundred dollars a month for insurance” demographic. Also unfortunately for them, their premiums are not yet being paid for by those horrible Democrats.
All of which, I am sure, only leads to further resentment.

I’m happy for those kids. I’d be even happier if those “fathers” were out of their lives. Growing up with Daddy behind bars is very difficult, and often leads a kid right down the path that took Daddy to the stripey hole.

I love how people who don’t seem to have made any effort to show any basic consideration for other people feel free to make broad sweeping pronouncements on the ultimate fate of kids who just want to see their daddies for a while.
God, what is it with people that are such cheap friggin’ bastards they begrudge a social occasion sponsored by churches to also give some kids a better start in life than their daddies probably got?

God, what is it with people that are such cheap friggin’ bastards they begrudge a social occasion sponsored by churches to also give some kids a better start in life than their daddies probably got?
Exactly.

Anyone who thinks so little of liberty that they think prison is too soft a punishment? That’s exactly who I don’t want anywhere near government.

The thing I find the most appalling about treatment of prisoners in the USA is that there’s this absolute WALL of the most base, coarse, vicious hatred you can feel coming off some people when they actively wish for prisoners to be ever worse off; no matter what new deprivation or shackling is put on prisoners, there’s always this seething desire for someone to do something even worse.

I wanted to say it might be due to people having a little too much respect for the law, but I don’t think that’s it exactly…

The story made me sad because I know some jackass is going to whine about it.
What does that make me?

jaded

@T-nomad: Hashmir’s outlook here is pretty much the same as mine. There are a lot of liberals who are happy with what we have but wish other peoples’ situations could be improved. How is that envy? Evilrooster has a point, too.
One right-wing troll on the Guardian’s website has said that the reason he doesn’t, as McAllen puts it, “give money away, drop a few tax brackets and join the ruling elite” is out of principle, since he doesn’t think he has the right to live at others’ expense the way the poor do.

@evan
As near as I can tell (as I’ve said before, here and elsewhere), conservatism boils down to: “winners should win and losers should lose”. I’ve looked for years but I’ve never been able to see any more coherent philosophy in there.
Evan, you’ve been misled by people who call themselves conservative like it’s a brand name or tribal membership, but they don’t actually subscribe to what any historian or political scientist would recognize as Conservatism. They’re fooling themselves so thoroughly the confusion spills over onto anybody who has to listen to them for too long.
A true conservative (one of the ways to identify them is they’ve been branded as RINO’s and run out of today’s Republican Party) says “hey liberals, I know you mean well, and it’s quite possible you’ve correctly identified the problem that needs addressing, but let’s really think through whether your proposed solution will even work, and if it’s the most cost-effective of the various options that are likely to work; let’s game out what the predictable side effects might be.” and “y’know, even good changes to people’s lives and to society-at-large can be stressful, so leaps and bounds probably isn’t the best way to get there — a smooth steady pace is less disruptive and will get there just as quick in the end.”

I think what FDR had to say is a good start.

That story makes me happy.

*sidles up to the Slacktivist playground*
Psst! Hey kids, wanna read a blog? It’ll make you feel real good!
Atlas Shrugged IV

*ZOOOOOOOOM*
*CaryB’s hair flies every which way in the resulting blast of wind*

Enoch Root said: The problem is that if you are an adult, you should understand the difference between condemnation that comes from deeply-held conviction and condemnation that comes from being goaded into resentment.
This is the problem, I think. And I fully expect to be smacked for saying this, but reading Fred’s post clarified a personal dilemma I’ve been dealing with (i.e. why I really don’t like my sister as a person, said sister being one of the Pebble types who has a serious, chronic case of Poverty Envy.)
For people like my sister, there is no difference between condemnation from deeply held conviction and condemnation from resentment because the resentment stems from her deeply held convictions. That’s not to say she’s not an adult — she is, fully functional, with two kids, a mortgage and a bachelor’s degree headed for her master’s — but her moral development (using the term clinically, not colloquially) is lagging. (Not my opinion, personal or professional; that’s what she pulled on a series of psych exams she had to take for a set of classes she had last semester and of which asked me to interpret the results. Her Defining Issues Test was particularly enlightening… or dismaying.)
When one’s moral world view states that there is no greater social construct and that the pole star of one’s morality is what’s in it for me?, there is little room for charity, institutional support and individual mercy. In a tit-for-tat system of morality, the perception of perfect fairness is the moral imperative, all interactions are between individuals (thus denying the social contract), and all such interactions operate within a zero-sum game. For example, such a person literally cannot grasp that indeed, it is in the best interest of the society as a whole for the school district to supply impoverished children with free lunches, pencils and boxes of crayons while wealthier parents must purchase their children’s food and supplies. My sister sees this as intrinsically unfair and resents the hell out of not only the free/donated school supplies and the free lunches, but the waiving of registration and athletic program fees, and on and on (and on and on… When she starts a rant, I could easily put down the phone and wander away for long stretches of time…)
However, this isn’t an artifact of the toxic media — my sister has been this way since toddlerhood. (You would not believe the number of whines that started with But it’s not FAAAAIIIIRRRR!) The toxic media certainly inflames this pre-existing condition, but Faux News didn’t even exist when we were children. Fred is right in that it inhibits a person’s ability to be happy, but it doesn’t cause the unhappiness.
Of course, the problem here is that none of this is strictly rational or even articulated — I can guarantee my sister has never sat down and thought out her tit-for-tat system of moral reasoning. She doesn’t even know why she believes it, but she sets up her world to reinforce her moral stance, which exacerbates her resentment, which sets up her world to reinforce her moral stance…
For me, this is a fairly painful dilemma — I don’t practice anymore, but I was a psychologist. I look at her test results and I see someone in Kohlberg’s level 1.2 (Pre-conventional self-interested orientation) of moral development (for a primer, see here: http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kohlberg.htm) which I associate primarily with children and early adolescence, not 30-something mothers of two. It makes me wonder what went wrong in her version of our childhood that she got stuck at the moral equivalent of a 12 year old.
(Hi, I usually lurk, but this cut pretty close to home as you can probably tell… No worries about sheep.)

@Evan – Wendy (isoacsl)pretty much sums up the actual Conservative line, which is pretty ‘hey we’ve tried this in the past and it really didn’t work, maybe we shouldn’t do that’ and ‘your solution is all out of proportion to the problem you’re trying to fix’ etc. Historically it’s been the side of ‘hey let’s not rush in here just yet’ and that’s not always a Bad Thing.
Conservatives tend to side with conservationists and, depending what country you’re in, may have a touch of social activism given that they know how privileged they are.
I’m a conservative in so far as I majored in history so I KNOW how badly many of the currently proposed social reforms turned out for the masses, and exactly what sort of reasons there were to reform the extremities of wealth inequality in the first place.

You say that as if being happy is more important than being right.

That Kohlberg piece is interesting. Not saying I agree with alll of it, but it’s especially interesting the light that

In particular, younger children base their moral judgments more on consequences, whereas older children base their judgments on intentions. When, for example, the young child hears about one boy who broke 15 cups trying to help his mother and another boy who broke only one cup trying to steal cookies, the young child thinks that the first boy did worse. The child primarily considers the amount of damage–the consequences–whereas the older child is more likely to judge wrongness in terms of the motives underlying the act

casts on those who insist that ‘Intent is bullshit’.

The problem with conservatism is that it’s very much preservation of the status quo, and sometimes that needs to be changed because it’s unfair.
I think to think that conservatism works when it acts as a form of risk management for progressivism, but stifling if it’s the only game in town.
Also that story made me so happy. That was some great work by the churches and I’m glad the prisons let it happen.

Here is my approximation of the unhappy response to that story.
I have another one here: Why is that even necessary? Why are there so many poor people in prison on charges which are kissing cousins to ideological? Why do kids have to rely on charity for something as basic and necessary as school supplies?
Really? This story made me angry.
McAllan: if that is the case, why the rich don’t just give away a lot of money, drop a few tax brackets, and join the ruling elite?
Yes, this. I understand if people gripe about taxes — doing something brings the right to complain about it with it, IMO. But when they complain that they have to pay and people on minimum wage don’t, then what stops them from joining their ranks?
ohiolibrarian: Is this the same phenomenon as when people make the extra effort to litter or boast of leaving their SUV idling, or otherwise just want to shove their ‘freedom’ in your face?
Don’t think so. Doing something just to spite someone of equal level of power (but often perceived higher) is pure contrarianism left over from teenaged days when there actually was a power difference. Contrarianism is a hard habit to kick: I never wanted a cigarette as much as when the whole town was decorated in anti-smoking messages — and that’s not an old addiction acting up, I never smoked more than five a year. Habitual resentment might be just as hard to kick, but it’s a different thing.
K. Chen: The idea is to disincentive profiting off of illegal drugs, and/or being part of the illegal drug trade.
Don’t get me started on how prohibition worked so well and was a boon to all law-abiding citizens.
KJ: One right-wing troll on the Guardian’s website has said that the reason he doesn’t, as McAllen puts it, “give money away, drop a few tax brackets and join the ruling elite” is out of principle, since he doesn’t think he has the right to live at others’ expense the way the poor do.
So he believes that the poor are forced to take public money any more than the rich are? I have to give it to that troll, he seems to be kinda aware that he wouldn’t have a bridge to live under if not for public money, and if he refuses to pay taxes and does not want to live on other people’s expense, he might to have to move out from under that bridge and live in a cave by the sea like his trollish ancestors did. But what’s a little cave living if it makes you a member of the ruling class?

However, this isn’t an artifact of the toxic media — my sister has been this way since toddlerhood. (You would not believe the number of whines that started with But it’s not FAAAAIIIIRRRR!) The toxic media certainly inflames this pre-existing condition, but Faux News didn’t even exist when we were children. Fred is right in that it inhibits a person’s ability to be happy, but it doesn’t cause the unhappiness.
You know, in retrospect, the childhood line that led to me being a liberal was “Yeah, well life isn’t fair.” Which lead to two things: one, my having a tendancy to look around and see, oh, yeah, things aren’t fair. Usually followed by a: WELL WHY IN HELL NOT?

K.: Intents is a part of moral development, but not the be-all and end-all. Somewhere in the higher numbers comes the whole bigger picture.

“Why should the children of criminals get something for free? …”

In that paragraph, Fred did an excellent job of hitting just about every racist dog whistle I’ve ever heard. Before the Tea Party, I thought of the people who embody the basic personality type as grumps – they only seem happy when they have something to complain about. They crave the self-righteousness feeling of being an “upstanding” person in a society of fools and idiots. I’ve heard some of them complain about specific problems with public agencies or private companies and not even try to do something about it, with the likely cause being that they’d rather feel aggrieved.

“When one’s moral world view states that there is no greater social construct and that the pole star of one’s morality is what’s in it for me?, there is little room for charity, institutional support and individual mercy.”
There was a comment in the book Evil In Modern Thought that “You either believe it’s good to look at the world from somewhere other than the position you accidentally occupy, or you don’t.” Too many people don’t.

The story in today’s paper can be used to encourage this resentment, but take it too far and you arrive at something more obviously absurd. “I wish I was a prisoner so my kids could have it easy like prisoner’s kids do.”
Oh, you’d think that wouldn’t work, but the number of people I’ve heard saying how much better off they’d be on benefits than working, and how that isn’t right, blah, blah, blah. None of them seem to be in a hurry to quit their jobs though…

Anybody’s Google-fu better than mine? I couldn’t find anyone objecting to these programs (there are about 90). That’s probably because they are clearly good. I have a hard time envisioning anyone thinking like Fred’s caricature, because Think Of The Children is such a powerful force.

*Applause* for you, Mr. Slacktivist, this is an absurdly good post. In fact, its too insightful. I’m going to have to ask you to dial it down a bit, before you actually burst the Negativity Machine’s bubble. It’s a little prickly, you see, doesn’t like to be touched or turned away.
This post makes me think of ‘The Dark Knight’, where the criminals and law-abiding citizens of Gotham City are herded onto separate ferries, rigged with explosives, and the Joker dares them to blow each other up. We may be more connected in this postmodern era, but we’re hardly more humane.

Great article.

The story made me happy – good for the kids and good for their fathers and good for their families. The right wing should be all for this being in favor of ‘family values’. The fact that many of them are not makes me angry.
Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
I think about this quote a lot lately because when I find myself arguing with a right wing zealot or even read about their truly warped views and desires I find myself angry and I feel that they are evil incarnate who need to be smashed and ruined.
But then I realize this solves nothing, for there are too many and the ones that I would doom would no doubt become martyrs for their cause and I would become (at least to some) a monster worth fighting that would harden their hearts and confirm for them the righteousness of *their* cause.
“Offer to them your other [cheek] also” – Matthew (somewhere)
There is wisdom in this but it is soooo unsatisfying. Plus it feels like one is being a coward (Yes, I know it isn’t especially if you are present in the ‘house of the other’ but in text it does).
It also feels like ‘the problem’ (this whole right wing meme-plex) does not even suffer a rebuke let alone a refutation. It seems only to add to the “effete-liberal” stereotype.
Fred is very effective at this type of argument but you have to read a long text to get there. This is not useful in the Heat of the moment or as a reposte in a public debate. The point is not to convince your opponent but rather to convince those open minded members of the audience and to provide – sorry there is no other phrase- sound bites, to at least stop the opponent in their tracks.
One thing the Right does well is stay “on Message” which they repeat over and over in varying ways. We need to develop the same kind of “mantras” that support our ‘Reality based’ and optimistic views.
Any Ideas?
@inge: Don’t get me started on how prohibition worked so well and was a boon to all law-abiding citizens.
- Wait, did you mean that the way it sounds? You aren’t suggesting that Prohibition was a GOOD thing are you?
…the childhood line that led to me being a liberal was “Yeah, well life isn’t fair.” Which lead to two things: one, my having a tendancy to look around and see, oh, yeah, things aren’t fair. Usually followed by a: WELL WHY IN HELL NOT? – CaryB
Absolutely agree with you there.

This story was very sweet. Thanks Fred.
Evan, on coherent conservatism and liberalism. Jonathan Bernstein in his Plain about Politics blogs has argued recently, last Thursday or Friday, that it might make more sense to think of liberalism (or leftism in general) and conservatism (or rightism) as impulses rather than ideologies. The liberal/leftist impulse is “we can do better” and the conservative/rightist impulse is “don’t make it worse.” So when someone wants to change something or perform some positive act its because they believe that the change would be for the better. A person that resists change is trying to avoid making something worse. So when the Democrats were resisting Bush’s scheme to privatise Social Security, they were acting on a conservative impulse, “don’t make it worse” for a leftist program while Bush was acting on a liberal impulse, making things “better” for a rightist reason, eliminating social insurance.
In this sense the politics of resentiment are not necessarily conservative because its not based on the “don’t make things worse” impulse. Resentiment comes from anger and jealousy at what the resenter feels are undeserved rewards for the people receiving them rather than an impulse not to make things worse. While the liberal impulse is towards creation and the conservative impulse is towards preservation, the resenter impulse is towards destruction.
So to elaborate on Jonathan Bernstein’s point, politics has three impulses a liberal, creative one; a conservative, preservation one, and a resentful, destructive one. Currently, the liberal and conservative impulses dominate the Democratic Party, who wants to preserve whats good and make what is bad better. The Republican Party is unfortunately filled with people who are fueled by the resentful, destructive impulse because the people who had the preseveration instinct have been driven from the GOP into the Democratic Party. This is why many liberals find the Democratic Party frustrating at times, because its also the Party of the preservers in addition to the creators.

the number of people I’ve heard saying how much better off they’d be on benefits than working, and how that isn’t right, blah, blah, blah. None of them seem to be in a hurry to quit their jobs though…
In fairness to those people, I’m pretty sure unemployment benefits are reserved for those who are unemployed through no fault of their own, that is, those who got laid off rather than those who got fired or who quit.

Hey T-nomad! Paraphrased from a book your sort claims to revere:

Depart from me, you accursed, for, among other things, I was in prison and you thought visits from the outside world were too good for me.

Oh, and, umm, you know, the whole “Judge not lest ye be judged” thaaaang.

Ryan: But Aurolyn, you didn’t make the mental leap to realizing that everyone in prison can be assumed to be PURE EVIL and can never be trusted with their own children even.
But…but…they *must* be evil! Jesus wouldn’t have put them in prison if they weren’t EEEEEEEEEEEEEVIIIIIILLLLL!!!!!!

Regarding turning the other cheek:
I read somewhere (too lazy to look it up) that there’s some social context needed in Matthew. Supposedly there were some social issues regarding how you hit someone (punch/slap versus backhand) and which hand you used to do it. Usually the striker was hitting in such a way as to enforce a master/servant relationship. By “offering the other cheek” you forced the striker to either demean himself or recognize you as an equal. I really need to hunt down that book now.

If a dominatrix strikes thee on thy right cheek, turn to her also thy other cheek.
*ducks*

ohiolibrarian: Some people are just prone to take lemonade and make lemons out of it.
Is this the same phenomenon as when people make the extra effort to litter or boast of leaving their SUV idling, or otherwise just want to shove their ‘freedom’ in your face?
Or the same sort of asshattery that led to Reagan removing the solar panels that Carter had installed on the White House? (Shorter Reagan: “Take THAT, you evil Commie Libs!)

The dominatrix was going to hit the other cheek anyway. I thought that was implied when I put on the gimp mask.

I was a bit angry after reading the story, but my anger was prefaced around the fact that the highlighted father in question was being incarcerated for POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA. His young children are being deprived of a father because of this. This makes me angry.

BTW, how does a guy who’s been incarcerated for 3 years end up as the father of 2 toddlers?
Conjugal visits. To wit: playing with the goodies.
Not so fast! He was “serving the last few months of a three-year sentence”. So, if he’s been in for two years and six months it’s possible for him to have fathered a 21-month old child before he was sent down.

Robyrt: I couldn’t find anyone objecting to these programs
There only a couple of comments, so far, on the actual Delaware-Online story– and both of them are objections:
“Is this just a farce so the guy can see his kids b/c daycare isn’t school that last time I checked. Stop selling weed and get a real job and be a father to your children.”
and
“Party at the jail!! Whoohoo!!!
Honestly, does anyone have a slight bit of pride anymore? And why would the news journal put such an article up? You are glamorizing drug dealing and being in jail.”
I think Fred knows his paper’s audience.

@Lee – Thanks for the point to Jonathan Bernstein and his Plain about Politics blog. I think that (so far) I like his reframing of the debate(s). Maybe it will present a way out of the political morass we are in.
@Raj – since you (presumably) paid the Dominatrix for her services why do you duck? Or does she have to chase you as well?

From “Wits Fittes and Fancies”, printed by Anthony Copely in 1595: A virtuous Gentleman, seeing a malicious person look down on the ground, and continue gazing thereon a good space, said: Questionless either some mischief has befallen yonder man, or some good to some other body.
Some things never change.

Fred, I believe that when you said that this angry resentiment is periodically a majory political force in American politics, you really mean during every Democratic Presidency since FDR. FDR was hounded by the Liberty League, Truman was hunted by the Dixiecrats, Kennedy and LBJ had to deal with JBS, Carter was crushed by the Reagan Democrats, Clinton suffered from a vast-right wing conspiracy led by Rush, and Obama, well we all know what Obama has to deal with.
Krugman had a good op-ed piece on how there is always a large faction of Americans that simply can’t deal with having a liberal or even moderately liberal President and over react. The fact tha Obama is not white makes things worse. Via Bachmann, we know that if Republicans take control of even one House of Congress that we are going to get repeated and expensive useless investigations and committee meanings.
The only place where I disagree with Krugman is if anything can be done about it. Krugman advocated that Obama do something about the economy and unleash New Deal 2.0, which I’m guessing means WPA 2.0. I don’t know if this is possible or even if Obama pursued a more aggressive, Roosevelt style earlier that it would have worked. An Australian poster noted that even though the Labour Party did everything it was supposed to, their conservatives still managed to get a PM to step down and create a hung Parliament. Its very likely that even if Obama did New Deal 2.0 that the Republicans could do the same. Of course, New Deal 2.0 would have been a good thing in and of itself.

Yeah, echo the anger about destroying that family for 3 years because of a damned marijuana charge. And those comments, my god. Conservative (well, Republican / fundamentalist anyway) obsession with “immoral” substances mystifies me. What prevents that guy from being a father to his children is not the fact that he had marijuana, or that he might have “delivered” some, it’s that he’s serving 3 YEARS IN JAIL.
Not to mention that the taxpayers are paying quite a hefty rate to give him full room and board during that time, so complaining about school (or even day care) supplies is very much in the straining out a gnat vein…

Yep.
I mean, it’s awesome that some people are doing something; it sucks that they need to. So I’m divided. I’m going to go with “awesome,” because I could use it, but also glare in the direction of the War on Drugs. Lord.

StuJay: Seems the sarcasm tags were invisble again.

“Party at the jail!! Whoohoo!!!
Honestly, does anyone have a slight bit of pride anymore? And why would the news journal put such an article up? You are glamorizing drug dealing and being in jail.”

Yeah. Because nothing is more glamorous than watching your kid get free school supplies in the prison yard. /sarcasm
What is wrong with people?

@Evan, re conservatism
Waleed Aly wrote an interesting essay a few months ago in which he discussed the conservative philosophy, as distinct from its common bedfellows in the contemporary era–e.g. nostalgia, xenophobia, economic liberalism, and reactionary attitudes to social issues. He says that at its heart conservatism is anti-revolutionary.
Full essay and supplementary video discussion behind the links:
http://www.quarterlyessay.com/issue/whats-right-future-conservatism-australia
http://www.themonthly.com.au/whats-right-waleed-aly-conservatism-shaun-carney-2393

Yeah, echo the anger about destroying that family for 3 years because of a damned marijuana charge. And those comments, my god. Conservative (well, Republican / fundamentalist anyway) obsession with “immoral” substances mystifies me.

And here I thought that according to the Word O’ Gawwwd, the only green thing forbidden to us was a magic fruit that grew on a (now extinct, apparently) tree which was also habitat for talking snakes. If Adam and Eve could have had their marijuana as a garnish for their ayahuasca porridge with psilocybin mushrooms on the side while Yahweh nodded his approval, whence cometh this “lock ‘em up and throw away the key” approach to drugs?
Also, I don’t get how people who say, “I don’t want no goddamn Washington bureaucrat tellin’ me what kinda guns I can own or that it ain’t alright for my meat-packing plant to include the occasional worker’s finger in our cans of Spam so’s we can put money we’d have wasted on worker safety into bonuses for the hard-working, productive CEO” can, apparently without noticing the Marianas Trench-sized gulf of cognitive dissonance, say “I do want a goddamn Washington bureaucrat to tell me what plants I can eat or grow or sell and who I can sleep with and what church I oughtta go to.”

“Party at the jail!! Whoohoo!!!
Honestly, does anyone have a slight bit of pride anymore? And why would the news journal put such an article up? You are glamorizing drug dealing and being in jail.”
You know who else had no pride and glamourized being in jail. Elvis Presley with his song “Jailhouse Rock.”
“Warden threw a party at the county jail. Prison band was there and they began to wail.”
…shameless….shameless… and disgusting…
Also “Jailhouse Rock” glamourizes the homosexual agenda. May I point out that coed jails don’t exist, yet this line is in the song.
“Number 47 said to Number 3, ‘you’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see.’”
Its obvious to me that “Jailhouse Rock” needs to be banned from the airwaves.

The story made me sad because I know some jackass is going to whine about it.
What does that make me?

Literate, because if you go to the comments section people do whine about it. They’re actually a lot more thoughtful than I expected though. They didn’t call for the execution of the man in the article and the sterilization of every female in his family, which is remarkably generous.

Conservatives want to… conserve things. Who’d have thought?
Probably because they’ve noticed how almost all change is change for the worse…
We are the Desperate Dan Appreciation Society…

Probably because they’ve noticed how almost all change is change for the worse…

K, it’s late at night so I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic. You’ll have to help me out.

Jason: Hee!
Although Elvis was quite the controversial figure, I hear, back in the day.

Probably because they’ve noticed how almost all change is change for the worse…

Bwaa? Unless one is speaking from the traditional power position, i.e. a white man with money and property, this makes no sense at all.

Probably because they’ve noticed how almost all change is change for the worse…

It helps that they spend most of their time — not all conservatives, but the ones on the radio and on the Internet — fantasizing about a time that never existed. A time when there was no taxes, everybody had a job, there was no crime, no one was gay, all marriages were happy, all children were quiet, fashionable, and hardworking from zygote stage, and everyone knew their place. This Past Utopia (Pastopia) might be a complete fiction; every generation places it at a random point in history — the Gilded Age, the 1950s, the Era of Good Feelings, the 1990s — but so much public policy goes into trying to resurrect this Atlantis that it gets as much attention as anything in history that actually happened.
(In short: “Leave It To Beaver” is not a documentary.)

Jason, if you can’t find a partner, use a wooden chair.

@Raj-
I’d also like to point out that the song “Teddy Bear” is rife with BDSM undertones.
“I don’t want to be your lion, because lion’s play to rough”
“Put a chain around my neck and lead me anywhere.”

This made me sad but not for the reasons Fred was talking about — I started thinking about the justice system, and how damn many of our citizens we’ve locked up, and how many kids around the US there must be like these kids, except with no church to help them. Makes me want to start some sort of similar program.

@CaryB
sidles up to the Slacktivist playground
Psst! Hey kids, wanna read a blog? It’ll make you feel real good!
Police! Police! Come arrest this man immediatly. His trying to hook our kids on internets.
And you kids remember: “Always say No”. It may begin innocently with something like a little blog post, but then you start to read comments, than engage in some conversations or discussion and suddenly BOOM! you’re in the middle of a flamewar with symptoms of SIWOTI disease, and finally you realise that you spend a whole afternoon not doing what you should have been doing. Don’t let that happen to you, because now you know and knowing is half of the battle.

@Jason:
Ah yes; Teddy Bear. The song somehow came up in a conversation I was having with a certain girl, and it, uh, inspired us.
Visualization is left as an exercise for the student.

Drake Pope:
It helps that they spend most of their time — not all conservatives, but the ones on the radio and on the Internet — fantasizing about a time that never existed. A time when there was no taxes, everybody had a job, there was no crime, no one was gay, all marriages were happy, all children were quiet, fashionable, and hardworking from zygote stage, and everyone knew their place. This Past Utopia (Pastopia) might be a complete fiction; every generation places it at a random point in history — the Gilded Age, the 1950s, the Era of Good Feelings, the 1990s — but so much public policy goes into trying to resurrect this Atlantis that it gets as much attention as anything in history that actually happened.
This reminds me of a Daily Show segment where John Oliver tried to find this elusive Golden Age, only to find that just about every decade was pretty bad for someone. Then he comes to the conclusion that it comes from a mix of nostalgia and a child’s viewpoint.
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-january-5-2010/even-better-than-the-real-thing

k, back on topic:
Count me among those who are both happy and sad. I’m happy about the way the prison event turned out (and about the fact that it even took place), but very unhappy – indeed, ragingly angry – about the people who are making as much effort as possible to be upset about it.

I have no real issue with this, so long as the various Churches aren’t pushing their particular beliefs on vulnerable children (and adults). With this economy, especially with a parent who is locked up, it’s hard – and with school budgets getting slashed, it is up to the families to provide more (although when I went to school, at a private catholic school no less, we had to provide all our supplies – today as a public school teacher, I have to provide them, somehow). This can also he good for both the prisoners and their family, and the contacts they have now might help them keep out of trouble in the future (and maybe keep them in better mental shape until they are released.

In fairness to those people, I’m pretty sure unemployment benefits are reserved for those who are unemployed through no fault of their own, that is, those who got laid off rather than those who got fired or who quit.
As far as I can tell, over here in Socialist Hell Broken Britain (as our very own resentful idiots like to think of it), you can claim Job Seeker’s Allowance (unemployment benefits) after getting fired or leaving work – although leaving a job AFTER being on JSA will mean a temporary bar on future claims. I’m open to correction by a more informed person, of course.
(Also, the maximum payment for £56 a week for a single person with no children is perhaps a bigger bar to people leaving work).

The two propositions:
a) the past was pretty crappy
b) change just makes things worse
…are hardly logically incompatible.

StuJay- Your welcome. Jonathan Bernstein’s blog is an interesting one because rather than advocating anything in particular, he likes view politics as an abstract. It brings an interesting perspective to the conversation. He obviously leans liberal based on who we cross-links to and what some of posts about the GOP, particularly when he called the GOP irresponsible, but he takes a longer and more theoretical view of things than most other bloggers do. I really like that. It can be frustrating for people who are very passionate in their beliefs but I believe is contributions are necessary and provide a good reflection on how politics in America work and why getting what you want is so hard even if you win an election.
KevinC- Once when walking, I encountered a short treastise by a youngish Hasidic Rabbi on a bookstand where he advocated that the use of consious altering drugs is not only okay under Halacha but that it increases a Jew’s abiltiy to understand God. I really should have purchased the treatise.
The War on Drugs needs to end. It only exists as a drain on money and to cause misery practically everywhere. It needs to end. The only people that are getting anything out of the war on drugs are the prison-industrial complex and the drug lords plus the random people involved that like the violence the drug war allows them to indulge in. Obama has been taking baby-steps in this direction but not enough. I like the policy of the Justice Department and DEA of defering to stats on marijuana usage but it can be reversed by the next President.

Unemployment here–which is “Taxachusetts” to conservatives and, like, Homer Simpson–also kicks in after you get fired, unless you get “fired with cause,” which basically means unless you get caught looking at porn during work hours or punch your boss in the face. Which is good, ’cause people find really smurfy reasons to fire employees. You don’t get it if you quit, though. And you lose it if you turn a job down.

The two propositions:
a) the past was pretty crappy
b) change just makes things worse
…are hardly logically incompatible.

The issue isn’t that those 2 statements are logically incompatible with each other. The issue is that the 2nd statement is incompatible with reality.

@Izzy-
means unless you get caught looking at porn during work hours
My extremely creepy, extremely rude coworker who always smelled like liquor store just got fired because they found porn site cookies on his computer. I can’t say that I shed any tears…..and all this was after his mail-order bride left him.
(not making any of this up…seriously)

‘Your Jobcentre Plus can delay your Jobseeker’s Allowance for up to 26 weeks if you have voluntarily quit without good reason.’
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/RedundancyAndLeavingYourJob/DG_10026688
But nothing about benefits on the Dismissal page, so presumably that doesn’t affect them:
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/RedundancyAndLeavingYourJob/Dismissal/DG_10026619

K.: Probably because they’ve noticed how almost all change is change for the worse…
The good old days were good because one was younger then.

Jason: Dude, all your job needs is a backwards-talking midget and some creepy owls, from the sound of it.

The good old days weren’t that good. Now is worse. Tomorrow looks like being the pits. I don’t want to think about next year.

I do think there’s a legitimate reason to be angry in this case. As others have said, it’s a travesty that that father got three years for possession of marijuana. There is a difference, of course, between that anger and the anger Fred is talking about, and it’s a difference I’ve seen in a lot of other discussions: it seems to me that liberals tend to get angry when people are treated worse than they deserve, whereas conservatives get angry when people are treated better than they deserve*.
K: Are you seriously saying that, for example, things are worse today than they were in the 18th century? Because, um, I’m going to have to disagree with you if that’s the case.
*Or better than conservatives think they deserve, at least. I obviously don’t think the prisoners in this situation are being treated better than they deserve at all.

Put me down as one of the happy crowd. Like the poor that they loathe (or self-loathe), there will always be resentful people, and I’m at peace with that, so that part of things doesn’t dim the happy.

greygelgoog: Usually the striker was hitting in such a way as to enforce a master/servant relationship. By “offering the other cheek” you forced the striker to either demean himself or recognize you as an equal.
I’ve heard that before, but I’ve never understood how that is supposed to work in the context of the rest of the passage.

Also, I don’t get how people who say, “I don’t want no goddamn Washington bureaucrat tellin’ me what kinda guns I can own or that it ain’t alright for my meat-packing plant to include the occasional worker’s finger in our cans of Spam so’s we can put money we’d have wasted on worker safety into bonuses for the hard-working, productive CEO” can, apparently without noticing the Marianas Trench-sized gulf of cognitive dissonance, say “I do want a goddamn Washington bureaucrat to tell methem what plants Ithey can eat or grow or sell and who Ithey can sleep with and what church Ithey oughtta go to.”

Made some edits that should explain the situation.
Government intervention is only ever wrong in the first person, such as my freedom of speech, what religion I practice and the right for me to bear arms.
Govenrment intervention is always called for and necessary in the third person such as their terror-mosque-of-terror, his godless sexual orientation, or those people‘s drug habits.

Excellent post. This in particular struck me:

Resentment, indignation and offendedness can be addictive, and thus these outlets remain popular, but lots of addictive things are popular despite precluding joy.

I’m watching friends and relatives who basically get their news from Fox demonstrate increasing addiction to precisely this kind of resentment. One elderly lady was remarking that she was tired of seeing all these ads for companies that would help those who found themselves in debt. She after all, she assured me, had lived frugally and avoided debt. Why was someone trying to help those who hadn’t?
I pointed out that the kind of “help” these companies were advertising was the kind she should be grateful not to have.
Those of us who interact with her are observing that she appears to crave the kind of adrenalin rush that comes from being indignant and/or anxious. We would love to wean her off it, but can’t really figure out how.
I totally despise those who manufacture resentment to make money.
(Sorry–that was a bit of a vent. But Fred’s post just hit home for me at this moment.)

Seriously, dealing MJ is a crime? I know a guy who got caught in his dorm room with an ounce, and all that happened is he got taken down to the jailhouse for a night.
Hell, for you older types, lemme explain who deals MJ. There are the people who actually ship multiple kilos. They sell that off by the kilo to some guy. And if you want MJ, you either A) know that guy, or B) know someone who buys weight. And lemme tell you, that last group? Thats EVERYBODY. Seriously. I know some excellent students who do that. They sell at a slight markup to their friends, make a little cash, and thats about it. So yeah, thats your “drug dealer” that most people know. Some dude who has a job, or goes to school and just sells a little dope on the side.
Seriously, the same people who say “if you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns” can’t apply that same logic to drugs?

The good old days weren’t that good. Now is worse.

But before we get to that report, let’s check in with women on their right to vote and their probability of surviving childbirth, high-melanin people on not being legal property, and basically everyone on their incredibly low chances of having to worry about smallpox, polio, or most other infectious disease. (Incidence of disease in particular correlates with improvements in the overall standard of living, rather than with the rise of specific cures and vaccines, but both are relevant.)

We are the Desperate Dan Appreciation Society…
God save strawberry jam, in all the different varieties!

Lately I’ve been finding comfort in reading Devotions upon Emergent Occasions by John Donne. I’ve been interested in community lately because I’ve realized just how much my happiness is determined by the happiness of my neighbors. The people who drive the roads with me and are the employees of the stores I shop at and the people who I pass on the street. When these people are hurting and miserable then my quality of life goes down.
Being the only happy person in a city full or miserable people is not very much fun.

@CaryB: For a while there in the rise of the Drug Warrior age (which is to say during most of the 1990s and the early-to-mid 2000s until it became so patently impossible to keep trying to enforce draconian anti-MJ laws) it was pretty much a guarantee that being busted for just about any amount would, unless the cops decided to cut you a break, mean getting processed through a court of law and being likely subjected to an asinine mandatory minimum.
Don’t even get me started on the inflexibility of three strikes and you’re out.

Voting’s overrated. And there’s never been any provision for anyone being legal property in common law, so that’s hardly a change (admittedly there was slavery throughout the Empire, and the 1833 Act is probably one of the few instances of change for the better; a notable exception which proves the general rule).
The advance of medicine has been nice, but it’s part of the general march of technology which is at the very least a two-edged sword.

Dash: She after all, she assured me, had lived frugally and avoided debt. Why was someone trying to help those who hadn’t?
So she was unhappy about her good fortune. It would feel pretty rude to me to suggest to an old lady that she should break a leg to get into financial trouble and receive all the help available to those, but I’d still be tempted…
Cary B: Hell, for you older types, lemme explain who deals MJ.
I do not think that this has changed much in the last 40 years, actually.

CaryB, like many things doing marijuana is not a crime if you happen to be the right sort of person. The man in this story wasn’t the right sort of person under the current dictates of society. Thats why he is in jail for three years rather than getting a slap on the wrist. The only reason marijuana is illegal because it was popular among the wrong sorts of people during the 1930s even though alcohol, and I love alcohol, has resulted in a lot more physical damage. There has never been an assault or any other act of violence done under the influence of marijuana. Bleh.
McAllen, thats an excellent way of putting it. Kudos, man.

That the government pays for nursing home care only for those who have no savings does rather make a perverse incentive not to save, at a time when we’re still suffering from the after-effects of a culture of too-much-spending, not-enough-saving. Surely the government should be rewarding those who save, not making the financially most rational path to spend exactly the same as you receive, so that you retire with neither debts nor savings?

You know what I love? When people claim with a straight face that the logical consequence of universal health care is people will go to the doctor/hospital more often.
Yeah, I’m really sure people will go out and break their legs at every intersection because getting the bones set and a cast is now free. *rolls eyes*
Yet this sort of superficially “logical” train of thought is often enough to create flimsy justifications for “we can’t have universal health care, damn it, I bought and paid for my own and that other person should eff off now!”
You can’t win when it comes to that kind of resentment that gets backed up by the Cato Institute.
Sure, I don’t like it when other people get free stuff I can’t get. But you know what? I also have a brain. And I can stop and think for ten seconds to realize why it is getting worked up over it is just stupid. Sure, it’s probably an asinine preferential policy and I can certainly complain.
But to be so upset and enraged over it as to be incapable of treating the recipients of said free stuff as human beings who just want a break in life? Jeeeeeeeeeeez.

K: And there’s never been any provision for anyone being legal property in common law, so that’s hardly a change (admittedly there was slavery throughout the Empire, and the 1833 Act is probably one of the few instances of change for the better; a notable exception which proves the general rule).
This is completely absurd: (1) That slavery was widely adopted, then largely wiped out in the common-law-speaking world without ever being allowed by common law just demonstrates that there are axes of societal change other than common law, and (2) “the exception that proves the rule” does not mean that.
You’re going to need to clarify very soon how much of this you actually believe, and develop your position in a little more depth than these two-sentence bursts of glib cynicism. At the moment you’re starting to smell like a troll.

Actually, I can tell you that under free health care people do go to the doctor more often. If I am worried about something, be it a cough or whatever, I go to the doctor about it.
If I had to pay a charge for every visit to the doctor, I wouldn’t do that. I’d wait and see if it went away by itself.
(If I were in the US, I would also be worried that the doctor would try to medicate me unnecessarily, rather than just telling me there was nothing to worry about, if that was the case. But the main reaosn I wouldn’t go is because of the cost).
I can’t really imagine having to pay for every visit to the doctor; it would fundamentally change the relationship we have with the health service. It would change from ‘go if you’re worried about something’ to ‘only go if something is absolutely, definitely, conclusively wrong.’ It would probably lead to a lot more late diagnoses.)

That the government pays for nursing home care only for those who have no savings does rather make a perverse incentive not to save, at a time when we’re still suffering from the after-effects of a culture of too-much-spending, not-enough-saving. Surely the government should be rewarding those who save, not making the financially most rational path to spend exactly the same as you receive, so that you retire with neither debts nor savings?

I’ve seen other asininely-structured policies as well, such as the requirement by some universities that government student loans are required to qualify for further financial assistance, but the remedy there is to highlight it and agitate for change, not grouse resentfully, IMO.

Actually, I can tell you that under free health care people do go to the doctor more often. If I am worried about something, be it a cough or whatever, I go to the doctor about it.
If I had to pay a charge for every visit to the doctor, I wouldn’t do that. I’d wait and see if it went away by itself.

Saskatchewan had a fee for per doctor visits ($5) back in the 1980s. The government abandoned it a few years later because it wasn’t accomplishing anything except to piss people off who legitimately needed to go.

Oh, what do you think ‘the exception that proves the rule’ means? you haven’t fallen for the commonly-held, but completely wrong, belief that it means the exception ‘tests’ the rule, have you? If so you need to brush up on your Latin.
Slavery may have been widely by the colonials, but I don’t believe it was ever adopted actually in Britain; let alone ‘widely’. Hence why I said about the 1833 Act. But all that proves is that some colonies decide to change, from not having slavery to having slavery, thus proving that change is for the worse, and that they should have remained as the mother country was. (They then changed back, thus proving that conservatism, ie changing back to the way things used to be, is a good idea)

(And when I say ‘changed back’ of course I mean ‘were forcibly changed back by the 1833 Act’; the colonials themselves weren’t happy about it, thus proving that those who make changes (which are bad) will want to keep those changes, and have to be pulled back to the straight and narrow.)

If I had to pay a charge for every visit to the doctor, I wouldn’t do that. I’d wait and see if it went away by itself.
(If I were in the US, I would also be worried that the doctor would try to medicate me unnecessarily, rather than just telling me there was nothing to worry about, if that was the case. But the main reaosn I wouldn’t go is because of the cost).
I can’t really imagine having to pay for every visit to the doctor; it would fundamentally change the relationship we have with the health service. It would change from ‘go if you’re worried about something’ to ‘only go if something is absolutely, definitely, conclusively wrong.’ It would probably lead to a lot more late diagnoses.)

My friends who have lived abroad all complain about the same thing in countries with socialized medicine: that they have to wait in line because poor people go in just for being sick, instead of waiting until it’s life-threatening. Why, they ask, should *they* have to wait to get their birth control prescription just so some *poor person* can get a routine checkup?

Fox is quite skillful, usually, at the fine balancing act this requires. Cultivating, teaching and nurturing perpetual resentment involves a measure of restraint. The story in today’s paper can be used to encourage this resentment, but take it too far and you arrive at something more obviously absurd. “I wish I was a prisoner so my kids could have it easy like prisoner’s kids do.” Unless one is extremely far gone, the silliness of that notion will cause the swelling resentment to burst like an over-filled balloon, forcing the Resenter to acknowledge that he or she actually is much better off than the supposed objects of resentment and exposing him or her to gratitude and empathy — the antidotes for the disease of perpetual resentment.
It’s like treating a boil. You have to wait until it forms a head before you can lance it.
Er, sorry…that was kinda gross…
——————————————————
Kudos to the Delaware Online journalist for picking that particular family. He probably could have found another one that was less likely to trigger nasty commentary, or glossed over the issues and written a squeaky-clean feel-good story that would neither offend nor challenge anyone.

I think things are generally on an upward trend as a whole, with some localized sharp fucking dips.
Also, I’d say that going to the doctor more often is a good thing, by and large–not just for the patient, but for society as a whole. As K says, if you get regular checkups, you’re more likely to catch something before you need major surgery or three courses of antibiotics. You’re also less likely to spread disease, and you’re more likely to be a productive member of whatever it is we’re supposed to be productive members of if you’re not in pain or nauseous or seeing double.

@Ross: Seriously? Come on. I’ve only ever had to wait about 15 mins or so at drop-in clinics and the doctors at my uni are pretty flexible about getting appointments scheduled if need be – wait time’s no more than a few days max. Hell if it’s a major prob I can usually get in the next day if need be.

Ross’s friends: yeesh. I hate lines as much as the next person, but really, I can just bring a book most of the time. Which I end up doing a lot, because…oh, wait, the U.S. is not a magical capitalist line-free paradise. Go figure!

K: Medicare might pay for Nursing Home care but that hardly is reason or incentive to not save for your own care. The main reason is that Medicare only pays a bare minimum of services. Your choices under medicare are limited and so it is much better to have your own money so that you can have your own options.
I don’t know of anyone saying, “Well, the government is going to pay for my care so I’m not going to save anything.” Is this a real problem? Also, this isn’t really the time to be trying to convince people to increase their saving. Even though savings rates have been going up (as people grow nervous about their jobs) this is actually a bad thing on a Macro level. You end up with a situation like Japan where people are saving money instead of spending it back into the economy. Right now we need to focus on getting more money into the economy. Not less.

I suspect one motive underneath all the resentment is fear. If you believe you’re living in a world where there isn’t enough to go around, and there never can be enough to go around, it makes sense to dread losing what you already have (much or little). It also makes sense in that world to expect that anybody you turn to for help will cheat you and leave you even worse off.
Once you start seeing the world as an impoverished, dangerous place, it must be easy to get angry about those scarce goodies going to people who haven’t “earned” them. Not to mention the likelihood that, if Bad People Who Aren’t Like Me really are getting help from others, the Bad People must have somehow tricked the helpers into helping instead of exploiting.
Perhaps this overlaps with sane / RINO conservatism in the concept of limited resources – the sane conservatives want to make sure resources aren’t wasted, and the habitually resentful want to make sure nobody gets more than they do (or, more likely, make sure nobody else gets as much as they do), but both start from a perception that there may not be enough to give everybody everything they want.

I have no real issue with this, so long as the various Churches aren’t pushing their particular beliefs on vulnerable children (and adults). – Badger3k

I don’t know anything specific about the program in Fred’s linked story. I can tell you that my church, and a number of other churches and synagogues in South Jersey, have just been collecting school supplies which are given to homeless shelters in Camden to be distributed. That is, the religious groups provide the supplies, but don’t deal directly with the recipients. No preaching.

You know what I love? When people claim with a straight face that the logical consequence of universal health care is people will go to the doctor/hospital more often.
Being poor is hoping the toothache goes away. Being not!poor, or living somewhere with the sense to have the government pay for routine dental checks and cleaning and medically-necessary dental work such as filling cavities, is getting one’s teeth professionally cleaned often enough that there might never be a toothache, and/or going to the dentist so the dentist can figure out what’s causing the toothache and do something to make the toothache go away while the problem is cheaply dealt with (for example, filling a cavity instead of doing a root canal) and before the toothache gets bad enough that it becomes necessary to skip a shift of shit-what-one-gets-paid-to-shovel.
I don’t remember the kid’s name, but a few years ago there was a kid who got tens of thousands of dollars of dental surgery done on the government’s dime, after his infected tooth or whatever it was had made up its mind to kill him no matter what anybody did, because his mom couldn’t afford and hadn’t convinced the government to pay for a few hundred dollars of dental work several months earlier. I’m not sure who that story ought to offend more, the people who think poor people are people too or the people who think reducing wasteful government spending is the Holy Grail.
So yeah, a logical consequence of universal health care is that people will go to the doctor more often. That’s the point.

@MercuryBlue: Yes, but when these anti-universal-care people use allegedly solid economic data to back them up, it carries a distinct flavor of “we’re trying to mathematically PROVE that universal health care is BAD!” and it really does carry to the absurd extreme of people seeing doctors more often clogs up the system and that’s BAAAAAAAAD.
Even though here in Canada, people don’t go to the doctor just because they feel like it. They go when it’s necessary and it does not clog up the system.
Economics says if the cost is zero, people will use as much of whatever as they can. Fair enough if it’s computer parts or food. But when it’s health care, that narrow view just leads to asinine conclusions.

Who has checkups? The doctor would laugh themselves silly if I came in nd said ‘I want a checkup’. The NHS doesn’t do checkups. If I wanted a checkup I’d have to pay BUPA or someone.
What the hell is ‘Medi-care’? Is that a private health plan like BUPA? I don’t think many people say ‘Well, the government is going to pay for my care so I’m not going to save anything.’ but a lot of people do end up in nursing homes with their savings — that they had hoped to leave to their children — being bled away to nothing, while the person in the next chair is having their fees paid by the government because they don’t have any savings. And that does rather seem unfair to me.
There have been lots of suggestions for solving this problem, such as having the government pay for a base level of nursing care and allowing those who have saving to either accept the basic level and therefore keep their savings intact or pay more for nicer homes, but they have never been implemented.
Often because of the deadly phrase ‘it would be a two-tier system’. Suggest any health-related policy would lead to a two-tier system where the poor lose out (as opposed, presumably to a one-tier system where everybody loses out) and it’s basically dead.
Same as what happened to grammar schools, basically, and the continuing assault on private schools for being a ‘two-tier system’.

“God save strawberry jam, in all the different varieties!”
Preservin’ the old ways from bein’ abused;
Protectin’ the new ways for me and for you;
What more can we do?

MercuryBlue: There was a horribly, awful story about a little boy that died because his mom couldn’t afford to take him to the dentist. As a result his toothache became infected and spread to his brain and killed him. Yet, there are people that still think that universal healthcare is bad thing. So what if people go to the doctor more, to save a single life is worth it.

That the government pays for nursing home care only for those who have no savings does rather make a perverse incentive not to save, at a time when we’re still suffering from the after-effects of a culture of too-much-spending, not-enough-saving. Surely the government should be rewarding those who save, not making the financially most rational path to spend exactly the same as you receive, so that you retire with neither debts nor savings?

Oh definitely. Government provided retirement housing to absolutely an incentive not to save. That’s why you see rich people trying to get into the places where those on government care end up and then getting all POed because the freeloaders have taken all the spaces at those primo old folks homes. I mean really, why would anyone bother to save just for the trivial benefit of being able to choose where they spend the last years of their lives? Comfortable surroundings and staff that are skilled and plentiful enough to provide decent care just aren’t that important. As long as they’re not camping under a bridge that’s all those people really want, right?
Man, the sarcasm tag just can’t close today.

Kudos to the Delaware Online journalist for picking that particular family. He probably could have found another one that was less likely to trigger nasty commentary, or glossed over the issues and written a squeaky-clean feel-good story that would neither offend nor challenge anyone.

If the Delaware Online journalist was actually trying to present something that would challenge people s/he should probably should have written about a white prisoner rather than playing into the idea that poor prisoners are all people of color.

I’d argue that people going to the doctor more often saves money: Prevention is pretty much universally cheaper than a cure, and the price of that cure just goes up the longer one waits due to not wanting to pay for a doctor’s visit and hoping it’ll go away.
You keep hearing about how Ontario’s hospitals are jam-packed as an argument against universal healthcare, but they’re not full because people with superfluous conditions are in them, every person taking up a bed needs to be in the hospital.
Apparently those who oppose universal healthcare feel that if you need to go to the hospital but are poor then you should die instead.

If the Delaware Online journalist was actually trying to present something that would challenge people s/he should probably should have written about a white prisoner rather than playing into the idea that poor prisoners are all people of color.
True, dat…

Who’s able to chose where they spend the last years of your lives? Unless you’re a millionaire, in which case yes you can probably afford somewhere nice, you’ll be in whatever nursing home can hope with the level of care you require and has a room available.
And you’ll stay there with your savings bleeding away until they’re gone, at which point the government will take over paying. Well unless you deteriorate and have to move somewhere with a greater level of care, in which case your savings will disappear even faster. But in either case, the person in the chair next to you might be having their fees paid by the government because their savings already ran out, or because they never bothered to save to start off with.

but a lot of people do end up in nursing homes with their savings — that they had hoped to leave to their children — being bled away to nothing, while the person in the next chair is having their fees paid by the government because they don’t have any savings. And that does rather seem unfair to me.

First of all, what universe do you live in where people with money end up in the same facility as people on the dole? Second, are you kidding me? You’re resentful on behalf of grown ass adults not getting “their” inheritance? Dang.

This universe?
And yeah, I think it’s rather off that if someone worked their lives and saved specifically in order to be able to leave something to their children (surely not an ignoble goal?), that they end up in a trap where it would have been financially better for them to have gambled everything away on the greyhounds. That’s perverse.

(Oh, and I guess it depend son what you mean by ‘people with money’ — yeah, if somebody can sell their house for three million quid, they probably can afford somewhere pretty nice. But for most people with an average amount of savings, and an averagely-priced house, they’re not going to be able to afford somewhere significantly better than the same homes the NHS puts people in, are they?)

If you want a case study in, well, unhappiness at other’s unhappiness, read the comments here:
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/aug/29/i-am-frightened/

Hmm. Arrogant, reality-resistant, normative, apparent citizen of the UK, and represented by a single letter of the alphabet that’s one removed from yesterday’s alias…
K, were you planning to respond to any of the other dissections of your Proper English concept on the other thread?

Back in the mid-’90s I had started working full-time after grad school and was taking my mother’s advice to shop for a cheap life insurance policy, “because if something happens to you, someone needs to pay to bury you.”
I met with a life insurance agent at a coffee shop. We made small talk for a while and he asked what I did for work. I told him I worked for a nonprofit community service agency. He became really quiet for a moment.
When he spoke again, he said, “I’ve always been a Republican, and I’ve always voted against funding for programs like yours. Then a few years ago, my son, who’s now 25, got in some trouble with drugs. A community service agency provided him with drug treatment, helped him get back on his feet, and helped him get a job. I never knew how important programs like that were, until I needed one.”
Fifteen years ago, when Fox and Limbaugh were just getting big, this story was possible. Now it seems like the politics of resentment are so stoked, a Republican in that man’s situation might cease to find such programs important right after his son completed it.

What is it with the one letter posters? First I, then (new) J, now K…
As I recall, The L is an intelligent and witty poster. Perhaps that will break the streak.

There is joy in resentment, otherwise people wouldn’t indulge in it. And I think the joy in it is the self-reassurance that I (the resentful jerk) deserve more blessings than someone else. In other words, a story about convicts and their kids is immediately seized upon as an opportunity to say “I’m better than them! Me me me!” The resentment is more of a side effect.
Sounds really dumb, petty, and poorly-thought-out, but I think that’s the most likely explanation. At the very least, I’m probably right that there is joy in resentment, somewhere.

Once the threads here pass about ten pages I really can’t be bothered keeping up.
I really should work on getting fed up sooner — before I mke the mistake of getting involved would be best. I’ll just have to keep trying.

then (new) J, now K…
Wait, wait, wait…. this J is isn’t the same J???? Can we have them fight to the death Highlander style “There can only be one!” I’m rooting for new J, but I would root for pretty much anyone against old J, so that’s not saying much.
J and K? Are the Men and Black posting here?

To be fair, I don’t think K’s talking about wealthy people in nursing homes, but rather middle class folks. They often don’t have any more options than the poor.

I’ve decided to change my name to a Chinese pictogram to express solidarity with the other single-letter names here.

You were tough on me when I was President, but I enjoy reading your blog.

Class has nothing to do with it — a lower-class millionaire wideboy might be able to afford a great nursing home, while the penniless son of an earl might end up in an NHS home.
But yes, I’m not talking about millionaires. I’m talking about ordinary folks who want to leave their children the fruits of their life’s labour, only to have it leached away on their nursing care.

Nice post. I’d comment, but I need to inform 007 of his new mission.

To be fair, I don’t think K’s talking about wealthy people in nursing homes, but rather middle class folks. They often don’t have any more options than the poor.

I don’t know how it is in the UK, but here in the US there are significant differences between the options available to the middle class and to the poor. The options for the middle class aren’t good, which might lead to the assumption that they’re at the bottom of the barrel. That assumption only holds until you’ve seen the places that the poor end up.

I don’t have time to read blogs right now. I’m too busy messing with Captain Picard.

Hapax: Shouldn’t L be trying to stop the dreaded serial killer Kira rather than posting to Slacktivist?;).

I don’t have time to read blogs right now. I’m too busy messing with Captain Picard.

Dagnabbit, I just came back to this thread specifically to make that joke! (My phrasing was “I wanted to take a moment out of eternity to congratulate you all on being so very human. I would say more, but I have to go finish playing with Jean-Luc.” One may read the potential hoyay as one wishes.)

“As I recall, The L is an intelligent and witty poster. Perhaps that will break the streak.”
Or maybe I just stole a letter from her

@ Pius Thicknesse
until it became so patently impossible to keep trying to enforce draconian anti-MJ laws
In Los Angeles, theyr’e trying to enforce a fairly-reasonable law on pot dispensaries in a manner that’s draconian – the attorney in charge (city, I believe) reads the law in such a way that the dispensaries are not allowed to change management, or even hire or reassign anyone, once they open, no matter how closely they follow the law in every other way. Failure to follow his interpretation of the law gets them shut down. And his interpretation wasn’t even handed out until after they opened.

What upsets me about this story is that apparently you can bankrupt your company and raid the pension fund and stock the loot in an offshore account and you will recieve a stern talking to (maybe). But if you are found with a ziplock baggie of ditch weed on your person you are a threat to all that is decent and good and must be locked up.
But as long as there are enough folks like the folks who do things like this story we just might make it. I think the root of the politics of resentment is fear. You can believe in god, gods, afterlife, karma, Zeus all you want but you see just like everybody else how cruel and random this world can be.
Good people die horribly, children get cancer, hurricanes destroy cities. And you can pray until your lips about fall off and you still lose your house, or your wife doesn’t make it. It’s scary. Good religion and secular philosophies acknowledge and address this the best they can. The politics of resentment feed you the lie that if someone else hadn’t got something they didn’t deserve things would have worked out for you.
It makes no logical sense, but the politics of resentment isn’t logical. It’s a sap to that primal fear at how random and unfair the universe is. That instead of accepting it like an adult you can bawl that if that prisoner’s child hadn’t got free school supplies, you wouldn’t have had to take another pay cut at work.
And for the demagogues like Beck they’re playing that frightfully well. And that’s where I get hopeless. Glenn Beck exists only so far as people listen to him and pay his salary by buying his books and attending his lectures. I don’t know how to get them to turn away, they don’t even seem to realize he and the billionaire Tea Party puppet masters are leading them to vote against their own economic self interest.

JessicaR: Thats debatible. Most members of the Tea Party are relatively affluent, at least affluent enough to be concerned about their tax dollars going to someone else and to believe that they won’t get anything back in return. The politics of resentment might be in their interest at least in a short-term manner even if long-term they’ll be burned along with the rest of us.
What I can’t determine is if Beck’s audience listens to him because he tells them what they already want to hear or because they were just leaning towards that direction and he pushed them into the dark, cold abyss. If its the former, we’re screwed. If it is the latter, we are screwed to but only in the short term. The latter suggests that it might be possible to prevent people from falling in the first place if presented with the proper information or possibly even to rescue some people.

What I can’t determine is if Beck’s audience listens to him because he tells them what they already want to hear or because they were just leaning towards that direction and he pushed them into the dark, cold abyss. If its the former, we’re screwed. If it is the latter, we are screwed to but only in the short term. The latter suggests that it might be possible to prevent people from falling in the first place if presented with the proper information or possibly even to rescue some people.

So in other words, we’re screwed. I’ve sadly learned from experience that problems like this are very, very rarely the result of being uninformed.

I forget who was asking about the interpretation of “Turn the other cheek”, but Wikipedia has a decent explanation:

A literal interpretation of the passages, in which the command refers specifically to a manual strike against the side of a person’s face, can be supported by reference to historical and other factors. At the time of Jesus, striking someone deemed to be of a lower class with the back of the hand was used to assert authority and dominance. If the persecuted person “turned the other cheek,” the discipliner was faced with a dilemma. The left hand was used for unclean purposes, so a back-hand strike on the opposite cheek would not be performed.[3] The other alternative would be a slap with the open hand as a challenge or to punch the person, but this was seen as a statement of equality. Thus, by turning the other cheek the persecuted was in effect demanding equality.

Turcano, they are uninformed; the people they listen to would rather feed them lies that are sweet on the tongue and bitter in the guts, and the listeners are also told that everyone else will lie to them.

I’m not clear on why someone who was trying to assert their authority and dominance wouldn’t be okay with smacking their ‘inferior’ with the Uncleanliness Hand. Seems like it’d be even more emphatic.

@greygelgoog: I think it was Walter Wink who talked about the context of “turn the other cheek.” He does work in theology with an emphasis on power disparities. Also coined the term “the myth of redemptive violence.”

In the short term, yes we are screwed. Long term? I’m not so sure, America is getting more diverse and the numbers of people who fall pray to Beck and company are going to to decrease in numbers. Its a waiting came but it will happen.

Class has nothing to do with it — a lower-class millionaire wideboy might be able to afford a great nursing home, while the penniless son of an earl might end up in an NHS home.
K, there was a discussion on here recently about the fact that class has a different definition in the U.S. than in the UK. In the US, class refers to income level, not connections to ancestry.

Will Wildman: I’m not clear on why someone who was trying to assert their authority and dominance wouldn’t be okay with smacking their ‘inferior’ with the Uncleanliness Hand. Seems like it’d be even more emphatic.
As I read it, that’s the point. Smacking-around of slaves was socially acceptable, within certain limits. The idea is to force them to step over those limits.
I think you said you’ve studied judo? This is “When pushed, pull.”

@Sarah: Yeah, the name got my memory going. Some of his books were required reading for one of my college courses. And thanks to everyone for bothering to look this stuff up.

> I suspect one motive underneath all the resentment is fear. If you believe
> you’re living in a world where there isn’t enough to go around, and there
> never can be enough to go around, it makes sense to dread losing what you
> already have (much or little)….Once you start seeing the world as an
> impoverished, dangerous place, it must be easy to get angry about those
> scarce goodies going to people who haven’t “earned” them.
And I think, if you feel that world is that dangerous, then the thought of picking a fight with someone stronger and more powerful than you is going to feel very frightening. So it’s much easier, emotionally, to pick fights and blame things on someone poorer and less powerful than you.

More to my inadequate response to Turcano. Its important to realize that the resentment crowd is much fewer in number than they appear. Most people that are going to be voting Republican this year aren’t members of the Tea Party or even people the listen to Glen Beck and watch Fox News. Most of them are not very political people, that do not really follow the news and just go out and vote everywhere because its what you do if you are citizen. They usually vote based on their feelings, usually concerning the economy. If the economy is sucky than they vote for the opposition. If its good than they vote for the majority. Since the economy is sucky than they are voting Republican even though it seems odd to people on this newsgroup.

As I read it, that’s the point. Smacking-around of slaves was socially acceptable, within certain limits. The idea is to force them to step over those limits.
I think you said you’ve studied judo? This is “When pushed, pull.”

Ah, so the unclean-backhand would be socially unacceptable, and the goal was to make the slapper give in to that impulse (which they might be all in favour of) to get mass condemnation? Interesting.
This is going to mess with one of my favourite parts of my Tribulation story, though. The Antichrist has already faced, essentially, TurboJesus (I’m not sure anyone here will ever read the story, since it’s 99.99% unwritten, so maybe spoilers don’t matter, but suffice to say that TurboJC summarily damned everyone on Earth). When she next meets a celestial figure who looks exactly the same, her immediate reaction is to smack him across the face – at which point he turns to offer the other cheek. This being an indication that this guy is not the sword-from-the-mouth, burn-the-heathens type. Which I thought was a great little moment, but now I feel like it’s too superficial a reading of that particular scripture bit.
(Tangentially related: I have studied judo, but I don’t remember saying so here. Either your memory is mighty or you are showing the first indications of mindwhammy powers.)

Thank you for this. It’s exactly why when my mother said, “Black women have it so easy,” that I walked away from a conversation from her. (It’s in response to how she sees many poor black women get free tuition and free childcare to the community college she works for, but fail out the first semester because in her words, they shop instead of study.)
While I think Fox, etc. encourages it, it’s been a feature of Republican, especially Upstate NY Republicanism for a while now. As in “Why are all those people in New York City taking our money for welfare, etc.?

@K: Voting’s overrated. And there’s never been any provision for anyone being legal property in common law, so that’s hardly a change (admittedly there was slavery throughout the Empire, and the 1833 Act is probably one of the few instances of change for the better; a notable exception which proves the general rule).
Yup, it was wayyyyyy better back in the day when my great-aunt’s abusive husband could walk into the bank and legally remove all the money in her bank account.
And it was wayyyyy better when universities didn’t tempt women to overwork their brains by actually letting them get degrees.
And it was a far, far better world when mortgage companies were allowed to legally discount up to 50% of a woman’s wages in calculating ability to pay mortgages.
And it was really cool when in August 24, 1928 the chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that women were not fit and eligible to be appointed to public office — that is they were not fully persons under the eyes of the law.

Thank you for this. It’s exactly why when my mother said, “Black women have it so easy,” that I walked away from a conversation from her. (It’s in response to how she sees many poor black women get free tuition and free childcare to the community college she works for, but fail out the first semester because in her words, they shop instead of study.

I hate it when people say things like that. They’re usually grossly overexaggerating from one anecdotal example they’ve likely heard of and are misremebering, and on the basis of that condemning a whole group of people and whining about how they get all the good stuff.
GRAAAAAAAAAAK.

I’m rather surprised “Freedom Fighter” hasn’t come back in some time, unless of course he decided to shorten his name dramatically.
And kudos to those of you who did the string of one-letter-names. ^_^ I almost destroyed a monitor here with high-fructose corn syrup….

Well I’m not sharining any of my cookies with you marxist nazis, and that’s good enough for me.

Ah, so the unclean-backhand would be socially unacceptable, and the goal was to make the slapper give in to that impulse (which they might be all in favour of) to get mass condemnation?
By “socially unacceptable” I don’t mean “you will be shamed in front of your peers” so much as “your culture has taught you that this is shameful”. It’s easy to hurt people without thinking about it as long as it’s done in a socially approved manner (privilege again); the strategy here is to force the oppressor to do something shocking to his own sensibilities. (Though public shaming can be part of that, as with Gandhi’s hunger strikes.)
I don’t think I’m explaining this very well; if you’re interested, Wink’s Engaging the Powers (the relevant part of which is on Google Books) goes into much more detail about the entire passage.

especially Upstate NY Republicanism for a while now. As in “Why are all those people in New York City taking our money for welfare, etc.?

Oh geez this. I hear that kind of thing all the damn time, living in northern NY with Republican family members. It is pretty true that the region tends to get ignored (at best) by state politicians and higher, but really, we are hardly any source of tax revenue for the state, and there’s little that state spending could do to provide long-term growth to the region short of taking outright control of the local utility monopolies that are strangling us harder than the state could ever dream. Our problems here go way beyond taxes, on the federal or the state level, but it’s easier to complain about someone somewhere else getting “our” tax money than it is to challenge and correct the groups and problems actually harming us.

The NY tax sentiment takes a very different form on Long Island, as in “Why are we the only ones paying for New York City?” followed by angry glaring in the direction of upstate. It’s weird that we don’t blame the city for taking our money, we blame upstate for not sharing the burden. I don’t know the numbers to know the truth of it, but that’s the sentiment.

Fred, I have never prayed to you before. I have no tongue for it. No one, not even you, will remember if we were good posters or bad. Why we fought, or why we flamed. All that matters is that two or three issues can take up many pages. Discussion pleases you, Fred, so grant me one request. Grant me a new Left Behind post! And if you do not listen, then – well, I’ll just have to wait another week, I guess.
*NOTE*
It’s not that I don’t find these latest posts interesting; it’s just that I’m coming down with a severe case of LB Fever.

Why, exactly, would I care about the colonials’ silly misunderstanding of the class system?

Raj, I think Fred promised to return in September. That means you may have to wait two more days, or (if he’s sticking to a Monday schedule) at most, seven. Think you can hold out that long?

Gosh, I’ve never seen so much discussion of slappers outside Friday night in the town centre.

(And as I’ve been inside Girton, Newnham and New Hall (better not call it Murray Edwards, as more than one person I know might punch me) I should perhaps point out I’m all in favour of women being awarded degrees? I guess that’s a change that wasn’t too bad, but again, doesn’t change the general tenor of change being for the worst)

Generally, I find that the people of NYC, Long Island, the Metro North counties find common ground in their loathing of up-state New Yorkers, whom they believe interfere with NYC and downstate government and deny downstate, its fair share of the revenues, especially for the MTA. Many people on Long Island and in the Metro North counties probably do not resent NYC dwellers because they see theme selves as honorary NYC dwellers since travel to the NYC for work and leisure is very common since the places of work and entertainment haven’t migrated much to the suburbs in comparison to other major metropolitan areas. I think only NYC and Chicago are the metro areas where most jobs are located in the central city of the metro area and downtown at that rather than in the suburbs.

Someone posted a comment about Tea Partiers being more affluent and went on to say something about Glen Beck’s influence on them. I have to add to that…in the South, the Tea Partiers are not necessarily affluent or educated, although some definitely are. What is happening is that the educated and affluent, along with the Glenn Becks of the world, are able to spin the Party rhetoric in a way that gives the lowly and ignorant ones a smokescreen for their racism. Read: talking points. Of course, they don’t actually regurgitate the information all that well, and this is why we end up with the sound bytes we do. Now, being a Southerner and not particularly affluent OR educated, I want to make sure I add the disclaimer that we are NOT ALL racist idiots, rednecks or tobacco-spitting misogynists, although that does seem to be the reigning theory. We are simply outnumbered down here. I’m trying to get the heck out of Dodge, but it ain’t all that easy.

1) Why, exactly, would I care about the colonials’ silly misunderstanding of the class system?
2) I guess that’s a change that wasn’t too bad, but again, doesn’t change the general tenor of change being for the worst
OK. The first sentence above confirmed my initial judgement, and the second gave me a way to test my hypothesis in case I’m actually wrong. We’ll start with #2.
So far, MonocharacterName, every time I’ve seen people point out “Oh, you think this wasn’t a change for the better?” you’ve gone “Oh, well, in that case I suppose it was, but not in general…” or “Well, at this one precise moment in time things might have been better and that was a return *to* that point.”
So, do enlighten us; what are some of the changes for the worse?
However, looking at sentence #1, up there, I will say this to my fellow Slactivites: suspension, truss, or simple stone arch, and who wants to toss money into the hat for this fellow?
(So that you’re aware, PersonWhoClearlyDidn’tReadEnoughKafkaToGetThePointButLikesHisCharacterNames, the English do not have ownership of the notion of a “class system”. It plays out different ways in different places, and if you’re going to continue with your inane “We got it all right back in the 1830s and the colonials have been changing it and making it worse ever since” blather, you might as well take up residence under your bridge now. And no, requests to make it the Forth Railroad Bridge will not be granted — it’s far too elegant a piece of engineering to demean it with your residence.)

Inasmuch as the United States have a ‘class system’ — and frankly, any culture that accords as much respect to the obnoxious nouveau riche as the American ‘class’ system does hardly deserves that adjective — they borrowed it from the British. Where then do you get off claiming that your ‘wealth system’ is the correct interpretation?
I’d give examples of changes for the worse but I expect you’d all think they were changes for the better, so I don’t see the point.

Anyone in need of some honey?

(I tried reading The Castle about a decade and a half ago, but was defeated by the German habit of not taking a new paragraph when a new character speaks. So confusing! Still, I mean to go back. Have you seen the new version of Metropolis? I saw it last night. Seriously, you have not seen Metropolis if you haven’t seen this. A whole new plotline with the Thin Man and 11811, the completion with the climax — all those bits that previously were title cards about the flood — and, best of all, layers on layers of depth about Rotwang and Joh Fredrickson. That moment where Rotwang hesitates before pulling the lever i the transformation scene? Heartbreaking, now. Absolutely heartbreaking. You must, must must see it.)

However, looking at sentence #1, up there, I will say this to my fellow Slactivites: suspension, truss, or simple stone arch, and who wants to toss money into the hat for this fellow?
Truss. Definitely.

Where then do you get off claiming that your ‘wealth system’ is the correct interpretation?
Actually, the person posted an explanation for why you might have misinterpreted what was said, and where it was coming from. This is different from claiming “This is the right way to interpret it, all the others are wrong.” For that, we got to wait for you.
I’d give examples of changes for the worse but I expect you’d all think they were changes for the better, so I don’t see the point.
I have a very simple question: Why are you still here?
And I don’t mean that in the “Go away, kid, you bother me” sense. But honestly? If you don’t see the point in presenting and defending your position, then why are you here with it at all? Because all you are doing is reinforcing a trollish impression.
Because if you *did* present changes for the worse, then we could discuss why they were/were not so, and what that means; we could, perhaps, actually learn something about each other’s positions. But it would appear you’ve decided yours, and ours, and so why even bother posting?

Joh Fredersen, even. Teach me to type drunk.

Why am I posting? Because I’m bored. Why else would I be wasitng time on the internet instead of doing real, productive things? Why are you?

About doctor’s visits: If my employer would not insist that employees bring a doctor’s note the third day they stay home sick, I would not go anyway, because when I’m too sick to work, I want to stay in bed, and not drag myself out on the street and talk to people. I have in the past taken comp time instead of bringing a doctor’s note because I felt too miserable to get up.
Ross, on your friends, agree with Izzy. That said, since the privatised the post office, I have to wait in line a lot longer every time I have to go to the post office than I ever had to at the doctor’s. (My mother’s doctor sucks at time management, though, and lets people wait for 30 minutes or longer. I’d long have got another one, but she does not consider punctuality to be important.)
missylissa: I don’t know of anyone saying, “Well, the government is going to pay for my care so I’m not going to save anything.”
I have heard more than one person make the calculation, “Well, the absolute max I could ever save in my lifetime would save government forty Euro a month on welfare when I retire or lose my job due to old age. I’m not going to live on Ramen noodles for forty years for *that*.”
K: Who’s able to chose where they spend the last years of your lives?
Everyone middle class and up, IME.

K: Why am I posting? Because I’m bored.
We notice.

Well, of course you noticed. I’m on the internet. People who have lives aren’t on the internet.

Well, of course you noticed. I’m on the internet. People who have lives aren’t on the internet.
Really? *glances around at guitar, Latin textbooks, quilting project, ticket stubs from the zoo and the circus, photos of nephews, recipe books, safety vest from train inspections, and half-written novel*
Glad you pointed that out. I never would have realised.

K: Why am I posting? Because I’m bored.
inge: We notice.

I think what we’re noticing is that he’s boring, not that he’s bored. Or maybe the word I’m searching for is tiresome.

I think there’s no argument that he fits the classic pattern of the troll. Shall leave him be and move on with our own lives, now?

I think you can tell by the way the novel is half-written, and never will never actually be finished.

(Oh, and that the photos are of nephews, not sons).

So… I should stop doing music, drama, gardening, cooking, going out with my boyfriend, catching up with my family, working, sewing, learning languages, and so forth, and dedicate all my time to writing, all day.
And that will prove that I have a life?
*is confused*

So, moving right along – how did the Beck Hijack-a-cultural-icon rally go? For the benefit of us non-Usaians.
Many turn up? As many as he had hoped/predicted? Anything juicily batshit said/done?

Steven S.: You don’t get the better class of troll under a suspension bridge, and that’s all I’m going to say about that.
If all changes are for the worse, then life is a downhill run from birth. I don’t believe for a moment that I was a better person at 2 years of age than I am now; I’m smarter, stronger, better educated, more coordinated, less selfish, more capable of love, and much more likely to get laid now, and I don’t see any of those things as changes for the worse. And while I may get to see fewer Bugs Bunny cartoons, nowadays I get the jokes.

You could just stop posting on the internet, and devote that that time to writing, instead; it would be more rewarding, more productive, and just generally better, for you and the world. And you wouldn’t have to reduce any of that real stuff either.

Why, exactly, would I care about the colonials’ silly misunderstanding of the class system?

Well, because Fred is from the US, and so are many (possibly most, I’m not sure of demographics) of his readers, and posts like this are written from a US-centric perspective.* So when the class system is mentioned, it’s probably going to be the US class system, not the UK one, and being aware of this fact means we get to save time being confused because we’re talking about two different things.

Why am I posting? Because I’m bored. Why else would I be wasitng time on the internet instead of doing real, productive things? Why are you?

I, at least, am not wasting time on the Internet. I’m learning. There’s quite a lot of people here who are smarter than me, or more eloquent than me, or have perspectives on various topics that I don’t have. This is thus an excellent place to learn about all kinds of things, particularly as the threads rarely stay on topic and the general level of civility and whatnot is so high.
So yeah, if you’re just here to grump about how life started bad and got steadily worse** because you have nothing better to do…most of us are here because this is something real and productive. If I wanted to waste time on the internet, I’d go play a Flash game or something.

I think you can tell by the way the novel is half-written, and never will never actually be finished.
(Oh, and that the photos are of nephews, not sons).

Kit Whitfield, one of our regulars, is a published author. Alas, she’s not here at the moment, because she’s having a baby. She’s said she plans to be back once she’s finished with that, though.
MadGastronomer, another regular, somehow manages to find quite a lot of time for us despite the fact that she owns and operates a rather successful restaurant.
If you do nothing with your life other than complain on the internet, I feel very sorry for you and hope you find something to do that you view as productive.
*Incidentally, referring to all the people from the US who post here as “colonials” is kind of condescending. Just so you know.
**I’m nearsighted. Life is a hell of a lot better for me than it was before some bright spark invented glasses, and before some bright spark invented contacts. I also have flat feet, and thank goodness somebody came up with corrective inserts because otherwise my life would suck a great deal more than it does. On a larger level, invading other countries because you want their land is now frowned on as incredibly uncivilized, rather than viewed as a matter of course. I’m rather happy about that one. But I suppose those are just more exceptions in your view.
On-topic: Thank you for this post, Fred. Some days it’s nice to remember that despite all the vitriol we see daily, people still act decently and kindly to other people. I will sleep a little sounder tonight because of that.

And while I may get to see fewer Bugs Bunny cartoons, nowadays I get the jokes.
I’ve been wondering that, actually – if I saw Bugs Bunny now, would I get all the funny bits, or would they still be too obscure for me? Haven’t seen any of them since I was about 12, so I barely remember them…

Yes, stop posting on the internet. Whoever learned anything from DEBATING anyway?
Oh, right, yeah… moving along.

I was a bit angry after reading the story, but my anger was prefaced around the fact that the highlighted father in question was being incarcerated for POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA. His young children are being deprived of a father because of this. This makes me angry.
Hey, you’re not me!

Oh, I haven’t seen much debating on this site. A lot of self-congratulatory reinforcement and a few heterodox voices who get jumped on, but not much in the way of debate.
Yes, I am aware of the condescension in calling y’all ‘colonials’. That’d be in the way of bein’ why I did it, y’know?
I shouldn’t really. It’s not your fault. You’re just unfortunate.

In fact, I guess you might just say I’m privileged.

Oh, so you’re trying to be a condescending prick. Okay. Well, that’s what I get for trying to deal with you like a reasonable person, I guess. Since you view posting on the internet as so unproductive, I at least will refrain from offering you any further incentive to do so.

You know who else had no pride and glamourized being in jail. Elvis Presley with his song “Jailhouse Rock.”
Have you people heard this Johnny Cash vs. Eazy E?
http://viprhealthcare.typepad.com/files/eazy-e-vs-johnny-cash-folsom-prison-gangstaz-106bpm.mp3
It’s just all kinds of awesome.

So, moving right along – how did the Beck Hijack-a-cultural-icon rally go? For the benefit of us non-Usaians.
Many turn up? As many as he had hoped/predicted? Anything juicily batshit said/done?

The turnout seems to have been decent, but naturally there’s raging disagreement about the actual numbers. Michelle Bachmann tried to claim there were a million in attendance. Not. Beck himself claimed between 300,000 & 500,000. Independent estimates were between 80,000 & 200,000.
Beck cried a bit, like he does. Bachmann demonstrated her usual disdain for the reality in which the rest of us live. Sarah Palin did likewise. Some of the crowd showed up dressed as their favorite Founding Father and said stupid things, but most of them just seemed to sit around getting sunburned.
IOW it was about what you’d expect from a bunch of aging white people whose unifying notion is utter terror over the fact that being white is no longer as “all that” as it used to be.

I will never, ever get trolling. I’m happy to keep an argument going with someone who genuinely holds an opposing view to mine for as long as it will go, but I just can’t get my head around the supposed pleasure of annoying other people for no good reason. It’s not an achievement, it doesn’t require any real skill – what’s the point?
If you can’t find anything to do on the Net, then go read a book, or watch a movie or whatever else. Why spend your time intentionally being a gimboid?

die italics die

Bah! Italics BEGONE

It could be accept by men and women so quickly. I feel many individuals will agree with you. You might be ideal that we could to not rely on other people. Who we could to rely on is ourself.

Turcano, they are uninformed; the people they listen to would rather feed them lies that are sweet on the tongue and bitter in the guts, and the listeners are also told that everyone else will lie to them.

I understand that most of them are uninformed. What I’m saying is that inadequate information is not the major issue; it is a matter of ideology. These people are convinced that they know the Truth™ and are not willing to change their minds when presented with mere facts. In other words, Beck is telling people what they want to hear.

“But apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order… what have the Romans change and progress done for us?”

@K: I should perhaps point out I’m all in favour of women being awarded degrees? I guess that’s a change that wasn’t too bad, but again, doesn’t change the general tenor of change being for the worst)
I call bull on you. A lot of it. The general tenor of change for women has been away from being disenfranchised, forbidden from getting educations, unable to control their own earnings let alone their own bodies, being legally barred from holding down a wide range of jobs and, when allowed to enter various professions, earning substantially less than men for the same number of hours worked.
Am I supposed to find it charming that you are in favour of allowing women to hold degrees? Like hell I am. You are waxing nostalgic about a time when I wasn’t even a second class citizen. Look up your common law history — decades into the 1900s women were not considered full citizens and indeed were expressly and legally denied fundamental personhood.
Just think about that for a moment. When my mother was born she was not, legally, a person. To find the things that she and others fought trivial and unworthwhile for is to denigrate the very uniform she wore.* Your attitude mocks the bravery and hard work of thousands of women without whose efforts you would not have the comfortable safe world in which you now live.
*My mother served in the army to help defend the very existence of Britain. She was not alone. Indeed even in the fairly limited group made up of my family she is not the only woman who delayed her own personal goals in life and put on a uniform to defend the comfortable life you are living.

Yes, I am aware of the condescension in calling y’all ‘colonials’. That’d be in the way of bein’ why I did it, y’know?
I really don’t know of any USAmericans who particularly care, one way or the other, to be honest. It’s a little like being called “whippersnappers” by the likes of John McCain or Prince Philip or the late Robert Byrd or Strom Thurmond. Yes, he’d mean it as an insult, but really now….

I am aware of the condescension in calling y’all ‘colonials’.
Just trying saying that out loud in Sydney on Anzac day. Then go look for your teeth.

@Dash — It’s actually kinda sad, isn’t it? I mean, here we’ve got a troll practically putting on a troll suit, dousing himself in troll aftershave, and jumping up and down waving his arms shouting “LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME I’M A TROLLITY TROLL TROLL TRO-O-O-LLLING YOU!” …
and the best he can come up with is “colonials” and a grumpy little whine to “pooh-pooh whatever’s fresh and new, and declare it’s crude and mean, for Art stopped short in the cultivated court of the Empress Josephine.”
It sorta makes me wistful for a better class of Underbridgers.

If I wanted you to find me charming, you would.
But more to your point, I wouldn’t ever want to denigrate a WRAAF, a WReN, anyone in the Land Army, or any other woman — or man — who served, British or from the colonies, whether on the home front, in Europe or Asia, or at Gallipoli. Every day I wish I had the courage to do the same.
However, I’m not sure what time you think I’m waxing nostalgic about. As I said, yesterday was pretty crap, by all accounts, whenever you pick ‘yesterday’ as being. Life was crap then, it’s crap now (albeit in different ways), and it’s not going to get any better.
Goodnight, America — wherever you are.

(Ah, Gilbert, such hilarious lines, such utterly tedious quarters of an hour (or so it seems) of nonsense verse.)

@K: Life was crap then, it’s crap now (albeit in different ways), and it’s not going to get any better.
Well, certainly not if we have to depend on people like you.
BTW — just in case you aren’t simply a troll — it is quite notable that you have yet to be able to refute an actual fact with a — what do we call them – yes, well sourced fact.*
*My cats had a similar attitude but unlike you they were cute, furry and, being minor deities, deserved to always be worshiped and never questioned.

I’ve been wondering that, actually – if I saw Bugs Bunny now, would I get all the funny bits, or would they still be too obscure for me? Haven’t seen any of them since I was about 12, so I barely remember them…

I’ve been doing an archive binge of classic cartoons on YouTube (sadly, you have to know the name of each individual cartoon short for a Bugs Bunny search to return anything other than Space Jam fanvids, but that’s what Wikipedia is for), and I got most of them.

So.. it’s well past midnight over in Britain… it’s a Monday night and the troll is drinking… they’re posting on the net because they’re bored….
Heh. =)

If I wanted you to find me charming, you would.

Thanks for this. I was in need of a laugh and you provided it.

I suspect one motive underneath all the resentment is fear. If you believe you’re living in a world where there isn’t enough to go around, and there never can be enough to go around, it makes sense to dread losing what you already have (much or little).

I had that theory in mind as well. In some cases, it may be even simpler than that – they may fear that having to share is merely a precursor to having everything they own being taken from them. I think of the overall mentality as Postapocalyptic Nuclear Wasteland.
In a related issue, another board attempted to hash out what the eff Beck was talking about when he bashed “liberation theology,” and more than one poster slammed the concept of collective salvation as Marxism.

I’ve been doing an archive binge of classic cartoons on YouTube
I’m so sorry, “Nicolae Carpathia”, but this completely cracked me up for some reason.
Did you watch them in alphabetical order?

I will never, ever get trolling. I’m happy to keep an argument going with someone who genuinely holds an opposing view to mine for as long as it will go, but I just can’t get my head around the supposed pleasure of annoying other people for no good reason. It’s not an achievement, it doesn’t require any real skill – what’s the point?
If you can’t find anything to do on the Net, then go read a book, or watch a movie or whatever else. Why spend your time intentionally being a gimboid?

Theoretically, it tickles parts of your brain responsible for the sensation of Schadenfreude, which normally can’t activate when you personally are the one inflicting the pain. Because you know in the abstract that people are suffering, yet they aren’t REALLY people since you can’t see them and your brainstem hasn’t evolved to understand the concept of people outside your immediate perceptual field communicating with you, you can generate the same effect without feeling responsible for it.
Or just this.

I’ve been doing an archive binge of classic cartoons on YouTube
I’m so sorry, “Nicolae Carpathia”, but this completely cracked me up for some reason.
Did you watch them in alphabetical order?

Nah, I only do that when I’m making a speech… and when organizing my DVD library.
(actually, I watched them in the order I had them on my now-completely-unwatchable VHS tape I made when I was a kid… anyone remember “Merrie Melodies?”)

@ Mrs Harris
I understand that about 90,000 showed up to listen to Beck running his mouth, Alveda King (who seems never to have known her uncle) claiming that he was a Marxist, and also to listen to gospel choirs. Mostly older white folks, sitting in lawn chairs and wearing ‘patriotic’ shirts instead of carrying signs, I understand.

It sorta makes me wistful for a better class of Underbridgers.
“Such terrible food! And the portions are so small!”

Mostly older white folks, sitting in lawn chairs and wearing ‘patriotic’ shirts instead of carrying signs, I understand.

Given their age, it’s likely that many of them never warmed to MLK or his message in the first place.

I will never, ever get trolling. I’m happy to keep an argument going with someone who genuinely holds an opposing view to mine for as long as it will go, but I just can’t get my head around the supposed pleasure of annoying other people for no good reason. It’s not an achievement, it doesn’t require any real skill – what’s the point?
Most trolls I’ve seen vastly overestimate the talent and intelligence it takes to annoy people, and the meaningfulness of the accomplishment when they manage to do so. I had a similar mindset when I was eight – being able to upset someone I found annoying, and come up with some excuse as to why it was their fault, not mine, or they deserved it, or I was technically only doing what I was allowed to, or some other “Well, it’s not really that bad!” reasoning seemed very impressive. Basically, the whole “Stop hitting yourself” thing.

Ako, several years ago, the NYT magazine had an article on trolling. Particular focus was given to trolls of the 4chan variety. The arrogance expressed by the trolls interviewed in the article was breath-taking. One incident that they saw as being at the height of wit was to hound parents whose son committed suicide because of something the son said in his youtube suicide note about loosing his IPOD. Another thing that one troll thought was funny was to keep sending delivery after delivery to the apartment of another troll, who eventually had to call the police. These were vicious people of the worst sort. K’s not as bad but operates under the basic assumption that the internet is for them alone and all others on it are intruders, trolling is an act of protecting what they see as their property.

Here is a link to the article, from August 2008, for interested parties:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html

(actually, I watched them in the order I had them on my now-completely-unwatchable VHS tape I made when I was a kid… anyone remember “Merrie Melodies?”)
Oh, I have one of those. Only it’s all Animaniacs and Freakazoid on EP recording (and boy am I regretting that now – penny wise pound foolish etc). And it’s actually a series of about three tapes. And I was out of college when I made them.* I think the ones I made as a kid were mainly He-man and She-ra.
(*Also the series of tapes collecting Space Ghost Coast to Coast and Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law. Also one from MTV’s debut of Liquid Television and the Top Some-odd Number of Animated Videos of All Time. How YouTube makes us obsolete!)
Hey! hey! let’s have K-plonking races! Who killfiled them first?

I’m talking about ordinary folks who want to leave their children the fruits of their life’s labour, only to have it leached away on their nursing care.

So, this means that the old folks spent what they earned on themselves (how dare they!) and poor little “K” didn’t get any?

Is there anything more quintessentially American than punishing children for choosing the wrong parents? I don’t think so.

Or for that matter, being against the estate transfer tax because your grandfather will die any day and you stand to get a million bucks.
No lie, I knew someone who said almost exactly this about ten years ago when Dubya Bush was making noises about killing that tax.

Or for that matter, being against the estate transfer tax because your grandfather will die any day and you stand to get a million bucks.
No lie, I knew someone who said almost exactly this about ten years ago when Dubya Bush was making noises about killing that tax.

I’ve never understood the argument against the estate tax (outside of the few remaining asset heavy family businesses anyway). It seems to me, if we’re going to talk incentives, as fiscal conservatives like to do, you’re incentivizing spending by the wealthy (which is good for everyone else), transferance of assets to spouses and non-profits (which is good for them and should make conservatives feel generally pretty warm and fuzzy), and encourages tax savvy wealthy people to transfer their wealth to their decedents early, pushing more money into the economy.

Yeah, the guy was normally a Dem and hated Republicans, but on this one thing he wanted the million bucks more than he cared about the greater picture.

So, this means that the old folks spent what they earned on themselves (how dare they!) and poor little “K” didn’t get any?
Anyone who isn’t enterprising enough to murder their parents for their money doesn’t deserve to inherit it anyway. Sheesh. Whatever happened to good old Yankee hard work and ingenuity? Kids these days want to have everything handed to them on a silver platter…

A sailor went to me me me to see what he could see see see, but all that he could see see see was a debate about nursing home fees fees fees.

@CaryB

Seriously, dealing MJ is a crime? I know a guy who got caught in his dorm room with an ounce, and all that happened is he got taken down to the jailhouse for a night.

You see, these people also had the aggravating circumstance of being persons of color. Dealing drugs, that’s bad, but dealing drugs while being BLACK, that the cops just can’t ignore.

I just can’t get my head around the supposed pleasure of annoying other people for no good reason.

I agree that annoying people takes very little skill. I might be able to appreciate a poster who articulates unpopular arguments with logic, such as defending the acquittal of an accused child murderer if the state has no case.

Or for that matter, being against the estate transfer tax because your grandfather will die any day and you stand to get a million bucks.

Mitch Albom came out against the repeal. His non-sports columns have become more sanctimonoius over the last couple of years.

Bring the Noise: I will never, ever get trolling.
I have to admit that after years on USENET, I kind of understood one of its appeals. When you’ve been through all the arguments half a dozen times and all it brought was a very low opinion on people’s reading comprehension, manners and general intelligence, taunting them into yelling at each other became, well… tempting.
But there are many different breeds of trolls, and our latest one is just walking in on a conversation that has nothing to do with him and whines that s/he’s bored and won’t anyone play with hir and s/he needs to be entertained. Maybe someone could point hir to an animated movie or some cat pictures?
Also, someone said they had a killfile script? There are not enough icons to go around here.

Hey, who reckons that K=I? Remember I? Also had a thing about the class system?

Yes, I am aware of the condescension in calling y’all ‘colonials’. That’d be in the way of bein’ why I did it, y’know?
I shouldn’t really. It’s not your fault. You’re just unfortunate.

On behalf of the other colonials, how’s the recession going there in old Mother England? I feel so unfortunate not to be there with you. AHAHAHA!
Cheerio from the colonies,
Sgt P.
PS: mmy, ANZAC is spelled with all caps. Just letting you know cos I know you’re into words.

I have to admit that after years on USENET, I kind of understood one of its appeals. When you’ve been through all the arguments half a dozen times and all it brought was a very low opinion on people’s reading comprehension, manners and general intelligence, taunting them into yelling at each other became, well… tempting.

Then there’s also the fact that some people are just plain hilarious when they get angry, but we probably aren’t discussing this sort of relatively benign e-equivalent of playful teasing.

Slavery may have been widely by the colonials, but I don’t believe it was ever adopted actually in Britain; let alone ‘widely’.Slavery may have been widely by the colonials, but I don’t believe it was ever adopted actually in Britain; let alone ‘widely’.
Don’t you believe it. Slavery in England was actually abolished by William the Conqueror, oddly enough – it had been routine in Saxon times. But it came back gradually from the 16th century and was accepted as custom and practice, so that it took a lawsuit to abolish it again. In 18th century England there were delightful customs such as aristocratic ladies having a black page to look decorative around the piece; the page was usually returned to the plantation when the lady got bored or the lad grew up.

Also, a quick google reminds me that Somersett’s case was decided only five years before the Vermont constitution ruled slavery illegal in much more unequivocal terms. So the British really haven’t got much to shout about on that score.

Late to the party as usualy, but I just wanted to note that I, for one, very much appreciate it when you (and others!) do this. If I could, I would send you all chocolate, but alas.
Thanks.
MadGastronomer, another regular, somehow manages to find quite a lot of time for us despite the fact that she owns and operates a rather successful restaurant.
And I’ve got two girlfriends and a guy, three cats and a dog, a variety of social and spiritual obligations, and crafts projects spread out all over the house. Just, you know, so I don’t spend all my time working. Thanks for sticking up for me.

@Sgt. Pepper’s Bleeding Hearts Club Band: mmy, ANZAC is spelled with all caps. Just letting you know cos I know you’re into words.
headbang I should have realized that. Back when I when I first heard people mention it (when I was a kid) I didn’t realize it was an acronym — guess an old habit reverted.
Now — can I tell my father-related Australian story?
While my dad’s regiment was in Korea (at the height of the Korean War) there was a period of 5 weeks when his company was pinned down by continuous shelling. They could not retreat because they were holding the line so that other troops could retreat in an orderly fashion. [For those who know their Korean War History there was a nasty period when UN troops were being pushed back from the northernmost reach of their attempt to liberate the peninsula.]
Anyway, after 5 weeks they received news that another contingent of UN troops had arrived to relieve them. When the members from the relieving company arrived it turned out that they were Australians and they were, to quote my dad, “the biggest guys I had ever seen.” When dad told them that his company would take a little longer to get their equipment packed up because due to death and injury less than 50 of the original contingent of 150 remained — the Australians said ‘no trouble’ and sent more ‘big guys’ over to lend a hand.
That evening they had a change of command ceremony in one of the tents. Only a handful of each group (Canadian and Australian) was there. And some of the Australians had brought some liquor which dad couldn’t identify. The tent was badly lighted and dad noticed that every so many minutes the Australian soldiers had been replaced by other Australian soldiers — all of them downing the drink quite liberally.
Now my dad was never a heavy drinker so he only a glass or two but he remembers being taken aback the next day when he awoke with a painful headache to see all these men who had been so liberally tossing it back the night before showing not the least sign of pain.
Point the first — there is a special fondness a soldier feels for the troops who relieve him after a long hard duty, but even allowing for that, it was clear that dad and his fellow soldiers found the Australians to be particular likable and nice. And big.
Point the second — I have read the history of the my father’s regiment during the Korean War so knew what had happened — but it is very chilling to hear him say in an almost by the way manner than they had a dead/wounded rate of close to 60% during that portion of time. Soldiers who seen active duty seldom speak directly about things like that. You have to pick them up by inference.
So to my dad, and the men of his company and the men of the other company nearby that the Australians also relieved — Australians were big, hard-drinking, helpful friendly people. With all the things that are going on in your country that are disheartening you remember there are still alive today Canadian soldiers who hold your country in very esteem.

ouch — that should have been “hold your country in very high esteem.

Sorry, mmy, but there’s clearly an error in your story.

the Australians said ‘no trouble’ and sent more ‘big guys’ over to lend a hand

They would have said ‘no worries’

With all the things that are going on in your country that are disheartening you remember there are still alive today Canadian soldiers who hold your country in very esteem.

That’s very nice of you to say. I’m disheartened because I think we fall so far short of the greatness I wish we’d aspire to, but I’m keenly aware that by accident of birth I’m in a far luckier position than the vast, vast majority of my fellow human beings.
FWIW, Australians have a very positive view of Canadians. As far as nations go, we probably think of you second only to the Irish.
I love your dad stories in general, btw. I have a soft spot for awesome dads because I had one once.

@Sgt. Pepper’s Bleeding Hearts Club Band: They would have said ‘no worries’
You know, when dad told the story I wondered about that — perhaps a few of his memories are rather clouded by whatever was in those bottles the Australians brought with them.
Australians have a very positive view of Canadians. As far as nations go, we probably think of you second only to the Irish.
I kid you not — dad would probably rank the Irish first as well — with Australians right near the top of the list as well.
So, a shorter dad story. He always spoke fondly of the time he spent in Ireland right after WWII — what I didn’t know until recently was that he had thought seriously about immigrating to Ireland but had returned to and stayed in Canada because as much as he loved Ireland the woman he loved was in Canada. So he returned to Canada, found her again (after the dislocations of the war) because she was his first love. He never told her that because he didn’t want her to feel guilty about him making that decision. After mom died dad told mmyspouse about it or else I still wouldn’t know.
I have a soft spot for awesome dads because I had one once.
I am sorry you know longer have your dad.

I am sorry you know longer have your dad.
I conflated two things — what I was thinking and what I was typing.
Obviously that should have been “I am sorry that your dad is no longer around.”

…what did the Irish do? I mean, they have good music and poets and horses and alcoholic beverages and accents and a very pretty country, but none of that seems quite enough to earn you “most favored nation” status. Is this some kind of Commonwealth “thanks for taking a swing at the British for all of us” thing?

Oh and that In Bruges movie was pretty good and they have cute dogs. But I’m still puzzled.

Spearmint: I think that a considerable amount of Australians are of Irish descent and its a sort of diaspora pride thing plus the entire “thanks for taking a swing at the British for all of us” since its my understanding that Australia’s relationship to the UK was always a bit more tense than it was for Canada and New Zealand.

I haven’t read the entire (long!) thread, but I’m stuck on T-nomad’s idea of liberality from somewhere around Post 10:

A lot of liberal-to-left “thought” and “philsophy” is built on pure, raw envy: “Why should that guy have goodies, and not me?” Even if the “other guy” got his goodies by working his tailfeathers off…

This seems to be how “conservatives” are taught to regard liberal ideology. I want to suggest to Mr -nomad that he read Wallace Shawn’s little book, “The Fever”, which for me provided some basic insight about class and ideology. I’d say it this way: I look at my life and I realize while I’m “only” middle class in the US, I’m wealthier than about 98% of all other humans at this time in history. And when I ask myself, “Why do I deserve this, and all those other people don’t?”, I don’t have a good answer. I’m not a better person, I’m not an insanely dedicated worker, I’m not necessarily smarter or stronger than that 98% that’s not doing as well as me. I am, in the larger scheme of things, Nothing Special. Therefore, I appreciate what I’ve got, that so many others don’t have; but I don’t imagine for a second that there is anything about me, personally, that led to this state of affairs. My comfort is largely an outcome of structural features of society. And once that fact is apparent, the natural follow-up is, “Are there social structures that could be more just?”
“Conservatives” (by which I mean Fox-ians etc, not those who actually favor limited-but-effective government that functions in service to its citizens) seem unable to even ask that question.

Is this some kind of Commonwealth “thanks for taking a swing at the British for all of us” thing?
It’s probably in recognition of the great contribution of the Irish armed forces in helping to defend Australia during the Second World War.
Oh, wait.

[[Spearmint:...what did the Irish do? I mean, they have good music and poets and horses and alcoholic beverages and accents and a very pretty country, but none of that seems quite enough to earn you "most favored nation" status. Is this some kind of Commonwealth "thanks for taking a swing at the British for all of us" thing?]]
Ooh, my Ireland story! When I was a junior in college, about 5 years ago, I was studying abroad and took a trip to Ireland with some friends for a few days. We were in Cork and staying at this old hostel (I think it was called Sheila’s?), and we came back to our room late at night. The window was open, and I was freezing, so I went over to close it. Thing was, there was this block holding the window up, and when I tried to get the block out, it slammed down on my hand. Took my friend all of his strength to get the damn thing open.
Anyway, the hostel called a cab and sent us to the ER. It was my first real experience with socialized health care. All I had to do was fill out a form with my name and where I was staying. They took X-Rays (nothing broken, fortunately), cleaned out the cuts, bandaged me up, gave me a tetanus booster and painkillers, and then gave me a weird look when I asked if I needed to pay anything. (Silly, naive American, this is Ireland, not your uncivilized country.) Then the hostel refunded us for the taxi (perhaps they were scared we’d sue them?).
So, overall? If I’m going to get hurt, I’d rather get hurt over there than here. Except that the hostel didn’t carry ice, which I really could have used for my hand. It hurt a lot.
That’s my off-tangent story for the day…

@Spearmint: Re the fondness for Ireland
Well, in my dad’s case I would venture that a number of things were involved.
1) During and after WWII there were still a lot of English (and I am using English rather than British very purposely) officers who bucked at the very idea that ‘colonial troops’ should have their own officers.
2) My father is a devout Catholic and remembering seeing buildings in the town he grew up in, in Ontario, with signs sayings no Blacks, Jews, or Catholics welcome. (I doubt those were the exact nouns used, he may have cleaned things up when telling me about them.) And in the Ontario of that time there was then a very tight relationship between the Anglican Church and the power-elite.
3) Catholics were de facto, if not de jure, barred from holding political office in some towns in Ontario when my father was a boy.
4) The legal invisibility/lack of power of group/class my father was in was such that one night when he was a boy and the family was sitting down to dinner there was a knock on the door — his father went to the door and came back with a paper telling them that the city had expropriated the property their house stood on and they had a week to move. They rented the house and neither the city or their landlord had bothered to even tell them what was going on. [No, it wasn't a foreclosure or a rent issue -- my grandfather actually had enough money saved to buy a house--which he did.]
5) There is still prejudice against the Irish in parts of American and Canadian society. A number of my students (undergraduates) had been told (and believed) that the only reason that the Irish starved during the Potato Famine is that because they were Catholic peasants they refused to eat the plentiful fish. [Insert, this also reflects weird geographical thinking-- as in, Ireland is an island so everyone is within a few yards of the sea aren't they]
6) My father learned at his mother’s knees all about the history of the England invasions of Ireland — remember Ireland was itself a colony and the horrors that were perpetrated then have not been forgotten by either side as the continuation of Marching Season in Northern Ireland indicates.

Having worked in two (private) nursing homes, I have a brief comment about the combination of Medicare (available to citizens 65 and older who have paid into the Medicare system for at least 10 years) and Medicaid (available only to the poor, elderly, blind or disabled):
The Medicare/Medicaid combo is a hell of a lot better than nothing, but before you decide it’s a luxurious way to spend your declining years, go visit a nursing home. Take some fresh fruit; the food tends to be pretty awful.
(Incidentally, it’s Medicaid that has the “spend down” requirement. Here are the rules for my home state of Georgia.)
Also, if you’re worried about spending your kids’ inheritance, give it to them now. In the U.S., any individual can give any other individual $13K per year (2009 limit; it increases every year) without triggering any tax liability for the recipient. (So if you’re married and your kid is married, dad and mom can each give $13K to Joe Jr. and $13K to Joe Jr.’s wife every year for a total of $52K per year; if you’re a multimillionaire you might want to set up a trust fund instead.) Of course, you have to do this several years before you plan to apply for Medicaid; this rule is designed to keep people from having their cake and eating the publicly-funded cake too, as it were.

oh, and as an addendum to my long post about “why my dad liked the Irish” — his ancestors are a mix of Irish and Vikings-by-way-Ireland. As a lad he had bright red hair and to this day he freckles when out too long in the sun.

A number of my students (undergraduates) had been told (and believed) that the only reason that the Irish starved during the Potato Famine is that because they were Catholic peasants they refused to eat the plentiful fish.
I . . . What? Wat? Since when do Catholics not eat fish? How does that make any sense to anyone? Fish on Friday! Fish are fine!

$13k * 2 = $26k not $52k, by the way. Still, $26k a year for two people is a nice bump-up on the income side esp if you’re making $30-40k together.

$13k * 2 = $26k not $52k, by the way.

Yes, but $13k * 4 = $52k and that’s what she’s talking about. It’s $13k from each parent to the son and $13k from each parent to the DIL. That’s $56k in total per year.

Also, if you’re worried about spending your kids’ inheritance, give it to them now. In the U.S., any individual can give any other individual $13K per year (2009 limit; it increases every year) without triggering any tax liability for the recipient. (So if you’re married and your kid is married, dad and mom can each give $13K to Joe Jr. and $13K to Joe Jr.’s wife every year for a total of $52K per year; if you’re a multimillionaire you might want to set up a trust fund instead.) Of course, you have to do this several years before you plan to apply for Medicaid; this rule is designed to keep people from having their cake and eating the publicly-funded cake too, as it were.
$13k * 2 = $26k not $52k, by the way. Still, $26k a year for two people is a nice bump-up on the income side esp if you’re making $30-40k together.

13k *2 *2 actually. Mom gives 13k to Joe Jr, and Mrs. Joe Jr., and Dad gives 13k to Joe Jr and Mrs. Joe Jr. if I understand this correctly. I seem to recall there being some sort of additional exemption for family to family and spouse to spouse (but not in law to in law) transfers of assets.

@MadGastronomer: Since when do Catholics not eat fish? How does that make any sense to anyone? Fish on Friday! Fish are fine!
I know, that one left me speechless for a moment.* When I tried to follow up and find out where the idea came from as far as I could figure it out it went thusly:
1) There really couldn’t have been a real famine because the English at the time were civilized and our first cousins and people like us don’t stand around and let “real” starvation happen
2) You know the Irish who came to the US then? They were just like the immigrants now — superstitious, uneducated and always complaining
3) Catholics ate fish on Fridays — but they were peasants and uneducated and so they would ONLY eat fish on Fridays — not on the other days of the week.
4) People who aren’t like us have strange ideas about food and if they would just eat like us there wouldn’t be a problem with famines or starvation.
5) All those nice people we see in Masterpiece dramas on PBS wouldn’t have let a real famine happen — so those funny looking, funny smelling people who lived in turf-roofed cottages must have been at fault for their own misery.
6) Besides they were just using it as a ruse to get into the United States.
Really, the stupidity and bigotry of the world is sometimes overwhelming.
*But not for long. Partly cause I am just not a “speechless” kind of person and partly because after teaching a class specifically about the social construction of ethnicity** for years I heard and read many things almost as bad.
**I had to cancel class on the day of 9/11. The next day I am teaching a class on the social construction of ethnicity and race to a roomful of confused and scared students three of whom were Muslim.

*gibbers*

mmy: My uncle was a very devout Irish Catholic, and by that I mean he was a devout Irish more than he was a devout Catholic. =) There was a brief time when he would send money across the way to the ‘wee lads,’ but when the IRA (or at least one of the factions calling itself the IRA) started blowing up school busses he stopped.
I learned a lot about my family’s Irish heritage from him, and learned to appreciate the song ‘My father he was Orange and my mother she was Green,’ though it’s reverse in my case. (In fact, my mother’s father was an Orangemen.) I wasn’t as mixed up as the lad in that song, though. Dad converted to marry Mom, which I’m sure was scandal enough without other things. As I have learned much to my dismay, discomfit, and, recently, horror… families like mine tend to keep rather dark secrets very, very well, and have no compunctions about taking secrets to their grave. At the very least, this makes accurate family histories very wanting! I mention this because my father was also in Korea, though he served with the US Marines. He had a few stories (not as many he would tell, it seems, c.f. ‘discomfit’ above) but he always spoke highly of the Commonwealth soldiers such as the ANZACs. (Is it proper to call them ‘Commonwealth soldiers?’)
JoeK: That’s an excellent summation of it, I think. It’s not about ‘white guilt,’ but a recognition that ‘hey, I have it pretty darn good, how can I make it so other people have it as good as me?’

It turns out there is in fact a bonus million dollars you can transfer as untaxed gifts as well over your lifetime. So in the situation of a two parent household transfering money to their only child and his spouse above, you’re actually looking at 2,000,000 + 52k*(yrsgiven-3) if the couple gives 52k a year for at least 4 years in untaxed gifts, assuming no other laws complicating the issue and I didn’t misunderstand how the estate tax 3 year whatever-the-opposite-of-a-harbor provision works.

@mink: I mention this because my father was also in Korea, though he served with the US Marines.
Oh a Marine! One thing I got from my dad and his friends who served in Korea [and from reading the regimental histories] is that there were American soldiers and there were Marines — and the Marines were tougher, better trained and guys you wanted around if you needed someone to watch your back.
This is not to disparage non-Marines but at that time there was no comparison between the training that Marines went through and the training members of the regular army went through. The regular ranks of the American Army also didn’t have unit cohesion (that is, individuals came and went from larger military units without having a strong group identity.)
The Canadian Army at that time has very strong unit cohesion. My father’s regiment is my family. I think that many Marines feel exactly the same thing about the Corps.

I seem to recall there being some sort of additional exemption for family to family and spouse to spouse (but not in law to in law) transfers of assets.

There’s a tax of 35% on gifts in excess of $1 million total to anyone other than your spouse. (The spousal exemption is $3 million.) That’s why people with serious money set up trusts. However, even without a trust the tax basically means that the recipient pays tax on the gift just like any other income. I have never been able to understand why people act like this is some sort of travesty of justice.
There’s also a generation skipping tax on money given to your grandchildren instead of your kids. I don’t remember the rational for that one. They repealed it for 2010 but I think it’s coming back for 2011 and beyond. There’s some other stuff too, which is way estate planning can be a lucrative career, but most of it applies only to the very wealthy. Seriously, the number of people who are hampered by taxes on gifts of more than $1 million to a single person is tiny. For the vast majority of even the quite well off it’s all manageable in such a way to leave your heirs paying very little tax if you make even a minimal effort at planning.
This is one of the things that bugs me most about the utter load of bull that was used to drive the repeal of the estate tax. The GOP basically manufactured from whole cloth a group of people who were losing the farms or businesses that generations of their families had worked hard to build all because of the mean old estate tax.
First of all, these families don’t exist. Researchers looked and couldn’t find a single farm lost due to the estate tax. That’s when the GOP switched to talking about small businesses instead of farms, but no one has lost a small business either so it’s just same crap different day. The reality is that there are only a tiny handful of family farms or small businesses that were subject to any estate tax at all.
Second, rudimentary estate planning would have exempted even them from the tax.
Third, having failed at estate planning 101 they were given 19 years to pay off the IRS.
In spite of all this we were supposed to believe that people were losing farms & businesses purely because of taxes. So, the poor are poor because they’re lazy and stupid, but people who do zero estate planning and also can’t budget for a 19 year payment plan to the IRS are innocent victims of the big bad government. Yeah, right.
For Robyrt: The entire debate about the “death tax” was awash in the politics of envy. You probably can’t find a single quote where an estate tax opponent accused anyone of envying those who inherit wealth, but the concept was there nonetheless.

@ Sgt. Pepper:
I have met people who disliked almost every nationality you can think of….American, English, Irish, even Canadian. I have never, ever, ever met anyone who didn’t like Aussies. Based on my own personal experiences with Australians, y’all are literally the friendliest people I’ve ever met. On at least two occasions, I’ve been traveling on my own and fallen in with a group of middle-aged Australians and was more or less instantly adopted into the group. Aussies ROCK.
I mean, they have good music and poets and horses and alcoholic beverages and accents and a very pretty country, but none of that seems quite enough to earn you “most favored nation” status.
It doesn’t? Music, poetry, the invention of whiskey, the accents (Oh sweet Jebus, the accents) and the Emerald Isle itself doesn’t do it for you? You have frighteningly high standards.

mmy: Regarding unit cohesion, that’s certainly the impression I got from Dad! –though to be fair, he probably WAS a little biased.
Though, probably related to the ‘discomfit’ thing again, it wasn’t until the late 80′s that Dad re-discovered and got back together with his old buddies in Force Recon. I hadn’t thought about that until now (I think some book about the Chosin Reservoir being published caught his attention and got him to get in touch with his surviving platoon mates) but looking back it does seem odd that he didn’t keep in touch with them. Though, also looking back on it now, I guess it makes sense.
The US military has a long and storied history of inter-service rivalry, most of it manufactured, much to the detriment of various joint operations. I often wondered why the services allowed it to go on even when there were documented cases of such rivalry causing the deaths of servicemen. But I guess the Army and the Navy in any country is going to have choice words for each other on leave and in budget discussions.
It was very touching that the local chapter of the Marine veterans association, whom Dad had never even met with or attended any meetings thereof or possibly even knew they existed, showed up at his wake to pay their respects.

Yes, but $13k * 4 = $52k and that’s what she’s talking about. It’s $13k from each parent to the son and $13k from each parent to the DIL. That’s $56k in total per year.

Each! Damn, yes, I went back and re-read. Oops! :O

OK, I want to talk about Ireland
Specifically I want to talk about the “famine”
About the fact that there never really was one
There was no “famine”
See Irish people were only ALLOWED to eat potatoes
All of the other food
Meat fish vegetables
Were shipped out of the country under armed guard
To England while the Irish people starved
And then on the middle of all this
They gave us money not to teach our children Irish
And so we lost our history
And this is what I think is still hurting me
See we’re like a child that’s been battered
Has to drive itself out of its head because it’s frightened
Still feels all the painful feelings
But they lose contact with the memory
And this leads to massive self-destruction
ALCOHOLISM DRUG ADDICTION
All desperate attempts at running
And in its worst form
Becomes actual killing
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be forgiving
There has to be knowledge and understanding
An American army regulation
Says you mustn’t kill more than 10% of a nation
‘Cos to do so causes permanent “psychological damage”
It’s not permanent but they didn’t know that
Anyway during the supposed “famine”
We lost a lot more than 10% of a nation
Through deaths on land or on ships of emigration
But what finally broke us was not starvation
BUT ITS USE IN THE CONTROLLING OF OUR EDUCATION
Schools go on about “Black 47″
On and on about “The terrible “famine”
But what they don’t say is in truth
There really never was one
So let’s take a look shall we
The highest statistics of child abuse in the EEC
And we say we’re a Christian country
But we’ve lost contact with our history
See we used to worship God as a mother
We’re sufferin from POST TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
Look at all our old men in the pubs
Look at all our young people on drugs
We used to worship God as a mother
Now look at what we’re doing to each other
We’ve even made killers of ourselves
The most child-like trusting people in the Universe
And this is what’s wrong with us
Our history books THE PARENT FIGURES lied to us
I see the Irish
As a race like a child
That got itself bashed in the face
And if there ever is gonna be healing
There has to be remembering
And then grieving
So that there then can be FORGIVING
There has to be KNOWLEDGE and UNDERSTANDING
– Sinead O’Connor, “Famine”

@CaryB: I have never, ever, ever met anyone who didn’t like Aussies.
While I would agree that Aussies are, in general, good, incredibly friendly people there are people/groups who would not agree with that characterization. I will leave it to Sgt. Pepper to say more if zie wishes to — but like many countries built on immigration, Australia has a shameful history of mistreatment of the original inhabitants and of immigrants from the “wrong” countries.
As does Canada.
I think it is important for us to remember how new and hard-fought many “basic” rights are for some groups.
My father was in Korea in 1952-1953. He loved Korea and the Korea people and believed that we should have been fighting to protect their freedom. Yet, as he told me when I was a child, many Canadians whose parents had immigrated from Asian countries did not enjoy the same rights as other Canadians. For example, until 1947 Chinese Canadians did not have the right to vote in federal elections and could not work as pharmacists, lawyers or accountants. British Columbia did not give Chinese Canadians the right to vote provincially until 1949 (although “Asians” who were Canadian citizens AND had fought in WWII were given the right to vote in BC in 1945). It wasn’t until 1967 that Immigration Act was changed to give immigrants from China the same opportunities to come to Canada as people from other parts of the world.

By all accounts, Australia has also got some serious problems with misogyny and homophobia.

mmy: No country, and no people, are really innocent of that. I’m glad we’re reaching a point in history where we can look back with a critical eye. We don’t have to guilt-out about it, but we do have to look back and acknowledge that we as human beings in our various clans and tribes and nations have done some pretty awful things to others, even as we’ve tried to do some pretty amazing things. And we can stand up and say that we’ll continue to do still more amazing things, even as we try to stop doing the awful things.
Which is a pretty amazing thing in and of itself, actually.

This is not to disparage non-Marines but at that time there was no comparison between the training that Marines went through and the training members of the regular army went through.

I strongly suspect that this was related to the fact that the Marines are all volunteer and at the time the Army had the draft. There are plenty of things you can do training-wise to volunteers that you just can’t do with people who are forced to be there.

Each! Damn, yes, I went back and re-read. Oops! :O

It’s easy to miss that because it’s a little counterintuitive. Married couples who are for all other tax purposes treated as a single financial entity are separate for the purpose of giving money to the offspring. It’s a little weird.

@mink: it wasn’t until the late 80′s that Dad re-discovered and got back together with his old buddies in Force Recon.
One real difference is that my dad was a lifer. He joined the Canadian Army BEFORE the outbreak of war in 1939 and served more than 30 years. [Joined young, married late -- which resulted in him having children at about the same time his relatives were having grandchildren]
I grew up around the very people dad served with. We lived on Army bases and they were our community.
But they never, ever, talked about the fighting part of the war(s). They told about jokes, they described the antics they got up to, but they never talked about the horrible stuff. For years I knew that dad got a bottle of wine and drank a toast on a particular day — but he never told me the details of the battle that was fought on that day or the names of the comrades whose deaths he was commemorating.
It was very touching that the local chapter of the Marine veterans association, whom Dad had never even met with or attended any meetings thereof or possibly even knew they existed, showed up at his wake to pay their respects.
Touching, but not to me surprising. Years after he was retired my dad called me and asked that mmyspouse and I give a hand to another retired member of his regiment who was dying of stomach cancer in a hospital over a hour’s drive away. The man’s daughter was estranged from her father and his wife was all alone at the bedside of the man who she had fallen in love with when he liberated the town she came from in the Netherlands. Dad and a few of this man’s other regimental brothers took turns at making sure that one of them (or their spouses or children) came every day to sit with her while he died. mmyspouse had never met either the man or the woman before the day my dad called but he was the person whose arms she cried in the day the old soldier finally died.

@cereselle: Wow — just wow.

U.S. Marines vs U.S. Army in Korea: Marines were, indeed, volunteers. But most of the Army troops sent were not ‘regulars’ but inactive reservists. So we have top of the line elite assault troops (Marines) being compared with troops who had trained 2-3 years earlier and hadn’t had any practice since.
That’s not to say all the Army troops were like that… but a lot were. Part of the resentment during the Korean war was that the Regular Army stayed in Europe (keeping the Russians honest) while the reservists were sent to the front.
Australians: the only group I found who disliked Australians were New Zealanders. But it suffers from small sample size (one small ship’s worth) and selection bias (RNZN).

@Lori: I strongly suspect that this was related to the fact that the Marines are all volunteer and at the time the Army had the draft.
My dad would agree with you that that played a role.
Another thing that is often overlooked is how rivalries between units can serve an important role in maintaining discipline and morale. The action of a single Marine can bring disrepute to the entire Corps. When, to the shame of the entire Canadian Army, the details of the behaviour of the Canadian Airbourne Regiment came to light — behaviour that including the brutal beating death of a Somali teenage — the entire regiment was disbanded. Sometimes the only way to cure an institution of a horrible problem (in this case members who are white supremacists) is to amputate the problem area.
You don’t want to be the commander who let that happen to an old and storied regiment.

@Hawker Hurricane: That makes sense. The Korean War broke out rather unexpectedly, there was an incredible push to get UN troops over there FAST since the North Korean/Chinese troops were rushing down the peninsula. The US didn’t have a standing army large enough to maintain their presence in Europe and provide troops to the UN action. And the active part of that war took place over such a short period of time [much shorter than the run of M.A.S.H.] that they first had to activate reserves who were out of “serious” training and didn’t have time to really build up more forces.
I did not know that the US didn’t rotate troops from the European to Korean theater but it certainly helps to explain some of the really unprofessional things dad heard and saw. The one that happened way too often was American troops breaking radio silence when a stray shell/bullet got one of them. They wouldn’t even keep to code — instead you would hear some version of “they got sarge.” Followed, of course, by intense fire from North Koreans who now knew exactly where the American troops were.

Lack of Radio Discipline is a common problem with Americans. We tend to use the radio the way we would use a telephone. (I speak from experience.)
A story…
Early in the Korean War, General Chester ‘Chesty’ Puller USMC assigned junior officers to South Korean units to ‘co-ordinate’. A South Korean officer got on the radio, calling for assistance because his unit was under attack by Chinese troops.
Chesty: How many Chinese are attacking your position?
South Korean Officer (SKO): Many many Chinese!
Chesty: How many?
SKO: Many many!
Chesty: Put your laison officer on the radio!
Laison: Yes, General?
Chesty: How many Chinese are attacking your position?
Laison: General, we’ve got a shitload of ChiCom attacking!
Chesty: Thank god someone over there knows how to count!

@mmy: Yeah, I’d forgotten how much I liked Sinead until I read her recent op-ed in the Washington Post. That song’s off her fourth album, “Universal Mother.” She’s pretty freakin’ amazing.
I checked Wikipedia, and yep, Ireland was a net exporter of food during the famine period. Dreadful.

cereselle: There was an old curse that my uncle — the devout Irish, not-so-devout Catholic one =) — told me about. It was ‘The curse of Cromwell be upon you.’ I’ve never been able to find any historical evidence of it, but it apparently relates to the ‘pacification’ campaigns that Cromwell instituted against the Irish. (Needless to say, my uncle colored my understanding of late British history quite a bit!) But yes, there was an active attempt by the English to eliminate Irish culture. Mind you, I don’t hold this against the modern British government (Thatcher has a lot to answer for on her own without getting the Irish involved! and I rather like the Parliamentary system of government*.)
HawkerHurricane and mmy: And very ‘close’ and ‘tight’ units can come to see others as outsiders. That clears up a few things for me, actually. And it’s not surprising. These were kids, then, for the most part? Hadn’t expected to be in an actual shooting war, who just wanted to serve their country for a bit, not make it their career? Try to make right after the pain of the Second World War, try to live without fear…. Godsdammit, this makes it all the more horrifying.

The Irish get “Most Favoured Nation” status for Guinness, pure and simple. All the other good things (the lovely lasses, the red hair, the whiskey, the music) are just icing on the cake.

This is probably the best explanation of the previously-baffling phenomenon of Conservative Poor Envy I’ve seen yet. Bravo, Fred.
—-
Ryan: That is a good question! I think it leads to the question “Is there a way that EVERYONE can have goodies?”
<RTConservative>
AIIIEEE! COMMUNISM!!@!1! WHARRRGARRBL! BURN THE WITCH!!1!!!one
</RTConservative>

Madgatronomer, Australia also seems to have some rather serious problems with race, i.e. Harry Connick, Jr. incident. Not that the United States is any better in this regard.

Yeah, I skipped mentioning that since someone already had, or had at least mentioned the problems with the Aboriginies.

K: Voting’s overrated.
Obvious troll is Obvious. Does the K stand for Karkat?
…Oh, NOW I get it. K here is trying to demonstrate the “thought” processes Our Host was railing against! Good job, K, but try to make it a little more obvious next time.
—-
GDwarf: Apparently those who oppose universal healthcare feel that if you need to go to the hospital but are poor then you should die instead.
It’s depressing how many RTConservative policies can be summed up as “die, weakling”.

Yes, the Famine is still considered an active attempt at Irish genocide by a number of groups. History Bites actually had a show on that, which included their Larry King analogue trying to get a British noble to connect the dots on fact that the Irish were starving because most of their food was going to the British.
My Irish ancestry left for Canada before things got really bad during the Famine, and set up a grist mill up in the Trent Waterway region of Ontario. I’d have to look up if they were Catholic when they came over here, but their descendant who was my great-grandfather was a Presbyterian minister who ended up working with the United Church because there weren’t a whole lot of churches out in Kamloops.
And his son ended up working with the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan, training bomber crews how to do navigation. Not much field military in my family.

@mink: These were kids, then, for the most part? Hadn’t expected to be in an actual shooting war, who just wanted to serve their country for a bit, not make it their career?
You want heart-wrenching — last time my dad was in Korea (45th anniversary of the Panmunjom Armistice) he went on to visit graves of British and Australian soldiers who were imprisoned after the surrender of Singapore in 1942. He worked out from the birth/death dates that many of them had been 18 or 19 when the war broke out in 1939 — ended up Singapore and after the surrender were shipped off to do forced labour. Some of those boys/men lived to 1945 and died just before the war was over having lived 1/4 of their short lives under conditions that most of us have trouble imagining.

@ Mink, Not A Kitty-Arsonist
That treatment of the Irish goes back long before Cromwell. ISTR that it goes back pretty nearly to Dermot and the Earl. (One of my ancestors was reportedly kicked out of Ulster for being ‘unruly’; he was moved first to Waterford and then to Delaware.)

That treatment of the Irish goes back long before Cromwell
The English monarchy spent a lot of time invading and colonizing Wales, Ireland and Scotland among others. Some of the really nasty campaigns in Ireland took place during the time of Queen Elizabeth the first, but they began long before her time.

Davis X. Machina: Is there anything more quintessentially American than punishing children for choosing the wrong parents? I don’t think so.
Just so you know, this is going right in my quote file for future use.

Is there anything more quintessentially American than punishing children for choosing the wrong parents? I don’t think so.
I overheard a conversation at a fairly upscale fund-raising event where a woman was complaining about all the time, effort and money spent on trying to improve conditions for women.
Complaining Woman: At one time all these efforts were necessary but now we live in a post feminist age where any women can succeed if she just makes an effort. I have no sympathy for all these women who moan about how bad things are when they could be spending the time and effort improving their own lot.
Stunned Fund-Raiser: Well even if that were true in the United States think of how fortunate you are that you weren’t born in a country where women are not allowed health care and education.
Complaining Woman: If I was born in a country like that I would still be able to make something of myself. I don’t believe those women couldn’t change things for the better if they quit waiting on someone from the US to come and do all the hard work.
I mean — what words can you say after that?

mmy: Amazing how we humans can compress so much tragedy into so short a time, label it a ‘war’ and then bury all of it, with only a handful of people to remember the dead of both sides, and even fewer to silently take their sins to their grave with them because some things are buried from the top down and the bottom up.
Sorry; having a moment of misanthropy.
I knew that the rather poor treatment of the Irish by the English had been going on for centuries. As I said, my uncle eagerly colored my view of English history with regard to the Irish! I guess that’s why I enjoy — or maybe ‘appreciate’ is a better word — books like Lies My Teacher Told Me.

I have met people who disliked almost every nationality you can think of….American, English, Irish, even Canadian. I have never, ever, ever met anyone who didn’t like Aussies.
How many Aboriginies have you talked to?
the only reason that the Irish starved during the Potato Famine is that because they were Catholic peasants they refused to eat the plentiful fish
…now that? That is sufficient cause to get Ireland “most favored nation” status. What the fucking fuck?
I mean. Okay, these are Canadians, I guess maybe prior to the cod fishery giving out they didn’t understand that every island on Earth is not knee-deep in fish. But even so that is the stupidest victim blaming argument I’ve ever heard in my life, and I have heard some pretty fucking stupid victim blaming arguments.
I just… flames. Flames on the side of my face.

Next time you are listening to a conservative do their usual harangue against Blacks, the homeless, Gays or some Other, when they pause long enough to wipe the spittle from their chins, politely inquire how they would feel if they happened to be Gay, Black or Other. Invariably comes the same answer, “I am not Gay! I am not Black! I am not homeless! And if I were, which I am not, I would overcome any and all obstacles in my path.” These statements are then followed by high decibel bootstrap speeches and Neanderthal Law of the Jungle platitudes.

I was reminded of the above commentary. Note the cutting-to-the-root of the problem, which is that political conservatives have a hard time imagining themselves in someone else’s shoes with all the attendant problems that someone else has.

mmy: Complaining Woman: If I was born in a country like that I would still be able to make something of myself. I don’t believe those women couldn’t change things for the better if they quit waiting on someone from the US to come and do all the hard work.
I mean — what words can you say after that?
I’d go with some variation on “I double-dog-dare you to move to Somalia and ‘make something of yourself’.”

@Spearmint: Okay, these are Canadians,
Actually these particular students were Americans, but you would have no way of knowing that since I didn’t locate where in my academic career this conversation took place.
But even so that is the stupidest victim blaming argument I’ve ever heard in my life, and I have heard some pretty fucking stupid victim blaming arguments.
Oh, I agree. I was actually bereft of words for a moment and my jaw just dropped. And I am not, as you have probably gathered, a person often at a loss for words.
The sheer offensive victim-blamingness of it took me aback. The smug comment from the white upper-middle class young woman who had never in her life gone without anything she wanted — suggesting that parents listening to their children cry in pain and watching their loved ones shrivel from starvation wouldn’t have done ANYTHING to feed them if they could. The idea that the rest of the class didn’t draw back from her as they would from a fetid object dropped among them. The idea that just as the south won the culture battle of the civil war the English had won the framing of the genocide of Irish peasants. Yes, most people don’t think the Irish starved next to piles of fresh fish but precious few know that the wealthy English of that time were dining every night on the very food they had stolen from the mouths of hungry Irish children…..
Well, you are not allowed to tell a student that they remind one forcibly of a fetid turd. However, I may have been rather forceful in my response.

Actually these particular students were Americans, but you would have no way of knowing that since I didn’t locate where in my academic career this conversation took place.
Then there is absolutely no excuse. Also I am ashamed on behalf of my country, and would like to apologize to Ireland, and also to you for having their repulsive stupidity inflicted on you.
The idea that just as the south won the culture battle of the civil war the English had won the framing of the genocide of Irish peasants.
This is the part that was really shocking to me, because in my experience, they haven’t. At least not here in the U.S. As far as I know, we quite like the Irish; they’re now white, Irish immigrants have been fully integrated for two generations, and it’s not like we’re inclined to back the British in a colonial dispute. (I think this is also part of the reason I assumed the students were Canadian; it would make sense for Commonwealth citizens to have a more equivocal view of English rule.) I’ve never heard the British occupation of Ireland defended.
(I actually got detention for the only time in my life by getting into a shouting match with some conservative kid in my high school history class about the Irish Civil War*, but that’s kind of the point- every debate I’ve ever heard about it was about how hard the Irish should kick the British out of Ireland. That it needed to be done was taken as a given.
* I was backing the Republicans, for the record. Ah, the radicalism of my youth.)

How many Aboriginies have you talked to?
*picks up heavy board of white guilt*
Pie Iesu domine, *smacks face into board* dona eis requiem. *smacks face into board*
OMG! I’m LIVING ON LAND STOLEN FROM THE SEMINOLES!
*WHAP*
SOMEONE THREW AWAY SOME LITTER AND MADE THAT NATIVE AMERICAN MAN OVER THERE SHED A SINGLE TEAR!
*WHAP*
Jesus fucking Christ, I said that Australians are nice people. Do you do this to the English? So what, next time Kit comes in here and mentions how much she likes England, we blame her because it was built ON THE BLOOD OF IRISH AND INDIAN BABBYS!! Or the Germans? I think Germans are great people, I guess that means I’m down with the holocaust too.
Or can I say nice things about Belgian chocolate, without having the Congo rubbed in my face? Can I drink some coffee, or first must I complete my ritual flaggelations over the plight of the Guatamalan peasants? I’d smoke some pot to chill out and relax, but first I need to dip my balls in boiling water because it tangentially supports the war on drugs AND mexican drug cartels.
I am sure that the Australians are not a magical group of perfect and saintly souls living in happy harmony with everyone and everything. I didn’t say that. I said that in my (admittedly limited experience) Australians are the nicest travelers I’ve met. You could’ve just let it go at that. But instead, we need a comprehensive list of the sins of the Australian people. Why? What’s the point?
Jesus, I see the appeal of conservatism. When you go, “Hey, australians are really nice people!” in front of conservatives, they don’t immediately begin compiling a list of “Evil shit those people you liked do.” You know what they do? They smile, nod, and GO ON WITH THE CONVERSATION! I’m well aware that the Australians, like every other religious, political, ethnic, social, indigenous, immigrant, or any other group have been dicks. My comment had NOTHING to do with that.
*takes deep breath. Counts ten.*
Sorry. It’s just….really? Was there a pressing need to take my one post about “Hey, Australian person, your people are nice!” and beat me over the head with it? Yes, I admit it, the Australians are acutally a bunch of evil racist, misogynistic, homophobic, Harry Connick Jr hating* criminals and we should shoot them all and give the place back to the Aborigines. Happy?
*Are you sure this was racist? I don’t think that anyone that hates Harry Connick Jr. is all bad.

Holy crap, CaryB. We’re not bagging on Australians, we’re acknowledging that they, like every other country on the face of the earth, have their problems. You said you couldn’t think of any group that disliked Australians, people pointed out a couple. Why? Because It’s More Complicated Than That. Nobody is disputing that Australians-in-general are nice, friendly people, we’re saying that isn’t the whole story.

You said you couldn’t think of any group that disliked Australians, people pointed out a couple. Why? Because It’s More Complicated Than That. Nobody is disputing that Australians-in-general are nice, friendly people, we’re saying that isn’t the whole story.
Ok, yes, that came out harsher than it should have. But my point was, there was no POINT to going “ahah! These people dislike Australians!” My comment was about “Hey, aussies are nice peeps.” There was no particlar need to drag up ever bad thing they’ve ever done, which had nothing to do with my comment.

Technically, your comment was “I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like Australians.” To which a perfectly appropriate response, much like to my “I’ve never met anyone who didn’t like capture-the-flag” comment last week, is, “Maybe you haven’t talked to the right people.”
It’s not like anyone started compiling a comprehensive list of every bad thing Australians ever did.
When you go, “Hey, australians are really nice people!” in front of conservatives, they don’t immediately begin compiling a list of “Evil shit those people you liked do.”
They’re probably too busy trying to figure out whether Aussies are Muslims and they need to denounce them as terrorists and invade their country. It is a desert after all. Very suspicious…

Wait a second. People earnestly held the opinion that the Irish starved because they overlooked the possibility of eating fish?
I’m pretty sure that’s a George Carlin stand-up routine.

They’re probably too busy trying to figure out whether Aussies are Muslims and they need to denounce them as terrorists and invade their country. It is a desert after all. Very suspicious…
Right. Because all every conservative ever wants to do is invade somewhere and kill muslims. And all every liberal wants to do is smoke pot and legalize beastiality. And all every libertarian wants to do is frantically masturbate to Glenn Beck. And all every straight male wants to do is have sex with as many women as possible. And all every feminist wants to do is chop off penises and have lesbian sex. And all every Irish person wants to do is drink and beat their wife, and all every Catholic, and every Protestant, and every Muslim and every everybody…
Aren’t stereotypes fun? Man, its so easy! You never have to think about what real people might think or want, or why they feel the way they do, or why they do what they do, or try and understand them at all! All you have to do is throw out one line of cheap, glib talking point and you win!

And all every libertarian wants to do is frantically masturbate to Glenn Beck.

To each his or her own, but… uh, let’s not invoke Rule 34 if we can help it. Yes?

@CaryB: I’ll stop demonizing Conservatives when they stop jabbing me with pitchforks.

And all every Irish person wants to do is drink and beat their wife
But not eat fish, remember.
CaryB, if it wasn’t obvious, as apparently it wasn’t, I was joking. I thought the ‘desert’ bit would be a tip-off, but maybe I needed a passive-aggressive smiley as well.
However, even if I hadn’t been, I hardly think the person who not twenty posts ago wrote this:
“When you go, “Hey, australians are really nice people!” in front of conservatives, they don’t immediately begin compiling a list of “Evil shit those people you liked do.” You know what they do? They smile, nod, and GO ON WITH THE CONVERSATION!”
is in a position to complain about stereotyping.

Gah. Sorry Spearmint. Seriously, sorry. I should’ve caught that.
I’ll stop demonizing Conservatives when they stop jabbing me with pitchforks.
“Conservatives” aren’t jabbing you with pitchforks. Certain, specific people who identify themselves as Conservatives, are jabbing you with pitchforks. Unless you literally think that about 100 Million people in this country think exactly the same things about everything, “Conservatives” haven’t done anything to you. Bad people have. And stupid people, and deceived people. These things are not all alike, and when you make them all alike you perpetuate the problem. Because when one of those stupid people, or deceived people hears you casually demonize them, the instinct is to casually demonize back. Someones gotta end the cycle.

@CaryB: There may be good Conservatives out there, but I ain’t Lot and I ain’t Diogenes, so rather than wander the earth in hopes of finding them, I will callously continue to judge the team by their spokescritters (stupid, bad and hateful) and their elected officials (hellbent on taking this country back to the ’50s, just divided on whether that should be the 1950s, 1850s, or 1050s).
I do _NOT_ like what I am seeing there.
(Now that I think about it, there ARE Sensible Conservatives in America. We call them the “Democratic Party”.)

Mink, there is a good side about the ability to pass of a lot of trauma as war though. In places where the average person is really concerned about history, they are not really concerned about history but national mythology and avenging a long line of alleged wrongs committed against their group. I.e., Israel-Palestine, Ireland, and the entire Balkan Peninsula plus myriad of other ethnic and religious conflicts across the globe. When people are more forgetful of the past, they tend to be more receptive towards peace.

mmy, P.J Evans: Didn’t much of English policy since the time of William the Conquerer to the Act of Union in 1801 revolve around establishing England’s supremacy over the entirety of Britain?

There may be good Conservatives out there, but I ain’t Lot and I ain’t Diogenes, so rather than wander the earth in hopes of finding them, I will callously continue to judge the team by their spokescritters (stupid, bad and hateful) and their elected officials (hellbent on taking this country back to the ’50s, just divided on whether that should be the 1950s, 1850s, or 1050s).
This. If your movement has been taken over by racists and lunatics, you are responsible to either kick them out or leave the movement. Until then, you get judged by the company you choose to keep.

Do you do this to the English? So what, next time Kit comes in here and mentions how much she likes England, we blame her because it was built ON THE BLOOD OF IRISH AND INDIAN BABBYS!!
No, CaryB – people don’t even need to say anything nice about the English before everyone dumps on them. And most of the time they are using English, instead of British – or the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
God, I think some people would have been happier if Irish terrorists had actually succeeded in Murdering Mrs Thatcher, not just three Conservative politicians, and three women whose only crime was to be married to Conservative politicians …

This. If your movement has been taken over by racists and lunatics, you are responsible to either kick them out or leave the movement. Until then, you get judged by the company you choose to keep.
Robert Byrd.
And I’m not saying that you have to hunt down every nice conservative out there. I’m saying that it seems to me that part of the point of being a liberal is we don’t demonize large groups of people for the actions of a few bad ones. When a racist judges all black people based on the actions of a few bad ones, we say they are bigots. When a racist judges all Muslims based on the actions of a few bad ones and some high-profile spokes people, we say they are bigots. When a conservative judges all of us based on a few high-profile people or political positions, we say they are idiots.
So how come when you do the same thing, you get a free pass? You want to judge all conservatives based on a few people. Grand. Its your right. But don’t try and pretend you have the moral high ground over those objecting to the “Ground Zero Mosque.” You may not be as harsh. You may not be as bad. But you are doing the exact same thing.
Some dude on the internet had a post about this. Ah yes. Here it is.
http://slacktivist.typepad.com/slacktivist/2010/08/please-forgive-me-for-the-actions-of-extremists-i-have-never-met-who-commit-acts-of-violence-that-i-.html

@Lee Ratner: When people are more forgetful of the past, they tend to be more receptive towards peace.
I both agree and disagree. I agree that sometimes the only way for the cycle of violence to stop is for people to be forgetful.
On the other hand forgetfulness about the past can make people far less fearful of war.
Back in 2001 it was positively scary to be listening to young men talking about going to war in Afghanistan — because these young Americans had no sense of what they were walking into. And if one tried to tell them that it might not be so easy the response was almost always “the Soviets were wusses” “the British were wusses.”
I think that sometimes the best way to ensure peace is to remember the complete reality of war — not just the glory and not just heroic sacrifices that sound so good when written up years later.
I remember, when a student responded in wonder “are you saying that the British were in Afghanistan?” by reciting from Kipling’s The Young British Soldier
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
But of course every generation thinks that they will be stronger and more fortunate than their great-grandfathers.
Didn’t much of English policy since the time of William the Conquerer to the Act of Union in 1801 revolve around establishing England’s supremacy over the entirety of Britain?

Of course something similar was true on the continent as duchies and principalities were being various central governments.

Can I just point out that “Aborigines disliking Australians” would be slightly contradictory, given that they are Australians? Some of them might dislike a subset of Australians, but definitely not the subset that’s them.
(Nitpicking, yeah, but it sounded kind of like Aborigines were being categorised as “not Australian”, or “not AS Australian as these other people who took them over”. Which I’m sure is not what was intended…)

mmy: I agree with you on the history thing. Its a complicated balancing act. It seems that forgetting is much more better than remembering because many people tend to mythologize their history into a long list of wrongs at worse or past and present glories and why their nation is number one at best. Neither form of mythologizing is really fruitful.
The difference, I think, between the continent and the British isles was that on the continent, the various counties and duchies were at least technically not independent countries but owed fealty to a King, usually the French King or the Holy Roman Emperor. The king was just trying to get his underlings to respect his authority for the most part. Ireland, Wales, and Scotland were not technically under the jurisdiction of the English King in anyway, well Ireland was since one Pope made Henry I or II Lord of Ireland, I think.

Lee, mmy: I can see where you are both coming from, and in a way I can agree. It’s probably for the best; but in some ways not knowing the truth, just going by word-of-mouth, hurts more.

@Lee Ratner: the continent, the various counties and duchies were at least technically not independent countries but owed fealty to a King, usually the French King or the Holy Roman Emperor.
But of course, once again, that didn’t mean they “belonged” to that King. When Eleanor of Aquitaine married Louis VII of France Aquitaine came with her (she was the legal heir of her father the Duke of Aquitaine.) When she had that marriage annulled in order to marry Henry II of England Aquitaine came with her. Her sons Richard and John were both Kings of England and Dukes of Aquitaine. And yes the nasty issue as to whether that meant that their owed fealty to the King of France came up — but Aquitaine had functioned as an independent unit of government. Portions of it were lost to France during the Hundred Years War — but parts of it were still not acknowledging France’s suzereignity until the 1450s.
Meanwhile Navarre was an independent country that spanned the Pyrenees. The southern portion was added to Spain by conquest in 1513. When Henry II, King of (northern) Navarre became Henry IV of France in 1589 Navarre “came with him” rather like Scotland “came with” James when he also became King of England. It wasn’t until 1620 that Navarre was formally merged with France.
Why yes, my mother did love history. And yes Henry of Navarre was her favourite King of France. And yes, we gossiped about just how well Eleanor “knew” Henry’s father before she finally married Henry. What, everybody doesn’t while the time away while doing household chores by telling stories from world history?

Spearmint:…what did the Irish do? I mean, they have good music and poets and horses and alcoholic beverages and accents and a very pretty country, but none of that seems quite enough to earn you “most favored nation” status.
Way behind as usual, but as far as I’m concerned, they get it on the poets alone (although the music and the whiskey are not to be despised, either).
They gave us money not to teach our children Irish
And so we lost our history
And this is what I think is still hurting me
Or, as another Irishwoman puts it, writing about the Dublin Pale (origin of the phrase “beyond the pale”):
A line drawn in rain
and clay and the root of wild broom–
behind it the makings of a city,
beyond it rumours of a nation–
by Dalkey and Kilternan and Balally
through two ways of saying their names.
Who came here under cover of darkness
from Glenmalure and the Wicklow hills
to the limits of this boundary? Who whispered
the old names for love to this earth
and anger and ownership as it opened
the abyss of their future at their feet?
I was born on this side of the Pale.
I speak with the forked tongue of colony.
But I stand in the first dark and frost
of a winter night in Dublin and imagine
my pure sound, my undivided speech
travelling to the edge of this silence.
As if to find me. And I listen: I hear
what I am safe from. What I have lost.
–Eavan Boland, from “Colony”

sorry for the very long double post — typepad sometimes does strange things.

God, I think some people would have been happier if Irish terrorists had actually succeeded in Murdering Mrs Thatcher, not just three Conservative politicians, and three women whose only crime was to be married to Conservative politicians.
Well, if someone is going to get murdered over policy, preferring the victim to be the policymaker rather than an innocent bystander seems reasonable. It’s a tough question because there are pragmatic considerations too and you might rather keep the policy maker alive and their wife probably doesn’t matter so much, but I could certainly see an argument for “It’s better to loose a soldier than a civilian.”
So how come when you do the same thing, you get a free pass?
I’m not. Judging conservatives by the ranting of a few fringe demagogues would be absolutely unfair. Judging conservatives by the platforms and policy of their elected representatives is not. The American conservative movement, as embodied in the Republican Party, has gone over a cliff and plunged into a cesspool of self-delusion, racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, class warfare, sexism, and general hatefulness. That’s not a few fringe people, that is party policy. If American conservatives want to be treated like adult members of society they either have to distance themselves from their crazy-ass party or take it back, because right now the sensible default assumption, based on their voting patterns, is that they’ve gone over the cliff with the rest of the Republican bus.
It’s a political party, not a religion. The conservative majority has absolute control over its message; they determine it every time they cast a ballot or call their senator or show up at a rally. I’m not holding them accountable for Glenn Beck or Timothy McVeigh, but I am bloody well going to hold them accountable for Sharon Angle.
The institution of a political movement resides in its members, just like the institution of the Catholic Church resides in its priests. And you bear some degree of collective responsibility for the actions of institutions of which you are a part. And I’d say the same thing to members of Hezbollah, another political party that has gone off the deep end, so don’t think I’m only mean to Republicans.
@Deird: good point.

mmy: After mom died dad told mmyspouse about it or else I still wouldn’t know.
I had to do a whiplash-inducing double-take on that sentence because I initially read “mmyspouse” as “Mnemosyne”.
btw, have I told you lately how awesome I think you are and your parents were?

It’s better to lose a soldier than a civilian. Cripes.

God, I think some people would have been happier if Irish terrorists had actually succeeded in Murdering Mrs Thatcher, not just three Conservative politicians, and three women whose only crime was to be married to Conservative politicians.
Well, if someone is going to get murdered over policy, preferring the victim to be the policymaker rather than an innocent bystander seems reasonable. It’s a tough question because there are pragmatic considerations too and you might rather keep the policy maker alive and their wife probably doesn’t matter so much, but I could certainly see an argument for “It’s better to loose a soldier than a civilian.”

Surely I’m missing something, because at first blush, it seemed that you’re waffling over the morality of murdering someone’s wife for being that person’s wife.

@Spearmint: and you might rather keep the policy maker alive and their wife probably doesn’t matter so much
I am really hoping that you meant that the wife didn’t matter as a policy maker or else that really reads like you are discounting the value of person’s life on the basis of who she is married to.
@Raj: btw, have I told you lately how awesome I think you are and your parents were
Thank you. I am only now really getting to see my parents for the people they were. I had many issues with them as I was growing up — stands to reason them being devoutly religious and me being an atheist. And my sister and I certainly kicked at any restraints.
But now I am having a chance to really stand back and look at them as people and I find them rather awesome myself.

It’s depressing how many RTConservative policies can be summed up as “die, weakling”.
The line “health care is not a universal right” made me kind of stare at it.
So let’s navigate this worldview: if a fetus is conceived, it MUST be carried and birthed, but it doesn’t have the right to health care after it leaves the mother’s body. EXCEPT if by some unhappy accident it ever ends up on life support. And then it doesn’t have the right to get taken off life support.
Oooooookay.

Surely I’m missing something, because at first blush, it seemed that you’re waffling over the morality of murdering someone’s wife for being that person’s wife.
No. Obviously the ideal outcome is for no one to be assassinated, and it’s immoral for you to assassinate anyone*. What I’m saying is that if someone is going to be assassinated anyway, it’s not obviously immoral, as a horrified bystander, to prefer that the victim be Thatcher rather than some random politician’s wife.
I am really hoping that you meant that the wife didn’t matter as a policy maker or else that really reads like you are discounting the value of person’s life on the basis of who she is married to.
Yeah, yeah, in terms of your political movement, obviously. If the KKK is going to assassinate Martin Luther King Jr. or little Bernice King and you have been assigned by Evil Thought Experiment Aliens to have to pick one or the other to live, you’ve got a pretty tough choice in front of you, because she’s a little kid who you might normally put on the boat first but his potential future contributions to the civil rights movement are invaluable.
* Well, mostly. I don’t think Thatcher was awful enough to be assassination-worthy. Then again I’m not Irish, so I may not be qualified to judge.

So let’s navigate this worldview: if a fetus is conceived, it MUST be carried and birthed, but it doesn’t have the right to health care after it leaves the mother’s body. EXCEPT if by some unhappy accident it ever ends up on life support. And then it doesn’t have the right to get taken off life support.
The fetus must be carried and birthed – but I don’t think this POV would grant the fetus a right to health care during the process. After all, that would mean health care for adult women, as well. I certainly haven’t seen any conservative initiatives for free or low-cost prenatal care, midwifery programs, etc.
The mindset seems to be more that the outcome of a pregnancy must be left to chance, rather than medical intervention, whether that intervention is an abortion at the choice of the pregnant woman or medical care to support the pregnancy.

Now I just want to go around correcting pro-choice signs. “Right to Life Take Your Chances, Kid.”
(let’s see if that coding works…)

Yes, most people don’t think the Irish starved next to piles of fresh fish….
*lightbulb*
Sheri Tepper’s Northshore/Southshore books. OMG PARALLEL.
Been awhile since I’ve reread them, but I recall that [rot13]gur snpgvba bs unecl-yvxr perngherf pbagebyyvat gur uhzna cbchyngvba jbhyq bayl rng qrnq obqvrf fbsgrarq hc ol gur mbzovr-znxvat shatv; gurl pbhyq rng svfu, naq vaqrrq gurve pbhfvaf jub bayl ngr svfu jrer abg rivy, naq fb gur uhznaf ungpurq n cyna gb sbepr gurz onpx bagb gur svfu qvrg. Ohg gur mbzovr pbecfr qvrg unq gur jrvtug bs pynff/pnfgr (eryvtvbhf) vzcrghf oruvaq vg, fb gurl va snpg qvq “fgneir arkg gb cvyrf bs serfu svfu.” Vg qvqa’g uryc gung fbzr bs gurz unq va snpg ribyirq vagb nyzbfg n qvssrerag fcrpvrf sebz gurve crnprshy pbhfvaf naq pbhyqa’g qvtrfg svfu ng nyy, ohg zber jnf znqr bs gur pnfgr gnobb guna gung.[/rot13]
I really, really hope she didn’t do that on purpose. I don’t need another reason to be impatient with her meta.

In Collapse I think Jared Diamond says the Norse in Greenland starved in part because they didn’t eat fish, or didn’t eat enough of it. That seems weird to me because I thought fish was a part of the diet in the places at least some of the settlers came from. Anyone know more about that?

No one has mentioned Mary Robinson as a reason for Ireland’s most-favored nation status? Really? Am I the only person who has an industrial-strength crush on her?
Also, there’s stew. The stew is excellent, especially if we’re grading on the UK-food scale. (Not that there aren’t lovely foods out of the UK, but I’ve just completed a comparative culinary history book on Britain vs. France and Italy, and I must say, it’s been a good few millenia for continental Europe.)

I keep glancing at the ends of threads, and realizing that I have no idea what’s going on, and then going back to what I’m suppposed to be doing…all of which is to say that all I can say about the above post is that it reminds that, whatever else is to be deplored, at least I’m glad that I live in a world where one can hear ‘Hamlet’ in the original Klingon.

(Yes, I know it’s old news to you Trekkies, but it cheers me up every time.)

@Amaryllis: I always get a kick out of that

The institution of a political movement resides in its members, just like the institution of the Catholic Church resides in its priests. And you bear some degree of collective responsibility for the actions of institutions of which you are a part. And I’d say the same thing to members of Hezbollah, another political party that has gone off the deep end, so don’t think I’m only mean to Republicans.
You’re seriously comparing the Republican Party to a fundamentalist Islamic near-terrorist organization?
ooooook. This is the part where you step back, take a few deep breaths and realize that these are people you disagree with politically. They are not terrorists, they are not foaming at the mouth berserkers, they’re you’re fellow Americans, and like it or not, we have to live with them. From now until the day you die. Unless you want to go be a Parisian ex-pat, these are your fellow citizens. Do they hold political beliefs that you and I find deeply unpalatable? Yes, they do. And we hold beliefs that they find deeply unpalatable. So we have two choices. Either we keep on being condescending assholes to each other until we’re so disparate that there is no common ground, just mutual and endless hatred. Historically, that doesn’t end well: or do I have to draw you a map of the middle east?
Or, alternately, we start acting like adults. And have reasonable conversations, about important things, and stop calling each other names like a bunch of schoolkids. And someone has to step up and act like grown goddamned people first. So it might as well be us. And will we win every battle and get exactly what we want? No. We’ll lose some, we’ll compromise some, and things will move forward.
And, yes, I’d love it if everything was fair, and everyone was happy. But this is the real world, and in the real world, clever little bon mots about how stupid One. Hundred. million. PEOPLE. are doesn’t get shit done. You ever notice how the people that actually made a difference didn’t act divisively? Whatever your reasons are for hating Republicans, I garunfuckingtee you that Gandhi had a better reason to hate the British. I know for a fact that MLK had better reason to hate Southeners. And you know what? No one would have blamed him if he just stood up and said “All these Southeners are a bunch of dumb, racist, cracker assholes.” And frankly, at that time, in that place, he wouldn’t be far off. But he didn’t. He saw his opponents for what they were: A bunch of people…not just some wide and monolithic block, but a million individuals with their own private fears and hates and loves and desires. And he reached out to them as people. He condemned their beliefs, but he never condemned them, and he damn sure never condemned them in a group.
So be as clever and as sweeping as you like. I sure as hell can’t stop you. But when you do that, EVERY time you do that, you’re taking another step closer to being just like the people you despise the most. I want something better than two groups indistinguishable in hatred and vitriol. I want a country defined by something more than an endless round of the political dozens. And I’m sure as hell sick of telling the conservatives that I know that we’re the mature party of ideas, only to turn around and find out that half the goddamned liberals are doing the political equivalent of sticking out their tounges at the other side. And the best part is, when someone calls you on it, whats your defense?
“Well, they did it first!”
Of course, since that appears to be the level of discourse and rationality we’re all striving for, maybe we should just call shotgun on the Presidency?
Or, to come at it from another angle: how come when we discuss Northern Ireland, Israel/Palestine, Fundamentalist Islam Vs. the West, the liberal approach is always to try and understand both sides of the conflict…but when it comes to Republicans, they’re all evil bigots who can’t be reasoned with. They’re PEOPLE, Spearmint. Not mindless drones, not machines for evil and hatred, but people who need to be understood. They aren’t stupid, and when you treat them like they are, you get the same reaction from them that you or I have when someone treats us like we just fell off the turnip truck: “Fuck you buddy, and fuck what you were selling.”

@CaryB: By the same token, however, it took the Vietnamese and Algerians resort to armed force to accomplish their objectives.
Sometimes things have evolved to the point where force is the only option. Violence the last refuge and all, but we humans have a habit of understanding the basest of common languages which says, “I have a gun. I will use it. GO AWAY.” This invariably ends up working in a very messy fashionm when negotiated solutions fail.
The Afghanis also proved this in spades to the Soviets.

The institution of a political movement resides in its members, just like the institution of the Catholic Church resides in its priests.
Actually, you know what? I completely changed my mind. You’re right. And until they repudiate their leaders, every Republican is responsible for them.
And until they repudiate their leaders, every Muslim is responsible for them. I mean, after all, if If American conservatives Muslims want to be treated like adult members of society they either have to distance themselves from their crazy-ass party religion or take it back, because right now the sensible default assumption, based on their voting patterns not repudiating the fanatics, is that they’ve gone over the cliff with the rest of the Republican Islamic bus. And based on this reasoning, which I just got off of Glenn Beck, I don’t think we should allow a religious center that close to Ground Zero.

@ CaryB

They are not terrorists, they are not foaming at the mouth berserkers, they’re you’re fellow Americans, and like it or not, we have to live with them.

I’d be a lot more willing to live with them if they didn’t seem to want to disenfranchise or imprison (if not kill) everyone who disagrees with their particular views (including the very narrow religious and social views that many of them are only too willing to tell us about). Far too many of them seem never to have read the Constitution or the Bible they claim is so important to civilization.
And anyone that’s willing to run for office and at the same time wants to shut down all or part of government is, IMO, not qualified for any public office.

CaryB, while I’m no fan of demonizing opponents, there is a fundamental difference between the hate-spewing fringe Muslim fanatics and the hate-spewing elected representatives of the Republican party (not to mention the talk show hosts who they state in polls as the people they “most admire.”)
Nobody asked every Muslim if Osama Bin Laden or the underpants bomber speaks for them. Those who *have* spoken on the topic, overwhelmingly say “Absolutely NOT!”
Republicans in Nevada and Minnesota and nationwide have been asked, repeatedly, who speaks for them. And they have answered “Angle and Bachmann and Glenn Beck.”
So until they answer differently, I’m going to continue to characterize them as Stupid and Evil. And if this makes me less of a saint than MLK or Gandhi, I can live with that.
(After all, more than either of those two, I revere Someone who reputedly wasn’t afraid to call a brood of vipers exactly what they were.)

CaryB,
You’re completely ignoring the practical and organizational differences between a political party in a representative democracy and religious leaders in a religion that does not have a formal and organized hierarchy.
Expecting a Muslim to repudiate every Muslim leader in the world is like asking Fred to repudiate the actions of every Baptist in the world. These aren’t organized religions, and aside from choosing what congregation you’ll attend, you have little control, as an individual, on what other congregations and their leaders are doing.
The Republicans, on the other hand, are a political party in a democracy. If you’ve voted for them, if you voted McCain-Palin in the last election, then you’ve acted to give them political power. Your actions affiliate you with them.
If you voted for Palin, she’s yours. You agree with her enough to think she’d be a good president and to act to try to make her potentially president. If she’s expressing political beliefs – well, that’s what you voted for.
If you don’t want to be associated with Palin, or with her associates, then you shouldn’t have voted for her. And if you’ve voted for her but changed your mind, then you can’t just complain about her – it is obligatory on you, in a democracy, to take democratic action to oppose her and her ideas. Which means, in the US, to give your political donations to liberals, to vote liberal, to organize liberal.
But if you voted Palin, an she’s running around organizing, politically, with Beck, then she’s yours, and he’s yours by extension, until you take appropriate steps within the political system to support those who oppose their kind.
If a conservative chose to vote McCain-Palin instead of Obama-Biden, then Palin is someone they like better than Obama, or Bidin. If you’re the kind of conservative who votes that way, you can’t claim not to be that kind of conservative.

@ CaryB
You seem to be of the opinion that batshit whackos are some tiny little non-representative fraction of the Republicans; that the GOP is mostly reasonable people with whom we just happen to disagree. I’m sorry, but that’s just not so. A Newsweek poll out this week has 52% of Republicans saying they believe “Barack Obama sympathizes with the goals of Islamic fundamentalists who want to impose Islamic law around the world.” 14% say it’s definitely true, 38% say it’s probably true, 33% says it’s probably not true but might be, only 7% of Republicans are willing to concede it’s actually not true at all.
These are not rational people. These are not people with whom we can have a reasoned discussion based on logic and evidence and, oh what’s the word, FACTS. They don’t care. They just dont. The man attended a Christian church for decades, was married in a Christian church, had his children baptized, speaks frequently of his savior Jesus. And yet more than half of Republicans think he’s a Muslim who wants to impose Sharia Law on us.
There’s no reasoning with these people.
and @ Amaryllis
Beyond the pale refers to the Pale of Settlement in imperial Russia, where the Jews were quarantined. If anybody used the phrase for some other place, they were making an allegorical allusion to the shtetls.

lonespark: In Collapse I think Jared Diamond says the Norse in Greenland starved in part because they didn’t eat fish, or didn’t eat enough of it. That seems weird to me because I thought fish was a part of the diet in the places at least some of the settlers came from. Anyone know more about that?
I’m no expert, but the ever-helpful wikipedia says that “isotope analysis of the bones of inhabitants shows that marine food sources supplied more and more of the diet of the Norse Greenlanders, making up between 50% and 80% of their diet by the 14th century.”
So I don’t know: didn’t the medieval Norse in Norway eat fish?
As for the Irish Famine, I don’t know that you can call it intentional genocide. More a misplaced but unshakeable faith in the power of the free market to meet everybody’s needs– eventually; so no one would interfere with the export of food from a starving county. Also a distaste for “encouraging a culture of dependency,” so government assistance was weak and private charity took a while to get going, and was never enough to meet the need..
Which is why, when certain pundits start punditing about “the market must be FREE!” and “he who does not work shall not eat” and “private charity is all the safety net we need,” you just want to sit them down and teach them about “Black 47″ in detail, until they get it.
@mmy: your family is indeed awesome. And thanks for reminding us of one of the subsets of our favorite motto: “History– It’s More Complicated Than That.”

Beyond the pale refers to the Pale of Settlement in imperial Russia, where the Jews were quarantined. If anybody used the phrase for some other place, they were making an allegorical allusion to the shtetls.
I highly doubt that the phrase has such a specific origin; a “pale” is just a boundary fence.

@wendy: here’s an interesting discussion of “Pale” and “beyond the pale.” According to this source, the earliest recorded use of “beyond the pale” in English is a little late to refer to the Irish Pale but too early for the Russian Pale; so maybe it was always a figurative expression.
And I am tring not to believe that there are people who mutate it into “beyond the pail.” What pail, for goodness sake!

Amaryllis: As for the Irish Famine, I don’t know that you can call it intentional genocide. More a misplaced but unshakeable faith in the power of the free market to meet everybody’s needs– eventually;
I forget where, but I remember Robert Anton Wilson mentioning some Potato-Famine era economist commenting that the Famine wouldn’t kill anywhere nearly enough Irish to be “worthwhile”, and it’s not called “the dismal science” for nothing.

RE: Fish in Greenland, I thought the time of year had something to do with it; there were acceptable fish and fish that weren’t seen as food, both, and the second category was around more in the winter.
It’s been a couple years since I read about it, though.

Lonespark:
Diamond says just that, on pp. 229–230. As you can see, he himself points out that their ancestral culture did eat quite a bit of fish, and so did the Inuits of Greenland, making their apparent disdain for fish all the harder to account for.

Amaryllis: According to this source, the earliest recorded use of “beyond the pale” in English is a little late to refer to the Irish Pale but too early for the Russian Pale; so maybe it was always a figurative expression.
Not exactly. A pale is pretty much as described: it’s a boundary marker, though usually for a village or estate on my little island. The difference, in English at least, is that it’s so-called because it’s white-washed to make it visible within its surroundings. I know the phrase occurs in English at least before the Reformation, because it’s an important part of at least one local festival (The Feast of the Boy Bishop, if anyone’s really interested).

Huh. Learned something.

The difference, in English at least, is that it’s so-called because it’s white-washed to make it visible within its surroundings.
Folk etymology strikes again. The two words have different roots: the fence is from palus and the color is from pallidus [pallere].
Why, yes, I do have the OED handy (the two volume edition, with the supplements).

P.J Evans: They’ve just discontinued printing the OED, funnily enough. And I, too, have learned something this – er – morning.

You’re seriously comparing the Republican Party to a fundamentalist Islamic near-terrorist organization?
…as far as unprovoked foreign wars of aggression go, the Republican Party and Hezbollah are tied. And Hezbollah’s stupid war didn’t involve a land invasion and had some relationship to quasi-legitimate underlying grievances, so maybe they should come out ahead on that scorecard. To be honest, I feel pretty comfortable comparing them.
This is the part where you step back, take a few deep breaths and realize that these are people you disagree with politically
So are Hezbollah. So are a lot of people. What does that have to do with anything?
You ever notice how the people that actually made a difference didn’t act divisively?
I’m not sure “making a difference” is the metric you want to use here. Hitler and Stalin “made a difference.” “Improved things” might be a better metric. I also don’t remember MLK and Gandhi only ever saying nice things about their enemies. Hell, MLK had some pretty harsh things to say about his (crappy) allies. There’s a difference between practicing non-violence and practicing never calling people out on their bullshit.
“All these Southeners are a bunch of dumb, racist, cracker assholes.”
MLK never said this because he had a better vocabulary, not because he wasn’t willing to thoroughly denounce racists.
Unless you want to go be a Parisian ex-pat, these are your fellow citizens.
If I was Lebanese Hezbollah would be my fellow citizens. Again, what does this have to do with anything?
They’re PEOPLE, Spearmint
So are Hezbollah. I’ll still confused about what your point is supposed to be.
They aren’t stupid
Some of them are. Some of them are malicious. A lot of them are just confused or scared. But understanding why they are wrong doesn’t mean we can’t condemn them for being wrong, any more than understanding Hezbollah means we can’t condemn them for being wrong. It would be patronizing to do otherwise, to treat them like children who can’t be expected to know what they are doing or held accountable for their actions. They are adults and they are hurting people. One of the consequences of hurting people is that people call you a jerk. One of the consequences of voluntarily associating with bullies is that people think you are a bully. This isn’t just a difference of political opinion. The modern conservative movement is incredibly, provably, dangerously, and if we believe Fred deliberately wrong on a host of issues, and I see no problem whatsoever with telling them so.
Re. your second post, what hapax and Ursula said. A political party is not a worldwide religion. American Muslims have no more control over Al Qeada than Mexican Catholics have over the IRA, and are no more accountable for their actions. American conservatives have as much control over the Republican Party as Lebanese islamists have over Hezbollah, and are equally accountable for their actions.

Launcifer, I heard about that. I don’t really blame them for not wanting to print it: it’s huge, and too expensive for a lot of smaller libraries. (I suspect that it also intimidates a lot of people.)

Hezbollah’s stupid war didn’t involve a land invasion
Er, a land invasion by Lebanon. *cough*

On this genocide of the Irish: Brad DeLong discusses the quote here, after the more important matter of academic protocol. His defense of the British economist imputes to him the belief that 4 million Irish people should die.

Regarding the OED, I wonder if they’ll make it available in print using POD technology?
I could see that working. The whole OED was a huge investment, but I could see someone who wanted a (near) full print version buying a POD volume, starting with “A”, and then when they can afford the next, starting with the word that’s last in their old version. It wouldn’t be a “complete” OED in the sense of the whole thing at on moment in time, but it would provide a complete print A-Z bought over several yeas.
I could also see gifts of a single volume, such as when a baby is born giving the volume their given name would fall in. Just because dictionaries are cool.
There aren’t enough copies needed to justify conventional printing, but there are people who want print copies. And as a matter of archiving, having a few thousand print copies at various points in the world is better than having only electronic versions.

In Collapse I think Jared Diamond says the Norse in Greenland starved in part because they didn’t eat fish, or didn’t eat enough of it. That seems weird to me because I thought fish was a part of the diet in the places at least some of the settlers came from. Anyone know more about that?
Posted by: Lonespark
————————–
IIRC, they didn’t starve because they didn’t eat fish/seafood, but because (unlike the natives) they couldn’t catch enough of it. They didn’t know the techniques the locals knew, and refused to learn anything from them, and starved while the locals continued to hunt seals and ate well.
(*I have forgoten the local tribal name, and refuse to use the generic and geographically inaccurate and possibly offensive term commonly used)

Why yes, my mother did love history. And yes Henry of Navarre was her favourite King of France. And yes, we gossiped about just how well Eleanor “knew” Henry’s father before she finally married Henry. What, everybody doesn’t while the time away while doing household chores by telling stories from world history?

Why just the other day, I explained to my wife over cleaning up after dinner how the War of 1812 and the Napoleonic Wars overlapped, and why France went through about a half-dozen governments in the early part of the nineteenth century. (I also had to explain that, no, neither Oliver Cromwell nor Cardinal Richelieu were involved in the French Revolution. In return, she explained to me that George IV was extremely fat, which I had totally not expected, having for some reason always imagined him as looking like a young Hugh Laurie). This also led to us looking up the War of 1812 to see who actually did win* (I know canadians think they won. But I was taught in school that the US won. And that Canada was not actually involved in the war. According to Wikipedia, in fact, as of 2009 roughly equal numbers of Canadians answered “Canada”, “The United States”, and “I’ve never heard of the war of 1812″ when asked who won. Outside of Ontario, where apparently no one cares. I also discovered that the only land to actually change hands in the war was a city in Alabama that the US took from Spain, prompting me to discover that Spain had holdings in Alabama in 1812.)

So let’s navigate this worldview: if a fetus is conceived, it MUST be carried and birthed, but it doesn’t have the right to health care after it leaves the mother’s body. EXCEPT if by some unhappy accident it ever ends up on life support. And then it doesn’t have the right to get taken off life support.

It may be unfair. It may be mean. But if you just always assume that the republicans support whichever policies most increase human suffering, you will usually be right.
* Officially, it was a tie. This is actually in the peace treaty.

Canadians were devastating in the land-based portion of the War of 1812, which is what we got taught about in school, but it was only years later that I found out how much more there was to it than “We took Detroit without a fight because the Americans were @#$%ing terrified of our First Nations allies, then we burned down the White House after eating their ice cream”. Apparently there were sea battles? Weird.

Ursula L: The mindset seems to be more that the outcome of a pregnancy must be left to chance, rather than medical intervention, whether that intervention is an abortion at the choice of the pregnant woman or medical care to support the pregnancy.
Yep. And if the pregnant woman dies, oh well, she’s a martyr and will be praised in heaven. As for the baby, it’s weak, so if it dies that’s its own fault. It should have raised itself up by its bootstraps.

Ross: I visited forts almost within cannon-shot of each other on either side of the Canadian-American borders which each had a plaque explaining how “our side won the war.”
@Ross: Outside of Ontario, where apparently no one cares.
That certainly wasn’t true in any of the places I lived in Ontario while I was growing up. Learned about the war in schools — and there are lots of places still named after battles. Also — ever hear of Laura Secord? We certainly did.
@Will Wildman: Apparently there were sea battles?
To quote a relative only the “bloody Brits” cared about the sea battles. The UELs focused on payback for having their own homes destroyed.

@mmy: Laura Secord! Darling of the War of 1812! (from the “everything I know about Canadian history I learned from Kate Beaton” files)

Ireland also has Seamus Heaney. That man made Beowulf wonderful to read. Plus, The Cure at Troy:
History says don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea-change
on the far side of revenge.
Believe that a further shore
is reachable from here.
Believe in miracles
and cures and healing wells…

then we burned down the White House after eating their ice cream”. Apparently there were sea battles? Weird.
The sea battles, like the Burning of Washington, involved Brits, not Canadians. Look it up; the name you want is George Cockburn. I have no idea why Canadians all seem so convinced that they burned the White House, but they didn’t; that was the Royal Navy and the British Army.
The Canadians can be proud of giving the lie to the first US politician who said “Let’s invade! It’ll be easy! They’ll welcome us as liberators!”

Lee, mmy: I think the difference is what you learn from history. History can teach you not to make the same mistakes again, can inoculate you against nostalgia, it can show you that an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind and that keeping grudges has killed more people than the yellow fever. But you have to ask history to teach you, not to justify you.

@ajay: I have no idea why Canadians all seem so convinced that they burned the White House, but they didn’t; that was the Royal Navy and the British Army.
The thing is there wasn’t a Canada then (as a country) there were colonials, various Amerindian nations that didn’t trust this new country to the south one damn bit, people who had come to New France or Upper Canada to make a better life and a whole lot of United Empire Loyalists. Who were really, really angry about waking up to find on our doorstep a new major power that wanted to colonize us.

@inge: History can teach you not to make the same mistakes again, can inoculate you against nostalgia, it can show you that an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind and that keeping grudges has killed more people than the yellow fever.
And history, as I learned it from my mother, is a reminder that we are all humans here. We all bleed, we all fear, we all hunger. We all love our children. Just recently I saw a heart-rending video of a Pakistani man carrying his father on his back through the flood. I grew up hearing about how Aeneas carried his father on his back out of the burning city of Troy. Different men, different times, different cultures — are the actions of that (to me) nameless man in Pakistan any less glorious and heroic than those of the legendary founder of Rome?
History teaches you that you were neither the first to love nor the first to hate. How many mighty empires have fallen into ruin making exactly the same mistakes you are planning to make today?
History is the voices of our mothers and our fathers echoing down the ages to tell us about the joys that lie ahead and the terrors behind every rock.

Well, yes, mmy, but it’s still pretty much wrong for Canadians to say “we burned the White House”. The people who did that weren’t from any of the territories that later became Canada. They were British. That’s where they were from, that’s how they thought of themselves.

@ajay: Can I presume you are not Canadian? Because you are talking about the self-identity of people who at the time were legally citizens of the British Empire and would have described themselves as such. My great-greats called themselves United EMPIRE loyalists and even in the first World War would, if they wished to accept commissions, been correctly described as officers of the British Army.

*points* what mmy said, ajay.
Personally, I was starting to get a little squinty at you. Like this. (>_<)

No, I’m not Canadian. At the time, of course, the people you’re talking about wouldn’t have described themselves as “citizens of the British Empire”, because there was no such thing, and there never has been; they were British subjects.
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here by talking about Canadian national identity. The people who burned the White House were British subjects from Britain. (And Ireland, most probably.) They weren’t from any of the territories that later became Canada. Saying “the Canadians burned the White House” is as accurate as saying “The Canadians won the Battle of Trafalgar” or “The Duke of Wellington was a Canadian”.
The people who fought the battles on land were British subjects too, but given that many of them – the militia that won at Queenston Heights, for example – were born in the territories that would later become Canada, I don’t have a problem with their being called “Canadian” avant la lettre, as it were.

@ajay: I’m not sure what point you are trying to make here by talking about Canadian national identity. The people who burned the White House were British subjects from Britain.
Do you have a record of the place of birth of every single person who served in the British forces at the time? No you don’t. The distinctions you are talking about were not made them.
No, Britain (usually) did not call itself an empire at that point (though it functioned as one) — but we (the ancestors of the present day Canadians — who lived in Upper Canada) were British subjects at the time. Some were born in England and moved to the colonial territories. Some moved back and forth. Some were pressed into service in England. Some went to England to join the forces.
The people who fought the battles on land were British subjects too, but given that many of them – the militia that won at Queenston Heights, for example – were born in the territories that would later become Canada, I don’t have a problem with their being called “Canadian” avant la lettre, as it were.
How very bloody good of you to have no problem. How bloody patronizing as well.
The relationship between the colonies and “the motherland” is far too complicated to reduce to a few sentences but I refuse to let an American tell me when and how I can identify with other members of what was then the commonwealth in making.

@ajay: Re “do we care” “does anyone still know about the war of 1812″ — to do some fact checking (as opposed to rest one opinions of the world on one’s own limited experiences) to quote my source who has access to the current curriculum guidelines for Ontario “the causes, the events of, and the short
and long term consequences of The War of 1812 is a major theme in the Grade 7 History “

I always liked the comment, I believe originally from Pierre Berton:

Ask a Canadian about the War of 1812, and they’ll say ‘The Americans tried to take us over, but we fought them back.’ Ask an American about the War of 1812, and they’ll say, ‘The British tried to take away our independence, but we fought them back.’ Ask an Englishman about the war of 1812, and they’ll say, ‘What war?’

And while the naval battles were mostly British forces, yes, the land battles had to be pretty much all colonials, militias, and natives, because most of the British army was tied down fighting with Napolean at the time, and the War of 1812 had already been going on for a while before news of it even reached England.
And yeah, the Battle of New Orleans took place after the armistice was signed but before news of that made it back to North America.
(I’m suddenly reminded of one of the Sharpe’s Rifles stories, where a plot point hung around the fact that there were supposedly-American newspapers fomenting rebellion amongst the Irish serving in the army against Napolean, and Sharpe pointed out that the newspaper was obviously a fake because the date was too recent for the paper to have actually made it over to Europe on any ship yet built.)

@Bryan Feir: — I love that Pierre Berton quote.
I think why the Ontario curriculum still emphasizes the importance of The War of 1812 is that it was a key step in our evolution towards being a nation in our own right. The residents of the areas that would one day become Canada might not yet have been ready to declare independence from Britain but they were sure as hell not willing to become part of the United States.

mmy: And history, as I learned it from my mother, is a reminder that we are all humans here. We all bleed, we all fear, we all hunger. We all love our children. Just recently I saw a heart-rending video of a Pakistani man carrying his father on his back through the flood. I grew up hearing about how Aeneas carried his father on his back out of the burning city of Troy. Different men, different times, different cultures — are the actions of that (to me) nameless man in Pakistan any less glorious and heroic than those of the legendary founder of Rome?
Your comment immediately brought to mind this bit of insight Darwin had in South America:

This spot is notorious from having been, for a long time, the residence of some runaway slaves, who, by cultivating a little ground near the top, contrived to eke out a subsistence. At length they were discovered, and a party of soldiers being sent, the whole were seized with the exception of one old woman, who, sooner than again be led into slavery, dashed herself to pieces from the summit of the mountain. In a Roman matron this would have been called the noble love of freedom: in a poor negress (sic) it is mere brutal obstinacy.
- Charles Darwin, The Voyage of the Beagle

@Raj: Wow — wonderful quote.

Ross: * Officially, it was a tie. This is actually in the peace treaty.
I wonder how much crap we could have avoided over the last 30-odd years if we’d done that with Vietnam?

@Consumer Unit: Officially, it was a tie. This is actually in the peace treaty.
I wonder how much crap we could have avoided over the last 30-odd years if we’d done that with Vietnam?
I actually have heard people suggest that the best way for the US to get out of [Afghanistan/Iraq] is to declare they have won and just leave. The other side would be quite free to declare that THEY were the side that actually won. Both sides would save face and millions of lives would be saved.
Of course, it is unfortunately likely that they would then fight a war over the question of who won the war.

ISTR that the UEL was based on the loyalists who left what is now the US because they didn’t want to be part of it. So I’d say there was more than a little payback involved from their point of view.
As far as ‘who was from where’ – one of the English commanders (Thomas Graves) in the Anglo-Dutch wars was a resident of Charlestown, Massachusetts.

@P J Evans: ISTR that the UEL was based on the loyalists who left what is now the US because they didn’t want to be part of it. So I’d say there was more than a little payback involved from their point of view.
Yeah, some of the UELs fled American colonies with nothing but the clothes on their back — driven from their homes as “traitors.” There was a hell of a lot of payback going on.
Exactly what the legal relationship any Canadian has to Britain is a wonderfully complicated (and very Canadian) thing. I just checked my Canadian passport and the rights granted to me therein are requested by “The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Canada” in the name of Her Majesty the Queen, and holders of Canadian passports are instructed that “in countries where there is no Canadian office, application may be made in an emergency to the nearest British diplomatic or consular office.”
So my right to travel abroad is proclaimed in the name of the Queen and I can call upon the British diplomatic services if I am unable to find Canadian representation.

Discussion of the War of 1812 cannot continue without the input of Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie

The relationship between the colonies and “the motherland” is far too complicated to reduce to a few sentences but I refuse to let an American tell me when and how I can identify with other members of what was then the commonwealth in making.
Good for you. And if an American ever tries to tell you that, I hope you tell her where to get off. I, however, am not an American.
But if it’s your position that you have the right to identify with whatever bits of the empire and commonwealth you want – to say not only “Canadians burned the White House” but also “Canadians won the Battle of Trafalgar” (and, for all I know, “Canadians built the Sydney Harbour Bridge” and “Gandhi led thousands of Canadians on the Salt March”), and any disagreement is insulting to your Canadianness… well, there’s not a lot one can say to that except “I hope you enjoy life in your universe”.

mmy: I remember, when a student responded in wonder “are you saying that the British were in Afghanistan?”
Heh. That reminds me of several critiques/comments I’ve read about the BBC’s new Sherlock Holmes series. A number of commenters thought that making Watson an Army doctor injured in Afghanistan was pointless and clearly Stephen Moffat was trying twisting a classic of literature to make some sort of point, etc., apparently blissfully unaware that in the original books, Watson was … an Army doctor injured in Afghanistan*. *facepalm*
(* Plus ca change …)

A number of commenters thought that making Watson an Army doctor injured in Afghanistan was pointless and clearly Stephen Moffat was trying twisting a classic of literature to make some sort of point, etc.,
Seriously? Wow.
What’s next? “How dare you suggest Sherlock Holmes would take drugs!”

@Ajay: first: the only apology you will get from me is misremembering (if I ever knew it) your citizenship.
second: There is a long and very scholarly history behind present-day Canadians considering themselves part of a group that they ancestors were part of. If you think you know more than generations of scholars then
PLONK

You’re thoroughly confused. You have no evidence that Fox News, or any conservative, would react negatively to, or resent, this story. I know this, because they wouldn’t. You’re entirely missing the point of why they WOULD react negatively to a similar story: They would resent the GOVERNMENT giving free handouts… not churches! When churches decide to do this, it is their own business, and the business of those who donate to them (willingly and wittingly). When the handouts come from the tax-payers, who occasionally fund this sort of thing UNwillingly and UNwittingly, then of course they’re resentful. But there are no conservatives who are “choosing to be unhappy” in this scenario, you’ve made it up entirely!!!

@Le Jardin: Dude, click the link in Fred’s post and read the comments. Plenty of butt-hurt conservatives there.

They’re so bent on depriving prisoners of anything nice in their lives that they’re wailing and moaning about this?
This is how I feel about that.

@Le Jardin: Dude, click the link in Fred’s post and read the comments. Plenty of butt-hurt conservatives there.

To be fair, you don’t know that those are conservatives. They could just be assholes. Yes, yes, I know, but there are plenty of people who are just… plain…. mean. Especially in the safety of a newspaper article comment thread.

The attitudes they are exhibiting jibe with conservative values — being ‘tough on crime’ a.k.a. treating criminals, people accused of crimes, and those associated with criminals like subhumans. This is a standard practice of conservative politics.

mmy, may I move North? I have a great-grandfather from Ontario. (Actually, there are Canadians all over the family tree.)

@ Le Jardin You have no evidence that Fox News, or any conservative, would react negatively to, or resent, this story. I know this, because they wouldn’t. You’re entirely missing the point of why they WOULD react negatively to a similar story: They would resent the GOVERNMENT giving free handouts… not churches!
Well, in theory, perhaps. I’m sure if you asked Micheal Gerson or George W. for their opinion of such a program, they would gush about how wonderful it was, and how this was exactly how things were supposed to work, etc.. However, in practice a lot of the people I’ve met who identify as conservatives will, when they think it’s safe, be pretty sour and disparaging about programs like the one Fred’s writing about. It’s true we don’t know the political affiliation of the people who are commenting negatively on that story, but, like I’ve said, I have heard conservatives make statements like that. More basically, I think the conservative response of “of course we believe in helping people – BUT THE HELP MUST COME FROM PRIVATE CHARITY AND NOT THE GOVERNMENT!!!!” is a smokescreen. People who really want to see other people being helped don’t get their knickers in a twist over where the help is coming from if it’s working. If a hungry person gets fed, that’s good. It doesn’t matter if it’s food stamps or a church pantry.

Actually it does matter sometimes, Trixie. There’s no shortage of churches where the charity comes with conditions, regular attendance or evidence of sufficiently moral behavior or the like. Food stamps, as long as you’re sufficiently desperate, you’re golden.

Speaking of handouts, how’s Sallie Mae and the feds doing? Pretty damn well, actually, as the picture notes.

Actually it does matter sometimes, Trixie. There’s no shortage of churches where the charity comes with conditions, regular attendance or evidence of sufficiently moral behavior or the like. Food stamps, as long as you’re sufficiently desperate, you’re golden.
True, that. But, if there’s no conditions or coercion used on people who are vulnerable – if it’s working – then I don’t mind how they’re getting fed, but it seems to me that if some conservatives had a choice between a private program that left a lot of people hungry, and a government program that managed to feed almost everyone that needed it – they would choose the private program, without hesitation. What I’m trying to say is that if you really cared about helping people, I don’t think you’d be so hung up on the agency that was doing the helping. For conservatives, I get the impression that it’s more about control. Hence the attraction to the agency where they could impose the conditions.

Yeah. There’s something really unfunny about their fixation on the idea that poor people have to be forced into a position of expressing gratitude for the tiny crumbs that get left for them.

There is a long and very scholarly history behind present-day Canadians considering themselves part of a group that their ancestors were part of
In other words, “everyone in the British Empire was a Canadian just like me, doesn’t matter where they were born”.
I personally don’t mind you saying that too much (“Admiral Cockburn? English Canadian! General Ross? Irish Canadian! The Royal North British Fusiliers? Canadians, all of them! From Scotland, Canada! The 44th Essex Foot? Canadians!”), it’s frankly more entertaining than anything else.
But I’d really love to see you try that line on an Australian. Ideally in a Melbourne pub, around late April time. “The diggers who died at Gallipoli? Canadian! Donald Bradman? Canadian! John Monash? Canadian!”

For conservatives, I get the impression that it’s more about control. Hence the attraction to the agency where they could impose the conditions.

Some of them sound as if they have a moral objection, like abortion opponents who don’t want their tax money being used for that procedure. I would be interested to know the specifics of Le Jardin’s objection to tax money being used for assistance. In my experience, the smokescreen that Trixie mentioned usually involves attitudes about ethnic minorities.

Carol rose. She suggested that the Thanatopsis ought to help the poor
of the town. She was ever so correct and modern. She did not, she said,
want charity for them, but a chance of self-help; an employment bureau,
direction in washing babies and making pleasing stews, possibly a
municipal fund for home-building. “What do you think of my plans, Mrs.
Warren?” she concluded.
Speaking judiciously, as one related to the church by marriage, Mrs.
Warren gave verdict:
“I’m sure we’re all heartily in accord with Mrs. Kennicott in feeling
that wherever genuine poverty is encountered, it is not only noblesse
oblige but a joy to fulfil our duty to the less fortunate ones. But I
must say it seems to me we should lose the whole point of the thing by
not regarding it as charity. Why, that’s the chief adornment of the true
Christian and the church! The Bible has laid it down for our guidance.
‘Faith, Hope, and CHARITY,’ it says, and, ‘The poor ye have with ye
always,’ which indicates that there never can be anything to these
so-called scientific schemes for abolishing charity, never! And isn’t it
better so? I should hate to think of a world in which we were deprived
of all the pleasure of giving. Besides, if these shiftless folks realize
they’re getting charity, and not something to which they have a right,
they’re so much more grateful.”
Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

There is a long and very scholarly history behind present-day Canadians considering themselves part of a group that their ancestors were part of
In other words, “everyone in the British Empire was a Canadian just like me, doesn’t matter where they were born”.

Only if we’re now using ‘in other words’ to mean ‘to completely rewrite what you’re saying’. Compare the statements again and see how thoroughly they don’t line up.

The attitudes they are exhibiting jibe with conservative values — being ‘tough on crime’ a.k.a. treating criminals, people accused of crimes, and those associated with criminals like subhumans. This is a standard practice of conservative politics.
</blockquote?
That's true, but surely you can see how a conservative who doesn't feel that way might not be persuaded by the argument that, yes, they do because some random, nameless assholes on the Internet COULD BE conservatives.
I agree that those comments ("How dare those people get a benefit that I don't particularly need!") do fit in line with traditional rhetoric, but I don't think it's fair to assume that the commenters are conservatives. Again, maybe they’re just horrible people.

That’s true, but surely you can see how a conservative who doesn’t feel that way might not be persuaded by the argument that, yes, they do because some random, nameless assholes on the Internet COULD BE conservatives.

I wasn’t basing my reactions on random anonymous comments on the internet. My reactions are based on the conservatives with whom I regularly have contact. They can get themselves up in arms about these kinds of freebies for the lucky ducky poor at the drop of a hat. They don’t necessarily react that way totally without promoting, but it takes only the tiniest hint to get them off on a rant about this sort of thing. If other conservatives want to argue with them about it they should feel free, but it’s sure as heck no my job to wait to form an opinion until they settle their No True Scotsman feud.

My reactions are based on the conservatives with whom I regularly have contact. They can get themselves up in arms about these kinds of freebies for the lucky ducky poor at the drop of a hat.
I’ve seen a lot of that. They may nominally take a “It shouldn’t be government, it should be private charity!” stance, but the moment a private charity gives things away to those in need without reinforcing shame and demanding displays of gratitude, it’s all “How dare they?” rage.

I agree that those comments (“How dare those people get a benefit that I don’t particularly need!”) do fit in line with traditional rhetoric, but I don’t think it’s fair to assume that the commenters are conservatives. Again, maybe they’re just horrible people.
So, do you think they are liberal trolls, just making the comments because they are horrible people and want to stir up trouble? I get the idea that you don’t want to make the assumption that all conservatives are horrible people, and that is true. And yes, there are liberal horrible people. But I somehow doubt that liberal horrible people would make this particular argument. So while these horrible people may not represent all conservatives, I think we can safely say that they are conservatives.

Only if we’re now using ‘in other words’ to mean ‘to completely rewrite what you’re saying’. Compare the statements again and see how thoroughly they don’t line up.
The point is that the “Canadians” who burned down the White House weren’t actually from Canada. It would be one thing if they were technically “British” because Canada was part of the Empire but they were all from the part of the Empire that was Canada — but they weren’t. They were British troops that had been transported to North America for the express purpose of dealing with the problems the USA was causing. Their leader, General Ross, had been born and raised in Ireland, distinguished himself in combat on the European continent, and had never been to North America before the War of 1812 — nor, to my knowledge, had the vast majority of the rest of his troops, who all arrived in North America for the first time in 1814 when their ships landed in Maryland to begin their punitive expedition against Washington DC.
You can claim a *connection* to them for being part of the same Empire/Commonwealth, but they weren’t “Canadian” by any of the definitions of the time — neither citizens of a Canadian nation-state *nor were they from the parcel of land we now refer to as Canada*.
“Canadians burned the White House” is indeed a statement roughly equivalent to “The diggers who died at Gallipolli were Canadian”. It makes no historical sense. It’s like saying that a Canadian named King George III was head of state when the War of 1812 was fought. Or that what we call the War of 1812 in the Western Hemisphere was a distraction against the Canadians’ more important war against the tyrannical, expansionist rule of the Quebecois emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.
Again: This is not “rewriting” what you were saying. The British troops who sacked Washington *were not Canadians* — the term “Canadian” was already in use at the time, and none of those troops (or, at least to my knowledge, not the vast majority of them) would have used that term to describe themselves. They *were not from Canada*. Saying so is not just a minor quibble about Canada not being an independent country at the time — these were overseas troops shipped in from the Old World.

Do you have a record of the place of birth of every single person who served in the British forces at the time? No you don’t. The distinctions you are talking about were not made them.
Producing the individual birth certificates is not really necessary here any more than it is with the case of President Obama. The British troops who burned Washington were *shipped to Maryland* as a single brigade under the command of Robert Ross, and was an army consisting entirely of veteran troops who had served with the Duke of Wellington in the European theater. They were Brits, from the Old World. There may have been a handful of troops in the British Army who’d been born in the New World and, through various exigencies of life, somehow made it back to the Old World and then gone on to a long military career entirely in Europe, but this would have been a very unusual life story back then — emigration went almost 100% the other way, and despite the ideal of being all one empire a Canadian who went back to Britain would’ve faced a certain degree of discrimination and exclusion.
If anyone can actually provide any examples, I’d be interested, but it was not a life story nearly common enough to make it reasonable to claim that the British Army regiments that were, again, *shipped in from over the ocean* to sack Washington were “Canadian”. They weren’t — it’s really that simple. There were UELs and Canadian patriots, yes, who fought in land battles on Canadian soil against American invading forces. None of these forces were dispatched on the punitive expedition against Washington DC.
Patriotic myths aside (we all have them), the British military leaders at the time didn’t think highly of *any* of the “bloody colonials” when it came to fighting experience, and the elite troops were troops who’d been raised and trained in the British Isles and who’d fought in “real” wars against “real” foreign powers (rather than against the Indian savages and other colonials), and so they didn’t entrust as important a mission as a punitive raid against a hostile power’s capital to any of their colonial loyalists — they shipped in troops from outside.
The Canadian mythology that there was no cultural or political distinction between British citizens regardless of origin back then was just that — mythology. The myth that it was “Canadians” who burned the White House — that all or most or even a majority or even, really, probably any of the troops burning the White House had even set foot in the New World before being dispatched on this specific mission — is even more so mythology.
(I don’t begrudge our neighbors to the north their myths, sure — you can stack that up against the much larger stack of stupid stories Americans tell themselves about how the world has always revolved around the USA — but myths are, nonetheless, myths and should not be mistaken for facts. I’m pretty adamant about shit like this; the main reason “Canadians burned the White House” is something I speak up about is that it’s just *wrong*, just like it may make Germans feel better about their national history to believe a German monk invented gunpowder or it may make Afrocentrist black people feel better to think the ancient Egyptians invented calculus but that, too, is wrong.)

There is a long and very scholarly history behind present-day Canadians considering themselves part of a group that they ancestors were part of. If you think you know more than generations of scholars then
Okay, this is just silly. “Generations of scholars” can be and often are wrong, especially about emotionally-charged issues that have become matters of national pride. Generations of scholars in the American South have said that the Civil War “wasn’t about slavery”, too, but that, too, is quite obviously wrong to anyone who even tries to approach the issue objectively.
(Granted this is a much more *significant* issue politically and morally than the other one, but it’s still one where a lot of people who have national-pride issues have a mental block. And no, I don’t think this has anything to do with me having any national-pride issues personally as an American; the White House got burned either way, regardless of who did it, and if anything giving credit to the Canadians at least would let me keep the credit within the Western Hemisphere without having to give anything to those hated Brits.)

re mmy vs ako, it would have been so much simpler if the British had used their Hessian troops to burn the White House. I doubt there would be any argument at all if they had…

After reading the comment section of various news articles about unemployment insurance and healthcare, I am now convinced that the rich and the elite could never have as much contempt for average Americans, as average Americans have for one another.

It’s been awhile since I’ve read your blog Fred. I love your Words. OK, now back to work. Agape isn’t easy.

…it seems to me that the logical conclusion from mmy’s premise that the British Canadians of 1912 weren’t politically differentiable from British citizens of England is not that it was the Canadians who burned Washington, but that it was the British who defended Queenston. After all it was Canadians who arguably didn’t exist yet- the British certainly did.
After reading the comment section of various news articles about unemployment insurance and healthcare, I am now convinced that the rich and the elite could never have as much contempt for average Americans, as average Americans have for one another.
Everyone despises traitors more than they despise suckers. It’s not the rich who can’t pay for their medical care, it’s we average Americans.

K: Why, exactly, would I care about the colonials’ silly misunderstanding of the class system? Because an intelligent respondent to a question of politics and behaviour in a given system would have the wit to inform themselves of the system which they were discussing.
Then again one can’t really expect a pommy-git to take the time to actually pay attention to much outside the narrow compass of her vision; why, one wonders, with so much pressing on your plate at home, do you feel the need to try and educate the citizenry of the US (and and involved subset thereof, even if you disdain voting (which given that it’s a recent privilege in the UK, all things being considered, for the general populace to be numbered among the electors, I can see how one might fail to see merit in it).
The arrant nonsense of all change being for the worst? Well the Normans coming in and kicking Saxon ass, that was a pretty shitty change, but since then… you are right, nothing has improved, the world (or at least the England) would be so much better off with absolute monarchs, villienage, petty warlords, etc.
Since you are attempting to teach grandmothers to suck eggs, it might behoove you to learn some newer way of doing it, one that actually showed some sort of sense to go with the education you seem to be otherwise wasting.
Steven S: it was meant to be condescending… an attempt to pretend that the “Colonials” didn’t manage to outmaneuver the Brits (both on the ground, and diplomatically) and so take the largest of the Great Powers of the Day to school. Some of them still possess a petite-bourgeoisie resentment of that little fact.

mmy: The issue of the Marines in Korea… not quite the “Army folded, the Marines stood the test”. The Army was in a much more exposed position when the Chinese pushed back; and the numbers they faced were different.
More to the point, in some ways, the Marines (for a variety of reasons) had a higher percentage of WW2 vets in the ranks, and the army was shipping in National Guard Troops (the last time, prior to Iraq, in which a massive call up of the Guard sent troops to combat, in particular the 40th Inf Division from Calif.). The Guard were all volunteers, but the level of steady training tells.
All in all, the Army and the Corps performed about the same; but the Corps has a (not unjustified) sense of being the red-headed stepchildren of the US forces, and they like to embellish this. (I speak as the son of a US Marine, and a Staff Sergeant of the US Army: who went to Iraq as a Guard Member, assigned to an active duty unit)
As for unit cohesion: Any combat unit has it. A poorly run one (regardless of nationality, or branch) will have poor cohesion, at some level of scale, but the cohesion in the primary units (fire-teams, at the very least, and usually at the sqaud level) will be so tight nothing can come between the members. A well run unit (be it platoon, company or battalion) can aslo have it. Much larger than Bn, and it’s all smoke and mirrors. Paratroopers, Marines, etc., will talk a lot of rubbish about the loyalty of the class, but it’s not really so.

Best quote “Why should that guy have goodies, and not me?”

Please give my regards to your family

Every man desires to live long; but no man would be old.