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| anepalikt |
Posted
on 20-Sep-02 05:26 PM
Check this out, folks. Another article from FrontPage Magazine. What do you think?
http://www.sajha.com/sajha/html/POSTnew.CFM?forum=2
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| anepalikt |
Posted
on 20-Sep-02 05:45 PM
To balance things out here is an interesting an interesting story about Seattle and the anti-WTO movement from The Nation:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020930&s=hayden20020912
I'd be interested to hear from folks' comments about the ideas in these articles, but also your views on the bi-polarity of views in the American media. What do you read/watch that you trust that is not tainted by this lefty liberal or righty whitey stuff?
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| red_herring |
Posted
on 20-Sep-02 06:00 PM
Clicked on your first link, and it doesn't take me to the national front article, instead it opens up a reply box.
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| anepalikt |
Posted
on 20-Sep-02 06:04 PM
Thanks for pointing that out, red herring. I apologize. Here it is.
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=3247
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| Biswo |
Posted
on 20-Sep-02 06:13 PM
anepalikt,
Thanks for the article of frontpage magazine and of The Nation , of course. Very
balancing links though!
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| red_herring |
Posted
on 20-Sep-02 07:17 PM
The nurse, a typical redneck, who after seeing three middle eastern looking men, immediately decided they were terrorists and thought she had to spy on them .Her mind invented things that the three weren't even talking about. This indeed is a typical Southern mentality . The Southerners not only hate the "other", but they hate the Yanks as well. What do you expect from people who live in the past, and still hoist confederate flags? As expected, KKK is also the strongest in the South.
The first article should go straight away into the trashcan. The author claims that for a typical liberal, a stereotypical conservative would be an uneducated rube from the south. Yet, at the same time, he too has lumped all liberals as putting on a cosmopolitan facade, and blindly supporting immigrants and immigration. Practice what you preach in the first place! Yeah, like a typical educated and affluent manager of a giant company who is a democrat and an impoverished laborer living with meager wage, who is a republican! Yeah, we all believe that, right? And no, I'm not saying that I don't stereotype.
USA is not a melting pot; it is a cultural mosaic of people of various backgrounds who TEND not to intermix. There has been some intermarriages, but people do resort to staying pure. How come my friend knows his ancestors came from Scotland? Don't even get me started about Italians; Southern Eurpeans are known to be even more authoritative when it comes to interracial marriages. Everybody tends to preserve his identity, his culture. It's just human nature.
Anybody who watched Hannity and Colmes yesterday should know what Republicans are like.
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| anepalikt |
Posted
on 20-Sep-02 08:42 PM
typical Southern mentality
what Republicans are like
I would love to, but I won't even go there! :)
But I really would be interested to hear about the "liberal left" in America. So what are They like if the southerners are hicks and nednecks and republicans obviously war mongers and xenophobes?
Disclaimer: Please note, I am neither :)
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| red_herring |
Posted
on 20-Sep-02 09:52 PM
I knew you were going to quote those lines, and so I also had added in a disclaimer: "And no, I'm not saying that I don't stereotype"
But how can you be neither anepalikt? Which way do you lean?
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| anepalikt |
Posted
on 21-Sep-02 09:51 AM
Of course you can be, Red herring. Or was that a red herring statement? :) I remember a nun accusing me of the same when I was still in school. Never did get over that!
Anyhow, American media, politicians and everyone else too would like to think that if you are not "us" then you and "them"... whether you are talking about being a democrat or a republican, whether you identify with the left or the right, or black or white, whether you are for America or for the Al Quaeida. In my opinion those are false dichotomies. Somehow, being who I am and where I am in life, being just this or that makes no sense to me. I am neither white nor black. I am neither rich nor am I poor. I am not an American citizen/a blind nationalist and neither am I an Islamist sympathizer.
There are some absolutes I adhere by, but otherwise I take from both what makes sense and chuck the rest. It gets hard because, good folks like you:), always ask which side of the line I stand on. Is there a line I say.... the hypocrisy of the politicians and "activists" just bleeds into each other's rhetoric till it makes no sense who is from the "left" or who identifies with the "right". Who is "right" when the hard working average citizen/immigrant/person is not "left" standing (I thought that was rather clever… :)).
Sometimes I say I am "socially liberal and fiscally conservative", but then I look at the other self-proclaimed "socially liberal" folks and cringe... I see mostly apologists who make excuses for the Bin Ladins, Louise Farah Khan, and Prachand's of the world. I see folks who want to generalize and cling to the us and them. I see guilt ridden socially, economically privileged white folks not ready to give up their privilege, but who think they can appropriate the voices of the down trodden and be their champion.
Then I look at the folks who call themselves "fiscally conservative" and they just seem to mean that they think the poor are out to squeeze their hard earned tax dollars and stay on welfare their entire lives. And seem to use that to justify not investing in social services and social and economic safety-net programs.
So anyway…. I guess that means I am neither.
Okay, sorry to ramble on but get this, I find I am sometimes so far of the far left that I am accused of being right and I guess vice versa as well. You seem to totally dismiss the points made in the first article from FrontPage magazine, but I think there are many things said there that make absolute sense. So based on that I guess some might argue I am a "right winger".
As for the article about Seattle, what a load of hogwash… these so called anti-WTO activists are mostly privileged first-worlders who are "speaking for the oppressed." Or they are the black clad anarchists who mooch off the system yet claim to be against it. Who resort to violence that leads to solutions… At one time, I was "neighbors" with a "leader" of the Anarchists (is that an oxymoron or what) who made their mark in Seattle. So I kinda saw their real MO fist hand. :)
"Battle for Seattle"? Give me a break! The writer says, "Seattle might have salvaged a new identity by taking pride in the rough birth of the movement against corporate globalization on its streets in 1999, rooted in the militant Northwest populist and labor traditions that Hightower's tour echoes today, but the local legacy of that "people's history" remains contested and unclear."
If this writer examined the history of Seattle dating back a little longer than 1999, the early 90s or even the 80s, he would see that this "Northwest populist and labor traditions" often didn't even speak to the experiences of most North Westerners: those Seattlites who are now "conservative" octogenarians on their walkers who grew up during the depression in places like North Dakota; the fishermen and logging families who prospered off the natural bounties of the Northwest and lost their jobs with no economic alternatives; employees of Boeing and other industries who lost jobs and struggled to make ends meet even during the era of Bill Gates. This is in addition to the disenfranchised Indians, the Blacks who were persecuted and still are some of the poorest in the country, or the Japanese and other Asian Americans who grew their strawberries in small tracts of land and scrimped and saved.
"Seattle" has been appropriated by the privileged, latte drinking, Harvard educated "activists" who supposedly "speak from Seattle" but in reality it has nothing to do with Seattle or the Northwest. Seattle has been taken over once again by a new set of wanna-bes. Before it was the lovers of Kirk Cobain and Nirvana and then Bill Gates, but now it’s the likes of Wallace:) These 'activists" wheel and deal in DC and follow the World Bank to Johannesburg, but for Seattlites and other North Westerners the reality is local. They are left battling out their local realities. I trust and believe in that.
Red Herring, hope that answered your question! :)
Done with my sermon for the weekend!
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| red_herring |
Posted
on 21-Sep-02 02:23 PM
Rather than being a clear-cut dichotomy, there is a thin line seperating Liberals from Conservatives, with some viewpoints that MIGHT that might be common between the two. It all depends on the politician and his ideas, really. If all liberals thought the same, then there would be no need for a myriad of liberal parties, like the Democratic Party, Green Party, etc. If they all thought the same, then the need for so many liberal parties is obviated. On top of that most people, I believe, do not blindly support a politician without weighing in their own ideas . Plus, people can be conservative when it comes to a particular viewpoint, and liberal when it comes to another. So, it just boils down to which side you LEAN towards.
Anyway, regarding that second article, why did you focus on that particular passage? He says, " Seattle might have" which I took to mean that even if this weren't the case, his views wouldn't be affected.
It actually is true that organizations like the IMF indirectly champion interests of Western nations in the guise of helping impoverished third world nations. Gimme a break! How come third world countries were instructed by these Orgos to refrain from subsidizing goods they trade when in fact Western nations were doing so? Wouldn't that deeply hurt developing nations? Even if the supporters are rich folks, it doesn't make an ounce of difference because they're condemning (well, somewhat) blatant discrimination indirectly put forth by these "Global" Orgos that help secure interests of developed nations.
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| anepalikt |
Posted
on 21-Sep-02 03:05 PM
Red Herring, I focused on that particular passage because it interested me. I guess I am most moved by the idea of the authentic, the homegrown and the local. For me it is not a matter of which way I lean. I don't know which way I lean most times... it just depends on the issue like you said. I just can't stand posturing and since I expect more of the "lefty liberals" their transgressions piss me off the most:)
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| sally |
Posted
on 21-Sep-02 03:52 PM
The case of the Nurse and the Med Students is instructive not just of the Limits of Diversity, but of the limits of human nature and the necessity of rule of law.
My take on it is that the hapless nurse was a rather dimwitted and instinctively prejudiced gal doing her level best, as she saw it, to be a patriotic American and save lives. If our friendly bunch of would-be oncologists had really been a gang of terrorists, we'd be grateful to her. You don't have to be smart to be a hero--which is what she'd have been, if she wasn't also ignorant enough to have, apparently, utterly misinterpreted what those poor guys were saying.
Because I suspect that the med students were ALSO right. It makes sense to me that they were just chatting. They didn't have to have been joking to have been misunderstood by a fool. Apparently they said stuff like "bring it down"--as in "bring the car down" (from where it is now)--and she thought it meant bring a building down!
So the med students did nothing wrong. And given that stupidity is not a crime, and suspected terrorism really SHOULD be reported, the nurse did nothing wrong, either. She did her best, within the limits of her limited abilities. It would be nice if everyone was culturally sensitive and able to comprehend accents and had a reasonably good brain for what other people are talking about and so on, but on which planet is that the case?
And in an "emergency," mistakes do happen. Which is why it's CRUCIAL to have a legal system with sufficient protection of human rights built into it, and a police force with the professionalism and accountability to follow the laws. That's what happened in this case, although one could easily imagine a scenario where no one did anything wrong, but a lot of people suffered.
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| red_herring |
Posted
on 21-Sep-02 03:57 PM
Yeah, I agree Sally. And terrorists wouldn't be discussing their plans in the open like that, they would be doing so privately.
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| sally |
Posted
on 21-Sep-02 04:02 PM
PS to Red Herring:
When you said, "If all liberals thought the same, then there would be no need for a myriad of liberal parties, like the Democratic Party, Green Party, etc," exactly which "etc." are you thinking about????
I agree there is a mild diversity of liberal thinking, just as there is a mild diversity of conservative thinking, but I definitely don't see this represented in the US political system.
Which one could argue is a good thing, since it cuts down on controversy and conflict. The US has a compromise-oriented system that focuses more on getting things done than theorizing. I imagine that Europeans would argue, on the other hand, that this reduces the diversity of opinion here.
Anyway, if you think there's a great plurality of opinion in the US, you certainly can't defend that idea by pointing to some imaginary "myriad" of parties!
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| sally |
Posted
on 21-Sep-02 04:05 PM
Sorry, Red Herring, the postings crossed. That was a reply to your earlier message.
To reply to what you just posted: I don't think anyone has claimed, following the incident, that they really were terrorists discussing their plans. It would certainly be ridiculous to discuss things in broad daylight, in English. Although the nurse claimed they were also speaking in "Arabic." (Two were Pakistani, the other Arab-American.)
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| anepalikt |
Posted
on 21-Sep-02 04:29 PM
Sally, good point that "the case of the Nurse and the Med Students is instructive not just of the Limits of Diversity, but of the limits of human nature and the necessity of rule of law."
No doubt that Eunice stone was racist.... but I object to the generalization that all "Southerners" are heehaws and rednecks. That is simply not the case. Also, the implicaltion seems to be that Northerners are significantly more egalitarian. Which I find is not necessarily true either. Now, what if instead of Shoney's it was an IHOP in Boston or some other Northern city? Eunice Stone would have been treated much more differently by the media.
Here is a link to another writer's view on the Eunice Stone and the med stydents' case:http://www.jewishworldreview.com/kathleen/parker1.asp
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| red_herring |
Posted
on 21-Sep-02 04:35 PM
The woman, supposedly "heard" them discussing about how 9-13 would be worse than 9-11. They certainly were suspects at that time.
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