Special to the Cape Charles Mirror by Paul Plante
In a recent CCM thread “On Citizenship,” CCM commentator Charles Taylor @ October 16, 2017 at 11:20 am stated as follows with respect to these so-called “football protests,” to wit:
Sorry that the form of protest does not suit your neat sense of how and when it should occur, and that it is does not articulate anything you can get your “hands” around.
You do the digging to understand; that‘s not my job or intent to inform you.
Since it has peaked your interest, you can delve further into the message it is intended to send.
If it makes you uncomfortable, then maybe its purpose is being served.
End quotes
In response, I would like to assure Mr. Charles Taylor that I have done plenty of “digging” on the subject, starting last year in fact, when San Francisco 49s quarterback Colin Kaepernick first “took the knee” before a preseason game in late August 2016, stating at that time, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” where “oppression” is defined as “prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control,” or “the state of being subject to unjust treatment or control,” or “mental pressure or distress,” which logically leads to the question, does the “country,” which is the United States of America, really oppress black people and people of color, who are defined as “a person who is not white or of European parentage,” given that we just had a black man as president in this country and another black man as its attorney general?
Does the United States of America have as its policy the oppression of black people and people of color?
Given that we had a black man as our chief law enforcement officer, as well as the person who is charged by our Constitution with “taking care” that our laws are enforced, were Barack Hussein Obama and Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. in 2016 subjecting black people and people of color in this country to “prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control,” or were black people and people of color in this country under Barack Hussein Obama and Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. in 2016 in “the state of being subject to unjust treatment or control,” or “mental pressure or distress,” or is that just a fever dream in the brain of football player Colin Kaepernick?
To answer that question, let us go to Wikipedia under the heading “Oppression,” to see what they have to say on the subject as a starting point in this discussion:
Oppression is the prolonged, unjust treatment or control of people by others.
In the past, the definition of oppression was limited to tyranny by a ruling group, but over time it has transformed because governments are not the only people who oppress.
Today, oppression “could also mean denying people language, education, and other opportunities that might make them become fully human in both mind and body.”
This is seen throughout history through the actions of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe, King George III in the United Kingdom and the Thirteen Colonies (the predecessor of the United States of America), and today by observing the actions of people such as Kim Jong-un in North Korea and Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
Although these leaders are separated by nearly fifty years and a few centuries, both are “governmental regimes that deprive people of at least some of their human rights.”
End quotes
So, in 2016, was the United States of America, the “country,” under Barack Hussein Obama and Eric Himpton Holder, Jr, both black men, oppressing black people and people of color in this country by denying them language, education, and other opportunities that might make them become fully human in both mind and body?
Now, there is a question for our times alright.
Getting back to Wikipedia, we have:
Today, oppression can be seen in the social, institutionalized, and economic spheres across the world.
Social oppression can be observed in the form of gendered, class, racial, and sexual oppression.
The relationship of social oppression is one of dominance and subordination, in which one party has the ability to maintain its advantage relative over another party.
Institutionalized oppression is when “established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups.”
End quotes
If institutionalized oppression is when “established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups,” does the United States of America, the “country” that football player Colin Kaepernick says “oppresses black people and people of color,” does the United States of America then have “established laws, customs, and practices” that systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups such as black people and people of color, or is that really just some horse**** Colin Kaepernick dreamed up to get his name in the newspapers?
And what about “social justice,” which Wikipedia tells us is a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society measured by the explicit and tacit terms for the distribution of wealth, opportunities for personal activity and social privileges?
If “social injustice” is measured in terms of inequality of wealth, then wouldn’t Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, a Pakistani-American billionaire and business tycoon who as of August 2017 had a net worth over $8.7 billion which ranked him 70th in the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, while he is overall the 158th wealthiest person in the world, be the epitome of social injustice here in the United States of America?
Getting back to “social justice,” Wikipedia tells us that in Western as well as in older Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive what was their due from society, while in the current global grassroots movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets and economic justice.
A question for our times, as we see armed anarchists and socialists and communists rampaging on our streets and destroying public property, is exactly what coercive methods are being employed today to “break these supposed barriers for social mobility?”
Do you break the barriers for social mobility by breaking people’s head with lead pipes and crowbars and clubs?
Getting back to Wikipedia, we are told that social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation.
Given all of the social programs and civil rights legislation in this country intended to assure black people and people of color are receiving the basic benefits needed to sustain life, are we to seriously believe this football player Colin Kaepernick when he says the country, the United States of America, oppresses black people and people of color?
What are your thoughts, people of America, the country that football player Colin Kaepernick says oppresses black people and people of color?
If the country is all the people in it, including black people and people of color, all of whom are citizens just like white people, and not just the land mass, then who is it that is oppressing the black people and people of color?
If it is the “country” doing it as football player Colin Kaepernick claims, then wouldn’t that have to include the black people and people of color, as well, oppressing themselves, since they are as much a part of the country as the white people are?
Questions for our times.
Antonio Sacco, Capeville, Va. says
I’ve read the long comments here meant for a college student, very well written and covered the subject well. I could write pages and pages on the subject of “social justice” but why bore you.
I’ll start, African American communities have been decimated by Government by ordered imprisonment of the African American Male population, low wages McDonald’s and Walmart, the national economy is officially at full capacity despite millions of current unemployment, underemployed workers, if continued I believe we face a government of Fascism.
And what is Fascism- is the belief in the absolute control of everyone/everything a form of Government that is slowly becoming popular in our United States
Paul Plante says
Good day to you, Antonio Sacco, and thank you for your thoughtful comments.
And I would say that what I write in here is not meant for college students; to the contrary it is words written by an American citizen and they are meant for every other American citizen, including college students, and it is written for the candid world, as well, those people in other countries who follow the Cape Charles Mirror so they can have a largely unedited and unscripted view of who the American people really are, which is you and me, Antonio.
And I am sure that you could write pages and pages on the subject of “social justice,” which incidentally would not bore me at all, unless you became repetitive, and that is the point.
EVERYBODY can write pages and pages about “social justice” (I just googled the term and got 159,000,000 results), and as a result, those pages and pages will never be quantitative or substantive; to the contrary, those pages and pages you could write will never be more than a bunch of conflicting opinions about what somebody thinks “social justice” should be, which is what I was taking pains to demonstrate in my essay above.
If you read about “social justice” on Wikipedia, you will find that there are a number of movements are working to achieve social justice in society and these movements are working towards the realization of a world where all members of a society, regardless of background or procedural justice, have basic human rights and equal access to the benefits of their society, which brings us to coercion, the practice of persuading someone to do something by using force or threats. and fascism, which is authoritarian government, for how else will these various movements force their vision and their will on anyone other than their own members?
And the answer is through totalitarianism, which is a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state, and authoritarianism, which is the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom, such as Hillary Clinton telling Black Lives Matter in a political gathering in Philadelphia on April 7th of last year that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
In the Heritage Foundation article “Social Justice: Not What You Think It Is” by Michael Novak, a George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, on December 29, 2009, the author states thusly in the Abstract about “social justice”:
For its proponents, “social justice” is usually undefined.
Originally a Catholic term, first used about 1840 for a new kind of virtue (or habit) necessary for post-agrarian societies, the term has been bent by secular “progressive” thinkers to mean uniform state distribution of society’s advantages and disadvantages.
end quotes
You see what I am saying here, Antonio?
How do you have a rational discussion about something that is amorphous and has no concrete definition?
You think it is one thing, and I might think it is another, so how is that dispute resolved?
By a third person with a different opinion telling both of us we are wrong?
Getting back to the Heritage Foundation article, the author provides us with this asset of thoughts::
Let us begin by asking what most people think social justice is.
After that, let us review how the term arose.
It is a Catholic concept, later taken over by secular progressives.
What social justice actually is turns out to be very different from the way the term is now used popularly.
Most people’s sense of social justice is generic, amounting to nothing more than what we find in the dictionary under “social justice”: “The distribution of advantages and disadvantages in society.”
Now, notice that the dictionary definition introduces a new key term, “distribution.”
Alas, the original notion of social justice had very little to do with distribution.
Worse, this newly added term suggests that some extra-human force, “the visible hand,” does the distribution: that is, some very powerful human agency, usually the state.
Furthermore, the expression “advantages and disadvantages” supposes there is a norm of equality by which to measure disadvantages.
Consider this professorial definition:
Although it is difficult to agree on the precise meaning of “social justice” I take that to most of us it implies, among other things, equality of the burdens, the advantages, and the opportunities of citizenship.
Indeed, I take that social justice is intimately related to the concept of equality, and that the violation of it is intimately related to the concept of inequality.
end quote
That, Antonio, is mealy-mouthed gibberish – social justice is intimately related to the concept of equality, and that the violation of it is intimately related to the concept of inequality.
Violation of what?
Somebody else’s opinion?
And look at this, Antonio: Although it is difficult to agree on the precise meaning of “social justice” I take that to most of us it implies, among other things, equality of the burdens, the advantages, and the opportunities of citizenship.
end quotes
To most of us?
Do tell.
And who is this professor talking about when he says “to most of us?”
And that answer is to him and his circle of friends is all, which is a handful of people, at best.
Getting back to the Heritage Foundation article:
This definition expresses a whole ideology: that equality is good and ought to be enforced.
end quote
But who enforces it, Antonio?
And how?
By what method is it enforced?
By putting people in Gulags or secure mental facilities?
Which takes us back to fascism.
Getting back to the Heritage Foundation article:
And note what has happened to the word “equality.”
In English, equality usually suggests fairness, equity, or the equitable; but what is equitable is often not to give people the same portions, but rather to give what is proportionate to the efforts of each.
end quote
And there, Antonio, is the root of the present conflict, is it not, that some people think that everybody should get an equal portion of the pie, and that it is the role of government to enforce that edict by taking from those who have to give to those who want, as can be seen in this definition of “social justice” in the American Sociological Review, to wit:
As I see it, social justice requires resource equity, fairness, and respect for diversity, as well as the eradication of existing forms of social oppression.
Social justice entails a “redistribution” of resources from those who have “unjustly” gained them to those who justly deserve them, and it also means creating and “ensuring” the processes of truly democratic participation in decision-making….
It seems clear that only a “decisive” redistribution of resources and decision-making power can “ensure” social justice and authentic democracy.
end quotes
Note the word “eradication,” Antonio, where eradication means the complete destruction of something.
Who is going to do the eradicating, and who is it that is to be eradicated?
Doesn’t that have the ring of the policies of the rug-chewing madman Adolph Hitler about it, or maybe those of old Joe Stalin using the Holodomor, a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 that killed an officially estimated 7 million to 10 million people, to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement.
As to African-American communities, Antonio, consider this from The Atlantic article “Hillary Clinton and the Tragic Politics of Crime – The criminal-justice policies she now denounces once helped her husband capture the White House.” by Peter Beinart onMay 1, 2015:
Some might still argue that, as public policy, (Bill) Clinton’s tough-on-crime policies were necessary.
But there’s a different, and more perplexing, defense of the Clinton record on crime.
It’s that even if Clinton’s policies can’t be justified substantively, they were necessary politically.
If he hadn’t embraced a “tough on crime agenda,” Clinton might never have become—or remained—president.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when crime rates hit their peak, the issue (“tough on crime”) enjoyed a salience in American politics that is hard to comprehend today.
And for Democrats, the consequences of appearing soft were devastating.
In 1988, the George H.W. Bush campaign’s most effective (and notorious) ad slammed Michael Dukakis for furloughing murderers in Massachusetts.
(A separate ad, by a pro-Bush PAC, made African American furloughed murderer Willie Horton a household name).
The most important moment in that year’s debates came when Dukakis, after being asked how he would react if his wife was raped and murdered, gave a bloodless, and politically catastrophic, answer.
In January 1994, 37 percent of Americans said crime was the most important issue facing the country.
And that fall, Mario Cuomo lost the governorship of New York State to a little-known Republican, George Pataki, who had made Cuomo’s opposition to the death penalty central to his campaign.
In 1992, Bill Clinton faced a far tougher electorate than Hillary will this time around.
African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians, who constituted almost 25 percent of the voters in 2012, and Millennials, who also lean disproportionately left on cultural issues, were either in school or in diapers.
There’s a reason Clinton reminded voters that year that his nickname was “Bubba.”
It’s because in 1992, far more than today, a Democrat who didn’t appeal to Bubbas couldn’t win.
And in 1992, being “tough on crime” was critical to getting most Bubbas to give a Democrat a second look.
end quote
And from there, Antonio,. to here, is a very straight line.
So, should it be social justice for the criminals, or social justice for their victims?
Where do you come down on that question?
Allan Burns says
Just wanted to clarify your comment, “Since it has peaked your interest, you can delve further into the message it is intended to send.” My interest did not “peak;” rather, it should have been “piqued,” the correct spelling.
Paul Plante says
Indeed you are correct, Allan Burns, “pique” means to “stimulate,” while “peak” can mean “the pointed top of a mountain or ridge,” or “a mountain with a pointed summit,” or “the pointed top of anything,” or “the highest or most important point or level,” or “the maximum point, degree, or volume of anything,” and thank you for pointing that out, although the comment was from Mr. Charles Taylor, and I copied it verbatim.
And since you bring up Mr. Taylor’s comments upon which this thread is based, perhaps we should revisit those comments, as follows:
Sorry that the form of protest does not suit your neat sense of how and when it should occur, and that it is does not articulate anything you can get your “hands” around.
You do the digging to understand; that‘s not my job or intent to inform you.
Since it has peaked [sic] your interest, you can delve further into the message it is intended to send.
If it makes you uncomfortable, then maybe its purpose is being served.
end quotes
Right now, it is that third sentence of Mr. Taylor’s commentary that piques my interest, where he states “you can delve further into the message it is intended to send.”
Believe me, Allan Burns , I have delved very deeply, as is my habit before speaking out in public as a rational American citizen on issues of importance to all of us in this nation, and it all comes back to some barely articulate grunting noises about “social injustices,” as in the ASSOCIATED PRESS article “High school coach blasts ref who left after anthem protests,” dated 29 October 2017, wherein we were informed as follows:
A high school football coach criticized a referee who refused to officiate a game after members of the opposing team knelt during the national anthem.
Referees Ernie Lunardelli and his son, Anthony, said they told officials from Colts Neck and Monroe high schools before Friday night’s game they would walk off the field if any players protested.
They said they respect players’ right to protest but believe such acts are disrespectful.
The trend of kneeling during the national anthem started in the NFL, where some players kneel to protest social injustices, particularly against African-Americans.
end quotes
There we have it, Allan Burns, these protests are to protest social injustices, particularly against African-Americans.
So, what then is a “social injustice” against an African-American, besides anything they want to say it is?
And then there is the article in THE HILL entitled “Trump rips NFL decision on anthem protests: ‘Total disrespect’ for US” by Julia Manchester, 18 October 2017, where we were informed as follows:
Trump has taken aim at players who kneel during the anthem to protest racial and social injustice in the U.S.
end quotes
And there we have it again – to protest racial and social injustice in the U.S.
So, Allan Burns, what exactly is racial and social injustice in the U.S.?
Have you a clue?
And then, there is the DAILY GAZETTE article “Members of Niskayuna football kneel for National Anthem – Several players, cheerleader take knee, a la NFL protesters” by Michael Kelly, September 28, 2017, where the following information on these “protests” was conveyed to us:
NISKAYUNA — For a few seconds, Osman Rasul hesitated.
Then, as “The Star Spangled Banner” continued to play, he dropped to a knee, joining several other players on the Niskayuna High School football team who kneeled prior to Thursday’s game against Guilderland.
“I did hesitate,” said Rasul, a junior.
“There were a lot of thoughts racing through my mind.”
The one that won out?
“In that moment,” Rasul said, “I was like, ‘I got to stay true to what I believe in.’”
end quotes
“I got to stay true to what I believe in.”
But what, pray tell, is that?
No answer forthcoming.
And that is what these protests are about, not what is happening, but what people want to believe, which can be anything under the sun they want to say it is, such as “screw-facing,” or “talking smack” about someone of the black persuasion.
That is what these “protests” are about.
Getting back to the Daily Gazette article:
In the past couple days, as a handful of players on the Niskayuna team voiced a desire to demonstrate in some fashion during the National Anthem, Niskayuna coaches and administrators urged their players to take careful thought before committing to doing anything.
A team meeting Wednesday resulted in head coach Brian Grastorf’s team deciding to lock arms during the anthem in a show of unity, but players who wanted to kneel were not discouraged.
“As long as they’ve done that with a lot of thought and passion for what they believe in,” Niskayuna High School principal John Rickert said, “it’s hard to be critical of that.”
A single Niskayuna cheerleader also kneeled before Thursday’s game.
end quotes
But what is it that they believe in, Allan Burns?
No answer forthcoming.
Getting back to the Daily Gazette:
What started a year ago with then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick first sitting — and then kneeling — during the playing of the anthem to protest racial injustices hit its high point after President Donald Trump said during a rally last Friday that NFL owners should fire players who don’t stand during the playing of the anthem.
end quotes
What racial injustices are being protested?
No answer forthcoming.
And again, back to the Daily Gazette:
Ismail Stewart, a Niskayuna senior, said he was the one that initially brought up the idea with his teammates about doing something during Thursday’s game.
“It was my job as the one who brought it to the team to explain why we were taking a knee,” said Stewart, who is of mixed race, but describes himself as black.
“The reason is there are some social injustices happening in this nation.”
end quotes
There it is, Allan Burns, there are some social injustices happening in this nation.
But what are they?
That is the question this thread intends to delve into by first looking at what social justice might be.
And again, thank you for your thoughtful input.
Paul Plante says
And getting back to you, Antonio Sacco of Capeville, Va., with all due respect to you and no offense intended, it is both disingenuous (not candid, i.e. not truthful and straightforward) and hyperbolic (exaggerated) to say that African American communities have been decimated by Government by ordered imprisonment of the African American Male population.
You make it sound with your use of the word “decimated” (kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of) that there are no African American males existing outside of government-run concentration camps or re-education camps or Gulags, and I can assure you from my own observations that such is simply not the case, at all.
Every day, I see male African Americans out there in the community going about their business unmolested by anyone, including the government that you would have us believe has ordered imprisonment of the African American Male population.
In fact, according to the NAACP, which should know better than anyone, I would think, in 2014, African Americans constituted 2.3 million, or 34%, of the total 6.8 million correctional population.
According to the 2010 U.S. census, in the United States at that time, the number of Black or African American was 37,685,848, so clearly, the African American male population in America has hardly been “decimated,” as you put it, nor do African American males constitute more than a minority of the total prison population according, to the NAACP, while according to the United States Federal Bureau of Prisons, last updated 23 September 2017, OLD WHITEY (the white folks in America) constituted 58.4% of the federal prison population while the blacks or African Americans were at 37.9%, so you could well make the argument that the white American communities have been decimated by Government by ordered imprisonment of the white American Male population to a far greater degree than have the African American communities.
And that incarceration of either blacks or whites was hardly “ordered” by the government, as if a pogrom, or proscription which is, in current usage, a “decree of condemnation to death or banishment” which can be used in a political context to refer to state-approved murder or banishment, a term originating in Ancient Rome, where it included public identification and official condemnation of declared enemies of the state, which has been used broadly since to describe similar governmental and political actions, with varying degrees of nuance, including the en masse suppression of ideologies and elimination of political rivals or personal enemies, or a bill of attainder, which is an act of a legislature declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them, often without a trial, the effect of which is to nullify the targeted person’s civil rights, most notably the right to own property and, in at least the original usage, the right to life itself.
Those incarcerations are as a result of actions taken through the criminal justice system for violations of our laws, intended to keep us safe from criminals, whether black or white, as opposed to protecting the criminals, which is what these football protests are all about, as can be seen in the NEW YORK TIMES article “N.F.L. Owners Won’t Penalize Players for Kneeling During Anthem” by Ken Belson and Kevin Draper on 18 October 2017, as follows:
The N.F.L. for now will continue to let players kneel or sit during the national anthem without a penalty, capitulating to demands by the athletes for free expression but potentially further alienating fans who object to the protests and feel they are disrespectful to the flag and the military.
But, after a meeting Tuesday with union representatives and players, the league did promise to help support some of the causes targeted by the protesting players, including reform of the criminal justice system.
end quotes
The football players want life made easier for the criminals, at the expense of their victims.
And here it must be noted that according to the annual racial and gender report card published by TIDES, The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport, the NFL is almost 70 percent black, and only 12.5 percent of running backs are white in the most recent year for statistics, 2014.
Nor is it true that African Americans are relegated to low wages McDonald’s and Walmart.
According to Association of American Medical Colleges, for example, among the U.S. medical schools that graduated 350 or more black or African American physicians between 1980 and 2012, Howard University and Meharry Medical College had the highest number of graduates, with 2,451 and 2,005 graduates, respectively, and there is a well-documented trend of growth among black or African American female medical school graduates, so that since 1986, the proportion of female graduates has increased 53%.
So there is hardly oppression of social injustice staring us in the face there.
To the contrary, that is good old American upward mobility on display there, especially with respect to the women.
And there are African American lawyers, judges, congress persons, governors, police officers, nurses, even an African American United States president and an African American attorney general, so the African Americans are hardly relegated to Walmart’s or McDonald’s, where incidentally, I worked when young to get money so I, a poor person, could afford to go to college.
As to Fascism, which you inform us is the belief in the absolute control of everyone/everything, a form of Government that is slowly becoming popular in our United States, as the Greek philosopher Socrates said many years ago now, “tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy,” where tyranny is “cruel and oppressive government or rule,” or “cruel, unreasonable, or arbitrary use of power or control,” so it is “our democracy” that is going to give us our fascism, or authoritarian government with enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom, or totalitarianism, as it is also known, totalitarianism being a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state, glimpses of which could be seen in presidential candidate and “progressive” Democrat Hillary Clinton telling Black Lives Matter, a political pressure group with a penchant for using violence to achieve its political aims, in a political gathering in Philadelphia on April 7th of last year that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
end quotes
That statement, Antonio Sacco of Capeville, Va., by presidential candidate and “progressive” Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton in 2016 that we need community programs here in America to cure white people of implicit bias is an excellent example of incipient totalitarianism, which is a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state.
White people in the United States of America, all 197.7 million of them, have been judged by the incipient dictator Hillary Rodham Clinton in conjunction with Black Lives Matter and they have been found guilty, end of story, no appeal available, and now, they must be cured in state-run institutions, where cure means to “relieve a person of the symptoms of a disease or condition,” which would be the imposition of a tyranny here in the United States of America should the progressive wing of the Democrat party in conjunction with Black Lives Matter gain sufficient political power here in America, as is their continuing goal, as can be seen in the above-mentioned New York Times article, to wit:
Protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement gathered outside the hotel where the owners were meeting.
One demonstrator, Hank Newsome, said Kaepernick was being unfairly treated by the N.F.L. because he brought attention to uncomfortable issues, including racism.
“What I see with the N.F.L. owners is a bunch of good old boys telling the players: Stay in your place,” he said.
Not long after, two protesters confronted the Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones as he walked through the lobby of the hotel, saying that the players were kneeling during the anthem to end white supremacy.
end quotes
Which then takes us back to totalitarianism, a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state, and authoritarianism, which is the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom, and Hillary Clinton telling Black Lives Matter in a political gathering in Philadelphia on April 7th of last year that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
As to this so-called “white supremacy” we all keep hearing about these days from the football players and Black Lives Matter Some Of The Time, But Not All The Time, as when it is blacks killing blacks, according to Wikipedia, “white supremacy” or white supremacism is a racist ideology based upon the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore white people should be dominant over other races.
So, it is an ideology, then, based on a belief, like the flat earth people believe the earth is flat, where “ideology” is defined on the one hand as “a system of ideas and ideals, especially one that forms the basis of economic or political theory and policy,” and on the other as “the ideas and manner of thinking characteristic of a group, social class, or individual,” such as Black Lives Matter, who believe in “white supremacy,” and hence, the belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore white people should be dominant over other races.
But given that we just had a black president, what current political power in the United States of America does white supremacy have, besides none at all, given that so few white people here in the USA consider themselves white supremacists?
And when you consider that ALL humans, black, white, red, yellow, polka dot, candy stripe, tri-color. etc., are of just one race, the human race, the whole concept of “white people should be dominant over other races” is shown to be simply stupid, and in pushing that concept of “white supremacy,” the Black Lives Matter Some Of The Time crowd is showing itself to be as ignorant and uninformed as a box of rocks.
Getting back to Wikipedia, white supremacy has roots in scientific racism and it often relies on pseudoscientific arguments, which is to say, it is nothing but horse**** leavened with a large dollop of pure, refined hog**** for flavor.
According to Wikipedia, scientific racism is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority, where “pseudoscience” is defined as “a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.”
So let’s put all of that into the statement of the two Black Lives Matter Some Of The Time protesters who confronted the Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones as he walked through the lobby of the hotel, saying that the players were kneeling during the anthem to end “white supremacy,” a statement which implies that the football players who “take the knee” do so based upon their belief that white people are superior in many ways to people of other races and that therefore white people should be dominant over other races, which ideology is in turn based on scientific racism which is the pseudoscientific belief that empirical evidence exists to support or justify racism (racial discrimination), racial inferiority, or racial superiority, where pseudoscience is defined as a collection of beliefs or practices mistakenly regarded as being based on scientific method.
Said another way, these football players trying the end “white supremacy” and the Black Lives Matter crowd have to be half-wits or morons to believe in white supremacy, which has no political power, given that historically, which means in the past, the scientific racism the ideology of white supremacy is based on received credence in the scientific community, but is no longer considered scientific, because it is not scientific, plain and simple.
To believe in white supremacy today, you have to be ignorant, plain and simple.
To see just how outdated this whole stupid concept of white supremacy really is, scientific racism was common during the period from 1600s to the end of World War I, which was over by 1918 or so. which is 100 years ago now, and since the second half of 20th century, scientific racism has been criticized as obsolete and discredited.
So why then is Black Lives Matter still using the term in 2017?
WHY?
Why is Black Lives Matter doing that, people?
That is the question for today.
Paul Plante says
Where we are here, of course, with the comment by CCM commentator Charles Taylor @ October 16, 2017 at 11:20 am, “Sorry that the form of protest does not suit your neat sense of how and when it should occur, and that it is does not articulate anything you can get your ‘hands’ around,” for those who have eyes that can see, at least, is entering firmly into an area of our responsibilities as citizens in this Republic of ours known as Political Philosophy.
For those as of yet unfamiliar with the term, the website PhilosophyBasics.com tells us that “Political philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, liberty, justice and the enforcement of a legal code by authority.”
That is what these so-called “football protests” are all about – political philosophy, as can clearly be seen in the ASSOCIATED PRESS article “About 2 dozen NFL players protested during anthems Sunday” on 23 October 2017, wherein was stated as follows:
Days after the NFL declined to change its rule on the national anthem, about two dozen players protested around the league Sunday.
On Sunday, the Seahawks and 49ers had the most protesters.
Seattle defensive end Michael Bennett and seven Seahawks teammates did not stand during the anthem before their game with the New York Giants.
As a New York City police officer sang the anthem, Bennett was joined by defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson, defensive end Brandon Jackson, defensive end Marcus Smith, defensive tackle Jarran Reed, defensive end Frank Clark and defensive end Quinton Jefferson.
In San Francisco, about a half-dozen 49ers kneeled led by Eric Reid, Marquise Goodwin, rookie linebacker Reuben Foster, Eli Harold, Adrian Colbert and K’waun Williams.
All the Dallas Cowboys stood, but defensive tackle David Irving raised his fist after the anthem ended.
Chargers left tackle Russell Okung (a black dude) stood with his right fist raised during the anthem before Los Angeles hosted the Denver Broncos.
Just one player appeared to protest visibly during the early games Sunday, with Rams linebacker Robert Quinn (a black dude) raising his fist during the U.S. anthem, then bringing it down before “God Save The Queen” before playing Arizona in London.
end quotes
Thanks to the internet ( http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-rams-johnny-hekker-robert-quinn-20170918-story.html ) I got to see the “Raising of the Black Fist” by Rams linebacker Robert Quinn during the U.S. anthem and what I saw was not in any way, shape of manner a “protest,” a point which he himself acknowledges in the Los Angeles Times article “Rams punter Johnny Hekker and linebacker Robert Quinn stand together during national anthem” by Lindsey Thiry on September 18, 2017, as follows:
Raising a fist represents more than a protest, Quinn said, and is a sign of appreciation to the ancestors who made the way for him.
end quotes
In the Los Angeles Times article “Rams linebacker Robert Quinn raises his fist during the playing of the national anthem” by Lindsey Thiry on August 14, 2017, we were informed as follows about his “black fist” salute:
Rams linebacker Robert Quinn stood on the sideline and raised a fist during the playing of the national anthem before Saturday’s preseason game against the Cowboys, continuing a practice he started last season.
“It’s not to cause a scene,” Quinn said Monday after practice.
“To me, it’s more awareness and a sense don’t forget where you come from.”
For Quinn, raising a fist represents more than a protest.
“It’s… not only just a stance but an appreciation to honestly the ancestors that made the way for and gave opportunities for me and others that came along the way,” Quinn said.
“It’s more of an appreciation and a stance that not all has been forgotten.”
end quote
So, an expression of political philosophy, people, for what I observed was a “Black Power Salute,” also known as the Black Power fist, which is a logo generally associated with black nationalism and sometimes socialism.
For those of us with memories, the most widely known usage of “Black Fist” we saw raised by Rams linebacker Robert Quinn was by the Black Panther Party in the 1960s.
As to “black nationalism,” here is what Wikipedia has to say on that subject:
Black nationalism is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism which holds the belief that black people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a black national identity.
Black nationalist activism revolves around social, political, and economic empowerment of black communities and people, especially to resist assimilation into white American culture (through integration or otherwise), and maintain a distinct black identity.
end quotes
Thus, as I saw it, the “black fist” salute by him was a proclamation by him that he is a Black Nationalist, one whose Black nationalist activism revolves around social, political, and economic empowerment of black communities and people to resist assimilation into white American culture, and to maintain a distinct black identity.
That is him engaging in political philosophy with a mere gesture that speaks volumes.
Getting back to political philosophy, website PhilosophyBasics.com tells us as follows:
It is Ethics applied to a group of people, and discusses how a society should be set up and how one should act within a society.
end quote
That is what Rams linebacker Robert Quinn with his black fist salute is trying to draw our attention to, according to his words in the Los Angeles Times article “Rams punter Johnny Hekker and linebacker Robert Quinn stand together during national anthem” by Lindsey Thiry on September 18, 2017, as follows:
Hekker asked Quinn about his stance before joining him Sunday.
“I kind of explained to him why I do it and whatnot,” Quinn said.
“He understood and I just think that just showed the message we’re trying to send is unity and hopefully we just keep spreading that and hopefully one day we can make the world realize what we’re really about and we’re all one people.”
end quote
Political philosophy, people.
Political philosophy asks questions like: “What is a government?”, “Why are governments needed?”, “What makes a government legitimate?”, “What rights and freedoms should a government protect?”, “What duties do citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any?” and “When may a government be legitimately overthrown, if ever?”
Which set of questions then take us back to the New York Times article “N.F.L. Owners Won’t Penalize Players for Kneeling During Anthem” by Ken Belson and Kevin Draper on 18 October 2017, as follows:
Protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement gathered outside the hotel where the owners were meeting.
One demonstrator, Hank Newsome, said Kaepernick was being unfairly treated by the N.F.L. because he brought attention to uncomfortable issues, including racism.
“What I see with the N.F.L. owners is a bunch of good old boys telling the players: Stay in your place,” he said.
Not long after, two protesters confronted the Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones as he walked through the lobby of the hotel, saying that the players were kneeling during the anthem to end white supremacy.
end quotes
Ending white supremacy?
How, do tell?
Ah, yes, people, political philosophy,
Stay tuned, more to come.
Paul Plante says
So, by way of review, for purposes of our discussion in here on Social Justice, which Michael Novak, a George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute informed us in a Heritage Foundation article “Social Justice: Not What You Think It Is” December 29, 2009 that, “For its proponents, ‘social justice’ is usually undefined,” which means it can be anything under the sun, and so it is, whatever anyone can imagine it being, no matter how ridiculously sounding the proposition, and “Originally a Catholic term, first used about 1840 for a new kind of virtue (or habit) necessary for post-agrarian societies, the term has been bent by secular ‘progressive’ thinkers to mean uniform state distribution of society’s advantages and disadvantages,” said secular “progressive” thinkers doing the bending of the term being Hillary Rodham Clinton, Black Lives Matter, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, the Marxist ideologue and Alinsky-ite “community organizer” Barack Hussein Obama, and the Democrat party in America, Political Philosophy is the study of fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, liberty, justice and the enforcement of a legal code by authority,” and Political Philosophy, which is discussed throughout many Cape Charles Mirror threads, asks these questions which we are discussing in here in this thread on Social Justice, an undefined term being thrown around quite liberally these days by Black Lives Matter and the protesting football players who either are demonstrating to get criminals coddled by the law, or who are Black Nationalists who want nothing to do with white society and their honky (a derogatory term used by black people for a white person or for white people collectively) national anthem, to wit:
What is a government?
Why are governments needed?
What makes a government legitimate?
What rights and freedoms should a government protect?
What duties do citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any?
When may a government be legitimately overthrown, if ever?
Not surprisingly, as someone who is accused in here of being a patriot, and as one of this nation’s many veterans who enlisted in the nation’s military in defense of our Constitution and our American way of life, as opposed to the Pakistani way of life, or the Kenyan way of life, I am very interested in answers to all of those questions, but in the light of these football protests, number 5 especially, to wit:
What duties do citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any?
Do these football players owe any duties to the legitimate government of the United States of America, which happens to be each and every one of us, regardless of skin color?
What about the Black Lives Matter crowd, who really should be spending some time explaining to us why it is that if black lives really did have some value, how come the black folks in Barack Hussein Obama’s hometown of Chicago, Illinois and the “Safe Sanctuary City for Lawbreakers,” Democrat Young Andy Cuomo’s capital city of Albany, New York, and Baltimore, Maryland, are killing each other off ?
What duties do they owe, if anything?
As to the question of “Why are governments needed,” in our unique American history, as opposed to the political history of Pakistan or Kenya or Saudi Arabia, we can refer back to – John Locke, The Second Treatise of Government, Chapter II, Of The State of War, where we find as follows:
For by the fundamental law of nature, man being to be preserved as much as possible, when all cannot be preserved, the safety of the innocent is to be preferred; and one may destroy a man who makes war upon him, or has discovered an enmity to his being, for the same reason that he may kill a wolf or a lion; because such men are not under the ties of the common law of reason, have no other rule but that of force and violence, and so, may be treated as beasts of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power.
end quotes
That is a strong statement of political philosophy which forms the basis for why we have a government in this country, as opposed to Pakistan or Kenya, and who in our age was not under the ties of the common law of reason, and had no other rule but that of force and violence, and so, was properly treated as a beast of prey, those dangerous and noxious creatures that will be sure to destroy him whenever he falls into their power, was Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri, who Hillary Clinton wept a mother’s tears over, and who was the hero and idol of the Black Lives Matter and these protesting football players like Colin Kaepernick.
Now, it is the safety of the innocent that must be sacrificed to violent wild beasts of prey like Michael Brown of Ferguson, Missouri.
Although not quoted as part of our unique American history, I still believe this Bene Gesserit axiom applies here:
The human race is bound not only by common genetics but also by universal standards of behavior.
Those who do not willingly follow the guidelines of civilization can no longer be considered truly human.
end quote
As to why we have government in this country, I would refer the reader to the “Speech to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention” by James Wilson on November 24, 1787, as follows:
Having enumerated some of the difficulties, which the Convention were obliged to encounter in the course of their proceedings, I shall next point out the end, which they proposed to accomplish.
Our wants, our talents, our affections, our passions, all tell us that we were made for a state of society.
But a state of society could not be supported long or happily without some civil restraint.
It is true, that in a state of nature, any one individual may act uncontrolled by others; but it is equally true, that in such a state, every other individual may act uncontrolled by him.
Amidst this universal independence, the dissensions and animosities between interfering members of the society would be numerous and ungovernable.
The consequence would be, that each member, in such a natural state, would enjoy less liberty, and suffer more interruption, than he would in a regulated society.
Hence the universal introduction of governments of some kind or other into the social state.
The liberty of every member is increased by this introduction; for each gains more by the limitation of the freedom of every other member, than he loses by the limitation of his own.
The result is, that civil government is necessary to the perfection and happiness of man.
In forming this government, and carrying it into execution, it is essential that the interest and authority of the whole community should be binding in every part of it.
end quote
When he says “In forming this government, and carrying it into execution,” he is not talking about the government t of Pakistan, or Kenya, or Saudi Arabia; he is talking about the United States of America, and when he says “it is essential that the interest and authority of the whole community should be binding in every part of it.”
So, because these black nationalist football players and the Black Lives Matter Some Of The Time crowd do not feel themselves a part of the whole community, and in fact, want a return to enforced segregation to keep white influence out of black communities in the case of the black nationalists, should they be exempt from the citizenship duties all other American citizens have?
Think it over, America, for the future you pick is the one you will have.
Paul Plante says
And getting back to “Social Justice,” which is a sub-set of the discipline of Political Philosophy, which is the study of fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, liberty, justice and the enforcement of a legal code by authority, in his Heritage Foundation article entitled “Social Justice: Not What You Think It Is” on December 29, 2009, the author, Michael Novak, a George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, informed us as follows with respect to where the topic of “Social Justice” is attempting to bring us in the United States of America today:
And note what has happened to the word “equality.”
In English, equality usually suggests fairness, equity, or the equitable; but what is equitable is often not to give people the same portions, but rather to give what is proportionate to the efforts of each.
In brief, shifting to the French égalité changes the entire meaning of equality from equity or fairness to arithmetical uniformity.
This is really a dreadful change, because where people take equality very seriously, they soon insist on uniformity.
In the Inca society under Spanish rule, the first utopia was attempted.
People were assigned by social class certain colors of robes to wear, and regimented hours were established for everything that was to be done throughout the day–even lovemaking hours, with great emphasis on bringing forth more children.
If you are going to make everybody equal, you really have to make uniform crucial items of daily life.
end quote
That, of course, is very reminiscent of the policies of the old Soviet Union, and more recently, Mao Tse Tung’s communist China in the days of the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution, so one has to wonder how that “equality through uniformity” is going to be imposed on the American people over here.
Getting back to the Heritage Foundation article:
Social justice is typically associated with some notion of the common good.
“Common good” is a wonderful term that goes back to Aristotle, but in practice, it often hinges on a key question: namely, who decides what is the common good?
end quotes
There really is a question for our times – where the Preamble to OUR federal Constitution states “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America,” in the United States of America, as opposed to Pakistan or Kenya or Zimbabwe, where a 25-year old American woman named Martha O’Donovan has been sent to prison after being accused of plotting to overthrow the government since last month’s creation of a cybersecurity ministry intended to police social media. after reportedly tweeting that President Robert Mugabe, one of Africa’s longest-serving leaders, is “a selfish and sick man” – who is it in the United States of America that decides what the common good is for all of us?
Is it Barack Hussein Obama?
Is it Hillary Rodham Clinton?
Is it Black Lives Matter and these black nationalist football players who refuse to stand for the Star Spangled Banner because it is a national anthem for honkys (a derogatory term used by black people for a white person or for white people collectively), but not for them?
On that question, author Michael Novak, a George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute informs us in his Heritage Foundation article entitled “Social Justice: Not What You Think It Is” on December 29, 2009, as follows:
In ancient societies, often the wisest and strongest person was the ruler, and it was he who made the important decisions, such as where we will camp tonight or near which source of water we shall build our village.
The person with the greatest strategic and tactical sense of what is safe and the greatest ecological sense of where there will be good community life would make these decisions.
In contemporary times, beginning a century or two ago, that responsibility gradually shifted to the bureaucratic state.
Decisions became too numerous for the ruler himself to make, and they became delegated to a variety of organizations.
Further, such decisions came to be decided by many people at once.
No longer is there one clear person to be held responsible and accountable for these decisions.
Quickly, the beautiful notion of the common good gets ensnared in red tape.
end quotes
And that statement about “the beautiful notion of the common good gets ensnared in red tape” brings us back in time a bit in this country, to 1996. and what may well be the roots of this present “protesting” by these football players, when Hillary Rodham Clinton, then occupying the Washington White House as “first lady,” made this following statement about what she considered to be the “common good” back then, in what was admittedly a totally different day and age in America, to wit:
“They’re not just gangs of kids anymore, they are often the kinds of kids that are called Superpredators.”
“No conscience, no empathy.”
“We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we must bring them to heel.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsSDqbot-EI
end quotes
Ah, yes, people, that famous Clintonian statement, “bring them to heel,” for which our darling and special and exceptional Hillary was then taken to task by Black Lives Matter last year, which then caused our darling Hillary to do a Democrat flip-flop on what the common good in the United States of America now is, as was reported by the Washington Post in the February 25, 2016 article “Hillary Clinton on ‘superpredator’ remarks: ‘I shouldn’t have used those words’” by Jonathan Capehart, where “flip-flop” Hillary was quoted as follows:
“Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today,” Hillary Clinton told me in a statement when I asked her what she would have said to Ashley Williams, the activist who interrupted Clinton at a Charleston, S.C., fundraiser Wednesday night.
end quotes
And that is how what is for “the common good” in America can rapidly change, and that for the sake of political expediency – now, the words Hillary uses to soothe the ruffled feathers of Black Lives Matter, a political pressure group with a penchant for using violence to achieve its political aims, are those she used in a political gathering with Black Lives Matter in Philadelphia on April 7th of last year that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
Ah, yes, how the “common good” pendulum in America swings.
Getting back to the Washington Post article:
Unfurling a banner that read “We have to bring them to heel,” (Ashley) Williams wanted the Democratic presidential candidate to “explain for the record” why she “called black youth ‘superpredators’.”
Before Williams was escorted out of the event, she asked, “How come you didn’t address that in the prior debate?”
Clinton replied, “You know what?”
“Nobody’s ever asked me before.”
“You’re the first person to ask me and I’m happy to address it.”
Clinton never got the chance to.
Williams was gone.
So, I asked Clinton for a response.
Here’s what she told me in full.
“In that speech, I was talking about the impact violent crime and vicious drug cartels were having on communities across the country and the particular danger they posed to children and families.”
“Looking back, I shouldn’t have used those words, and I wouldn’t use them today.”
“My life’s work has been about lifting up children and young people who’ve been let down by the system or by society.”
“Kids who never got the chance they deserved.”
“And unfortunately today, there are way too many of those kids, especially in African-American communities.”
“We haven’t done right by them.”
“We need to.”
“We need to end the school to prison pipeline and replace it with a cradle-to-college pipeline.”
“As an advocate, as First Lady, as Senator, I was a champion for children.”
“And my campaign for president is about breaking down the barriers that stand in the way of all kids, so every one of them can live up to their God-given potential.”
end quotes
So, now, the “common good” pendulum in America has swung away from prosecuting “superpredators” to blame casting white people for causing all the “problems” of the superpredators in America based on Hillary’s dictatorial pronouncement as Democrat presidential candidate that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
As to Hillary’s 1996 speech, according to the Washington Post:
“That speech” was a 1996 address at New Hampshire’s Keene State College in support of the 1994 Violent Crime Control Act, otherwise known as the crime bill.
In her remarks, then-first lady Clinton said, “They are not just gangs of kids anymore.”
“They are often the kinds of kids that are called ‘superpredators.’”
“No conscience, no empathy.”
“We can talk about why they ended up that way, but first we have to bring them to heel.”
And in light of the overarching fear of crime across the United States back in the 1990s, Clinton’s going out of her way to define “superpredator” as a kid with “no conscience, no empathy” is noteworthy.
Also noteworthy is Clinton saying then, “We can talk about why they ended up that way.”
I highlight that because Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Clinton’s presidential campaign rival and then a member of the House, gave an impassioned floor speech in 1994 raising questions about cause and effect.
“Mr. Speaker, it is my firm belief that clearly, there are some people in our society who are horribly violent, who are deeply sick and sociopathic, and clearly these people must be put behind bars in order to protect society from them.”
“But it is also my view that through the neglect of our Government and through a grossly irrational set of priorities, we are dooming tens of millions of young people to a future of bitterness, misery, hopelessness, drugs, crime, and violence.”
The 1994 crime bill, the statute that many African Americans single out as the cause of mass incarceration of blacks over the past 20 years and that many in the criminal justice field view as a mistake, passed the House with 235 votes.
Sanders joined 188 Democrats and 46 Republicans in voting “aye.”
end quotes
And by way of review as to the “common good” for the American people back in the 1990s, we have this from The Atlantic article “Hillary Clinton and the Tragic Politics of Crime – The criminal-justice policies she now denounces once helped her husband capture the White House.” by Peter Beinart on May 1, 2015:
Some might still argue that, as public policy, (Bill) Clinton’s tough-on-crime policies were necessary.
But there’s a different, and more perplexing, defense of the Clinton record on crime.
It’s that even if Clinton’s policies can’t be justified substantively, they were necessary politically.
If he hadn’t embraced a “tough on crime agenda,” Clinton might never have become—or remained—president.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when crime rates hit their peak, the issue (“tough on crime”) enjoyed a salience in American politics that is hard to comprehend today.
And for Democrats, the consequences of appearing soft were devastating.
In 1988, the George H.W. Bush campaign’s most effective (and notorious) ad slammed Michael Dukakis for furloughing murderers in Massachusetts.
(A separate ad, by a pro-Bush PAC, made African American furloughed murderer Willie Horton a household name).
The most important moment in that year’s debates came when Dukakis, after being asked how he would react if his wife was raped and murdered, gave a bloodless, and politically catastrophic, answer.
In January 1994, 37 percent of Americans said crime was the most important issue facing the country.
And that fall, Mario Cuomo lost the governorship of New York State to a little-known Republican, George Pataki, who had made Cuomo’s opposition to the death penalty central to his campaign.
In 1992, Bill Clinton faced a far tougher electorate than Hillary will this time around.
African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians, who constituted almost 25 percent of the voters in 2012, and Millennials, who also lean disproportionately left on cultural issues, were either in school or in diapers.
There’s a reason Clinton reminded voters that year that his nickname was “Bubba.”
It’s because in 1992, far more than today, a Democrat who didn’t appeal to Bubbas couldn’t win.
And in 1992, being “tough on crime” was critical to getting most Bubbas to give a Democrat a second look.
end quote
So, yes people, the “common good” in America is clearly inextricably linked to political expediency, which is to say, what is good for the two political parties, who only have their short-term interests at heart, especially the “progressive” Democrats, and not for the American people at large.
Such it is and so it goes.
Stay tuned, for this story is far from being over, and thank you for your interest in this matter of importance to all Americans today regardless of skin color, and thank you to the Cape Charles Mirror for hosting this discussion.
Paul Plante says
“He’s (Colin Kaepernick) standing up for (social justice).”
That is a statement made in a USA TODAY SPORTS article entitled “These NFL fans are boycotting. But it’s not just about protests” by Nancy Armour on 6 November 2017, where the person making the statement was identified thusly:
“I’m going to stay right behind him,” said Bruce Burns, who has stopped watching the NFL and was spending his Sunday afternoon at The Velvet Lounge instead, listening to music.
end quote
That statement about Colin Kaepernick standing up for social justice by refusing to stand for the Star Spangled Banner obviously caught my attention, given that this thread started as follows:
In response, I would like to assure Mr. Charles Taylor that I have done plenty of “digging” on the subject (of the football protests), starting last year in fact, when San Francisco 49s quarterback Colin Kaepernick first “took the knee” before a preseason game in late August 2016, stating at that time, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” where “oppression” is defined as “prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control,” or “the state of being subject to unjust treatment or control,” or “mental pressure or distress,” which logically leads to the question, does the “country,” which is the United States of America, really oppress black people and people of color, who are defined as “a person who is not white or of European parentage,” given that we just had a black man as president in this country and another black man as its attorney general?
end quote
Getting back to the USA TODAY SPORTS story:
CHICAGO – Any other year, the Chiefs-Cowboys game would have been playing on the three TVs behind the bar at The Velvet Lounge.
Projected on the wall opposite the DJ booth, too.
Not this year, though.
Not as long as Colin Kaepernick remains persona non grata in the NFL, blackballed for beginning the player protests that have roiled the league and put it at odds with President Donald Trump and his hair-trigger tweets.
“(Kaepernick) just felt it in his heart to take on this fight, and we felt it was important to support him,” said Kenny Johnson, who won’t show NFL games at either of the two bars he owns in Chicago’s South Loop, The Velvet Lounge and The Bureau Bar, so long as Kaepernick remains unsigned.
Supporters of Kaepernick and his efforts to draw attention to racism and discrimination, they’re incensed that the NFL has banished him.
“He’s standing up for (social justice).”
end quotes
Frankly, that is quite hard to see, from my perspective, how Colin Kaepernick is standing up for social justice by refusing to stand for the Star Spangled Banner, and sadly, that USA TODAY SPORTS article leaves those questions unanswered.
As to Colin Kaepernick and this concept of social justice we are hearing so much about today, to get to the roots of the matter, which are political, we need to drop back in time to a DailyCaller article entitled “Hillary Tells Black Church White People Must End ‘Systemic Racism’” by Alex Pfeiffer, Reporter from 04/20/2016, where we were informed about “social justice” by progressive Democrat Hillary Clinton as follows:
She (Hillary) later said at the event, “We all have implicit biases.”
“They are almost in the DNA going back probably millennia.”
end quote
As to “social justice,” which Wikipedia tells us is a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society measured by the explicit and tacit terms for the distribution of wealth, opportunities for personal activity and social privileges, how does Hillary Clinton, a career politician with no scientific or medical background, know any of that to be true, especially the part about “almost in the DNA going back probably millennia,” for anyone other than herself?
Where does Hillary Clinton, a pandering politician and dangerous demagogue willing to say anything to anyone for a buck or a vote, get off telling any of us that we have “implicit biases” that are “almost” in the DNA going back probably millennia?
Where is the concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society in Hillary’s Clinton’s mass condemnation of white people in America in order to pander to people like Colin Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter?
In short, there isn’t any concept or fairness or justness there, because that is all horse**** that Hillary Clonton made up out of whole cloth to pander for votes by dividing America across racial lines:
“And what we need to do is be more honest about that and surface them,” adding, “I don’t have the answers, I’m not a behavioral psychologist or anything, but I think that needs to be done in every community kind of setting we can find that is open to doing it.”
When Hillary Clinton said those words, it was in Philadelphia in April of last year during a visit to a black church, where Hillary Clinton told the predominately African-American audience that it is the “responsibility of white people” to end systemic racism, incorrectly stating a popular hip-hop phrase in saying we will “ride and die.”
That I believe is one of the triggers that set off Colin Kaepernick and these football protests, Hillary telling the black folks last year that it is the responsibility of white people to end systemic racism, as if we were all guilty of being racists, as Hillary charges, without evidence, of course, to back up any of her specious claims, which flies right in the face of social justice..
“If someone has white skin,” HILLARY told those people, “they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
Clinton was visiting the St. Paul’s Baptist Church along with “The Mothers of the Movement” and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder.
The Mothers of the Movement HILLARY was meeting with consisted of mothers who had lost loved ones in police shootings, and the stated topics of the event were police brutality, mass incarceration, gun violence and racism.
“We have to be honest about systemic racism and particularly the responsibility of white people, not just people in public life but all of us,” Hillary said.
Before HILLARY spoke at the event a group of protesters gathered outside who were a part of an organization called Philly R.E.A.L. Justice Coalition.
They hammered Clinton on her support for her husband’s 1994 crime bill and they demanded that Hillary pledge that as president she would pardon all those convicted due to the law.
end quote
I frankly find it incredible beyond belief that a person running for president of the United States of America would be out there pandering for votes by telling black folks that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
That is a statement only a lunatic would make, given that this “Implicit Bias” Hillary and the progressive wing of the Democrat party are pushing all across America is something that has no scientific basis in fact, but notwithstanding, it has become the rallying point for these football protests, which is an object lesson in how the concept of social justice can be abused for political gain by a demagogue like Hillary Clinton.
Scott says
Why is it always old white men talking about losing their “raghts” as though civil liberties are a zero sum game. If you look at the history of institutionalized racist policies such as restrictive covenants and redlining, you will see that programs that were part of the New Deal, Fair Deal and yes, the G.I. Bill were essentially affirmative action for white males in that minorities were mostly left out of these programs. How about “justness and fairness”? According to an FHA report from 1947, homes owned by African-Americans were unlikely to maintain their value so therefore blacks couldn’t get loans. Federal policies bolstered segregation. This, by the definition, is “institutionalized oppression”
By the way, this comes from print sources, not Wikipedia, which every college student knows, will be given an “F” for valid sources.
I won’t be reading any comments to this, as I am deleting the Mirror from my newsfeed. It’s the ultimate vanity press for gasbags.
Note: Vanity Press? We thought it was a local, muck-raking, yellow journalistic rag, but what do we know.
Paul Plante says
And that, in case anyone was wondering, was Scott, who apparently won’t be staying, as he seems to be canceling out his subscription to the CCM in a protest of its free speech policy, and who won’t be missed, as he seems to be on the hysterical side above here with his “Why is it always old white men talking about losing their ‘raghts’ as though civil liberties are a zero sum game.”
There is no talk in here in here about “old white men talking about losing their ‘raghts’ as though civil liberties are a zero sum game.”
What there is talk of in here is progressive Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton trying to appease black people and pander for their votes by stripping white folks of their due process rights and equal protection rights under the Constitution with her wild talk in a DailyCaller article entitled “Hillary Tells Black Church White People Must End ‘Systemic Racism’” by Alex Pfeiffer, Reporter from 04/20/2016, as follows:
“If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
“We all have implicit biases.”
“They are almost in the DNA going back probably millennia.”
“And what we need to do is be more honest about that and surface them.”
“I don’t have the answers, I’m not a behavioral psychologist or anything, but I think that needs to be done in every community kind of setting we can find that is open to doing it.”
end quotes
That, people, is a serious allegation Hillary Clinton was making there, an accusation, actually, that Hillary had no grounds to make, lacking neither credentials nor proof to support her wild allegation, to which I replied:
I frankly find it incredible beyond belief that a person running for president of the United States of America would be out there pandering for votes by telling black folks that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
That is a statement only a lunatic would make, given that this “Implicit Bias” Hillary and the progressive wing of the Democrat party are pushing all across America is something that has no scientific basis in fact, but notwithstanding, it has become the rallying point for these football protests, which is an object lesson in how the concept of social justice can be abused for political gain by a demagogue like Hillary Clinton.
end quotes
In a word, those comments are racially insensitive and they are discriminatory and as such, they are quite offensive.
That kind of talk comes disturbingly close to the discriminatory comments made against Jews in the German Third Reich, and it shouldn’t be acceptable in this nation today, and yet, disturbingly, it is, because it was Hillary Rodham Clinton saying those words, and thus, although false, they have to be taken as true because it was Hillary who said them, and everybody knows she would never tell a lie for political purposes.
And what bull**** that is!
Getting back to Scott, who is no longer with us, having stormed off in a huff and a sulk, as was stated above, when Hillary Clinton said those words, it was in Philadelphia in April of last year during a visit to a black church, where Hillary Clinton told the predominately African-American audience that it is the “responsibility of white people” to end systemic racism.
And that gave Scott his segue into “If you look at the history of institutionalized racist policies such as restrictive covenants and redlining, you will see that programs that were part of the New Deal, Fair Deal and yes, the G.I. Bill were essentially affirmative action for white males in that minorities were mostly left out of these programs.”
However, looking at the “Fair Deal,” which was an ambitious set of proposals put forward by U.S. President Harry S. Truman to Congress in his January 1949 State of the Union address and more generally characterized the entire domestic agenda of the Truman administration, from 1945 to 1953, offering new proposals to continue New Deal liberalism, Wikipedia (yes, I will continue to use it as I am long since out of college with a masters degree so am not worried about getting an “F” for using Wikipedia as a primary information source) tells us under the heading “Civil Rights Movement” as follows:
In a 1947 speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), which marked the first time a sitting President had ever addressed the group, Truman said “Every man should have the right to a decent home, the right to an education, the right to adequate medical care, the right to a worthwhile job, the right to an equal share in the making of public decisions through the ballot, and the right to a fair trial in a fair court.”
As President, he put forward many civil rights programs but they were met with a lot of resistance by southern Democrats.
All his legislative proposals were blocked.
However, he used presidential executive orders to end discrimination in the armed forces and denied government contracts to firms with racially discriminatory practices.
He also named African Americans to federal posts.
Except for nondiscrimination provisions of the Housing Act of 1949, Truman had to be content with civil rights’ gains achieved by executive order or through the federal courts.
Vaughan argues that by continuing appeals to Congress for civil rights legislation, Truman helped reverse the long acceptance of segregation and discrimination by establishing integration as a moral principle.
end quotes
That tells the story quite differently from the twisted version Scott is trying to sell us above here, does it not?
Instead of Truman “oppressing” the black folks as Scott would have us believe, it would appear that Truman was using the power of the federal government to help the black folks, instead.
In his 1949 State of the Union address to Congress on January 5, 1949, Truman stated that “Every segment of our population, and every individual, has a right to expect from his government a fair deal,” and amongst the proposed measures he included federal aid to education, a large tax cut for low-income earners, the abolition of poll taxes, an anti-lynching law, a permanent FEPC, a farm aid program, increased public housing, an immigration bill, new TVA-style public works projects, the establishment of a new Department of Welfare, the repeal of the Taft–Hartley Act, an increase in the minimum wage from 40 to 75 cents an hour, national health insurance, expanded Social Security coverage, and a $4 billion tax increase to reduce the national debt and finance these programs.
There is nothing in there that can be construed as “institutionalized oppression” by the federal government on behalf of all white people in America at the expense of the black people in America, and there is an irony here in that charge as we consider the CCM story “Riverside Shore Nurse Named Finalist for March of Dimes Nurse of the Year Award” which is about a black woman, Riverside Shore nurse Cheryl Warren, BSN, RN, CCRN, being a finalist for the 7th annual Virginia Chapter March of Dimes Nurse of the Year award.
Clearly, from that story, we can say that at least one black person here in America was not systematically “oppressed,” given her proven record of accomplishment, including her education, and where there is one black person who has not been “systematically oppressed,” perhaps there are more, starting with Colin Kaepernick, who led a charmed and privileged life, thanks to the white people who adopted him and the white people who created the community and society that he was then able to thrive in, including the game of football itself.
So what a bunch of rank hypocrisy we are being thrown here by our dearly departed Scott, who happens to be talking about things that likely occurred long before he was born to justify his charge of “oppression” today, as though nothing had changed between then and now, which is called intellectual dishonesty, a failure to apply standards of rational evaluation that one is aware of, usually in a self-serving fashion.
Look at the “New Deal,” for example, which Wikipedia tells us was a series of federal programs, public work projects, and financial reforms and regulations, enacted in the United States during the 1930s in response to the Great Depression, including support for farmers, the unemployed, the youth, and the elderly, as well as the new constraints and safeguards on the banking industry and changes to the monetary system, with most programs being enacted at different stages between 1933–38.
By my clock, the 1930s were long before most people in America, including Colin Kaepernick and Hillary Rodham Clinton were even born, and the 1930s are long since over, and we in the United States of America have moved on since then, except for those protesters like Colin Kaepernick who have to go back into history that is long since dead to dredge up examples of black people being oppressed to justify their protests today.
With respect to history moving on, in the 1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society used the New Deal as inspiration for a dramatic expansion of liberal programs, which Republican Richard M. Nixon generally retained, which included sweeping civil rights legislation.
So, Scott, to conclude, dude, I am not going to miss you now that you have done us the favor of removing your presence from our midst, and a favor it was because it means we won’t have to be subjected to any more of this “systematic oppression” stuff from a different century that you are spewing above here in a vain attempt to justify the football protests on-going today, so thanks for leaving, dude, it is appreciated.
Scott says
Ok, I’ll take the bait, but I try not to take political sides. I don’t have any answers, and I don’t watch football, I have my own ways of wasting time. BTW, I also have loads of respect for Mr. Creed, he runs the Mirror as a public service, a thankless task.
Cheryl Warren deserves all due respect but does that anecdote mean anything in the big picture? Did the election of Obama end centuries of racist policies?
Mr. Plante loves Wikipedia, and it’s true, you can cherry pick anything you want. Search the New Deal and Race and a guy named Anthony Badger argues, “New Deal programs in the South routinely discriminated against blacks and perpetuated segregation” The New Deal programs such as Social Security were meant for industrial workers, and although all walks of society were helped, those left out were agricultural and domestic workers, by custom usually minorities. The FHA refused to guarantee mortgages on houses purchased by blacks, and both the CCC and TVA practiced racial segregation. These programs were expanded later to include more people.
Beginning in 1949 the government and private lenders divided cities into four zones, ranking them from most likely to hold or increase their value to least likely to do so. The latter neighborhoods were usually shaded red on residential maps, and their residents were redlined – automatically denied a mortgage –regardless of income. Since the turn of the century, real estate covenants and other forms of segregation had forced most African-Americans and Latinos to live in red zone neighborhoods, of without infrastructural and neglected by landlords. Denied the basic American Dream of home ownership, red zone minorities saw their property values and quality of life decline further According to Wikipedia, the systematic denial of loans was a major contributor to the urban decay that plagued many American cities during this time period. Minorities who tried to buy homes continued to face direct discrimination from lending institutions into the late 1990s. The disparities are not simply due to differences in creditworthiness. With other factors held constant, rejection rates for Black and Hispanic applicants was about 1.6 times that for Whites in 1995.
This directly impacts education opportunity. Search “Racial Steering” in Wiki. Racially segregated minority neighborhoods have been associated with having low academic achievement rates. …segregation attributes to minorities under achievement in at least two ways. Firstly, students in segregated schools may receive a poor quality of education because schools serving minorities or low socioeconomic groups may have lower funding levels, inexperienced teachers, and reduced levels of other resources that contribute to the student’s academic achievement. Secondly, Rumsberg and Willms argue that the residential racial segregation leads to schools having the same composition which can directly affect the student’s level of academic achievement. They call these differences “contextual effects”. Contextual effects are defined as peer interactions and the teaching and learning climate in the school.
Truman did integrate the armed forces and part of his Fair Deal were Civil Rights. Like any other time, it just caused a huge backlash among the white folk, creating the Dixiecrats, the white supremacist faction of the Democratic party. Most of his proposals were rejected. However, Taft-Hartley was passed which created “right to work” laws, code for “right to get axed without recourse” laws.
When Congress did enact Fair Deal initiatives that would have helped minorities and poor whites, it often underfunded the programs.
In the South, federal agencies such as the FHA disqualified minorities. Mississippi, for instance, guaranteed over three thousand federal home mortgage loans for veterans in 1947, but only two went to African Americans. In New York, African Americans were the recipients of just one a thousand veteran loans and 2 % of all conventional mortgages.
In good ol’ Virginny, six school systems were shut down in Norfolk when people like Harry F. Byrd didn’t want to integrate after Brown v. Board of Education. Byrd called for – and got- “massive resistance” 101 lawmakers signed the Southern Manifesto denouncing SCOTUS and called for whites to defy court-ordered segregation. 5,000 southerners joined White Citizens Councils, the middle class version of the KKK.
This is from”Elusive Equality: Desegregation and Resegregation in Norfolk Public Schools, 1900-2008.” By May 1963, almost a decade after Brown v. Board of Education, fewer than 150 Negro students were admitted to desegregated schools. They tried busing but this led to “white flight” In 1986, it became the first school system in the country to win permission to stop busing at the elementary level in hopes of curbing the flight of white, middle-class families to private schools and the suburbs. School officials argued that the exodus was creating segregated pockets in the city. In 1994, Harvard University released a study that called the end of busing a failure. One conclusion from the report:
“In Norfolk, the only clear results of the city’s abandonment of school desegregation and its subsequent return to neighborhood schools has been severe racial isolation and an increase in concentrated poverty, both of which have consistently been associated with poor school performance and inequality.”
https://pilotonline.com/news/the-norfolk-face-a-hostile-reception-as-schools-reopen/article_05745bcd-a24e-5d1d-9c5c-ce22313d963d.html
So finally, in the 60’s, a century after the Civil War, the Voting Rights and the Civil Acts were passed. By this time the long term discrimination polices had left their mark. Now the children’s children are left with a legacy of 400 years of oppression. When policies that were put in place to finally level the playing field white people’s heads exploded.
Here is a link to an article by Ira Katzelson that is an op-ed piece based on the research that led to his book. Ira Katznelson is a professor of political science and history at Columbia University, president of the Social Science Research Council and the author of “When Affirmative Action Was White.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opinion/sunday/making-affirmative-action-white-again.html
To quote “The unsettling history of this affirmative action for whites significantly widened racial gaps in income, wealth and opportunity that continue to scar American life.”
This means that policies that were made in the early and middle part of the 20th century still have a lingering effect on the children and families that came afterward.
Paul Plante says
A very simple question for you, Scott, and it is good to see you back, although there is no bait for you to take in here, since I am not in here to “bait” anyone:
Are black people the only people in history who have ever been slaves?
Take your time, Scott, in answering, and carefully check your sources.
And no, I don’t “love” Wikipedia.
It is a resource, and I use it as such.
tkenny says
You are clearly baiting him with your question. Speaking of which, what is the relevance of the question? Nowhere in Scot’s replies has he mentioned slavery which speaks volumes to the fact that you have no understanding of the real issue of social injustice.
Paul Plante says
Get real, tkenny, I’m hardly baiting him with the question “Are black people the only people in history who have ever been slaves,” where the gerund or present participle “baiting” means to “deliberately annoy or taunt someone,” given that it is my thread, where as Original Poster, I set the topic for this thread in these following three questions, to wit:
In response, I would like to assure Mr. Charles Taylor that I have done plenty of “digging” on the subject, starting last year in fact, when San Francisco 49s quarterback Colin Kaepernick first “took the knee” before a preseason game in late August 2016, stating at that time, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” where “oppression” is defined as “prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control,” or “the state of being subject to unjust treatment or control,” or “mental pressure or distress,” which logically leads to the question, does the “country,” which is the United States of America, really oppress black people and people of color, who are defined as “a person who is not white or of European parentage,” given that we just had a black man as president in this country and another black man as its attorney general?
Does the United States of America have as its policy the oppression of black people and people of color?
Given that we had a black man as our chief law enforcement officer, as well as the person who is charged by our Constitution with “taking care” that our laws are enforced, were Barack Hussein Obama and Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. in 2016 subjecting black people and people of color in this country to “prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control,” or were black people and people of color in this country under Barack Hussein Obama and Eric Himpton Holder, Jr. in 2016 in “the state of being subject to unjust treatment or control,” or “mental pressure or distress,” or is that just a fever dream in the brain of football player Colin Kaepernick?
end quotes
There, tkenny, right before your eyes, is what this thread is all about, especially that third question, and how did our polemicist (One skilled or engaged in polemics, which is the art or practice of disputation, especially the use of aggressive argument to refute perceived errors of doctrine) Scott deal with that set of questions?
Let’s take a look, shall we:
Scott says @ November 12, 2017 at 7:42 pm:
Why is it always old white men talking about losing their “raghts” as though civil liberties are a zero sum game.
end quotes
Now, tkenny, if “baiting” means to “deliberately annoy or taunt someone,” then I would say that we have a serious case of it right there, wouldn’t you?
But you know what, tkenny, and yes, you do!
Being compassionate and expansive as I am, I chose to give Scott a pass on that baiting of his, and to engage him as a serious equal, and it is from that intellectual process, which apparently was far too subtle for you to follow, that my question to him “Are black people the only people in history who have ever been slaves” emerged, and if he is intellectually honest, he will answer the question truthfully.
If not, he will duck it entirely, or try to weasel his way around it, and in either case, we shall be educated, which is my purpose for posting these types of essays in the CCM.
tkenny says
Duck or weasel, like you are doing? So again I will ask, what is the relevance of asking “Are black people the only people in history who have ever been slaves?”
I’m absolutely sure social injustice ( the theme of your Dissertation) has nothing to do with whether you were a slave or not, so what’s the point in asking?
You are grossly exaggerating the educational value of any of your post.
Paul Plante says
Seriously, tkenny, you need to enroll yourself in a remedial reading program, or a reading comprehension program, or maybe English as a second language with that question of yours “So again I will ask, what is the relevance of asking ‘Are black people the only people in history who have ever been slaves?’”
The relevance of my question comes from this set of statements by Scott @ November 13, 2017 at 11:14 pm, as follows:
So finally, in the 60’s, a century after the Civil War, the Voting Rights and the Civil Acts were passed.
By this time the long term discrimination polices had left their mark.
Now the children’s children are left with a legacy of 400 years of oppression.
When policies that were put in place to finally level the playing field white people’s heads exploded.
end quotes
400 years of oppression, tkenny?
That brings in the slavery question as far as I am concerned.
What about you?
How are you seeing that from your perspective?
And another question I would then have for Scott is who is ultimately responsible for those 400 years of oppression having happened?
And to prompt him, since we are talking about Wikipedia, I would direct him to the heading “African participation in the slave trade,” where he would find as follows:
African states played a key role in the slave trade.
Slavery was a common practice among Africans.
Chieftains would barter their slaves to European buyers for rum, spices, cloth or other goods.
Selling captives or prisoners was common practice among Africans and Arabs during that era.
In the 1840s, King Gezo of Dahomey said:
The slave trade is the ruling principle of my people.
It is the source and the glory of their wealth…the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery…
end quotes
There, tkenny, is where those 400 years of oppression really begin.
But I am curious as to how Scott will see it.
So we just have to wait and see.
Will he accept that the black folks created their misery today by making themselves slaves in Africa?
Or will he deny it and blame it all on WHITEY and the federal government, which indeed deserves a lot of the blame Scott has heaped on it?
The candid world would like to know.
Paul Plante says
As to tkenny’s “social injustice,” Definitions.net tells us that “Social injustice is a relative concept about the claimed unfairness or injustice of a society in its divisions of rewards and burdens and other incidental inequalities based on the user’s worldview of humanity.”
Given that definition, “social injustice” can be and literally is everything under the sun, without end.
Getting back to Definitions.net:
Immorality is often used as a synonym for this.
The concept is different for different worldviews of persons and societies.
Conflicts in definitions of social injustice is increasingly a platform of emerging political parties.
For some societies, social injustice includes the distribution of advantages and disadvantages in society aren’t equal.
For other societies, social injustice includes repressing peoples’ ability to be fruitful for themselves and the society they are in.
Social injustice is used as a slogan by certain societies to oppose other societies’ definition of social justice.
end quotes
There, people, is why it is impossible to have a rational, intelligent conversation with anyone, and especially tkenny, about “social injustice” – Social injustice is used as a slogan by certain societies to oppose other societies’ definition of social justice.
Our polemicist Scott and his apologist tkenny and tkenny’s hero Colin Kaepernick say that black people in America are victims of social injustice in America, and to them, so they are, end of argument.
So set are they in their belief that no set of facts to the contrary will make a bit of difference to them, like the fact that we just had a black president and a black attorney general, who was quoted in the DAILY MAIL on 20 August 2014, as follows:
Shortly after taking office in February 2009, Holder called the United States ‘a nation of cowards’ when it comes to talking about race, in a Black History Month speech.
end quotes
That is what brought me into this conversation about race, and who the coward turned out to be was Eric Himpton Holder, Jr.
Getting back to “social injustice” from Definitions.net:
Current hot topics include wealth distribution relative to labor, skill and responsibility, prejudice, discrimination, oppression, religion, homophobia, racism, patriotism, casteism, capitalism, classism, ableism, ageism, stereotyping and sexism
end quotes
See what I mean about tkenny’s “social injustice” being anything and everything there is under the sun?
As to tkenny’s “social injustice” being anything and everything under the sun tkenny wants it to be, when he wants it to be, depending on the circumstances, Definitions.net directs us to a site called Quora, where Oliver Wright, Doctor of International Law, Cornell Law School, answered the questions “What are the types of social injustice?” and “What are some examples?” as follows
There is no such thing as social injustice.
Physical force—nothing else—can violate rights.
Physical force—nothing else—enables one man to take the life, property, liberty, of another man; to enslave him, rob him, stymie his goals, compel him to act against his better judgment.
Social injustice is a meaningless term invented by social justice warriors to create a moral sanction for them to seize the production and wealth of the competent and productive for their effortless, incompetent and unproductive enjoyment.
It is vile opportunism masquerading as piety.
It is not social injustice that must be eradicated, but its very notion that must be exterminated, if we are to repair the wholesale ghettoization of America that’s been underway for the last fifty years, and accelerated over the last eight.
end quote
And on that note, I will rest my case and toss the ball back into tkenny’s court.
tkenny says
“Will he accept that the black folks created their misery today by making themselves slaves in Africa?”
You’re really going to go there? That selling a slave 400 yrs ago has any bearing on a person today?
Are you that much of a bigot? A racist? Really? You are attributing the discrimination of blacks to a black King who sold black men into slavery. You don’t have a problem with the white men who bought them, the white men who thought they were nothing more than property,the bible toting white men who said the black men were not their equal.
You’re true colors are showing and it’s ugly. You need not respond to me. You’re a sick man Paul, write what you may but I won’t be responding to you anymore. I’ll pray for you.
Paul Plante says
I didn’t “go there, ” tkenny, these black nationalist football protesters who blame ALL of their problems not on themselves but on the white folks brought us there, and so here we are, whether your tender sensibilities can handle that, or not.
You quite obviously suffer from a real bad case of “white guilt” compounded by a severe case of “implicit bias,” tkenny, and so it skews your perspective on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
And frankly, I am past, far past, actually, all of this continuous BULL**** about ALL the problems of the black folks being solely caused by the white folks, as if the black folks bore no responsibility whatsoever for their own actions and for their own plight, starting with selling themselves into the slavery they no so detest.
That, tkenny, is pure horse****, and you with your intense white guilt can accept it, but I refuse to.
As to your insulting comments, I will pass them by, because they are just so you, tkenny, if is not funny.
As to your inane comment “You don’t have a problem with the white men who bought them, the white men who thought they were nothing more than property,the bible toting white men who said the black men were not their equal,” ALL of those people, to whom I am not related, and for whom I am NOT RESPONSIBLE are long since DEAD, tkenny, so I am not going to waste even a drop of emotional energy thinking anything about them, and I certainly do not support them in any way, and you are a fool for thinking so.
Unable to refute any arguments in here with facts, you resort to your fall-back position of hurling insults to try and distract people’s attention away from your failure, but, tkenny, while that tactic works in a face-to-face confrontation, where by hurling insults as you do, you can hope to win some of the spectators over to your side, in here, where a transcript is created, and people can take a moment to review the proceedings themselves to see all of what has been said, as opposed to what you say has been said, the tactic of using insults and getting all huffy as you do, really falls flat on its face and makes you appear as much a moral coward on the subject of “race” as is former attorney general Eric Himpton Holder, Jr.
Such it is, tkenny, and so it goes.
And tkenny, while you are out there mumbling to yourself and sulking, try to take a moment to breathe.
Breathing is necessary to life, tkenny, and when somebody gets all het up like you, often they forget to breathe, and that affects to oxygen content going to your brain, which is not good for it.
Chas Cornweller says
And you dear sir, are missing the point of your own dissertation. Colin Kaepernick got down on one knee, not to blame “White People” as you put it, but to shine a light (and, yes, the blame) on a system that if not being “outwardly used” as an oppressive tool, has in perpetuity; systematically “used” race and class as a political football. Both parties are “to blame”. The side comments and some not so side comments by Ms. Clinton pale in comparison though, to your friend and president Mr. Trump. Ms. Clinton’s putdown of the votes of Mr. Trump as deplorables was bad enough, but it was the usage of “as unredeemable” that was the clincher. But, compared to Mr. Trumps message about our neighbors to the south as rapist, murders, drug mules…some bad hombres, was beyond the pale. So, both sides are to blame for the skewed rhetoric on society. And by speaking this way, average Joe (me) and average Josephine are not sure where they (the politicians) are going with this. Especially once they acquire the seat of office. Now, if you are an African American and The Man has been speaking out of the side of his mouth for as long as you can remember, you can only imagine the damage this does to their psyche. Literally oppressed? Maybe. Subliminally oppressed, definitely. You don’t get the stares when you enter a fine clothing store. You don’t get the stares when you enter a jewelry store. You don’t get the stares when you ask if you can test drive a car off the lot, or enter a bank to open a new account. Well, guess what…I have friends (who just happen to be brown) that have had those experiences…more than once on many occasions. Now, if that had been just one person, I might have chalked it up to a paranoid mind, but I have spoken to several of my friends and each one had a version of this same story. So…yes, the struggle is real. Just not for you and me. Understand? And yes, there are black doctors, black lawyers, black senators (just not enough, heh, heh) black athletes, black dentist and so on and so forth. But, I guarantee you, that if that black doctor had been running in a track suit that morning and ended up in front of a branch office of his bank and entered to withdraw a bit of cash, there would be some to give him “the stare”. Now ask yourself why…
But, I am afraid; or rather…convinced, that the more you speak (write) the more twisted up in your own arguments you become. I honestly try to follow your discourse, and I consider myself a man of letters; but, I’ll be dogged if I know where in the hell you intend on taking us with your words. You start with social injustices and end with slavery. Which, by the way, under American law as written in 1821, was not considered a social injustice at all, but only by a handful of conscientious Americans. But, had you a way-back machine, you could ask a black slave somewhere in Alabama, or Virginia or Georgia, how they feel about that law. Because in all honesty Mr. Plante, that is what we are dealing with as Americans. This is what Colin Kaepernick is trying to say. The echo of those laws still reverberates. The shame of ownership still carries on our (ALL our shoulders-if you call yourself American). And until we face that fact and discourse our shame and our grievances, we will continue to classify, alienate, and divide ourselves into smaller and smaller piles of do nothings. While the powers that be, pluck the last dignities from us. That, to me, is the social injustice.
Paul Plante says
Dear Chas Cornweller, I am a political independent, so please, do not insult me by calling me a friend of Donald Trump, or him a friend of mine, because he is not, and neither am I.
And you need to get over this dichotomous thinking of yours, this either/or categorization you indulge in in here, where in your mind, if someone is not for the Democrats, they have to be for the Republicans, or if someone doesn’t like Hillary Clinton, and that is a multitude, then they have to like Donald Trump.
Neither is true, Chas Cornweller; some of us with rational, thinking minds can dislike both of them equally, and with good cause.
As to your “But, I am afraid; or rather…convinced, that the more you speak (write) the more twisted up in your own arguments you become. I honestly try to follow your discourse, and I consider myself a man of letters; but, I’ll be dogged if I know where in the hell you intend on taking us with your words. You start with social injustices and end with slavery,” in the original post, Chas Cornweller, I asked a series of questions, to wit:
* So, in 2016, was the United States of America, the “country,” under Barack Hussein Obama and Eric Himpton Holder, Jr, both black men, oppressing black people and people of color in this country by denying them language, education, and other opportunities that might make them become fully human in both mind and body?
* If institutionalized oppression is when “established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups,” does the United States of America, the “country” that football player Colin Kaepernick says “oppresses black people and people of color,” does the United States of America then have “established laws, customs, and practices” that systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups such as black people and people of color, or is that really just some horse**** Colin Kaepernick dreamed up to get his name in the newspapers?
* And what about “social justice,” which Wikipedia tells us is a concept of fair and just relations between the individual and society measured by the explicit and tacit terms for the distribution of wealth, opportunities for personal activity and social privileges?
* If “social injustice” is measured in terms of inequality of wealth, then wouldn’t Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shahid Khan, a Pakistani-American billionaire and business tycoon who as of August 2017 had a net worth over $8.7 billion which ranked him 70th in the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, while he is overall the 158th wealthiest person in the world, be the epitome of social injustice here in the United States of America?
* Do you break the barriers for social mobility by breaking people’s head with lead pipes and crowbars and clubs?
* Given all of the social programs and civil rights legislation in this country intended to assure black people and people of color are receiving the basic benefits needed to sustain life, are we to seriously believe this football player Colin Kaepernick when he says the country, the United States of America, oppresses black people and people of color?
* What are your thoughts, people of America, the country that football player Colin Kaepernick says oppresses black people and people of color?
* If the country is all the people in it, including black people and people of color, all of whom are citizens just like white people, and not just the land mass, then who is it that is oppressing the black people and people of color?
* If it is the “country” doing it as football player Colin Kaepernick claims, then wouldn’t that have to include the black people and people of color, as well, oppressing themselves, since they are as much a part of the country as the white people are?
end quotes
As I said in the original post, Chas Cornweller, questions for our times.
Why didn’t you try to address any of them?
And from that, you can see that it was not “social injustice” I started with, it was “social justice,” and in my second post, I cited a Heritage Foundation article entitled “Social Justice: Not What You Think It Is” by Michael Novak, a George Frederick Jewett Scholar in Religion, Philosophy, and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute, on December 29, 2009, where the author stated thusly in the Abstract about “social justice”:
For its proponents, “social justice” is usually undefined.
Originally a Catholic term, first used about 1840 for a new kind of virtue (or habit) necessary for post-agrarian societies, the term has been bent by secular “progressive” thinkers to mean uniform state distribution of society’s advantages and disadvantages.
end quotes
The message there, Chas Cornweller, is that “social justice” is a bull**** term invented by social justice warriors to create a moral sanction for them to seize the production and wealth of the competent and productive for their effortless, incompetent and unproductive enjoyment, it is vile opportunism masquerading as piety.
Do you disagree with that assessment?
From there, the discussion went to an article from The Atlantic entitled “Hillary Clinton and the Tragic Politics of Crime – The criminal-justice policies she now denounces once helped her husband capture the White House.” by Peter Beinart on May 1, 2015, where we were informed as follows::
Some might still argue that, as public policy, (Bill) Clinton’s tough-on-crime policies were necessary.
But there’s a different, and more perplexing, defense of the Clinton record on crime.
It’s that even if Clinton’s policies can’t be justified substantively, they were necessary politically.
If he hadn’t embraced a “tough on crime agenda,” Clinton might never have become—or remained—president.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when crime rates hit their peak, the issue (“tough on crime”) enjoyed a salience in American politics that is hard to comprehend today.
And for Democrats, the consequences of appearing soft were devastating.
In 1988, the George H.W. Bush campaign’s most effective (and notorious) ad slammed Michael Dukakis for furloughing murderers in Massachusetts.
(A separate ad, by a pro-Bush PAC, made African American furloughed murderer Willie Horton a household name).
The most important moment in that year’s debates came when Dukakis, after being asked how he would react if his wife was raped and murdered, gave a bloodless, and politically catastrophic, answer.
In January 1994, 37 percent of Americans said crime was the most important issue facing the country.
And that fall, Mario Cuomo lost the governorship of New York State to a little-known Republican, George Pataki, who had made Cuomo’s opposition to the death penalty central to his campaign.
In 1992, Bill Clinton faced a far tougher electorate than Hillary will this time around.
African Americans, Hispanics, and Asians, who constituted almost 25 percent of the voters in 2012, and Millennials, who also lean disproportionately left on cultural issues, were either in school or in diapers.
There’s a reason Clinton reminded voters that year that his nickname was “Bubba.”
It’s because in 1992, far more than today, a Democrat who didn’t appeal to Bubbas couldn’t win.
And in 1992, being “tough on crime” was critical to getting most Bubbas to give a Democrat a second look.
end quote
There, Chas Cornweller, is what Colin Kaepernick is supposed to be protesting, but you know what, Chas Cornweller?
Colin Kaepernick is remaining silent about what he is protesting, so nobody really knows what he is protesting, including yourself, Chas Cornweller.
However, from the San Francisco Chronicle article “Colin Kaepernick’s silence is a powerful message” by Ann Killion on November 13, 2017, we have this:
Ameer Hasan Loggins wrote about how Kaepernick came to his class at Cal, with his “little notebook and pencil,” driving up from San Jose to attend every week.
“We’ve decided the conversation leans on ‘Does Colin want to be an activist, or does he want to be an athlete?’” Loggins wrote.
“As if the two cannot happen simultaneously.”
“You can care about people and play sports.”
“The problem is that his particular activism was toward the cause of blackness.”
“That’s what he’s being ostracized for.”
end quotes
What, Chas Cornweller, is the “cause of blackness?”
Do you have a clue?
Is it a cause you embrace?
Is it a cause of inclusion, do you think?
Or is it a cause of exclusion?
And if it is a cause of exclusion, then why are you embracing it?
As to why you don’t know where this thread is going, the answer should be apparent from the date of that San Francisco Chronicle article entiled “Colin Kaepernick’s silence is a powerful message” by Ann Killion, which was November 13, 2017, just two days ago, so the story is still developing, Chas cornweller.
If you want to know where it goes from here, and where it ends, you will just have to practice patience and stay tuned.
As to Hillary Clinton, Chas Cornweller, this is precisely what I did say:
What there is talk of in here is progressive Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton trying to appease black people and pander for their votes by stripping white folks of their due process rights and equal protection rights under the Constitution with her wild talk in a DailyCaller article entitled “Hillary Tells Black Church White People Must End ‘Systemic Racism’” by Alex Pfeiffer, Reporter from 04/20/2016, as follows:
“If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
“We all have implicit biases.”
“They are almost in the DNA going back probably millennia.”
“And what we need to do is be more honest about that and surface them.”
“I don’t have the answers, I’m not a behavioral psychologist or anything, but I think that needs to be done in every community kind of setting we can find that is open to doing it.”
That, people, is a serious allegation Hillary Clinton was making there, an accusation, actually, that Hillary had no grounds to make, lacking either credentials or proof to support her wild allegation, to which I replied:
I frankly find it incredible beyond belief that a person running for president of the United States of America would be out there pandering for votes by telling black folks that “If someone has white skin, they are a racist because of Implicit Bias, and we need community programs here in America to cure them.”
That is a statement only a lunatic would make, given that this “Implicit Bias” Hillary and the progressive wing of the Democrat party are pushing all across America is something that has no scientific basis in fact, but notwithstanding, it has become the rallying point for these football protests, which is an object lesson in how the concept of social justice can be abused for political gain by a demagogue like Hillary Clinton.
In a word, those comments are racially insensitive and they are discriminatory and as such, they are quite offensive.
That kind of talk comes disturbingly close to the discriminatory comments made against Jews in the German Third Reich, and it shouldn’t be acceptable in this nation today, and yet, disturbingly, it is, because it was Hillary Rodham Clinton saying those words, and thus, although false, they have to be taken as true because it was Hillary who said them, and everybody knows she would never tell a lie for political purposes.
end quotes
That is what I said, Chas Cornweller, and it is those statements that I stand by – that those statements by Hillary Clinton are racially insensitive and they are discriminatory and as such, they are quite offensive, and that kind of talk by Hillary Clinton comes disturbingly close to the discriminatory comments made against Jews in the German Third Reich, and it shouldn’t be acceptable in this nation today, and yet, disturbingly, it is, because it was Hillary Rodham Clinton saying those words, and thus, although false, they have to be taken as true because it was Hillary who said them, and everybody knows she would never tell a lie for political purposes.
As far as I am concerned, that is far more egregious than anything Trump, who is not a friend of mine, said about the Mexicans, for this reason: Trump was talking about people who are not United States citizens, and thus, have no constitutional rights in this country, while Clinton was talking about American citizens with Constitutional rights which she as president was willing to strip away to appease some black folks as a means of pandering for their votes.
That is what is beyond the pale, Chas Cornweller.
I’m surprised that you don’t see that, actually.
How come?
Paul Plante says
And as always, people, our dear friend and colleague, the Honorable Chas Cornweller, has given us much to think about here in his dissertation above here, which starts thusly:
And you dear sir, are missing the point of your own dissertation.
Colin Kaepernick got down on one knee, not to blame “White People” as you put it, but to shine a light (and, yes, the blame) on a system that if not being “outwardly used” as an oppressive tool, has in perpetuity; systematically “used” race and class as a political football.
end quotes
Well said, Chas Cornweller, and in my humble estimation, nothing better exemplifies what Chas Cornweller just said there, right out loud, than an article in the WASHINGTON POST entitled “Three UCLA basketball players are suspended indefinitely after being arrested in China” by Tim Bontemps on November 15, 2017 at 4:46 PM, which is about three young people who appear to be “people of color,” or perhaps “black people,” who really knows, who took it upon themselves when in China to steal sunglasses in a mall, as if they were still in America and could get away with that **** because they were “minorities” and special because they were basketball players.
And you know what, people?
You are damn right they are special and can get away with that crap, according to the Washington Post article, as follows:
(UCLA Athletic Director Dan) Guerrero laid out a timeline of events on Wednesday, officially spelling out what happened for the first time.
On Nov. 6, players and staff from UCLA and Georgia Tech – the Bruins’ opponent for a game Saturday in Shanghai – visited the campus of Alibaba, the e-commerce giant that sponsored the teams’ game and whose executive vice president, Joe Tsai, recently purchased 49 percent of the Brooklyn Nets, as well as the option to buy a controlling interest in the team.
After the tour, Guerrero said the teams returned to their hotel, where players were allowed 90 minutes to explore the city.
During that time, Guerrero said, the three players went to three stores in the mall adjacent to the hotel and stole the items before returning to the hotel.
The following morning, local police arrived and interviewed players from UCLA and Georgia Tech to determine which players had stolen the goods, before eventually settling on Ball, Riley and Hall.
At that point, the players were taken to a police station, where they were further questioned.
They were joined at the station by UCLA associate head coach Duane Broussard and Pac-12 Associate Commissioner Gloria Nevarez, where they were later met by Alford and Chris Carlson, UCLA’s associate athletic director.
end quotes
That is the background, and here is where it gets interesting:
Eventually, the school – with permission of the players’ parents – found them legal representation and escorted them through the process.
Carlson and Doug Erickson, UCLA’s director of basketball administration, stayed with the players while the rest of the team and staff traveled to Shanghai, about 100 miles away, and then back to the United States.
After Ball, Riley and Hall were given permission to come home by Chinese authorities, the school got them on a flight that left Shanghai on Tuesday around 9 p.m. local time, and arrived at Los Angeles International Airport at 5 p.m. to a horde of television cameras awaiting their return.
One significant question that has yet to be answered is who will pay legal fees and other expenses incurred by the incident.
Guerrero said Wednesday that the school “provided the necessary resources to ensure the timely release and safe return of the UCLA athletes.”
“We now have the task of working to reconcile who is ultimately responsible of the cost incurred, in addition to addressing any NCAA implications.”
David Ridpath, an associate professor of sports administration at Ohio University and a veteran college athletics administrator, said he expected the NCAA would rule in favor of UCLA being able to pay for the expenses incurred.
While some could argue that it was an extra benefit, he said the unique circumstances involved made it likely in his eyes that the NCAA would look to put the issue to bed.
“I guess you could say by the letter of the law it’s an extra benefit, but I think it would fall under actual and necessary benefits, and the NCAA would look at this in a vacuum and likely permit it,” Ridpath said in a phone interview.
“I don’t know if the NCAA wants to come out and add more insult to injury here and say, these kids or the kids families, have to pay for it.”
end quote
To which I say – INCREDIBLE!
OMG – the precious kids went off to China and didn’t know they weren’t home any more so they acted like thieves, and now, somebody else should have to pay for it.
Not them that were the thieves.
Hey, they are “persons of color” and it would be extremely racist to hold them either responsible or accountable for their actions.
They are probably in China stealing sun glasses because of 400 years of oppression by WHITEY, so they had no choice in the matter, and thus, cannot be held legally responsible.
If they were white, it would be a different story, but they weren’t.
So they get a cake walk and a free ride.
And that is social justice, people, staring us right in the face.
That is “the cause of blackness” that Colin Kaepernick is now the champion of, along with these black nationalist football players – giving free rides to these shop-lifting basketball players.
So, yes, Chas Cornweller, I do “get it.”
How about you?
Paul Plante says
And while we are on that subject of our dear friend and colleague Chas Cornweller giving us a plenitude of existential things to have to think about in here, for which we all should be thankful, because where else will you find this conversation on-going, and it won’t be the New York Times or Washington Post I can tell you, I find myself being drawn to the prophetic nature of his final words above here, to wit:
And until we face that fact and discourse our shame and our grievances, we will continue to classify, alienate, and divide ourselves into smaller and smaller piles of do nothings.
end quotes
In what can only be called a Cosmic Confluence of Meaningful and Perhaps Extraordinary Events (CPMPEE), as our own Chas Cornweller was having those thoughts that led to him speaking those words, FOX NEWS had an article entitled “Antifa apocalypse? Anarchist group’s plan to overthrow Trump ‘regime’ starts Saturday” by Caleb Parke on 3 November 2017, which stated as follows:
Will the so-called “Antifa apocalypse” come with a bang or a whimper?
A series of anti-government, leftist rallies set to descend on major cities nationwide Saturday is drawing the attention of local officials, who, like the organizers themselves, fear the events could be hijacked by violent masked anarchists.
The left-wing “Refuse Fascism” group is using Nov. 4 as its kickoff for demonstrations in nearly two dozen U.S. cities, protests it says will continue “day after day and night after night ‘not stopping’ until our DEMAND is met.”
The “DEMAND” is the removal of President Trump and Vice President Pence.
The gatherings are being described as a kind of “Antifa apocalypse” on right-wing media, according to The Washington Post.
Several sites are expressing particular alarm about the loosely-defined left-leaning group, which preaches a version of ferocious anti-government chaos that often uses “domestic terrorist violence,” according to a recent FBI report.
end quotes
I would pause here to focus attention on the FBI report which states these alleged Democrat Party paramilitaries called the ANTIFA BRIGADE often use domestic terrorist violence.
Why do I pause here?
Because of Chas Cornweller’s statement about “until we face that fact and discourse our shame and our grievances, we will continue to classify, alienate, and divide ourselves into smaller and smaller piles of do nothings.”
I would come back and say to Chas Cornweller that it is these ANTIFAS who are attempting to turn people into do-nothings, through fear and intimidation.
Getting back to FOX:
The anarchist group, whose name comes from term “anti-fascist,” made news earlier this week for allegedly harassing a female reporter at Columbia University and for seven arrests at California State University, Fullerton, amid reports of head-punching and pepper-spraying.
“Tapping into movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Women’s March, Refuse Fascism said it hopes to protest non-stop, 24/7 “until this regime is driven from power.”
The organization is engaged with a broad coalition of groups, including the Revolutionary Communist Party – but says they are committed to a nonviolence stance.
Zee told The Washington Post his organization does “uphold the legal right to self-defense,” but that they “don’t initiate violence” and they “oppose violence.”
Previous instances of antifa violence have, however, been justified as “self-defense.”
end quote
Chas Cornweller, I refuse as an American citizen to stand with those people, and that does not make me a Trump supporter.
Getting back to FOX:
“Show this damn Trump and Pence regime that they do not rule over us,” one organizer said in a video posted on Facebook.
“Let us stand together, come together, and fight this regime on November fourth.”
“‘This Nightmare Must End’ captures how millions of people feel right now where you may face persecution or even death,” said Andy Zee, a member of the advisory board of Refuse Fascism, according to the Revolutionary Communist website.
Zee called for a “ferocious struggle” because “normal forms of petition (like protest as usual) DO NOT APPLY with Trump.”
Recently, several members shut down a Los Angeles highway with “Nov. 4 It Begins” signs in a show of “non-violent civil disobedience.”
Zee cites the pamphlet “The Coming Civil War,” by Bob Avakian, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party and architect of the new synthesis of communism, to point out why the group demands “the whole regime must go.”
end quotes
I found that reference to the Revolutionary Communist Party interesting, so I took some time and looked them up on the internet http://revcom.us/rcp/ where I found this:
Time To Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution
Message from the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA
The Revolutionary Communist Party IS ORGANIZING NOW TO OVERTHROW THIS SYSTEM AT THE SOONEST POSSIBLE TIME.
Preparing to lead an actual revolution to bring about a radically new and better society: the New Socialist Republic in North America.
May 16, 2016
end quote
Pretty dramatic stuff, that, and with Chas Cornweller’s recent talk of revolution in here, I got to thinking, wow, what if Chas Cornweller is part of this Revolutionary Communist Party, and how cool that would be if he was, because then we could get the inside story from him as to when the REVOLUTION is going down, and if this time, it will be televised.
And as Chas Cornweller was urging us to all get together to discourse our “shame” at being white Americans, which I will not do, because I think it is stupid, at the same time, FOX NEWS was reporting in the article “Anti-Trump protesters ‘scream helplessly at the sky’ to demonstrate on election anniversary” by Caleb Parke on 9 November 2017, as follows:
From helpless cries to primal screams, liberals protested the one-year anniversary of President Trump’s election by huddling together in public spaces and howling from sea to shining sea.
end quotes
Now, there, I must confess, is where Chas Cornweller loses me, because I neither huddle nor howl, and I sure do not want to find myself trapped in a crowd of people uttering helpless cries and primal screams to protest the one-year anniversary of President Trump’s election.
Getting back to FOX:
A year after Trump’s historic underdog win over Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, hundreds of anti-Trump protesters gathered in locales such as New York City’s Washington Square Park for an event urging attendees to “scream helplessly at the sky.”
Many attendees, at the end of a countdown, let out varied shouts, shrieks, screeches and yowls while standing in place, putting their heads back and crying out towards the sky.
end quotes
Was our Chas Cornweller there, one must wonder, with his own muzzle pointed skywards as he let out heart-rending shouts, shrieks, screeches and yowls while standing in place?
Is that what our Chas Cornweller is asking us to join into – getting together with a bunch of liberals to stand in place and let out varied shouts, shrieks, screeches and yowls while putting our heads back and crying out towards the sky?
If so, count me out, because that to me is about the weirdest thing I have heard people doing in this country to date, and as a combat veteran, I have an aversion to being too close to weird people doing weird things, because to me, they are dangerous and unpredictable.
You never know when the varied shouts, shrieks, screeches and yowls are going to suddenly turn to clashing teeth and snapping jaws as the mob goes berserk in its howling frenzy.
So, it is no wonder that Chas Cornweller is having trouble recruiting people to his cause, when they would have to join in with people like these:
The leftwing Refuse Fascism group, which is associated with the Revolutionary Communist Party, showed up with signs, drums and a host of chants.
“Who’s going to end this fascist nightmare?”
“We’re going to end this fascism nightmare,” members cheered.
“We are screaming in rage, we are screaming in pain, but we are screaming in unity and solidarity ’cause we have a plan and a way forward,” Eva Sahana, a Refuse Fascism organizer, told Patch.com.
About 30 anti-Trump activists in Eugene, Ore. took part in what they called “primal scream therapy” Tuesday, as reported by KLCC.
Philadelphia had a handful of screamers outside City Hall, a protest which concluded with chants of “F— Trump.”
“We don’t want to scream helplessly at the sky,” protest organizer Samantha Goldman told Philly.com.
“We want to scream like a pack of wolves [to bring down the administration].”
end quote
Memo to protest organizer Samantha Goldman: wolves do not scream, and you sound like an idiot saying that.
And who in their right mind, Chas Cornweller, wants stand with a bunch of howling idiots trying to tear down our government?
Do you?
Paul Plante says
And with the introduction of the Revolutionary Communist Party into the cast of characters in this long-running passion play started by football player Colin Kaepernick last year, in the “cause of blackness,” what ever in the end that might be, I want to take a moment to reiterate that when we are having a conversation or discussion in here, or anywhere for that matter, on the topic of “Social Justice,” what we are really talking about is a subset of what is known as “Political Philosophy,” which is the study of fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, liberty, justice and the enforcement of a legal code by authority.”
That is the framework which shapes the discussion – those fundamental questions about the state, government, politics, liberty, justice and the enforcement of a legal code by authority, especially with this Revolutionary Communist Party coming on the scene with a Statement from the Revolutionary Communist Party ON THE STRATEGY FOR REVOLUTION, as follows:
For those who have hungered for, who have dreamed of, a whole different world, without the madness and torment of what this system brings every day…those who have dared to hope that such a world could be possible…and even those who, up to now, would like to see this, but have accepted that this could never happen…there is a place and a role, a need and a means, for thousands now and ultimately millions to contribute to building this movement for revolution, in many different ways, big and small—with ideas and with practical involvement, with support, and with questions and criticisms.
Get together with our Party, learn more about this movement and become a part of it as you learn, acting in unity with others in this country, and throughout the world, aiming for the very challenging but tremendously inspiring and liberating—and, yes, possible—goal of emancipating all of humanity through revolution and advancing to a communist world, free of exploitation and oppression.
end quotes
Doesn’t that phrase – emancipating all of humanity through revolution and advancing to a communist world, free of exploitation and oppression – just tug at your heartstrings, people?
Isn’t that a cause to believe in, despite its being utopian?
So what if it is not real, let’s all go for it, anyway.
And that is utopianism, which I frankly am not into, as it is not achievable on this earth of ours, and utopias have never succeeded, because they are comprised of people who haven’t achieved the level of perfection a utopia demands for its sustainability.
But the people the Revolutionary Communist Party aims its message at don’t know that, and so, are easy to manipulate.
And that is a big part of Communism – psychological manipulation, which is a type of social influence that aims to change the behavior or perception of others through abusive, deceptive, or underhanded tactics.
By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at another’s expense, such methods could be considered exploitative, abusive, devious, and deceptive, but hey, when it comes to politics, which this most definitely is, who really cares?
The ends justify the means!
And that brings us right back to Political Philosophy, which asks these pertinent questions, to wit:
What is a government?
Why are governments needed?
What makes a government legitimate?
What rights and freedoms should a government protect?
What duties do citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any?
When may a government be legitimately overthrown, if ever?
end quotes
Clearly, with this call for revolution by the Revolutionary Communist Party, that last question is most definitely in play here, when may a government be legitimately overthrown, as can be seen from this following from the Revolutionary Communist Party website:
Without a revolutionary party, you can’t have a revolution
Making revolution against a powerful and vicious enemy—and going on from there to bring into being a whole new world, without exploitation and oppression—is an incredibly challenging and complex process.
Such a revolution requires leadership; it requires an organization with a sweeping vision, a scientific method to analyze reality and how to go about changing it, and serious discipline.
An organization that can awaken and unleash the revolutionary potential of the masses of people, direct their outrage against the real enemy, and loft their sights to the emancipation of all humanity.
An organization that can chart the path through the difficult twists and turns of the revolutionary process.
That organization is the revolutionary vanguard party.
Only with an organization such as this can the masses rise to the historic challenges, and win their emancipation.
The Revolutionary Communist Party, USA has taken on the responsibility to lead revolution in the U.S., the belly of the imperialist beast, as its principal share of the world revolution and the ultimate aim of communism.
This Party is built on and takes as its foundation the new synthesis of communism that has been brought forward through the body of work and method and approach of Bob Avakian.
Its members are united in their profound desire for a radically different and better world, and their understanding of the need for revolution to get to that world.
They have dedicated themselves wholeheartedly to revolution, and on the basis of that they channel their individual abilities and passions to the cause and needs of this revolution.
end quotes
And that in turn brings in the political philosophy questions of what is a government, why are governments needed, what makes a government legitimate, what rights and freedoms should a government protect, and what duties do citizens owe to a legitimate government, if any?
Which then brings us to the draft CONSTITUTION For The New Socialist Republic In North America from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, and its Preamble, which is exceedingly long and wordy, but starts as follows:
The New Socialist Republic in North America could only have been brought into being as a result of heroic, self-sacrificing struggle carried out by millions and millions of people who had been forced to live under a system of exploitation and oppression in the former United States of America; who could no longer tolerate the continual outrages and injustices perpetrated by the system of capitalism-imperialism and the structures and institutions of power and repression which enforced all this with violence and brutality as well as lies and deception; who refused to any longer accept that this was the best possible society and world, and were increasingly aware of and inspired by the possibility of a radically different and better society and world; and who therefore rose up, with the leadership of the Revolutionary Communist Party, to defeat, abolish and dismantle the imperialist system in the former USA and its institutions and apparatus of repression and violence.
At the same time, this new socialist state could only have resulted from a whole process of revolutionary work and struggle, in the realm of theory as well as practical-political activity, by the Revolutionary Communist Party, acting as the vanguard of the revolutionary process, to enable both the Party itself and growing numbers of broader masses to prepare for and then to seize on the emergence of a revolutionary situation, to defeat and dismantle the forces of the old, oppressive order, and establish the new socialist state.
In this whole process, the interaction and mutual reinforcement between the vanguard role of the Revolutionary Communist Party–with its theoretical basis in the science of communism and the further development of this science through the new synthesis brought forward by Bob Avakian–and the growing consciousness and increasingly determined struggle of masses of people, constitute a decisive element in the success of the revolution and the founding of the new, revolutionary socialist state.
The Constitution for the New Socialist Republic in North America continues and gives further expression and initiative, in the conditions of the new society, to the fundamental principles and motive forces that constitute the basis for the establishment of this new socialist state.
end quotes
WOW, and that is just the beginning!
For those familiar with Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” they will notice a strong similarity between the pigs in “Animal Farm” who were going to free all the other animals from oppression and the Revolutionary Communist Party.
With respect to “leadership,” in an essay entitled “Herman Cain, Booker T. Washington, and Barack Obama,” Bob Avakian, Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, has this to say about Barack Hussein Obama:
And then there is President Obama, who uses his “blackness” to help enforce and “justify” the “modern-day” enslavement of the masses of Black people, along with the deepening divide between the haves and have-nots, the violation of the environment, the robbing of the future from the youth, the wars, torture and assassinations, and other abominations carried out by the ruling class of this country, and its machinery of violent repression, death and destruction, all around the world as well as “at home.”
From Booker T. Washington to his “successors” today…from second-class servant of the system to actual or wannabe commander-in-chief…it’s all about perpetuating a capitalist-imperialist system based on exploitation and oppression—committing countless crimes against humanity.
The masses of people, and humanity as a whole, must and can do better.
end quotes
WOW, again, people, and there for a moment I will rest, but let me assure you, this bizarre drama started by Hillary Clinton denouncing all the white people in the United States of America as being racists is far from being over, as this excerpt http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1259820 from an editorial produced by the Revolutionary Communist Party team credentialed to cover the Democrat convention by the Democratic Party clearly shows:
The Communists, who for decades ran their own candidates for president and vice president but supported Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, don’t just like Hillary and Bernie.
The party also gave a big thumbs-up to Clinton’s running mate, Tim Kaine.
“He’s a great choice,” wrote staffer Larry Rubin on the first day of the convention.
“Everyone agrees: he’s a sincere, nice guy.”
“Amazing as it may seem, Barack Obama has dragged the entire Democratic Party so far leftward over the past seven-plus years that today’s Democratic Party has become almost indistinguishable from the Communist Party.”
end quotes
Sounds a lot like what I have been saying myself – yes, he has, and so they have willingly gone.
Stay tuned, more is yet to come!
Paul Plante says
And getting away from the Commies for a moment, and back onto the topic of social justice, which is an undefined term that can mean anything under the sun one wants it to mean, I recently asked Google this following question – “how many people in US are discriminated against” – and not surprisingly, the answer is just about everyone in this country.
For example, the Episcopal News Service has an article entitled “National poll finds discrimination prevalent in the United States – Perspectives vary widely by race, hope for the future remains” posted Nov 12, 2013, which informs us as follows:
A new national poll commissioned by the Episcopal Church has found that nearly all Americans (98 percent) feel that there is at least some discrimination in the United States today.
In addition, African-American respondents (49 percent) are three times as likely as white respondents (16 percent) and Hispanic respondents (11 percent) to feel there is a “great deal” of discrimination.
“Despite major reforms, our culture continues to perpetuate discrimination in various forms,” said Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.
end quotes
And how true that is, as I can personally attest as someone who has been subjected to intentional government discrimination and retaliation which was given the federal government stamp of approval in 2005 by then-2d Circuit Court of Appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor, now a Supreme Court Justice with lifetime tenure, thanks to Barack Hussein Obama and the Democrat party.
That, people, is government-sanctioned “Oppression,” which is the prolonged, unjust treatment or control of people, myself in this instance, by others, which include the Town of Poestenkill in New York state, the County of Rensselaer in the state of New York, the state of New York itself, and finally, the federal government.
So, yes, if “institutionalized oppression” is when “established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups,” then in my case, we most definitely have “institutionalized oppression” here in corrupt New York state under Democrat tyrant Young Andy Cuomo, who may well be running for president in 2020.
But enough about Young Andy and Sonia Sotomayor, for the moment.
Returning to that Episcopal News Service article, an important finding from that study which relates directly to what is being discussed in this thread on Social Justice is as follows:
Minority respondents in general feel that white Americans have gotten more, economically, than they deserve.
African-American (58 percent) and Hispanic (49 percent) respondents are more likely than white respondents (28 percent) to agree that white Americans have garnered more economically than they deserve.
end quote
More than they deserve, people?
That is a statement that needs to be seriously pondered over here for a moment, because it is directly related to comments made by both Chas Cornweller and Scott above here on the issue of housing.
In his comments, the Honorable Chas Cornweller stated:
You start with social injustices and end with slavery.
Which, by the way, under American law as written in 1821, was not considered a social injustice at all, but only by a handful of conscientious Americans.
But, had you a way-back machine, you could ask a black slave somewhere in Alabama, or Virginia or Georgia, how they feel about that law.
end quotes
It is now 2017 by my calendar, soon to be 2018. and here is our dear friend and colleague Chas Cornweller taking us all the way back to 1821 to make his case that black people in America today are being discriminated against, as if no time whatsoever had passed since 1821, but as we shall see, that is not the case at all.
As to Scott @ November 12, 2017 at 7:42 pm, what he adds to the discussion is as follows:
If you look at the history of institutionalized racist policies such as restrictive covenants and redlining, you will see that programs that were part of the New Deal, Fair Deal and yes, the G.I. Bill were essentially affirmative action for white males in that minorities were mostly left out of these programs.
end quotes
There Scott is referring to a practice known as “redlining.”
As Wikipedia tells us on the subject:
Although informal discrimination and segregation had existed in the United States, the specific practice called “redlining” began with the National Housing Act of 1934, which established the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).
end quotes
So, at least Scott has moved us forward in time to 1934, as opposed to 1821, but 1934 is still many years ago, people, and those practices from back then are no longer with us, that thanks to Democrat Bill Clinton when he was president and progressive Democrat Young Andy Cuomo as his HUD secretary.
As to “redlining,” Wikipedia tells us that in 1935, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) asked Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) to look at 239 cities and create “residential security maps” to indicate the level of security for real-estate investments in each surveyed city.
end quotes
Consider what is really be said there, people – “redlining” existed in 1935 to “protect investments” of taxpayer monies, and whether that was right or wrong or responsible or irresponsible is a value judgment with no concrete basis for anyone’s opinion, and since I was not alive back then, and hence was not privy to those discussions, I refrain today from having an opinion, either way..
Getting back to Scott:
According to an FHA report from 1947, homes owned by African-Americans were unlikely to maintain their value so therefore blacks couldn’t get loans.
end quotes
Okay.
And there is where Scott stops, in 1947, as if no time had passed since then, and as if nothing had changed with respect to federal housing programs for “minorities,” and there is where the comments of both Scott and Chas Cornweller in here become quite misleading, and frankly, intellectually dishonest, because as a number of sources tell us, in 1995, president Bill “BUBBA” Clinton loosened housing rules by rewriting the Community Reinvestment Act, which put added pressure on banks to lend in low-income neighborhoods.
For those unfamiliar with it, which list would seem to have to include Scott and Chas Cornweller and football player Colin Kaepernick, Wikipedia informs us as follows with respect to the Community Reinvestment Act:
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA, P.L. 95-128, 91 Stat. 1147, title VIII of the Housing and Community Development Act of 1977, 12 U.S.C. § 2901 et seq.) is a United States federal law designed to encourage commercial banks and savings associations to help meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.
Congress passed the Act in 1977 to reduce discriminatory credit practices against low-income neighborhoods, a practice known as redlining.
end quotes
Ah, yes, in 1977, people, the federal government took affirmative action to end discrimination in housing against minorities.
So why the silence on that from Chas Cornweller and Scott?
Because it destroys the fabric of their narrative, which is what this is really all about – the NARRATIVE, which is not the same as truth or reality.
And before I continue further on the Community Reinvestment Act, I want to close with this thought as we talk about social justice in this country for the black folks, and that thought concerns a gentleman of color, a black dude, in other words, or African-American, named Franklin Delano “Frank” Raines, born January 14, 1949, who is an American business executive and was the former chairman and chief executive officer of the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, who served as White House budget director under President Bill Clinton.
As we hear our dear friend and colleague Chas Cornweller telling us about all this discrimination from 1821 that is still with us today, how then does he explain the presence of a black dude named Franklin Delano “Frank” Raines as the chairman and chief executive officer of the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, who served as White House budget director under President Bill Clinton?
Paul Plante says
And that brings us back around to our dear friend and colleague Chas Cornweller and his comment above as follows:
You start with social injustices and end with slavery.
Which, by the way, under American law as written in 1821, was not considered a social injustice at all, but only by a handful of conscientious Americans.
end quotes
But that is really not true, at all, that only a handful of conscientious Americans considered slavery a social injustice, as can clearly be seen from Crito by Samuel Hopkins in the Providence Gazette and Country Journal thirty-four years earlier on October 06, 1787, as follows:
When the public, or any part of the community, are taking those measures or going into that practice, which may issue in ruin, and most certainly will, unless reformed; he who foresees the approaching evil cannot act a benevolent or faithful part, unless he gives warning of the danger, and does his utmost to reform and save his fellow-citizens, even though he should hereby incur the displeasure and resentment of a number of individuals.
In this view, Crito asks the candid attention of the public to what he has to say on the following interesting and important subject.
Some, perhaps, will not chuse to read any farther; but drop this paper with a degree of uneasy disgust, when they are told the subject to which their attention is asked is, The AFRICA SLAVE TRADE, which has been practiced and in which numbers in these United States are now actually engaged.
So much has been published within a few years past on this subject, describing the fertile country of Africa, and the ease and happiness which the natives of that land enjoy, and might enjoy to a yet greater degree, were it not for their own ignorance and folly, and the unhappy influence which the Europeans and Americans have had among them, inducing them to make war upon each other, and by various methods to captivate and kidnap their brethren and neighbours, and sell them into the most abject and perpetual slavery; and at the same time giving a well-authenticated history of this commerce in the human species, pointing out the injustice, inhumanity and barbarous cruelty of this trade, from beginning to end, until the poor Africans, are fixed in a state of the most cruel bondage, in which, without hope, they linger out a wretched life; and then leave their posterity, if they are so unhappy as to have any, in the same miserable state.
So much has been lately published, I say, on these subjects, that it is needless particularly to discuss them here.
It is sufficient to refer the inquisitive to the following books, viz.; Several tracts collected and published by the late Anthony Benezet, of Philadelphia; A Dialogue concerning the Slavery of the Africans, lately reprinted at New York, by order of the society here, for promoting the admission of slaves, and protecting such of them as have been or may be liberated; and especially, An Essay on the Slaves and Commerce of the Human Species, particularly the Africans, by Thomas Clarkson, which was honoured with the first prize in the University of Cambridge, for the year 1785.
If the African slave trade, and the consequent slavery of the Negroes in the West-Indies, and in the United States of America, be an open and gross violation of the rights of mankind, a most unrighteous, inhuman and cruel practice, which has been the occasion of the death of millions, and of violently forcing millions of others from their dear native country, and their most tender and desirable connexions, and of bringing them to a land of slavery, where they have not a friend to pity and relieve them, but are doomed to cruel bondage, without hope of redress, till kind death shall release them, as is represented, and seems to be abundantly proved in the above mentioned publications, and many others, a conviction of which is fast spreading among all ranks of men in Europe and America; then the following terrible consequence, which may well make all shudder and tremble who realize it, forces itself upon us, viz. all who have had any hand in this iniquitous business, whether more directly or indirectly, have used their influence to promote it, or have consented to it, or ever connived at it, and have not opposed it, by all proper exertions of which they have been capable; All these are, in a greater or less degree, chargeable with the injuries and miseries which millions have suffered, and are suffering, in consequence of this trade; and are guilty of the blood of millions who have lost their lives by this traffic of the human species!
end quotes
That is hardly a case of white people in America staying quiet about the evils of slavery, and our dear and honorable colleague, the illustrious Chas Cornweller, does us a grave disservice by trying to make us think otherwise, just because he does.
And then our dear friend and colleague Chas Cornweller goes on to say as follows:
But, had you a way-back machine, you could ask a black slave somewhere in Alabama, or Virginia or Georgia, how they feel about that law.
Because in all honesty Mr. Plante, that is what we are dealing with as Americans.
This is what Colin Kaepernick is trying to say.
The echo of those laws still reverberates.
The shame of ownership still carries on our (ALL our shoulders-if you call yourself American).
end quotes
I am herein declaring right now that I have no shame of ownership on my shoulders, and I do indeed call myself an American, and if I had a way-back machine, I would go back to just before the Civil War, and this is what I would find, because it actually did happen, despite our dear friend and compatriot Chas Cornweller being ignorant of it:
History of Troy, New York FROM LANDMARKS OF RENSSELAER COUNTY BY: GEORGE BAKER ANDERSON PUBLISHED BY D. MASON & CO. PUBLISHERS,
SYRACUSE, NY 1897 CHAPTER XVI. TROY AS A CITY.
Just before the opening of the War of the Rebellion a thrilling incident, one of many of a similar nature which occurred in various parts of the country, created a great sensation in the city.
In the spring of that year Charles Nalle, an escaped slave from Virginia, was employed as a coachman by Uri Gilbert.
Feeling secure in his new home he foolishly communicated to some of his newly formed acquaintances the fact that in the fall of 1858 he had become a fugitive.
His owner was informed of his whereabouts and in April, 1860, United States Deputy Marshal J. L. Holmes was given an order for the arrest of the fugitive.
Nalle was arrested on the 27th of the month and taken at once to the office of United States Commissioner Miles Beach, which was located on the second floor of the Mutual bank building on the corner of First and State streets.
Martin I. Townsend was immediately secured by friends of the prisoner to secure his release if possible.
While Mr. Townsend was preparing papers requisite for a writ of habeas corpus, the intention being to take Nalle before Justice George Gould of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, a crowd of spectators, including many colored persons, had gathered about the office of Commissioner Beach.
The story of Nalle’s flight from the land of slavery to a free State was pathetically told by one of his colored friends, and almost in the twinkling of an eye a plot was laid to liberate the captive from the hands of the officers of the law.
The excitement increasing with every moment, Chief of Police Timothy Quinn was ordered to send a large force of officers to the scene, with instructions to quell any signs of a disturbance as soon as they appeared.
The writ of habeas corpus secured by Lawyer Townsend was served upon Marshal Holmes at four p. M., the instrument directing the latter official to take the prisoner before Judge Gould at his office, No. 39 Congress street.
As the prisoner descended the stairs, in company with several officers, all were instantly surrounded by the crowd below and a number of colored men made a bold dash to take Nalle from his custodians.
In an instant all was confusion.
The mob kept the city policemen so far from the other officers as to prevent them from rendering any assistance.
A moment later Deputy Marshal Morgan S. Upham was torn from the prisoner, leaving the latter in the hands of Marshal Holmes.
The crowd then followed on to Congress street where, after a desperate fight, the prisoner was released and carried to the foot of Washington street.
Here he sprang upon a ferry boat and was taken to West Troy, where he was almost immediately captured and taken to the second story of a house near by.
The rescuers surmised that Nalle had not made good his escape, and within a brief space of time 300 of them captured the steam ferry boat and rushed to the rescue.
The temporary prison was taken by storm, despite the free use of pistols by the West Troy officers, and Nalle’s friends escorted him rapidly down Broadway, whence he jumped into a wagon that was in waiting and was carried westward far from the reach of the unsuccessful officers of the law.
After remaining for a while in the woods in the eastern part of Schenectady county he proceeded to Amsterdam.
In May he returned to Troy, his freedom having been purchased by his former employer, Uri Gilbert, and other citizens of Troy.
end quotes
That is the history I grew up with, helping escaped slaves, not making slaves of them, and I’ll be twice damned if I am going to feel at all ashamed by that.
But all of this throws a serious monkey-wrench into the gears of Chas Cornweller’s NARRATIVE, doesn’t it – that we all should be feeling this ridiculous “white guilt” of Hillary Clinton and her crowd of self-righteous prigs.
For helping the slaves to be free, I think some white pride is in order, so that is what I am going to feel.
And that takes us to Scott @ November 13, 2017 at 11:14 pm, where he says:
So finally, in the 60’s, a century after the Civil War, the Voting Rights and the Civil Acts were passed.
By this time the long term discrimination polices had left their mark.
Now the children’s children are left with a legacy of 400 years of oppression.
end quotes
That statement about 400 years of oppression caught my attention, because of a ranting screed by Bob Avakian, the leader of the coming Communist revolution here in the United States of what used to be America on February 10, 2017 in the Revolution Newspaper, wherein was stated as follows:
From the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party to ALL People:
What the Trump-Pence Regime Will Mean for Black People—And What Must Be Done About It, NOW!
Revolution Club Chicago can be contacted at:
(312) 804-9121
Revclub.chi@gmail.com
The Revolution Club opened a center on the Chicago South Side in late February.
The address is 1857 E 71st. Street. Chicago IL 60649.
Hours 3pm-7pm every day except Mondays.
Another center on the West Side is planned to open in June.
Chicago is infamous for the true horror of young Black people killing each other.
And now Chicago is ground zero for Trump’s overall offensive against Black people.
There’s no mystery why these heartbreaking murders go on.
A whole section of youth, numbering in the millions, are told by the system they’re worth nothing in 1,000 ways.
Living in torn-up communities with no future.
Given no way to be somebody outside of the street life and the code of revenge.
The latest link in a chain stretching back 400 years.
end quotes
Ah, yes, 400 years, which is the same 400 years Scott is telling us about.
Is Scott then preaching the Revolutionary Communist Party line here, one must wonder?
And given that I know black people who got out of Chicago to make their lives elsewhere as functioning members of a multi-ethnic society such as we have here in the United States of America, I think what revolution leader Bob Avakian is preaching there is pure horse****, plain and simple, but the people this Bob Avakian is pitching that line to won’t know the difference, and that is where his message gains its strength, from the ignorance of his listeners.
The man is a skilled demagogue, that must be admitted
As to his demagoguery, which then fuels the rage of the ignorant among us like football player Colin Kaepernick, it continues as follows:
Now comes Trump.
The stone-cold racist claims he will “fix” the problem.
He promises jobs.
In reality, his agents will dole out a few jobs… to buy people as his enforcers.
Trump will pull more Black people into the oppressor army to kill off other oppressed people.
Trump and Pence will basically destroy the public schools and send the students to schools that train them as Christian fundamentalist robots, unable to think critically or resist.
But the sharp edge of Trump’s program is “sending in the feds to restore law and order.”
In reality, this means that the masses of Black people will have no rights whatsoever.
The police will be unleashed to kill even more people and crush all resistance.
The fascist regime will fill the prisons even fuller, far fuller.
The regime will use its lackeys to spy on, confuse, divide and crush those who say NO.
end quote
As demagoguery goes, people, that is really some high-flying stuff there, but the dude is on a roll, so it does not stop there, not by a long shot:
That is their plan.
And there’s a reason for this plan.
For centuries, Black people have caught the hardest hell in America.
But they have also been a powerful force that called America out and fought it, that created something way different right in the belly of this ugly beast.
When Black people stand up against this system, they inspire others to open their eyes and also stand up, and it begins to call the whole thing into question.
We’ve seen it these past few years in the struggle against the murder of Black and Latino people by the police.
Try as he might for the system he served, Obama could not cool that out.
So Trump whipped up a racist reaction as part of his “Make America White Again” campaign and rode it to power.
Trump now aims to once and for all wipe out the struggle of Black people against their oppression as a people, and what’s been forged through that.
Worse still: to divide and degrade people, and turn them against each other in ways not yet seen.
And if it comes to that, mass roundups, camps and worse.
When Trump says “Make America Great Again” he means fascism.
Reinstating open white supremacy within America.
But also: running amok all over the world, madly risking catastrophic nuclear war.
Forcibly slamming women “back into their place.”
Persecuting Muslims and immigrants, and gay and trans people.
Fascism means taking away legal and political rights altogether, and putting dissenters into prison or worse.
We Need A Revolution!
end quotes
So there you have it, for the moment anyway – there is what football player Colin Kaepernick is taking the knee about – that spew of horse**** by leader of the coming Communist Revolution Bob Avakian,
As to Avakian, Wikipedia tells us under the heading “Avakian’s cult of personality” as follows:
The RCP has said that there are two mainstays of its work: the role of the party press and building a culture of “appreciation, promotion and popularization” of Bob Avakian and his body of work, method, and approach, “along with a whole ensemble of Communist work which is necessary to the bringing forward of a revolutionary people—including building “massive political resistance to the main ways in which, at any given time, the exploitative and oppressive nature of this system is concentrated in the policies and actions of the ruling class and its institutions and agencies” and solving the problems of how to involve the masses in “meaningful revolutionary work””.
Others have charged that the RCP has created a cult of personality around Avakian, with dissenting voices driven from the organization.
The RCP has countered that over the period of the 1980s and 1990s two parties developed within the organization, representing two fundamentally opposed roads.
One, represented by the “official” line of the Party and concentrated in the new synthesis Bob Avakian was championing, and expressed in the Party’s newspaper (the Revolutionary Worker, now Revolution).
The other, opposed the new synthesis and revolutionary-communist line, was becoming predominant on all levels of the Party, and “objectively, [this] amounted to abandoning the outlook and aims of the communist revolution, accommodating to the system of imperialism and settling for, at most, reforms within this horrific system.”
end quotes
All of that notwithstanding, the question in my mind right now is will the revolution be televised this time?
Does anyone out there have a clue?
Paul Plante says
Yes, people, demagogues.
In the chapter ON DEMAGOGUES in “The American Democrat” by James Fenimore Cooper in 1838, the author had this to say about the breed:
The peculiar office of a demagogue is to advance his own interests, by affecting a deep devotion to the interests of the people.
Sometimes the object is to indulge malignancy, unprincipled and selfish men submitting but to two governing motives, that of doing good to themselves, and that of doing harm to others.
end quotes
Focus on those words – “advance his own interests.”
In an article by Chris Hedges on May 4, 2009, he stated as follows concerning demagogues in our national politics in this country:
Those who do not understand what is happening around them and who are overwhelmed by a brutal reality they did not expect or foresee search desperately for saviors.
They beg demagogues to come to their rescue.
end quotes
So we had Barack Hussein Obama and now we have Donald Trump, and Hillary Clinton, who indeed is a demagogue, and this Bob Avakian, who is the leader of the coming Communist revolution in this country, which may or may not be televised, apparently depending of who get the movie rights and such other business details – because those who do not understand what is happening around them and who are overwhelmed by a brutal reality they did not expect or foresee had searched desperately for saviors, and so, they begged those demagogues to come to their rescue.
Getting back to Chris Hedges and political philosophy. of which the topic “social justice” is a subset:
Acting, politics and sports have become, as they were during the reign of Nero, interchangeable.
In an age of images and entertainment, in an age of instant emotional gratification, we do not seek reality.
Reality is complicated.
Reality is boring.
We are incapable or unwilling to handle its confusion.
We ask to be indulged and comforted by clichés, stereotypes and inspirational messages that tell us we can be whoever we seek to be, that we live in the greatest country on Earth, that we are endowed with superior moral and physical qualities, and that our future will always be glorious and prosperous, either because of our own attributes, or our national character, or because we are blessed by God.
Truth is irrelevant.
Those who succeed in politics, as in most of the culture, are those who create the brands and pseudo-events that offer the most convincing fantasies.
A public that can no longer distinguish between truth and fiction is left to interpret reality through illusion.
Random facts or obscure bits of data and trivia are used to bolster illusion and give it credibility or are discarded if they interfere with the message.
The worse reality becomes – the more, for example, foreclosures and unemployment skyrocket – the more people seek refuge and comfort in illusions.
When opinions cannot be distinguished from facts, when there is no universal standard to determine truth in law, in science, in scholarship, or in reporting the events of the day, when the most valued skill is the ability to entertain, the world becomes a place where lies become true, where people can believe what they want to believe.
end quotes
Such an accurate description of where we now are in this country, that last sentence.
The world indeed has become a place where lies become true and where people can believe what they want to believe, because opinions can no longer be distinguished from facts, and as then-federal 2d Circuit Court of Appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor proved conclusively in 2005, there is no longer a universal standard to determine truth in law, in science, in scholarship, or in reporting the events of the day, and the most valued skill has become the ability to entertain.
That, of course, is the forte of Donald Trump – the ability to entertain.
As to the times we have now entered into, whether any of us like it or not, Chris Hedges differentiated these times from a past some of us once knew, as follows:
The old production-oriented culture demanded what the historian Warren Susman termed character.
The new consumption-oriented culture demands what he called personality.
The shift in values is a shift from a fixed morality to the artifice of presentation.
end quotes
A massive shift in values is what we older people are witnessing in America today.
And that takes us back to Robert Bruce “Bob” Avakian, born March 7, 1943, who is an American political activist and Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP).
As to who he is, since we all have a good grasp on the other demagogues Trump, Obama, and Hillary Clinton, Wikipedia tells us thusly:
As a young man, Avakian became involved with the Students for a Democratic Society at Berkeley, the Free Speech Movement and the Black Panther Party.
In 1968, he wrote articles for the Peace and Freedom Party’s publications and in July 1969, he attended the Black Panther conference in Oakland, California.
In the early 1970s, Avakian served time in jail for desecrating the American flag during a demonstration.
He was charged with assaulting a police officer in January 1979 at a demonstration in Washington DC to protest Deng Xiaoping’s meeting with Jimmy Carter.
After receiving an arrest warrant, Avakian “jumped bail” and fled to France.
In 1980, he gave a speech to 200 protestors in downtown Oakland and his police assault charges were dropped a few years later.
end quotes
So we can see from that, that the dude is indeed a national league player in a class with other demagogues such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama, and consequently, he is not somebody to be considered a lightweight when it comes to national politics in the USA.
With respect to Avakian being a political heavy hitter in a class with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Wikipedia tells us that in 2005, Avakian published an autobiography called “From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist,” and he has been the Revolutionary Communist Party’s central committee chairman and national leader since 1979, and with respect to today, in 2016 Avakian founded Refuse Fascism, an organization opposed to the presidency of Donald Trump.
So with those street creds as a demagogue, a political leader who seeks support by appealing to popular desires and prejudices rather than by using rational argument, with such synonyms as rabble-rouser, agitator, political agitator, soapbox orator, firebrand, fomenter, and especially provocateur, we, the people, would be wise to heed his following words on February 10, 2017 in the Revolution Newspaper, wherein was stated as follows:
From the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party to ALL People:
What the Trump-Pence Regime Will Mean for Black People—And What Must Be Done About It, NOW!
There is the potential for something of unprecedented beauty to arise out of unspeakable ugliness: Black people playing a crucial role in putting an end, at long last, to this system which has, for so long, not just exploited but dehumanized, terrorized and tormented them in a thousand ways—putting an end to this in the only way it can be done—by fighting to emancipate humanity, to put an end to the long night in which human society has been divided into masters and slaves, and the masses of humanity have been lashed, beaten, raped, slaughtered, shackled and shrouded in ignorance and misery.
end quotes
Now, that is some powerful rhetoric there, is it not?
Getting back to the Avakian sermon or harangue, his long and tedious piece of admonition and reproof of the Trump administration:
We have the method and strategy to understand the world and see the revolution through to victory.
BA has authored a Constitution for a new socialist society—a society that will be far better than this, on the road to a truly communist world without exploitation and any kind of oppression.
There’s organization in the Revolutionary Communist Party that is the backbone of this.
Right now, the revolution must join with all different kinds of people of many viewpoints to drive out the Trump-Pence fascist regime, before it’s too late.
end quotes
Now, that is an interesting statement given this dude Avakian’s history – right now, the revolution must join with all different kinds of people of many viewpoints to drive out the Trump-Pence fascist regime.
But what about tomarrow, people, because tomarrow always does come, especially in partisan politics in this country?
What happens to all those “different kinds of people of many viewpoints” when the Trump-Pence fascist regime is finally driven out, and all those “different kinds of people of many viewpoints” become expendable and in the way of the ambition of Robert Bruce “Bob” Avakian, the American political activist and Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP)?
Do they then get purged in a scenario reminiscent of the “Hundred Flowers Campaign,” also termed the Hundred Flowers Movement, which was a period in 1956 in the People’s Republic of China during which the Communist Party of China (CPC) encouraged its citizens to openly express their opinions of the communist regime, after which Chairman Mao used this to oppress those who challenged the communist regime by using force?
The crackdown continued through 1957 as an Anti-Rightist Campaign against those who were critical of the regime and its ideology and those targeted were publicly criticized and condemned to prison labor camps.
Is that the future promised us in this country by Robert Bruce “Bob” Avakian, the American political activist and Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA (RCP)?
Is that a future that we really want, or need?
What say you, America?
The candid world would like to know.
Paul Plante says
So, people, think about it – should we really be surprised in this day and age to see world communism knocking on our door here, trying to foment an uprising of the black folks and the “people of color” in this country to aid the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, which has taken on the responsibility to lead revolution in the U.S., the belly of the imperialist beast, as its principal share of the world revolution and the ultimate aim of communism, in fulfilling its goal of overthrowing our Republican frame of government to replace it with a repressive Communist frame of government from straight out of Orwell’s “Animal Farm” or Stalinist Russia?
In an age of demagogues and messiahs, should we be at all surprised to hear that this Revolutionary Communist Party which is becoming conflated with the Democrat Party in this country, is built on and takes as its foundation the new synthesis of communism that has been brought forward through the body of work and method and approach of Bob Avakian, who gained Messiah status among the Commies by serving time in jail for desecrating the American flag during a demonstration in the early 1970s, and for being charged with assaulting a police officer in January 1979 at a demonstration in Washington DC?
And that answer is clearly no, in this day and age, we should not be surprised, at all, to see that not only are the Commies here, for they have been here for a long time, actually, going back at least as far as the American Civil War, but that they are actually becoming so main stream and powerful as they have recently become, especially out in Berkeley, California.
In CHAPTER XIV of his “THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC: ITS CONSTITUTION, TENDENCIES, AND DESTINY.,” entitled POLITICAL TENDENCIES, written in 1866 at the close of the Civil War, the author, O. A. Brownson, had this to say on the subject, to wit:
The tendency to individualism has been sufficiently checked by the failure of the rebellion, and no danger from the disintegrating element, either in the particular State or in the United States, is henceforth to be apprehended.
But the tendency in the opposite direction may give the American state some trouble.
The tendency now is, as to the Union, consolidation, and as to the particular state, humanitarianism, socialism, or centralized democracy.
end quotes
That was in 1866; today, in 2017, this is what we hear from the Revolutionary Communist Party on the subjects of socialism and centralized democracy in this country:
Its members are united in their profound desire for a radically different and better world, and their understanding of the need for revolution to get to that world.
They have dedicated themselves wholeheartedly to revolution, and on the basis of that they channel their individual abilities and passions to the cause and needs of this revolution.
end quotes
And to get a better feel for what the Revolution is really going to be all about, for those of us who are not card-carrying members of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, let us for the moment peruse this bit of expostulation from Communist Party Messiah Bob Avakian on the subject of “Trump vs. Clinton: Criminal Choices of a Criminal System – We Need to Overthrow, Not Vote For, This System!,” updated August 16, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us, where we are informed as follows:
The Deadly Logic of the Lesser Evil
We had to vote for Obama and the Democrats, we were told, to put a stop to the great harm that was being done by George W. Bush and the Republicans.
But did voting for Obama, and having Obama as president, prevent the fascism that has increasingly characterized the Republican Party from reaching a dangerously new level with the Trump candidacy?
Obviously not.
But why not?
Because Obama and the Democrats, as well as Trump and the Republicans, are products and representatives of the same system of capitalism-imperialism, and that system has its fundamental dynamics and ways it has to function, which mean that anyone who rises to the top of that system must continually commit crimes against humanity.
Funneling good sentiments and intentions into voting for Democrats, time after time—accepting and “validating” the logic and assumptions of this system, rather than opposing the whole system and its endless crimes, presided over by both Democrats and Republicans—has made people complicit with these crimes and has contributed to the situation we are in, where an overt, undisguised fascist candidacy, embodied in Trump, is contending seriously to assume the leadership of this system, and it is now being insisted that only voting for Clinton, who is guilty of many despicable and monstrous crimes against humanity herself, can stop Trump and what he represents.
As for the argument, “Well, yes, Clinton is not what we really want, she is actually quite bad, but she is ‘the lesser evil,’ and there are realistically only two choices—either Clinton or Trump—so if you don’t go for Clinton you are helping elect Trump,” this actually amounts to nothing more than the argument that, “As long as you accept the logic and ‘choices’ dictated by this system, you have to accept the logic and ‘choices’ dictated by this system.”
Doesn’t the fact that this system has produced someone like Trump as a “legitimate” candidate, heading one of the two major political parties of this system—doesn’t this powerfully demonstrate the utter illegitimacy of the whole system?
And the fact that Clinton and the Democrats will only oppose Trump with arguments that amount to insisting that they are better representatives of this same system, and can do a better job of perpetrating its crimes—doesn’t this powerfully demonstrate the urgent need to break with the logic and assumptions of this system and rise up against it and those who represent it, including Clinton as well as Trump?
August 1, 2016
end quotes
There, people, in 2016, was the siren song of the Revolutionary Communist Party that reaches out to the masses in the country very well expressed, and now, a year and three months later, the Revolutionary Communist Party remains on the ascendant because of that message, as we were only recently informed in a FOX NEWS article entitled “Antifa apocalypse? Anarchist group’s plan to overthrow Trump ‘regime’ starts Saturday” by Caleb Parke on 3 November 2017, which stated as follows:
Will the so-called “Antifa apocalypse” come with a bang or a whimper?
A series of anti-government, leftist rallies set to descend on major cities nationwide Saturday is drawing the attention of local officials, who, like the organizers themselves, fear the events could be hijacked by violent masked anarchists.
The left-wing “Refuse Fascism” group is using Nov. 4 as its kickoff for demonstrations in nearly two dozen U.S. cities, protests it says will continue “day after day and night after night ‘not stopping’ until our DEMAND is met.”
The “DEMAND” is the removal of President Trump and Vice President Pence.
end quotes
They don’t like Trump, and let’s face it, the dude is hard to like, but in the United States of America, under our present Constitution which I swore an oath to defend, American presidents are not removed from office by mobs who don’t like them.
Getting back to FOX:
The anarchist group, whose name comes from term “anti-fascist,” made news earlier this week for allegedly harassing a female reporter at Columbia University and for seven arrests at California State University, Fullerton, amid reports of head-punching and pepper-spraying.
“Tapping into movements like Occupy Wall Street and the Women’s March, Refuse Fascism said it hopes to protest non-stop, 24/7 “until this regime is driven from power.”
The organization is engaged with a broad coalition of groups, including the Revolutionary Communist Party – but says they are committed to a nonviolence stance.
Zee told The Washington Post his organization does “uphold the legal right to self-defense,” but that they “don’t initiate violence” and they “oppose violence.”
Previous instances of antifa violence have, however, been justified as “self-defense.”
“Show this damn Trump and Pence regime that they do not rule over us,” one organizer said in a video posted on Facebook.
“Let us stand together, come together, and fight this regime on November fourth.”
“‘This Nightmare Must End’ captures how millions of people feel right now where you may face persecution or even death,” said Andy Zee, a member of the advisory board of Refuse Fascism, according to the Revolutionary Communist website.
Zee called for a “ferocious struggle” because “normal forms of petition (like protest as usual) DO NOT APPLY with Trump.”
Recently, several members shut down a Los Angeles highway with “Nov. 4 It Begins” signs in a show of “non-violent civil disobedience.”
Zee cites the pamphlet “The Coming Civil War,” by Bob Avakian, the Chairman of the Revolutionary Communist Party and architect of the new synthesis of communism, to point out why the group demands “the whole regime must go.”
end quotes
So, there we have it, people, according to the Revolutionary Communist Party, “the whole regime must go,” which makes these exciting times we are now living in, indeed, for never before in my lifetime have the Communists held this much political power in this country where they can now demand the removal of an American president from office because that president does not meet with their approval.
Will they actually succeed?
Stay tuned, and soon we will know for sure.
Paul Plante says
And getting away from the Commies and their coming REVOLUTION for the moment, anyway, since the Commies who are intent on REVOLUTION in this country are not going away any time soon, I would like to go back to the beginning of this thread, where I stated as follows:
In response, I would like to assure Mr. Charles Taylor that I have done plenty of “digging” on the subject, starting last year in fact, when San Francisco 49s quarterback Colin Kaepernick first “took the knee” before a preseason game in late August 2016, stating at that time, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color,” where “oppression” is defined as “prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control,” or “the state of being subject to unjust treatment or control,” or “mental pressure or distress,” which logically leads to the question, does the “country,” which is the United States of America, really oppress black people and people of color, who are defined as “a person who is not white or of European parentage,” given that we just had a black man as president in this country and another black man as its attorney general?
end quote
It is that question that I would like to address, does the “country,” which is the United States of America, really oppress black people and people of color, this in the light of these two August 1, 2016 statements from the Revolutionary Communist Party, USA, which party is presently engaged in an ideological struggle in this country for political supremacy for socialism leading to Communism in this country, to wit:
Doesn’t the fact that this system has produced someone like Trump as a “legitimate” candidate, heading one of the two major political parties of this system—doesn’t this powerfully demonstrate the utter illegitimacy of the whole system?
And the fact that Clinton and the Democrats will only oppose Trump with arguments that amount to insisting that they are better representatives of this same system, and can do a better job of perpetrating its crimes—doesn’t this powerfully demonstrate the urgent need to break with the logic and assumptions of this system and rise up against it and those who represent it, including Clinton as well as Trump?
end quote
Notice that the Commies are talking about a “system” that is oppressing people that they are going to rise up against, not the “nation,” as football player Colin Kaepernick would have us believe is doing the oppressing.
And the important point here is that the “system” which is oppressing people, me being one of them, is NOT the “nation,” nor can it be conflated with the nation, although in truth, it is that “system” which has charge of the nation’s affairs, so it is easy to see how one could try to conflate them.
As to that oppressive “system” the Commies want to overturn, at p.210 of “Miracle At Philadelphia – The Story of the Constitutional Convention May to September 1787” by Catherine Drinker Bowen, we are given an apt description of it as follows:
Patrick Henry boomed his alarums over the tyranny to be exercised by a supreme government in this ten miles square.
Luther Martin in the Maryland legislature referred ominously to “the seat of empire.”
Governor Clinton of New York – friend of Lansing and Yates, enemy of Hamilton – wrote, under the name of Cato, diatribes to the New York Journal concerning the ten miles square.
The court of the president would be held there, said Clinton.
In this place, men would see all the vices of princely courts: “ambition with idleness, baseness with pride, the thirst of riches without labor …. flattery …. treason …. perfidy; but above all the perpetual ridicule of virtue.”
end quotes
There is what we now have in Washington, D.C., and that is what the Commies want to rise up against – all those vices of princely courts we now see exhibited in Washington, D.C. the federal city – ambition with idleness, baseness with pride, the thirst of riches without labor, flattery, treason, perfidy; but above all the perpetual ridicule of virtue.
The question is as to their methods of rising up against that oppressive system, as Communism itself is an oppressive, repressive political system as we were once taught in this country when I was young, before Communism became mainstream in American politics as it is today, especially in the U.S. Senate, where Democrat Charley “CHUCK” Schumer, the most powerful Democrat of them all, is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Democratic Socialists of America, as we are told in the GOTHAMIST article entitled “New Yorkers Put Schumer On Blast: ‘Stand Up Or Get Out Of The Way’” by Raphael Pope-Sussman on February 1, 2017, as follows:
Hundreds of New Yorkers braved freezing temperatures Tuesday night on Brooklyn’s Grand Army Plaza at a rally calling upon U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to take a firm stand against the Trump administration.
Hae-Lin Choi, of the Democratic Socialists of America and Resist Trump NY, took the stage first, announcing herself as an immigrant and telling the crowd why organizers had called for the protest.
“Senator Schumer must be bold and stand with the working class,” she cried over the loudspeaker.
“He has to champion the resistance or get out of the way and we’ll find someone that will.”
end quote
As to who the Democratic Socialists of America are in this drama coming to us from the TEN MILES SQUARE known today as Washington, D.C., we can learn about them from this on-line publication http://www.dsausa.org/resistance_rising_socialist_strategy_in_the_age_of_political_revolution to wit:
Resistance Rising: Socialist Strategy in the Age of Political Revolution
Posted by William Thompson on 06.25.16
A summary of Democratic Socialists of America’s Strategy Document – June 2016
2016 was a game changing year for leftists and progressives.
We are finally reemerging as a vital and powerful force after an extended period of stagnation and demoralization, and we face a political landscape more favorable than perhaps at any time since the 1960s.
end quotes
It is interesting that when I joined the United States Army in 1968, this is what was stated about Communism back then at p.4 of the U.S. ARMY SOLDIER’S HANDBOOK for 1968:
Today, Communism is the major threat to our Nation.
This threat is the primary reason for the Army to constantly train men as part of the U.S. fighting force.
Your training and eventual performance of duty with a unit is a vital part of this Nation’s defense.
end quotes
How the times have changed between then and now is all I can think.
Getting back to the Democratic Socialists of America’s Strategy Document – June 2016, in the section “Challenges Facing the Left and Progressive Movements,” we have as follows:
Yet we must not overstate the strength of progressive and leftist politics today, and likewise we must not understate the extent of the challenges that lie before us.
While a new wave of social movement organizing appears to be underway, and while younger people especially are increasingly open to radical alternatives, the Left and progressive movements remain weak.
Today we celebrate more the possibility of political openings than the achievement of significant concrete gains.
Beyond our relative lack of resources, the structural barriers placed in our path by the nature of the U.S. political system and the extraordinary power of individualist ideology to undermine collective action, Leftists and progressives face a groundswell of racist and antiimmigrant political organization — represented most dramatically by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
As the life prospects of many white people in the 99% continue to decline, and as demographic tides shift steadily toward a United States in which people of color constitute a majority, this reactionary organizing is likely to grow ever more serious.
end quotes
That last sentence takes us back to the substance of these football protests, where these black football players are refusing to stand to honor a symbol of what they see as HONKY OPPRESSION, when in fact, it is not the flag at all that is doing the oppressing, it is the Democrats and Republicans, neither of whom are the “nation.”
As to the coming REVOLUTION, the Democratic Socialists of America’s Strategy Document – June 2016 continues as follows:
Despite these challenges, once in a generation opportunities currently exist for taking the offensive and launching an assertive anti-capitalist politics in the United States.
The most difficult — and most important — question that remains, is how, specifically, to make democratic socialist politics a force to be reckoned with in rural communities, towns, cities and states across the country in the coming years.
end quotes
That is a difficult question for them, because historically, it was in rural communities, towns, cities and states across the country, democratic socialist politics were a force to be reckoned with, with resistance.
And so we can have a better feel for all the actors in this on-going drama of ours, the Democratic Socialists of America’s Strategy Document – June 2016 provides us with the following question to ponder as we consider what the future of this nation is going to be, and who will be in control of that future:
Before addressing this question, however, we turn first to a no less fundamental issue: what is democratic socialism, and why do we place our hope for a better, more egalitarian and humane future in this seemingly abstract ideal?
end quotes
Yes, why, indeed, so let’s go back and see what they have to say for themselves on that score:
Democratic Socialism as Radical Democracy
DSA believes that the fight for democratic socialism is one and the same as the fight for radical democracy, which we understand as the freedom of all people to determine all aspects of their lives to the greatest extent possible.
Our vision entails nothing less than the radical democratization of all areas of life, not least of which is the economy.
Under capitalism we are supposed to take for granted that a small, largely unaccountable group of corporate executives should make all fundamental decisions about the management of a company comprised of thousands of people.
This group has the power to determine how most of us spend the lion’s share of our waking hours, as well as the right to fire anyone for basically any reason, no matter how arbitrary.
Under democratic socialism, this authoritarian system would be replaced with economic democracy.
This simply means that democracy would be expanded beyond the election of political officials to include the democratic management of all businesses by the workers who comprise them and by the communities in which they operate.
Very large, strategically important sectors of the economy — such as housing, utilities and heavy industry — would be subject to democratic planning outside the market, while a market sector consisting of worker-owned and -operated firms would be developed for the production and distribution of many consumer goods.
In this society, large-scale investments in new technologies and enterprises would be made on the basis of maximizing the public good, rather than shareholder value.
A democratic socialist society would also guarantee a wide range of social rights in order to ensure equality of citizenship for all.
Vital services such as health care, child care, education (from pre-K through higher education), shelter and transportation would be publicly provided to everyone on demand, free of charge.
Further, in order to ensure that the enjoyment of full citizenship was not tied to ups and downs in the labor market, everyone would also receive a universal basic income — that is, a base salary for every member of society, regardless of the person’s employment status.
Finally, the work week would be gradually reduced and vacation time would be expanded to guarantee that everyone in society benefited from increasingly efficient technologies that decrease the overall amount of labor needed in the economy (and also to ensure that all who wish to find employment are able to do so).
Economic democracy would be complemented in the political sphere by a new system that combined an overhauled form of representative democracy (our current system) with direct democracy, a system in which individuals participate directly in the making of political decisions that affect them.
In this system, the Senate (an extremely unrepresentative political body in which states with very small populations have the same level of representation as the most populous states) would be abolished, and a system of proportional representation would be established so that Congress actually reflects the political will of the electorate.
end quotes
And there for the moment, with that last statement of theirs about “reforming” our
federal Constitution to reflect their values, is where I will rest.
But stay tuned, as this passion play is far from over, so don’t touch that dial!
Paul Plante says
And stepping away from the Democratic Socialists of America’s Strategy Document – June 2016 for just a moment, above here, I asked this very pertinent question, to wit:
If institutionalized oppression is when “established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups,” does the United States of America, the “country” that football player Colin Kaepernick says “oppresses black people and people of color,” does the United States of America then have “established laws, customs, and practices” that systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups such as black people and people of color, or is that really just some horse**** Colin Kaepernick dreamed up to get his name in the newspapers?
end quotes
Now, since I have never been black, I cannot claim, and therefore, do not claim that the United States of America has “established laws, customs, and practices” that systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups such as black people and people of color, but as a white person in a targeted social group in the State of New York, and this is thanks to a decision by now-U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor in 2005 when she was a circuit judge in the federal 2d Circuit Court of Appeals which made me into a modern-day Dred Scott, someone not human and therefore, not a citizen with rights, I can state that yes, there are federally-condoned “established laws, customs, and practices” in the State of New York and its political subdivisions that intentionally produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups, such as those of us who stand up to government corruption and injustice.
A case in point is this e-mail I sent today to the supervisor of the corrupt town in the Stat e of New York I happen to presently reside in as a disabled Viet Nam war veteran:
30 NOVEMBER 2017
Dominic Jacangelo
Town Supervisor
Town of Poestenkill
Poestenkill Town Hall
38 Davis Drive
Poestenkill, NY 12140
RE: Extortion attempt and intimidation by person claiming to be a town employee acting under your direction
Dear Mr. Jacangelo:
As the Town Supervisor, you act as the Chief Executive Officer of the town, and as such, you are responsible for the day to day operations with the exception of those matters handled by Highway Superintendent or the Town Clerk.
Simply put, the buck stops at your desk, and the buck that is stopping there right now is thus:
At about 10:45 A.M. this morning, I was standing outside of the dwelling I reside in, and where I am recuperating from a recent hospital stay for a life-threatening abdominal infection, on private property, when I saw what looked to be a Nissan pick-up truck pulling in my driveway.
After parking some ways back from where I was standing, out from the vehicle came a person in what I would call work clothes, advancing towards me in what I would characterize as a very threatening swagger.
I must admit that as he came closer, I became quite fearful for my safety, as there was something very definitely wrong with his eyes, like they were glazed.
Without showing any identification, he told me his name was Paul Berringer, that he was the town building inspector, and that he had been sent by you to shut down the winterizing work being done on the structure I reside in, where I am convalescing in what was a state of peace until what I perceived to be a dangerous lunatic showed up in my driveway this morning and started bullying me with threats and false accusations, while trying to extort money from me to get him off my back, or he threatened to be there Tuesday coming with police to lock me out of my place of sanctuary in the cold.
Should he attempt that, I intend to have police officers there to arrest him for harassment and intimidation and attempted extortion, and in fact, this morning, there were two police officers there at the time this person was threatening me, and they grew quite concerned, as they should have in this day and age of lunatics and maniacs going around killing police officers, when this person saying you sent him there stopped his vehicle in front of the dwelling, and started taking pictures of them, as if he was a lunatic going to sniper them.
That, Mr. Supervisor, is a capsule summary of what kind of day to day operation you set in motion today as the Chief Executive Officer of the town, responsible for the day to day operations in the Town of Poestenkill.
If in another day to day operation come next Tuesday, you attempt to have me thrown out of my abode into the cold, I can assure you that there will indeed be plenty of witnesses, including the police officers who were there this morning when the person saying he was your lackey came to threaten me where I am recovering my health, and we will see where that attempt at intimidation lands you.
So there you have it, Mr. Supervisor, this buck does indeed stop with you!
Sincerely,
end quote
The complaint which triggered that act or intimidation, repression, oppression and and retaliation is as follows:
21 NOVEMBER 2017
Nancy M. Baker
Regional Permit Administrator, Division of Environmental Permits
New York State Department of Environmental Conservation
1130 North Westcott Rd, Schenectady, NY 12306
As a resident of the Town of Poestenkill who has been adversely impacted in my home by operations at this facility in violation of the law and its permit, with its regulatory history as a violator of ,law, I find it incredible that you and your agency should be so callous and disregarding of human health and safety as to allow this facility to again recommence operations.
That is nothing less than depraved indifference, which has become the hallmark of your agency in the Town of Poestenkill, where you have a documented record of disregard for law and the health and well-being of the residents of Poestenkill, including myself.
Because of the contaminants this facility put into the groundwater in this area, while the DEC turned its back and looked the other way, I no longer drink the water from my well, which constitutes a taking due to your alleged and documented negligence in the affair.
Your agency was allowing garbage of all kinds, including medical waste and crappy baby diapers and adult diapers from perhaps diseased or sick adults, and fluids, including hydraulic oil spewing out of the big loaders, to be dumped right onto the bare ground, which is porous shale, where it was ground into a thick toxic paste beneath the wheels of the big loader which would churn the stuff up as it tried to ram the mountain of putrefying garbage into the actual building, which had its sides bulged out from ramming so much garbage in there.
The toxic sludge was allowed by your agency to seep into the groundwater, and you did not give a damn, just as you did not give a damn in Hoosick Falls,
Human life means nothing to you, because you are sociopaths, devoid of any real connections with the living, breathing human beings your actions so adversely impact, like those children in Hoosick Falls with that PFOA in their bloodstream.
And now, here you are, going to inflict that same fate on those of us who live in proximity to this environmental nightmare known as the Poestenkill Transfer station.
You are going to make us your next victims, the next Hoosick Falls, and that is precisely because you see us as weak and powerless, so you can with impunity backed up by the full force of the State of New York inflict acts of environmental harm on us, and destroy our environment so others can profit,
And so in the end it may be, because it is quite obvious that you hold all the power here, while we hold none.
But in the meantime, with this action of yours which puts our lives and health in jeopardy, as was done to the people of Hoosick Falls, and by holding our lives and health in contempt, you have started something in this community that can only serve to show the residents of this town just how great a menace to our health and well-being your agency really is, just as it was in Hoosick Falls.
As to your own records, they have the permit for this facility expired.
Sincerely,
So, yes, systematic government oppression does exist.
It’s just that when it is done to white folks, that’s too bad.
Paul Plante says
So, based on the above, when we read in the DAILY GAZETTE article “Members of Niskayuna football kneel for National Anthem – Several players, cheerleader take knee, a la NFL protesters” by Michael Kelly, September 28, 2017, about Ismail Stewart, a Niskayuna senior, who said he was the one that initially brought up the idea with his teammates about doing something during Thursday’s game, “It was my job as the one who brought it to the team to explain why we were taking a knee,” said Stewart, who is of mixed race, but describes himself as black, when he says, “The reason is there are some social injustices happening in this nation,” what we are talking about above here concerning Sonia Sotomayor stripping me of my civil rights for daring to speak out and confront endemic public corruption in the State of New York government and its political subdivisions the County of Rensselaer and the Town of Poestenkill is a real-life case study of actual social injustice in America as a result of institutionalized oppression, which is when “established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups.”
Yes, people, in real life, that is exactly what social injustice does look like, and an interesting thing I have found, both on the internet and in real life, is that when people who label themselves as liberals who wail and weep and moan and cry and tear their hair out over perceived injustices being done to the black folks and “people of color” hear this story, or read about this story, their immediate reaction is that it is I, a non-gay, non-transgender old white dude, who must have done something wrong here by speaking out, not Sonia Sotomayor or any of the various public officials involved who engaged in acts of intimidation, coercion, repression and retaliation against me for speaking out against public corruption, because those people would never do the things the record says they did, because they are all nice people, especially Sonia Sotomayor, who as a Latina, or “person of color,” knows what real social injustice is all about, as opposed to what is called faux social justice, which is the retaliation against me for exercising my First Amendment rights, which I found out from Sonia Sotomayor I don’t really have, along with any rights I thought I might have under the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.
That what I thought were my rights as a natural-born American system were before Sonia Sotomayor as a circuit judge on the federal 2d Circuit Court of Appeals in 2005 when she told me to my face I had no rights is made clear by a review of paragraphs 29-31 of the federal civil rights complaint which was before her in 2005, which paragraphs state as follows:
29. As a result of this conspiracy, on August 22, 2001, at about 11:20 A.M., plaintiff (myself) suffered a massive curtailment of liberty in violation of plaintiff’s rights to substantive and procedural due process of law pursuant to the Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and equal protection of the law pursuant to the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and freedom from fear of unreasonable seizure under the Fourth Amendment, when plaintiff was seized by Albany, New York VA Hospital staff and involuntarily confined, detained, incarcerated or otherwise committed to the secure mental health ward of the Albany, New York VA Hospital, based on nothing more than the unlawfully issued New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.45 involuntary commitment order which was unlawfully executed by defendant John Christian Braaten on August 22, 2001 as the designee of defendant Joseph Cybulski, acting under color of New York State law (see, Exhibit E) and false reports to VA Hospital officials by defendants Gallerie, Shea and Reiter. (See, VA Hospital Police Report annexed hereto as Exhibit F and made a part hereof)
30. Plaintiff (myself) was harmed in his person and in his property on and after August 22, 2001 by this conspiracy, and the due course of justice in the Town of Poestenkill, the County of Rensselaer and the State of New York was purposefully impeded, hindered, obstructed and defeated by the conspirators with the result that plaintiff has been denied the equal protection of the law in the Town of Poestenkill, the County of Rensselaer and the State of New York.
31. This intentional and purposeful deprivation of plaintiff’s liberty on August 22, 2001 by the above named defendants conspiring and acting under color of New York State law was in violation of plaintiff’s rights pursuant to the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution, and is therefore actionable pursuant to 42 USCS 1983 and 1988.
end quotes
So I thought, anyway, but in 2005, Sonia Sotomayor, then a federal 2d Circuit Court of Appeals judge who was proving her political reliability with this case, was to disabuse me of that notion when she told me to my face in her courtroom that I had none of those rights, and that I was nothing to her, this as she put the federal government seal of approval on the process which resulted in that false psychiatric arrest order becoming a permanent part of my records in both federal and state law enforcement computers, much to my detriment to this day.
By way of comparison, in a PEOPLE magazine article entitled “Monica Lewinsky Blasts Upcoming TV Special About Bill Clinton Affair” by Tierney McAfee on 29 November 2017, we were told as follows about how Monica Lewinsky, now an anti-bullying activist, feels about what she calls her “public shaming,” to wit:
Lewinsky has spoken out in recent years about the public shaming she received following her sexual relationship with then-President Clinton when she was an intern.
“I felt like every layer of my skin and my identity were ripped off of me in ’98 and ’99,” Lewsinky told the Guardian in April 2016.
“It’s a skinning of sorts.”
“You feel incredibly raw and frightened.”
“But I also feel like the shame sticks to you like tar.”
end quote
Imagine then, how much worse it must feel to be falsely accused, as I was, of being mentally ill and dangerous, and to then have a malicious federal judge put the federal government seal of approval on that branding, which is now for life, thanks to Sonia Sotomayor, who I feel to this day raped me, but good, as she destroyed everything I had worked to accomplish in my life following my return here from Viet Nam in 1970.
She branded me for life just as if she had pulled a hot iron from out of the fire and applied it to my forehead.
And yes, it most definitely is like every layer of my skin and my identity were ripped off of me, a skinning of sorts that makes you feel incredibly raw and frightened, and yes, the stink of that false accusation and branding sticks to you like tar.
As to the institutionalized oppression in New York state which Sotomayor put the federal government seal of approval on in 2005, the complaint before Sotomayor in 2005 details it as follows:
8. This lawful investigation (investigation into endemic public corruption in the Rensselaer County Department of Health conducted by myself as a New York state licensed professional engineer charged with protecting and safeguarding human life and health in NYS) was in furtherance of the due course of justice in the Town of Poestenkill, Rensselaer County and the State of New York and consistent with and in full accord and compliance with a March 1999 directive from the Rensselaer County Board of Health to all residents of the Rensselaer County Health District to report any and all such deliberate falsifications of inspection data and fraudulent submissions to the Rensselaer County Director of Environmental Health, defendant Roy Champagne, which plaintiff (myself) herein had done on August 3, 2001. (See, Exhibits A,B,C)
9. While conducting this lawful investigation on a public thoroughfare in the Town of Poestenkill on August 7, 2001, four (4) days after reporting to defendant Champagne, plaintiff was viciously attacked and physically assaulted by defendant Jeffrey Pelletier of Poestenkill, New York, who first threw a rock directly at plaintiff’s head in a killing throw and after narrowly missing plaintiff, then came out on Liberty Lane in a killing rage and grabbed plaintiff in a wrestling hold and literally cracked plaintiff’s spine sideways, which immediately paralyzed plaintiff and rendered him speechless in pain and defenseless.
10. While plaintiff was in this position of helplessness on August 7, 2001, defendant Jeffrey Pelletier kept displaying class-based invidiously discriminatory animus towards plaintiff as a federally protected disabled veteran by repeatedly calling plaintiff a “f__king retard”.
11. In his own words as he physically and verbally assaulted plaintiff on August 7, 2001, defendant Jeffrey Pelletier came out on a public highway in the Town of Poestenkill to assault plaintiff with purposeful intent to prevent, by force, intimidation and threat plaintiff from accepting or holding a public trust or place of confidence in the Town of Poestenkill and the County of Rensselaer as a New York State licensed professional engineer, and from discharging any duties thereof; and to seriously injure plaintiff in his person and in his property on account of plaintiff’s lawful discharge of his duties of New York State licensed professional engineer so as to molest, interrupt, hinder and impede plaintiff in the discharge of his duties as a licensed professional engineer to protect life, health and property in the State of New York.
12. Plaintiff also understood defendant Pelletier to say, as he assaulted plaintiff on August 7, 2001, that defendant Pelletier did so with purposeful intent to punish plaintiff for having lawfully enforced his right to equal protection of the law.
13. Defendant Pelletier also informed plaintiff as defendant Pelletier assaulted him on August 7, 2001 that defendant Pelletier purposefully intended to seriously harm plaintiff in his person and property to deny plaintiff rights, privileges and immunities guaranteed to him by the United States Constitution and 18 USCS 1512(b) & 1513(b) of the laws of the United States.
14. In defendant Jeffrey Pelletier’s words to plaintiff on August 7, 2001, defendant Pelletier was going to “fix” plaintiff so that never again could plaintiff appear as an expert witness in any court either in the State of New York or of the United States, so that defendant Pelletier could impede, hinder, obstruct and defeat the due course of justice in the Town of Poestenkill and the County of Rensselaer in the State of New York to his personal benefit.
15. Defendant Jeffrey Pelletier’s words to plaintiff during the August 7, 2001 assault made clear to plaintiff that the assault was intended to deny and deprive plaintiff as a federally protected disabled person and others like situated the equal protection of the laws, and to seriously injure plaintiff in his person and in his property for lawfully enforcing and attempting to enforce the rights of any person, or class of persons in the Town of Poestenkill and the County of Rensselaer in the State of New York.
16. Subsequent thereto, on or about August 9, 2001, defendant Robert Reiter personally confronted plaintiff and warned plaintiff to “back off” on the Pelletier investigation as defendant Jeffrey Pelletier was a “protected person” in Rensselaer County.
17. Thereafter, on August 17, 2001, defendant Kathleen Jimino called plaintiff at his home and told plaintiff that if he did not stop his investigation into the manner in which defendant Jeffrey Pelletier had procured a Rensselaer County Health Department sewage system construction permit, she would cause plaintiff to be harmed in his person and in his property.
18. Thereafter, it is alleged that defendant Kathleen Jimino, cloaked in the authority of Rensselaer County Executive and acting under color of New York law, conspired with defendant Joseph Cybulski, who was cloaked in the authority of Rensselaer County Director of Community Services, for the express purpose of having defendant Cybulski, under color of New York State Mental Hygiene Law 41.03(8), 41.05(c), 41.07(a), 41.09 and 9.37(b), obtain for defendant Jimino from defendant Samaritan Hospital a fraudulent New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.45 involuntary commitment order so that defendant Jimino could have plaintiff involuntarily incarcerated as a mental patient to intentionally harm plaintiff in his person and property for seeking equal protection of law in Rensselaer County and for petitioning for redress of grievance. (See, Exhibits B,C)
19. In furtherance of that conspiracy, it is alleged that on or about August 21, 2001, defendant Joseph Cybulski conspired with defendant John Christian Braaten, a staff physician at defendant Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York, to have defendant Braaten act as defendant Cybulski’s designee under color of New York State Mental Hygiene Law 41.09(b) so as to obtain for defendant Jimino a fraudulent MHL 9.45 involuntary commitment order with which defendant Jimino would have plaintiff involuntarily incarcerated in the secure mental health facility of Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York, under the care of defendant Adrian Anthony Morris, with leave for defendant Morris to administer medications to plaintiff as an alleged “dangerous person” with an alleged “Bi- polar disorder”. (See, August 22, 2001 Mental Hygiene Law 9.37[b] Samaritan Hospital involuntary admission form annexed hereto as Exhibit D)
20. As defendant Cybulski’s designee under color of MHL 41.09(b) on August 22, 2001, it is alleged that defendant Braaten made out and filed with defendant Samaritan Hospital, the Albany VA Hospital, the New York State Police and the United States Attorney, a fraudulent medical certification pursuant to New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.37 falsely attesting therein, despite the absence of clear and convincing evidence, that plaintiff was a dangerous person with a mental illness for which immediate inpatient care and treatment in a hospital was appropriate despite the fact that neither defendant Cybulski nor defendant Braaten had ever seen, examined or evaluated plaintiff in any manner.
21. In furtherance of this conspiracy with defendants Cybulski and Jimino to purposefully harm plaintiff in his person and property in order to impede, hinder, obstruct and defeat the due course of justice in the Town of Poestenkill and the County of Rensselaer in the State of New York, it is alleged that on or about August 21, 2001, defendant Braaten, cloaked in the authority of a medical doctor licensed to practice in the State of New York by the New York State Education Department, and acting under color of New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.37, conspired with defendant Adrian Anthony Morris, who was cloaked in the authority of a medical doctor licensed to practice in the State of New York by the New York State Education Department acting as the Director of the secure mental health facility of defendant Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York under color of New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.39, to have defendant Morris receive and retain plaintiff in the secure mental health facility of defendant Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York, as a person with an alleged mental illness requiring treatment, and to enter upon the hospital records of defendant Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York a set of false and manufactured circumstances alleged to lead to and support the incarceration and retention of plaintiff in the secure mental health facility of the Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York. (See, Exhibit D)
22. It is then alleged that on or about August 21, 2001, defendant Adrian Anthony Morris conspired with defendants Carol Fiorino, Bernadette Rotter Hallam, Robert Reiter, William Shea, Andrea Gallerie, Northeast Health, Inc. and Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York, to assist him in manufacturing and creating a false persona for plaintiff, as well as a false set of circumstances, which would appear to justify defendants Braaten and Morris incarcerating plaintiff in the secure mental health facility of defendant Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York, on August 22, 2001.
23. Thereafter, it is alleged that on or about August 21, 2001, defendants Robert Reiter, William Shea and Andrea Gallerie conspired with defendants Denise Ayers, Roy Champagne, Raymond Pelletier and Jeffrey Pelletier to assist defendants Northeast Health, Inc., Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York, Morris, Rotter Hallam, Braaten and Fiorino in creating a false persona for plaintiff and a false set of circumstances which would appear to justify defendant Jimino having plaintiff incarcerated in the secure mental health facility of defendant Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York, on August 22, 2001, as an alleged “dangerous person” with an alleged “mental illness”.
24. It is then alleged that, thereafter, defendant Denise Ayers conspired with defendants Jeffrey Pelletier, Carl Richard Aiken, Kevin Joseph McGrath and Eugene Bechard to have them assist her in the creation of a false persona for plaintiff and a false set of circumstances which she would then “report” to defendants Cybulski, Fiorino and Braaten in her alleged capacity as a health officer under color of New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.45 and 9.47 to trigger the “psychiatric takedown” and involuntary commitment of plaintiff on August 22, 2001.
25. At the same time, it is alleged that defendant Kathleen Jimino conspired with defendant Timothy Holt to gain his assistance in creating a false persona for plaintiff and a false set of circumstances which would appear to justify incarcerating plaintiff in the secure mental health facility of defendant Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York, on August 22, 2001, as an alleged “dangerous person”, by having Rensselaer County building guards in his control, and over whom he had authority in his capacity as Rensselaer County Director of Central Services, “lock down” the Rensselaer County Office Building on false pretenses on the morning of August 22, 2001, and then report to Samaritan Hospital officials, to include defendants Morris, Rotter Hallam, Braaten and Fiorino, that the said “lock-down” on August 22, 2001 was allegedly necessitated because plaintiff was alleged to be coming in to cause “bloodshed”. (See, Exhibit D)
26. Thereafter, it is alleged that on August 22, 2001, defendant Carol Fiorino conspired with Dr. John Christian Braaten to create a false persona for plaintiff as a “dangerous” mental patient in need of immediate incarceration in the secure mental health facility of defendant Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York by falsely reporting to defendant Braaten, while cloaked in the authority of a registered professional nurse in the State of New York acting under color of MHL 9.45, that plaintiff was an alleged person with a mental illness for which immediate observation, care, and treatment in a hospital was appropriate and which was likely to result in serious harm pursuant to New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.39(a)(1) & (2). (See, NYSMHL 9.45 involuntary commitment order annexed hereto as Exhibit E)
27. Upon information and belief, the source of which is defendant Bernadette Rotter Hallam, to manufacture the false claim of a “long psychiatric history” with which to support incarcerating plaintiff in the secure mental health facility of the Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York on August 22, 2001, defendants Rotter Hallam, Braaten and Fiorino allegedly conspired with defendants David Gebhardt, Gary James Horton and Gerald Jones to have them swear or attest to false facts to create a false persona for plaintiff as an alleged “dangerous person” with an alleged “long psychiatric history”.
28. Thereafter, on August 22, 2001, while cloaked in the authority of a medical doctor in the State of New York acting under color of New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.45, defendant Braaten executed pursuant to New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.45 an involuntary commitment order which directed the New York State Police to apprehend and transport plaintiff to the secure mental health facility of the Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York. (See, Exhibit E)
32. This action is non-frivolous, as it presents this Court with substantial federal Constitutional questions with respect to the constitutional rule set forth by the United States Supreme Court in O’Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563 (1975) and progeny in the State of New York, that without more, states may not incarcerate or maintain as political prisoners in mental institutions persons such as plaintiff who are without mental disease or defect, and who are not dangerous, and who can survive safely in freedom by themselves, simply because of an exercise of protected speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.
33. This Court has jurisdiction over the instant matter pursuant to 28 USC 1331, 1343(3) and (4) and 2201 as this is a civil action arising under the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution and 42 USCS 1983 and 42 USCS 1988 of the laws of the United States of America seeking relief and damages to defend and protect those rights.
34. Where the named State actors above acted with malice and intent in direct contravention of the strict legal requirements of the New York State Mental Hygiene Law to unconstitutionally and unlawfully incarcerate or have plaintiff incarcerated as a mental patient on August 22, 2001 absent clear and convincing evidence that plaintiff was mentally ill, and that plaintiff posed a substantial threat of physical harm to himself or others, and where the act of having plaintiff incarcerated as a dangerous mental patient on August 22, 2001 was not reasonable by objective standards, and where the state actors acted with purposeful intent to harm plaintiff in his person and his property for a lawful exercise of his First Amendment rights, the defendant State actors named above are not entitled to either absolute or qualified immunity in suit before this Court in this action to recover based upon wilful and intentional deprivation of rights, privileges and immunities secured to plaintiff by the Constitution and laws of the United States.
35. For the purposes of 42 USCS 1983 and 1988, defendants Jimino, Cybulski, Ayers, Holt, Champagne, Reiter, Shea, Braaten, Morris, Rotter Hallam, Fiorino and Gallerie are state actors acting under color of New York State statutes, ordinances, and regulations, and customs and usages in the County of Rensselaer and State of New York who have subjected, or caused to be subjected, plaintiff, to the deprivation of rights to due process and equal protection of the law; as well as the right to petition for redress of grievance and to speak to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Courts of the United States and the State of New York on matters of public concern in Rensselaer County and the State of New York; and privileges and immunities secured to plaintiff as a disabled veteran and citizen of the United States by the United States Constitution and laws of the United States.
end quotes
To which Sotomayor replied that she didn’t give a damn – that is what I get for opening my mouth to the wrong people at the wrong time.
And that, people, is the true story how Sonia Sotomayor proved her political reliability to be a justice of the United States Supreme Court, by putting the hush on that investigation so as to protect endemic public corruption in New York state.
So yes, people, as that case proves, there is indeed institutionalized social injustice in this country.
But as that case also proves, who are you going to find to do something about it, when a federal appeals court judge has put the federal government seal of approval on the practices, which raises the existential question of when a federal appeals court judge like Sonia Sotomayor puts the federal government seal of approval on unjust policies, are they unjust anymore?
Or does that federal government seal of approval render them into justice done?
And for whom?
The candid world would really like to know.
Paul Plante says
“Where a person’s good name, reputation, honor, or integrity is at stake because of what the government is doing to him, notice and an opportunity to be heard are essential.”
“Only when the whole proceedings leading to the pinning of an unsavory label on a person are aired can oppressive results be prevented.”
Those are words written by the United States Supreme Court in 1971, before Sonia Sotomayor became a member of it, in the case Wisconsin v. Constantineau, 400 U.S. 433, 435.
In this above case study of what textbook government-approved institutionalized social injustice actually does look like in this country involving myself, Sonia Sotomayor, then a circuit judge on the federal 2d Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City in 2005, totally ignored those words, because to her, what the Supreme Court had to say about justice for an American citizen like myself was totally immaterial.
My case was highly political, and she was there to make a name for herself as a federal judge who could be counted on to do the “right thing,” as her sponsor Barack Hussein Obama was fond of saying, and so, justice as defined by the United States Supreme Court in Wisconsin v. Constantineau, 400 U.S. 433, 435 went right out the window, along with my civil rights, when Sotomayor let stand the unsavory label pinned on me by Rensselaer County in 2001 with the issuance of that fraudulent 9.45 psychiatric arrest order Sotomayor put the federal government seal of approval on in 2005.
In the matter before Sotomayor in 2005, based upon sworn admissions in a November 10, 2003 affirmation to her Court from David E. Rook, Bar Roll No. 507846, of the law firm, Thuillez, Ford, Gold Johnson & Butler, LLP, 20 Corporate Woods, 6th Floor, Albany, New York 12211, attorneys for Defendants Northeast Health, Inc., Samaritan Hospital of Troy, New York, Adrian Anthony Morris, NYSMD 166342, John Christian Braaten, NYSMD 138415, Carol Fiorino, NYSRPN 230870, and Bernadette Rotter Hallam, NYSRPN 331662, it was both clear and uncontrovertible that on August 22, 2001, the defendants, acting in concert in a malicious fashion with intent to cause harm to myself and my property, did first unlawfully and unconstitutionally brand me as a dangerous mental patient under color of New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.01, 9.39 & 9.45 (Amended Complaint, p.9; para.26), and did then, cloaked in their “statutory authority”, in clear violation of Wisconsin v. Constantineau, 400 U.S. 433, 435 (1971), post the
false and malicious branding of myself as alleged fact with the New York State Police, the Federal Veterans’ Administration Police, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York and the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, as well as with the general population of the Town of Poestenkill, the County of Rensselaer and the State of New York to my continued harm and detriment herein.
Sotomayor in 2005 was totally dismissive of that harm caused to myself for the rest of my life, so long as that fraudulent psychiatric arrest order stands in my records, which in my mind, makes her both a sociopath and a monster.
In Vitek v. Jones, 445 U.S. 480 (1980), another United States Supreme Court decision that Sotomayor ignored in 2005 when she raped me as a person by taking away my civil rights, the United States Supreme Court spoke directly to the “direct harm” caused to myself by the defendants and the events of August 22, 2001 complained of in the Amended Complaint in this above matter, the “stigmatization process” caused by defendants through the “pinning” on myself of the unsavory label in a small community of that of a dangerous, mentally ill person, all of this without a stitch of evidence in support thereof, or even a pretense of due process having been afforded to myself in clear violation of Wisconsin v. Constantineau, 400 U.S. 433, 435 (1971):
“We have recognized that for the ordinary citizen, commitment to a mental hospital produces ‘a massive curtailment of liberty,’ Humphrey v. Cady, 405 U.S. 504, 509 (1972), and in consequence ‘requires due process protection.’ Addington v. Texas, 441 U.S. 418, 425 (1979); O’Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U.S. 563, 580 (1975) (BURGER, C.J., concurring).
So what, who cares was Sotomayor’s reply – you are nothing, and nobody cares what happened to you, which actually has turned out to be quite true.
Said the United States Supreme Court in Addington v. Texas in 1979:
The loss of liberty produced by an involuntary commitment is more than a loss of freedom from confinement.
It is indisputable that commitment to a mental hospital ‘can engender adverse social consequences to the individual’ and that ‘[w]hether we label this phenomena ‘stigma’ or choose to call it something else …. we recognize that it can occur and that it can have a very significant impact on the individual.’ Addington v. Texas, supra, at 424-426. See also Parham v. J.R., 442 U.S. 584,
600 (1979).
Also, ‘(a)mong the historic liberties’ protected by the Due Process Clause is the “right to be free from, and to obtain judicial relief for, unjustified intrusions on personal security.” Ingraham v. Wright, 430 U.S. 651, 673 (1977).”
end quotes
In 2005, Sonia Sotomayor informed me in no uncertain terms that regardless of what the United States Supreme Court might have to say about “historic liberties” in their courtroom in Washington, D.C., in her courtroom in New York City, where she was the law, not the Supreme Court, I was in her eyes nothing more than a piece of crap, not a human being, not an American citizen, so in her courtroom, I had no right to be free from, and to obtain judicial relief for, unjustified intrusions on my personal security, and such it was actually to be, and still is.
So, based on the above, as clearly can be seen, when we read in the DAILY GAZETTE article “Members of Niskayuna football kneel for National Anthem – Several players, cheerleader take knee, a la NFL protesters” by Michael Kelly, September 28, 2017, about Ismail Stewart, a Niskayuna senior, who said he was the one that initially brought up the idea with his teammates about doing something during Thursday’s game, “It was my job as the one who brought it to the team to explain why we were taking a knee,” said Stewart, who is of mixed race, but describes himself as black, when he says, “The reason is there are some social injustices happening in this nation,” what we are talking about above here concerning Sonia Sotomayor stripping me of my civil rights for daring to speak out and confront endemic public corruption in the State of New York government and its political subdivisions the County of Rensselaer and the Town of Poestenkill is a real-life case study of actual social injustice in America as a result of institutionalized oppression, which is when “established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups.”
Stay tuned, though, because this story of what real social injustice in the United States of America with the federal government seal of approval on it is far from over, so there is much more to come as we work in here to fulfill the admonition of CCM commentator Charles Taylor @ October 16, 2017 at 11:20 am in the thread “On Citizenship” to do the digging to understand what social injustice in America really is all about in real life, as this story above involving Sonia Sotomayor is, since it is not his job or intent to inform us, and since it has piqued my interest, I have delved further into the message the football protests were intended to send about real social injustice in America condoned by the federal government and I have posted it above in an effort to educate my fellow Americans on the subject, courtesy of the Cape Charles Mirror, which is the only place in America I am aware of where this in-depth discussion on the subject of government-sponsored social injustice in this country is taking place, for which we all owe a debt of gratitude as American citizens to Wayne Creed.
Paul Plante says
With respect to federal 2d Circuit Court of Appeals circuit judge, now a Supreme Court Justice, Sonia Sotomayor stripping me of my civil rights for daring to speak out and confront endemic public corruption in the State of New York government and its political subdivisions the County of Rensselaer and the Town of Poestenkill as a real-life case study of actual social injustice in America as a result of institutionalized oppression, which is when “established laws, customs, and practices systematically reflect and produce inequities based on one’s membership in targeted social identity groups,” this 6 December 2017 writing from myself to the Poestenkill Town Board, Town of Poestenkill, Poestenkill Town Hall, 38 Davis Drive,
Poestenkill, NY 12140, RE: PDD/Transfer station Records; The DEC Finagle; The next Hoosick Falls, casts a spotlight on just what endemic public corruption in corrupt New York state looks like today, this thanks in large part to Sonia Sotomayor, who has done her best to crush dissent in New York state, to wit:
As a follow-up to mine of yesterday, which concerned itself with an official Town of Poestenkill document known in Poestenkill as “THE GREAT FLIM-FLAM” or “BAMBOOZLE” with respect to transfer station operations, at the Poestenkill transfer station, that being a copy of an August 14, 2001 letter to Nancy M. Adams, Contact Person, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, 1150 North Westcott Road, Schenectady, New York 12306 from Patrick Tomaselli, Attorney at Law, at that time the Poestenkill town attorney, re: In the Matter of the Application of WASTE MANAGEMENT OF NEW YORK LLC for a modification to an existing solid waste management permit for the POESTENKILL TRANSFER STATION, corner Rts 351 and 66, Poestenkill, NY (Application ID: 4-3838-0023-00002) to operate with the doors open, wherein at p.4, Poestenkill Town Attorney Patrick Tomaselli notified the DEC that its analysis of the environmental impacts of the Poestenkill transfer station permit modification and conclusions drawn from that analysis were flawed, which they certainly were, the next relevant document would be a document headed by “FROM THE DESK OF KATHLEEN LISTON MORRISON ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL” to Art Hennigson of DEC dated September 3, 1993, and entitled “Chronology in Benson Brothers’ Transfer Station Permit Application, As Best As I Can Figure.”
That document is relevant because coming from the Office of the NYS Attorney General, it is the official record of what transpired in this matter right from May 13, 1992, when the Attorney General’s Office states as follows:
By letter from Frost & Donahue, P.C., Benson formally applies to Town Board for Planned Development District.
The letter references an application to DEC (in the past tense), mentions that DEC has met with Benson’s representatives on two occasions, and indicates that “the project is in compliance with all DEC requirements.”
That chronology concludes as follows:
April 9, 1992: A Monday, Plante commences suit by filing notice of petition with Albany County Supreme Court.
end quote
That “Plante” who commenced that lawsuit against the corrupt New York State Department of Environmental Conservation on April 9, 1992 happens to be myself, the same one who in 2005 would be told by then- federal 2d Circuit Court of Appeals judge Sonia Sotomayor that he was a piece of crap in her court without rights, as she approved government retaliation against me for daring to challenge the corruption state and repression of me, to keep me from being able to do so again.
Getting back to that 6 December 2017 writing from myself to the Poestenkill Town Board, it continues as follows with respect to endemic public corruption in New York state and its Department of Environmental Conservation:
That then brings us to a September 20, 1993 memo on NYSDEC letterhead from Dec Region IV attorney Rich Ostrov to Deb Volberg RE: Matter of Paul Plante v. DEC, wherein is stated:
Region staff upon review of the (Plante Article 78) petition in the above captioned matter believe that we should request the Attorney General to seek a remand of this matter to the Department.
The allegations regarding the inadequacy of both the application and record and SEQRA review are for the most part correct.
End quote
That was the beginning of my death knell as a licensed professional engineer in the state of New York right there, and it is going to lead in an unbroken path to the “FINAL SOLUTION.” that being a politically-connected doctor at Samaritan Hospital in Troy, New York on 8-22-01 issuing a fraudulent New York State Mental Hygiene Law 9.45 involuntary commitment order directing the New York State Police to apprehend me and bring me to the Samaritan Hospital secure mental facility, or GULAG, for incarceration as a dangerous mental patient, which practice Sotomayor put the federal government seal of approval on, in December of 2005.
And once again getting back to that 6 December 2017 writing from myself to the Poestenkill Town Board:
With respect to that gross failure by the NYSDEC and its employees to meet the highest standards of honesty, accountability, and efficiency with respect to the issuance of that permit, and with respect to regulatory insufficiency at the DEC, in response to that Article 78 Petition, Assistant New York State Attorney General Kathleen Liston Morrison filed an affidavit dated October 14, 1993, in the Matter of Paul Plante v. New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Albany County Index No. 4840-93, to Judge Robert Williams of Albany County Supreme Court wherein she stated under oath to Judge Williams of Albany County Supreme Court as follows with respect to DEC lawlessness and regulatory insufficiency in connection with the original Benson Brothers permit that was brought into the Town of Poestenkill as “proof” of complying with DEC regulations:
“I have read the Verified Petition, the Department permit file, and the relevant statutes and regulations.”
“The state respondents admit that the Department (NYSDEC) erred in issuing the permit when it had an incomplete application under Environmental Conservation Law (“ECL”) Article 70, the Uniform Procedures Act, and the regulations promulgated thereunder in 6 NYCRR Part 621, the Solid Waste Management Act, ECL Article 27, and the regulations promulgated thereunder in 6 NYCRR Part 360, and failed to comply with the requirements of Article 8, the State Environmental Quality Act, and the regulations promulgated thereunder in 6 NYCRR Part 617.”
end quote
Speaking of regulatory insufficiency, lawlessness and duplicity by the NYSDEC, that, of course, happened to be every law and regulation which should have been applied to a proper review of this facility.
However, that never fazed the Town of Poestenkill, as can be seen from this line in that September 20, 1993 memo on NYSDEC letterhead from Dec Region IV attorney Rich Ostrov to Deb Volberg RE: Matter of Paul Plante v. DEC, to wit:
It is my understanding that Benson Bros. received its building permit and is ready to construct the transfer station.
End quotes
In other words, Benson Bros. were able to launder a fraudulent DEC permit through the Town of Poestenkill to obtain both the PDD and the transfer station building permit, and the rest is now history, as Poestenkill backs the fraud that started this matter off while shutting me out of the process and retaliating against myself.
end quotes
For those unfamiliar with federal court proceedings, many years can elapse between the time of the original assault on one’s rights by the government, and this was just such a case.
Getting back to that 6 December 2017 writing from myself to the Poestenkill Town Board, it continues as follows with respect to endemic public corruption in New York state and its Department of Environmental Conservation:
That then brings us to a memo on DEC letterhead dated September 24, 1993 to DEC attorney Marc Gerstman from Kathleen Martens through Gail Kamaras, RE: Plante v. DEC (Benson Bros. Transfer Facility) which stated thusly:
Rich Ostrov (DEC Regional attorney) has recommended we ask the AG for a remand of Plante v. DEC to the Department because the petitioner’s allegations concerning the application and record and SEQR review are correct.
The SEQR review was clearly deficient, and because the SEQR allegations are true, I also recommend that the case be remanded.
According to Henningson, **** staff apparently relied upon the fact that the Town of Poestenkill was lead agency for approving the planned development district (PDD) for this project.
However, in issuing its negative declaration (after an uncoordinated review) the Town apparently relied on the applicant’s inaccurate statement in its PDD application that “DEC has already rendered an initial determination that the project will have no adverse effect upon the environment.”
This information is contained in the petition and was uncovered through a separate action the petitioner has brought against the town.
So, since neither the Town nor the Department complied with SEQR, it is necessary to have the case remanded.
An option would be to stipulate to a withdrawal of the petition on our agreement to coordinate review with the Town and ensure SEQR is done.
End quotes
That never happened, and as can clearly be seen here, right from the very beginning, the Town of Poestenkill was willing to sell out the residents of the Town to ensure that Benson Bros, would profit from the Town selling out the residents.
end quotes
And it is just such “speaking out” as I have done above here about social injustice in New York state that caused Sotomayor to silence me by leaving me branded for life as a mentally ill and dangerous person based on a fraud.
And again getting back to that 6 December 2017 writing from myself to the Poestenkill Town Board:
In a memo on DEC letterhead dated October 22, 1993 from Richard Ostrov to Bill Clark and Art Henningson of the DEC Region IV Office RE: BENSON BROS. ARTICLE 78 update, it was stated as follows:
Kathleen Morrison called me today to say that the hearing in the above captioned matter was held this morning before Judge Williams.
As you remember, the Department is not opposing a nullification of the permit and remand because Plante’s arguments on lack of SEQRA review and inadequate record have merit.
Stockli, Benson’s attorney, was hopeful that when the matter was remanded, DEC would expeditiously address the new application.
It goes without saying that DRA (DEC Division of Regulatory Affairs) should not process the recently received modification request because there would be no permit to modify.
End quote
There we see Benson Bros. trying to launder the fraudulent permit it used to get the PDD and Poestenkill building permit back through the DEC.
The memo on DEC letterhead dated October 22, 1993 from Richard Ostrov to Bill Clark and Art Henningson of the DEC Region IV Office RE: BENSON BROS. ARTICLE 78 update, then concluded as follows:
Kathleen indicated that because of this judge’s personal slant toward DEC, our record should be air-tight when the new permit application is processed.
She pointed out that Plante’s basis for standing is his well’s proximity to site of one transfer station.
It appears from her review of the record that the wastewater impact of the transfer station was not adequately addressed in the record.
End quotes
That, of course, is a gross understatement – neither the Town nor the DEC ever gave a damn about our drinking water in the first place – we were expendable.
end quotes
Yes, people you are reading that correctly – that is what real social injustice in this state looks like and no, it is not pretty, at all, unless you are a sociopath or psychopath, that is.
Which takes us back to that 6 December 2017 writing from myself to the Poestenkill Town Board, as follows:
And with respect to us being the next Hoosick Falls, which happened because the DEC and Rensselaer County Health Departments were turning their backs and being “business friendly,” that takes us to an October 1, 1998 letter on DEC letterhead to Mr. Vince Forgione, USA Waste, P.O. Box 129, Wynantskill, N.Y. 12198 RE: Water Well Test Results, from Richard Forgea, P.E., Environmental Engineer 2, Region 4, wherein was stated:
Enclosed are the results of water well samples taken at your Poestenkill facility on March 30, 1998.
Two sets of samples were taken; one from the well adjacent to the transfer building and the other from the pond on the site.
The results indicate that no contaminants of concern are present in either location.
Trace concentrations of methylene chloride ( a solvent, prolonged skin contact with may cause chemical burns and exposure by any route can cause CNS depression while ingestion of methylene chloride can cause severe gastrointestinal irritation) were indicated in the samples from both locations.
This appears to be due to lab error.
End quotes
That letter was copied to the Town and the NYSDOH.
That statement about lab error, however, is false, and is part of a cover-up by the Town and DEC just like in Hoosick Falls, as can be seen from a DEC Regional Laboratory telephone contact log entry with Richard Forgea dated 3/31/98, wherein is stated as follows:
Summary of Questions/Issues Discussed:
Received 3 samples without chain of custody.
No COC will be sent by DEC.
End quotes
There was no “lab error” there – that was a finagle, pure and simple.
Without chain of custody, the lab could not verify where those samples came from, and they may well have been tap water from somewhere, and there was no chain of custody because of Forgea and the DEC, intentionally, because that was part of a cover up, if in a March 8, 1999 letter to NYSDEC’s Art Henningson, Rensselaer County Environmental Management Council Director Ken Dufty was stating “Additionally, there is concern by area residents that indirect tipping has resulted in, and will continue to exacerbate, groundwater contamination,” and “As you know, Toluene was detected in a residential well adjacent to the station early last year,” which would have been early 1998.
Since then, just as was the case in Hoosick Falls, the residents of Poestenkill have been left completely in the dark as to what kinds of poisons might be lurking in our drinking water.
Why?
Some people with children in this town who care about their children and don’t like being sold out by the Town of Poestenkill and the DEC would like to know.
signed, Paul R. Plante, NYSPE
end quotes
So if we think about it carefully, in 2005, Sonia Sotomayor did not really strip me of my right to speak out, because in America, even the insane and certified lunatics have a right to speak out.
What she did by leaving intact that fraudulent certification that I am mentally ill and dangerous and in need of incarceration in a secure mental facility is to insure that my voice will not be heard in a court of law again, and for some in America, anyway, that is considered justice done.
And that, people, is what real social injustice in America looks like in real life.
But stay tuned, for more on real social injustice in America is yet to come.
Paul Plante says
Why would the Cape Charles want to mess up one of the best websites in America with a bunch of ads for hookers and dating services and other crap that nobody wants or needs, because that is exactly what the Cape Charles would get from those ad sites – and the Cape Charles Mirror would have absolutely no control over what ads were being shown.
I used to pay to keep the ads off my website.
Who wants to be associated with hooker ads and dating site ads?