White Mans Burden
It is a bit difficult, I must say, helping these blasted Arabs form a genteel society when all they care to do is fight. The lusty, swarthy characters are obviously prone to violence but it is our Christian duty to guide them out of this medieval darkness and into the light of cheeseburgers and myspace.com.
The race is on to see who is the toughest. The toughest on terror, the toughest torturer, toughest love, the toughest guy with the toughest truck. Between John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart, who would be the toughest president?Talk about tough, says here "the military has increased elistments by individuals with serious criminal misconduct in their records, and eased requirements of non-citizens, of which there are currently about 40,000 in the armed services" One day of active duty and you can be a citizen. Send us your tired and huddled masses. This is an old tradition, many Irish and others stepped right off the boat and into a uniform. They'd be back on the boat headed for WWI quiker than you could say potato.
The Popular Assembly of the People of Oaxaca are anxiously preparing for an all out assault by state and para-military forces. This is a variegated social movement of reformist and radical trade unions and other leftist political forces converging in support of the 129 day teachers strike, demanding that the governor step down. He would rather bust heads. Maybe the Mexican Revolution starts here?
Back to the" perception" thing in the NIE. A document created by the same group that brought us WMDs. The more you read it, the more you see it really says nothing. Except that we are fighting an "image"war. We have the largest economy in the history of the world , the largest military apparatus, the largest nuclear arsenal, the highest standard of living yet we cannot allow the jihadists to have the "perception" of having won.
posted by troutsky @ 10:33 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
I have also noticed how it has become acceptable for people to be racist towards Arabs, or "freedom haters" as george calls them
Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan brown, For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.” (Rudyard Kipling, 1892)
I think this component is missing in all the analysis.My post was spurred by a visit to my favorite rightwing site and all the racism there which refuses to acknowlede itself as such. Pocho hits it dead on, I was to lazy to find the right Kipling, but it is exactly what i was insinuating.The attribute most often associated with arabs (in the white mind a jumble of semitess,Persians,Ottomans)is irrationality, an inability to reason, so that the only answer to a dispute becomes "kill them all and let God sort them out".
We've given them blogging, what more could they want. Let them eat HTML.
*I have also noticed how it has become acceptable for people to be racist towards Arabs, or "freedom haters" as george calls them*
I couldn't agree more. It is the new antisemitism don't you know, but probably more widespread and openly preached (and fashionable) than European antiJewish sentiment ever was.
Rupert Murdoch is a prime mover of course, but all the western media have had a hand in this.
It isn't just a biproduct of events either in my opinion. There is a deliberate, calculated campaign behind it.
Troutsky, have a look at .....
http://neomythicus.blogspot.com/
It may help. :-)
graem said:
"I have also noticed how it has become acceptable for people to be racist towards Arabs..."
Again the racist thing. I think a more appropriate definition for racism would be: a preoccupation with race and potential racial animosity.
Trout, "quiker than you could say potato." Seems a bit stereotypic to me. =)
A serious question Trout: What do you think of things like NAFTA in real time (i.e., the situation as it is not as it should be)? You have mentioned the border factory situation, and there are a myriad of other problems (such as the undercutting of Mexican corn production). Do you think it hurt Mexico more than it helped? In general are these sorts of arrangement going to hurt working people in all places (the rich and poor societies)?
Thanks for the link foreigner.I try hard to stay critical about comparisons to Nazi Germany but having just put down Arendts disturbing Origins of Totalitarianism it's impossible not to see certain parallel trends.The erosion of constitutional protections and removal of people (in this case Muslims) to a place "outside" of lawful protections is most ominous.Real Libertarians should be up in arms.
Brad, I fail to see how a "preoccupation" can be equated with real racism, which is a belief that race is the primary determinant to behavior and traits.I sometimes fall prey to this myself, such as when I say something like "white people all act in such and such way."
As for trade agreements like NAFTA,it was not designed to spread benefits equally, though it may have been promoted as such. The woman working in the Maquila for eleven dollars a day WAS able to send her childern to school and prepare them better than if they had stayed in a rural subsistence farming setting.But the owners of Sony sent their children to Brown and bought them all sailboats )or whatever)Thom Friedman tells us this is "flattening" the globe but what is the vision of the future? What are the children being prepared for? A classical Marxist historical analysis shows us people being lifted from fuedal conditions into industrial, with all the attached benefits of capitalism, but then we know what happens to industrial workers, the exploitation and oppression (increased profits) prior to gaining power through organizing.India, China, southeast Asia all making gains but all with the attendent issues of cultural breakdown, inequality, pollution, class conflict, wars for resources etc..In the case of NAFTA we see the free movement of capital but the restricted movement of labor, hardly laissez faire,with corporate shareholders making incredible gains and workers facing the inevitable "creative destruction".
I ,of course , believe in a wholly different structure for society, questioning why labor should be forced to keep chasing capital, why should we be organized around urban industrial production (why should efficiency take priority over stability?)Why should growth be an organizing principle? (and not sustainability)We are back to my ideal society now so I guess one answer would be that I am for a much different form of globalization than that promoted by NAFTA or the FTAA, that in the short term, capitalist civil society needs the power to write protections into trade agreements to reflect the values associated with the concept of "human rights", to promote sustainability, and to increase the re-distribution of global wealth (Rawls)while in the long term i want to eliminate capital altogether.
Trout, I agree with your short term assessment of the situation, so there is some common ground.
As to the racism thing: the whole reason I brought it up was that I think the accusation is often frivolous, as with my chastising you about the potato/Irishmen thing, or you self-criticism about the “white people” generalization (i.e., we both know that there is no hatred involved); and when the accusation is serious, it is often polemical, and nothing else. True racism must be confronted when acted upon, but frivolity and polemics should not be taken seriously, and wisdom, not emotion, should be applied to discern the two.
I am just wondering, Brad , if hate really does need to be involved? Could one just have a racist analysis and not have any emotional reaction. not act with prejudice?
I would be interested in your view concerning trade pacts or what is commonly called globalization.What role do state actors play?
We may be getting close to “splitting hairs,” but I think that if someone doesn’t have an emotional reaction and doesn’t act with prejudice it would be wrong to label that person a racist. To me, this is especially true in the arena of personal politics, where making accusations of others being racists imbues one with a sense of political correctness and moral superiority. Such a position allows one to simply ignore the potential substance of an opposing point of view and dismiss one’s opponents as vile people (polemics). And the only way to decide if someone has a racist analysis, without any evidence other than one’s own specific political/social biases, is to assume that it the case based on their political perspectives, and I think that is a mistake. For example, someone can oppose affirmative action for philosophical reasons (as do conservative black intellectuals like Stanley Crouch and Thomas Sowell) and not have a racist analysis (likewise, someone can support it out of guilt for their emotional biases).
As to trade pacts, I think they are disastrous in asymmetrical situations. All they do is allow capital from the wealthy player to grab the natural resources of the poorer partners, and pay very low wages for labor, while avoiding environmental and worker safety regulations. In addition, they allow the undercutting of rational domestic production by the poor players by dumping cheap (and usually inferior) products (such as grain) on the poor nations market, making them beggar states. And I think we would agree that the effects on labor in the wealthy nation are also ruinous. As to the few benefits, like the woman sending her kids to school, they are offset, as you pointed out, by the lack of investment in the social/economic future of the poor nation. As to the states’ role: Some level of globalization is inevitable, but the states should be allowed to protect their environments, resources, worker’s safety, and domestic production (etc).
I have a friend who has many black friends but he does not feel blacks as a unit can do well in America because of an inate, genetically derived lack of competitiveness, lack of industriousness or ambition.He does not mean this in a negative sense ( he,like me , is notsoldon the modern definition of success), but I believe this to be a racist attitude.Perhaps I am mistaken?
As for states and global trade, the issue then becomes how does the multitude get represented by the state which is negotiating in it's interest? I argue this representation can never be democratically derived because of the imbalance of power in a capitalist society.If I argue for protectionist policies we simply return to mercantilism, with gunships protecting trade routes, and still no guarantee that labor benefits, and if I argue for unrestricted trade (which helps with the problem of re-distribution of wealth) I still have the eventual problem of oversupply and lowered profits.Im no economist (can you tell?)but I know a free market requires that producers and consumers have information about ALL the costs associated with their decisions, short term ,long term, environmental, social, etc.Can such an information sharing system exist?
Post a Comment
<< Home