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The Composer
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Toe is in the water |
Registered: September 2018
Messages: 87
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PS - for all of you who were ever Boy Scouts, it has been suggested that the statue of Baden Powell be moved for its own safety.
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Mark
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Likes it here |
Location: Earth
Registered: April 2013
Messages: 279
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"timmy wrote on Wed, 10 June 2020 13:32"
In Hungary they had a better idea, and migrated their politically undesirable statues to Memento Park. I visited it, I think in 2007. It was impressive and told a story. It was also pretty inaccessibe, at the end of a tram line, and then a bus to 'nowhere at all' in the countryside. To me this is a far more desirable route than simply tearing them down and disposing of them. The history of how we got here is important, perhaps especially the unpalatable elements.
With luck we will grow up.
The statues removed are destined for museums here where they will be interpreted
--
As I've mentioned a couple of times here, I use Firefox for my Internet browser, and it has on its "homepage" (the page that first comes up whenever I open up Firefox) a selection of different articles, and intrestingly, today one of the articles that was on there was this one, which talks about that very thing.
[Updated on: Thu, 11 June 2020 18:03] |
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Four days ago I made a comment about American police being militarized, and trained accordingly. Now, here's this set of data, that tells the tale:
This is US police departments, and the source of the military equipment is Dept. of Defense (DOD). This is so far removed from the concept of "community policing" that it's hard to conceive.
[Updated on: Thu, 11 June 2020 22:46]
Bensiamin
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And the one who can perceive revolutionary trends occurring...might influence the future!
I just finished watching a striking video by Russell Brand titled "Statues, Slavery and Revolution" which speaks to many of the subjects this Forum string has touched on, and gets there via the pulling down by Black Lives Matter protestors of Confederate statues in the US, and the Edward Colton statue in Bristol.
It is worth the ten minutes to watch, and there's a part that should resonate on LGBTQ rights when he describes his privelege as a "white, straight male," and then really touches a nerve when he talks about things both Hitler and Churchill might have agreed upon.
We know Hitler's position on homosexuals? Does anyone know Winston Churchill's position on homosexuality?
You can watch on Instagram by clicking
[Updated on: Sat, 13 June 2020 03:01]
Bensiamin
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Russell Brand is entitled to express his opinions, but all he is doing is commentating on events. He isn't proposing any way forward other than suggesting that perhaps the fabric of our society is founded on inequality and that not only the symbols of that society, but the society itself should be torn asunder. Even money may have no place, but small groups of people might decide things for themselves. Anarchy.
I doubt he would win many votes were he to present himself for election on such a platform. He also states that no one was harmed in the peaceful demonstration of direct action which targeted inanimate objects. This is probably true, no one was harmed except by accident if they got in the way of a tumbling statue, but that doesn't make it right to take such action. The link between the statue of a slave trader in Bristol and the police action in the USA is rather tenuous. Black lives matter is being hijacked by the anarchist anti-capitalist movement and maybe other extremists. After all, all lives matter, but more important is how things can get out of control quickly when mob rule applies.
I believe we should keep the democracy we have and cherish it. That some things need to change, but they should be voted on, not attacked. Russell Brand, makes the point of revolution. Well, do you want your world, however imperfect, torn apart by revolution and factions. The answer, for me, is no. The result will be a whole lot worse than what we have now. Russell Brand is an armchair philosopher and insidiously dangerous, espousing revolutionary anarchy and chaos. It's going way beyond Black Lives Matter, just exactly the same happened with the yellow jackets in France. You start with good intentions and end with destruction and anarchy.
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"Talo Segura wrote on Sat, 13 June 2020 06:38"I believe we should keep the democracy we have and cherish it. That some things need to change, but they should be voted on, not attacked. Russell Brand, makes the point of revolution. Well, do you want your world, however imperfect, torn apart by revolution and factions. The answer, for me, is no. The result will be a whole lot worse than what we have now. Russell Brand is an armchair philosopher and insidiously dangerous, espousing revolutionary anarchy and chaos. It's going way beyond Black Lives Matter, just exactly the same happened with the yellow jackets in France. You start with good intentions and end with destruction and anarchy.
--
I concur.
You can't change history, much as you might want to. There was slavery; there were slaves. There will always be injustice and it's not down to the colour of skin. Take China and Tibet, or Myanmar and the Rohingya, or any number of internecine conflicts. It's tribal. At best 'my football team is better than yours;' at worst 'my tribe will eradicate yours.' We've grown as a civilisation, but we're all still animals at heart.
Yes #BlackLivesMatter, but #AllLivesMatter would be a better rallying cry. Maybe we should deal with world poverty and starvation first?
"There are two means of refuge from the miseries of life: Music and Cats." - Albert Schweitzer
It's like Mad Max out here: guys doing guys, girls doing girls, girls turning into guys and doing girls that used to do girls and guys!
- from Alex Truelove
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Geron Kees
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Likes it here |
Location: USA
Registered: February 2016
Messages: 150
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"Bensiamin wrote on Sat, 13 June 2020 00:44"And the one who can perceive revolutionary trends occurring...might influence the future!
I just finished watching a striking video by Russell Brand titled "Statues, Slavery and Revolution" which speaks to many of the subjects this Forum string has touched on, and gets there via the pulling down by Black Lives Matter protestors of Confederate statues in the US, and the Edward Colton statue in Bristol.
It is worth the ten minutes to watch, and there's a part that should resonate on LGBTQ rights when he describes his privelege as a "white, straight male," and then really touches a nerve when he talks about things both Hitler and Churchill might have agreed upon.
We know Hitler's position on homosexuals? Does anyone know Winston Churchill's position on homosexuality?
You can watch on Instagram by clicking
-- The US is a big place. We need some rules in common throughout the country, surely. But if Alabama refuses to allow gay marriages, so be it. Why any gay couple would want to live in Alabama is beyond me, anyway. Habit? I was born there? If you cannot change things where you are, move to a place where those changes already exist. It's the reason so many flocked to America in the first place. There are plenty of states here where gay unions will stay legal no matter what the Fed says, no matter what any other state says. You are not going to force this issue - any issue - on a state where the majority refuses to have it. Not for long, anyway.
Winston Chruchill was said to have commented, on why they would never get a conviction for sodomy in a court of law, "Because half the people don't think it's physically possible, and the other half are doing it!"
He couldn't imagine why the media made such a big deal over homosexuality when they wouldn't even confront the issues of divorce, or unfaithfulness. He felt that homosexuality should be decriminalized and treated as a mental health issue. He wasn't exactly gay-friendly, but he did view this as a human issue, and not one for the courts to decide.
Hitler, on the other hand, was something of a gay-basher. Not a nice guy, by any historical account. I don't think he liked the Jews, either. Or intellectuals. Or people with physical or mental handicaps. Or the Roma. Or the Poles. Or any of the Slavic peoples. In effect, I don't think he cared for anyone that didn't meet his extremely narrow concept of 'human'.
Sounds like someone else we all know, who shall remain nameless here (Trump).
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The Composer
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Toe is in the water |
Registered: September 2018
Messages: 87
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Allegedly:
The story goes that when Winston Churchill was Prime Minister, he was woken one freezing February morning by a Downing Street aide bearing the shocking news that a male Tory MP had been caught having sex with a guardsman [ie soldier] in St James's Park.[/font]Noting that it had been the coldest night of the winter, Churchill is said to have remarked: 'Makes you proud to be British.'[/font]
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"Geron Kees wrote on Sun, 14 June 2020 13:11"It's the reason so many flocked to America in the first place.
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I will go along with all the other excellent points you make, but hoestly, this one smacks of revisionist history. No, the real reason they came here was so they could enforce their own brand of sectarianism, bigotry, and dogma upon others who were not like themselves, and they only thought it was freedom because they were the ones meting out the punishments. Let's not forget the Salem With Trials or other Puritan horrors.
“There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.” - Terry Pratchett
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13771
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Today I saw this news item in the UK.
There is no sense of irony over this.
Just how white was their messiah?
And I have just been asked "...how did they manage to send missionaries to Africa?" based upon that logic.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Geron Kees
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Likes it here |
Location: USA
Registered: February 2016
Messages: 150
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"Teddy wrote on Mon, 15 June 2020 20:06"
"Geron Kees wrote on Sun, 14 June 2020 13:11"It's the reason so many flocked to America in the first place.
--
I will go along with all the other excellent points you make, but hoestly, this one smacks of revisionist history. No, the real reason they came here was so they could enforce their own brand of sectarianism, bigotry, and dogma upon others who were not like themselves, and they only thought it was freedom because they were the ones meting out the punishments. Let's not forget the Salem With Trials or other Puritan horrors.
--Revisionist history works both ways. To say that every immigrant to America came here to better live with views they couldn't get away with at home is equally untrue. I should have made that remark more clear. The original colonists to America mostly (but not all) came here because of religious divides. Many held radical or despised, or even feared views, that were being actively suppressed in their homelands. Many first colonists were simply escaping their fates by coming here. Some certainly did want to organize communities ruled by their ideas, and suppressed those members that would not conform. That's the cyclic nature of human civilization, to NOT learn from the past, and to heap abuses on others that have been visited upon ourselves in the same or variant form.
Other 'first' colonists simply had no choice, arriving here in an indentured state, to work off the penalties of crimes or debt or political dissent. Others came as slaves, with not even the right to work their servitude away, not EVER, as far as they knew. The early America was a convenient dumping ground where 'undesirables' of every sort were sent just to get rid of them. No human history is either all good or all bad, and I don't mean to propagate myths about America. But no blanket statements can be made for either side, either. To ignore the documented family histories of so many, and say everyone that came here did so for motives of greed or power, or religious freedom OR oppression, is also simply not true.
MILLIONS of people flocked to the US after the American model of freedom and opportunity had become more pronounced. Or the world perception of it, anyway, which is the same as reality for all intents and purposes. Many of them came here for the perceived opportunity to make a better life for themselves and their children, or to escape oppression in their homeland, or wars, or famine, or economic depression. For millions of people, the US represented hope for something better. This is so well documented in family histories everywhere that it cannot be denied. America once meant hope for a great many people.
But even if you decry American freedom as being partly or even mostly illusion, it is a better working illusion than the one that exists in much of the world, and people in other places still want to be a part of it today. Human beings are often a disagreeable species. Intelligence is purely relative, as are perspective and perceptions. But one thing most people want is enough freedom not to feel that every single day is a danger to their existence, or to the existence of their loved ones. At one time, the hope of America at least seemed to offer that dream as a reality. And if you look hard enough, it is still there, even amidst the troubling times of today. We are still working on it. Obviously, it still NEEDS work.
For every step forward, it does seem we take two steps back. But that's also a matter of perception. The steps forward are real, and they are cumulative. They hold out hope that one day we may actually just get together on things and wind up better than we ever expected we could be. You cannot enjoy freedom until you have known what it is like not to have it, or TO have it, and fear losing it.
[Updated on: Thu, 18 June 2020 18:20] |
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Merkin
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Getting started |
Location: Virginia, U.S.A.
Registered: October 2017
Messages: 13
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Geron Kees offers a very fair, very balanced summation of what I have understood of our American social and political history. We live in a federal republic, where fifty different state-based versions of privilege and obligation are in force, all constrained within the framework of a central government's set requirements and limitations. These are subject to continual review and revision. The contradictions inherent to such a system can make anyone deeply confused.
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Geron, I agree with Merkin. Yes, you do offer an educated and balanced view of why people came to this country.
Our Founding Fathers, many of whom were actually non-christian and quite a few of whom were Free Masons, it seems, certainly did a valiant, but not perfect job of balancing the more extreme factions, such as those I mentioned above, and presenting our nation with a fair and effective form of government. But you are correct in pointing out my lack of objectivity in the statement I made. 
[Updated on: Fri, 19 June 2020 18:39]
“There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people as things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.” - Terry Pratchett
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Geron Kees
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Likes it here |
Location: USA
Registered: February 2016
Messages: 150
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"Teddy wrote on Fri, 19 June 2020 18:38"Geron, I agree with Merkin. Yes, you do offer an educated and balanced view of why people came to this country.
Our Founding Fathers, many of whom were actually non-christian and quite a few of whom were Free Masons, it seems, certainly did a valiant, but not perfect job of balancing the more extreme factions, such as those I mentioned above, and presenting our nation with a fair and effective form of government. But you are correct in pointing out my lack of objectivity in the statement I made.
--I didn't mean to point out anything lacking objectivity in your statement, but to clarify my own. My one-liner was a sort of too-general popular view of why people came here, without a little more depth of explanation.
I happen to agree with you that our founding fathers did a pretty good job of looking ahead at where governments go over time, and in trying to install some safeguards to keep our own on the rails. What they seem to have been is practical and observant people, fair-minded, and as well-informed on what makes governments go bad as what makes them stay good. A pretty fair insight into why governments fail is behind a lot of the provisions they made in the paperwork to safeguard our new nation, as is an understanding of human greed, ambition, and the corruptive influences of power and money. What they came up with, what they seemed to be hoping for as a result of their efforts, was a government whose values stem from, and must always return to, the people.
I think most of us still feel these values today, which is a pretty good indication of a job well-done. Now we just need to be observant ourselves, and stay informed, and be ready to act to keep what we have from going by the wayside.
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The Supreme Court decision was very important, but don't celebrate too soon!
"The Trump administration Friday moved forward with a rule that rolls back health care protections for transgender people, even as the Supreme Court barred sex discrimination against LGBT individuals on the job.
The rule from the Department of Health and Human Services was published in the Federal Register, the official record of the executive branch, with an effective date of Aug. 18. That will set off a barrage of lawsuits from gay rights and women's groups. It also signals to religious and social conservatives in President Donald Trump's political base that the administration remains committed to their causes as the president pursues his reelection."
This craven administration continues its assault, and the bit about "signals to religious and social conservatives" is telling.
Read the entire piece by clicking here.
Bensiamin
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