Thursday, January 24, 2013

"Dumb America".

Let me preface this cut and paste post I am about to drop on you by saying that I love the South and most of the people living in it. (Well, maybe not most.) My lovely wife is a Southerner, (I see you Opelousas) so that ought to tell you how much love I have for the region.

There is a lot about the Southern culture to love, and yet, unfortunately, there is a lot not to love as well.

The wonderful essay below was sent to me by Greg Fuller, and I had to share it with my fellow -enlightened- field hands.

 "George Packer’s recent New Yorker comments on the South made me sort out my own complicated feelings about the region. Both sides of my family are from the South: my mother’s from Georgia, my father’s from Virginia. Though my parents left Atlanta soon after I was born there, we often visited southern relatives in Atlanta, Louisville, and Birmingham. I preferred those who had stayed in the South to those who moved north. My Irish grandmother in Atlanta was a warm-hearted Catholic, while my English grandmother in Chicago was a pinched Christian Scientist always correcting her family. But even apart from the contrast in grandmothers, I always liked the South, though my northern accent made me an outsider there as a child (the family “Yankee”).

One reason I like the South is that I am conservative by temperament—multa tenens antiqua, as Ennius put it, “tenacious of antiquity.” A sense of the past helps explain why America’s southern writers were to the rest of America, in the twentieth century, what Irish writers were to England. The English had Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, Sean O’Casey, Bernard Shaw, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. We (whose relevant region is larger) had Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Wright, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Robert Penn Warren, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, John Crowe Ransom, Erskine Caldwell, Andrew Lytle, and Carson McCullers.  

The South escaped one of the worst character traits of America, its sappy optimism, its weakness of positive thinking. The North puffed confidently into the future, Panglossian about progress, always bound to win. But the South had lost. It knew there was an America that could be defeated. That made it capable of facing tragedy, as many in America were not. This improved its literature, but impoverished other things. Yet poverty did not make the South helpless. In fact, straitened circumstances made it readier to grab what it could get. In its long bargain with the Democratic party, for instance, it not only fended off attacks on its Jim Crow remnant of the Old Confederacy, but gamed the big government system through canny old codgers in Washington—the chairmen of the major congressional committees, who sluiced needed assistance to the South during the Great Depression.

Under the tattered robes of Miss Havisham were hidden the preying hands of the Artful Dodger. Southerners were not really trapped in the past, since they were always scheming to get out of the trap. They were defeated but not dumb. With dreams of an agrarian society, they might denounce the industrial north, but they got the funds to bring electricity to large parts of the South from the government’s Tennessee Valley Authority. They wanted and got government-funded port facilities, oil subsidies in Louisiana, highways and airports and military bases.

But the current South is willing to cut off its own nose to show contempt for the government. Governor Rick Scott of Florida turned down more than $2 billion in federal funds for a high-speed rail system in Florida that would have created jobs and millions of dollars in revenues, just to show he was independent of the hated federal government. In this mood, his forebears would have turned down TVA. People across the South are going even farther than Scott, begging to secede again from the Union. Packer notes that the tea is cooling in parties across the rest of the nation, but seems to be fermenting to a more toxic brew in the South. No one needs better health care more than the South, but it fights it off so long as Obama is offering it, its governors turning down funds for Medicaid. This is a region that rejects sex education, though its rate of teenage pregnancies is double and in places triple that of New England. It fights federal help with education, preferring to inoculate its children against science by denying evolution.

No part of the country will suffer the effects of global warming earlier or with more devastation than the South, yet its politicians resist measures to curb carbon emissions and deny the very existence of climate change—sending it to the dungeon with evolution and biblical errancy. One doesn’t need much imagination to see the South with lowered or swollen waters in its rivers and ports, raging kudzu, swarming mosquitos, and record-breaking high temperatures, still telling itself that global-warming talk is just a liberal conspiracy. But it just digs deeper in denial. The South has decided to be defeated and dumb.

Humans should always cling to what is good about their heritage, but that depends on being able to separate what is good from what is bad. It is noble to oppose mindless change, so long as that does not commit you to rejecting change itself. The South defeats its own cause when it cannot discriminate between the good and the evil in its past, or pretends that the latter does not linger on into the present: Some in the South deny that the legacy of slavery exists at all in our time. The best South, exemplified by the writers listed above, never lost sight of that fact. Where are the writers of that stature today in the Tea Party South? I was made aware of the odd mix of gain and loss when I went back to Atlanta to see my beloved grandmother. She told me not to hold change between my lips while groping for a pocket to put it in—“That might have been in a nigger’s mouth.” Once, when she took me to Mass, she walked out of the church when a black priest came out to celebrate. I wondered why, since she would sit and eat with a black woman who helped her with housework. “It is the dignity—I would not let him take the Lord in his hands.”

Tradition dies hard, hardest among those who cannot admit to the toll it has taken on them. That is why the worst aspects of the South are resurfacing under Obama’s presidency. It is the dignity. That a black should have not merely rights but prominence, authority, and even awe—that is what many Southerners cannot stomach. They would let him ride on the bus, or get into Ivy League schools. But he must be kept from the altar; he cannot perform the secular equivalent of taking the Lord in his hands. It is the dignity.

This is the thing that makes the South the distillation point for all the fugitive extremisms of our time, the heart of Say-No Republicanism, the home of lost causes and nostalgic lunacy. It is as if the whole continent were tipped upward, so that the scattered crazinesses might slide down to the bottom. The South has often been defeated. Now it is defeating itself." [Source]

Unlike the author I do not have a "conservative temperament" so this is why the worst aspects of the South are even more galling. The fact that I happen to be black makes the scope of their ignorance even more (if I may use a Yiddish word) mishegaas to me. 

But I get it. What the author said makes sense. It is why the Tea Party, no matter what they say, will never be able to convince the rest of us that their movement wasn't just about rejecting the "prominence" and "authority" of this black man who dares to call himself their leader. It is why no matter what he says or does they will reject it, even if they happen to lose their nose in the process. 

51 comments:

  1. Amen, I live in Houston because it is a diverse dynamic multi-cultural city...huge Chinatown and the second largest Nigerian community outside of Nigeria in the world.

    But drive a short distance or listen to our governor... I don't get it.

    Thanks for the story I will use it in my government class.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Victor11:12 PM

    "Tradition dies hard, hardest among those who cannot admit to the toll it has taken on them. That is why the worst aspects of the South are resurfacing under Obama’s presidency. It is the dignity."

    Dignity is definitely a tradition that is dying thanks to liberalism.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Enbrolio11:19 PM

    sField Negro:
    "But I get it. What the author
    said makes sense. It is why the Tea Party, no matter what they say, will never be able to convince the rest of us that their movement wasn't just about rejecting the "prominence" and "authority" of this black man who dares to call himself their leader."
    ------------

    WRONG.

    The Tea Party didn't oppose Obama because he was black, they opposed him because he is a lying leftist spending the country into insolvency.

    Obama is not even black. He is the bastard son of a Kenyan raised by his white hippy momma and her family and taught to hate America. He only adopted his black identity as an adult because it suited his political ambitions.

    You are such a puppet.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Sloppin' the hogs:

    http://moonbattery.com/#ooid=A3eTdvODpUXyv-Jcop566wmffy1oa4tG

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous11:53 PM

    Great post, esp about the South. And just because you married a woman from the South doesn't mean shit. What it means is she married a Jamaican from Philly. Now, does that mean she loves Philly? I don't think so. Does it mean that YOU love Louisiana? I don't think so.

    The South is as evil today as it did during the days of slavery and Jim Crow. I don't see a damn thing good about it, esp for Blacks, unless they prefer living out their lives with a plantation subservient mentality.

    The GOP represents the White Southern mentality-a recalcitrant bigoted mind, and an evil contaminated heart bound for hell at death.

    I have relatives in Oklahoma and if I see them or Oklahoma EVER...it will be too damn soon.

    ReplyDelete
  6. clarice11:58 PM

    Michelle Obama is an embarassment to America.

    Some things can’t be handed to people no matter how racially correct they are. Class, for example.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Anonymous11:58 PM

    Those racist ??!@?@ have already lost their tiny pea brains. Let them lose their noses, arms, legs, and continence!

    Updates to the college shooting and a link to teacher carrying guns on K-12 campuses in one Texas town are below.

    http://www.khou.com/news/crime/Mother-of-wrongly-accused-Lone-Star-College-suspect-They-made-him-into-a-monster-188290561.html


    http://www.khou.com/news/local/2-districts-in-southeast-Texas-will-allow-teachers-to-carry-guns-188309281.html

    ReplyDelete
  8. A common thread has emerged among the worst mass killings involving firearms in recent US history:

    Ft Hood: Registered Democrat/Muslim.

    Columbine: Too young to vote; both families were registered Democrats and progressive liberals.

    Virginia Tech: Wrote hate mail to President Bush and to his staff.

    Colorado Theater: Registered Democrat; staff worker on the Obama campaign; Occupy Wall Street participant; progressive liberal.

    Connecticut School Shooter: Registered Democrat; hated Christians.

    Banning guns won’t help. Maybe we should try banning moonbats.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Obama Ties Bush as Most Politically Polarizing President In Modern History

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/160097/obama-fourth-year-office-ties-polarized-ever.aspx

    I think he'll wind up tying Bush in some other metrics, too.

    Like final job approval.

    Anyway, Gallup says this is just the times we live in:

    The list of most polarized years makes it clear that Obama's highly polarized ratings may be as much a reflection of the era in which he is governing as on Obama himself. The last nine presidential years -- the final five for Bush and Obama's first four -- all rank in the top 10. Thus, it appears that highly polarized ratings are becoming the norm, as Americans aligned with both parties are apparently not looking much beyond the president's party affiliation to evaluate the job he is doing.

    Uh, no, it's not that. Obama doesn't feel the need to be president for all the people -- just his micro-targeted macro-payoff base.

    That may indeed be part of the times-- Presidents may follow Obama's lead and nevermore consider themselves presidents of the entire nation -- but it's not the same as that being due to the times.

    It's due to Obama's decisions.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Ace Freeley12:34 AM

    The government locked up a filmmaker because the filmmaker expressed his free speech rights in a way the president found politically problematic. Not only has the press shown no fears about this, they've actively campaigned for the man's jailing.

    That's frightening. Even if you come down on the side that the guy did what he's accused of and all that... to have absolutely no trepidations about the government jailing people primarily for their Speech Crimes? That's something.

    That's something.

    I don't think I'm being alarmist. At every point in history when media power has fused with government power -- whether involuntarily or, for one of the first times in history, now voluntarily -- it has resulted in disaster and misery.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Old Major12:40 AM

    Piers Morgan: Attacking Hillary Clinton For Her Incompetence In Allowing 4 Americans To Be Butchered Is "Misogyny"

    And criticizing Obama (as we know) is "racism."

    There's just no legitimate grounds whatsoever to criticize our president or his inferior servants.

    Yes, indeed, this is precisely what an advanced liberal society is supposed to look like. Not Orwellian at all.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Anonymous1:08 AM

    Finally I knew teh Mooches new doo looked familiar. Sho nuff she was copying President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho from Idiocracy.


    http://moonbattery.com/?p=24462

    ReplyDelete
  13. This is American literature taught conservatively south of the Mason Dixon line: "A sense of the past helps explain why America’s southern writers were to the rest of America, in the twentieth century, what Irish writers were to England. The English had Oscar Wilde, William Butler Yeats, Sean O’Casey, Bernard Shaw, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. We (whose relevant region is larger) had Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Richard Wright, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Robert Penn Warren, Truman Capote, Harper Lee, John Crowe Ransom, Erskine Caldwell, Andrew Lytle, and Carson McCullers." It is far, far from indisputable. & Ellison & Wright were added to that list quite grudgingly. It may even be considered by some insulting to those Irish writen cited.

    ReplyDelete
  14. NSangoma3:53 AM

    ~

    Be careful who you murder in Philadelphia:
    Bucks County exterminator charged with killing Philadelphia pediatrician

    http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20130125_Bucks_County_exterminator_charged_with_killing_Philadelphia_pediatrician.html

    Found that sucker, quick:
    http://www.philly.com/philly/video/BC2117084002001.html

    `

    ReplyDelete
  15. Just FYI, the U.K.s latest crime figures were released yesterday, all crimes are down between 5% and 7% and homicides are down to the lowest level since 1978.

    That's the same U.K. where possession of hand-guns is illegal.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Ace, that idiot should have been locked up a long time go, he is a career criminal.

    ReplyDelete
  17. It is the American Blacks that are biting their own nose off with blind support of an incompetent President who himself is in a revenge fantasy.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Anonymous6:24 AM

    Blogger The Purple Cow said...

    Just FYI, the U.K.s latest crime figures were released yesterday, all crimes are down between 5% and 7% and homicides are down to the lowest level since 1978.

    That's the same U.K. where possession of hand-guns is illegal.

    Oh that's nice. Is it still the 2nd most violent nation in the world after Australia?

    What a third world nation the UK has become aye.

    "Statisticians say one explanation for the difference may have been pressure on the police to downgrade incidents in the face of a targets culture. The study says the police figures may overstate the actual long-term fall in crime, especially since 2006-07.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2011/jul/14/crime-statistics-england-wales

    ReplyDelete
  19. Anonymous8:27 AM

    Thanks for this link, Field. My (white) grandparents were Southern (Texas and Missouri, anyway) and their kids inherited a lot of the bigotry in skim-milk form. Wills throws light on the "dignity" that prevents the South from accepting Obama as their leader (even though they let him "get into Ivy League schools"). Sounds like too much, too soon for their weak constitutions. They will have been ready for Obama in 50 years.
    Meanwhile their shoot-themselves-in-the-foot contrariness boggles my goddamned MIND.

    —anotherbozo

    ReplyDelete
  20. Anonymous9:37 AM

    reps = dems = racists too

    most of the greatest black rebel americans have been southerners
    like mlk

    i am a native of chi
    but my wife and my mom are ebony southern belles too...kudos!
    chiraq = upsouth

    even as latinos and bimbos won hobama 2012
    millions of whites have voted for hobama twice

    hobama has proven that the tea party was clairvoyant indeed

    cc ndaa/gun grabs/new taxes for the poor/wwiii/africom/dhs ammo/fema camps/banksters wilding still...

    when will broke black agendaless jobless homeless gunless hopeless unchanged doomed scalded hobama nazis brew BELATED black tea??????

    when?????????

    shame on u fn!!!!!!


    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/white-house-un-reality-show


    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/symbols-are-all-we-need-four-more-years-black-silence-irrelevance

    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/coming-imperial-implosion-arab-world

    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/connecting-dots-frightening-future

    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/mali-invasion-shows-%E2%80%9Cadieu%E2%80%9D-does-not-always-mean


    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/descent-dr-king-barack-obama

    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/entitle-meant


    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/don%E2%80%99t-you-dare-conflate-mlk-and-obama

    http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=brewing%20blame%20xanga&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CC8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Faliciabanks.xanga.com%2F753897758%2Fbrewing-blame-%25E2%2580%2593-on-scapegoating--slandering-the-tea-party%2F&ei=LJYCUeKTDIrOqAGklIHQDg&usg=AFQjCNE-kv1HoWaTjCAGPgWlQWP1YTKtIQ&bvm=bv.41524429,d.b2I

    ReplyDelete
  21. Lt. Commander Johnson9:38 AM

    field, your wife is from Opelousas? Ask her if she's ever tried Billy's Boudin.

    Have you ever had good, REAL, boudin? If not, you've gotta try it, and Billy's is the best. It'll make you want to slap yo momma.

    ReplyDelete
  22. WTF dude? Stop with the racism. :(

    ReplyDelete
  23. Ace Freeley10:26 AM

    field negro said...
    >Ace, that idiot should have been locked up a long time go, he is a career criminal.<


    True enough, actually he should have been deported as he is not even a citizen. In the end though, he didn't attract any attention from law enforcement until he became a useful foil for the Obama administration.

    The wider point is that the media now function as an arm of the government. It is clear that they see their primary role to defend and cover for the ruling party. Look at how Hillary's testimony was reported by the media. There has been zero curiosity about what really happened. Some very serious mistakes were made and four Americans were killed. No one has taken any responsibility and some ridiculous lies were told for political expediency, destroying Susan Rice's career in the process. Yet the angle taken by the major media outlets was that the Republican were grandstanding misogynists.

    As a result, the American people will never know what their government has been up to. Protecting Hillary is more important.

    That's something.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Quote Catastrophically-stupid-lying-twat 9:24 a.m.

    “Oh that's nice. Is it still the 2nd most violent nation in the world after Australia?”

    According to the Global Peace Index 2012, the UK is the 29th safest nation on Earth. Compare and contrast with the USA which is the 88th safest. Australia incidentally, is the 22nd safest. So as usual you have picked these figures from your morbidly obese, wobbly, white ass.

    **

    "Statisticians say one explanation for the difference may have been pressure on the police to downgrade incidents in the face of a targets culture. The study says the police figures may overstate the actual long-term fall in crime, especially since 2006-07”

    Dear Dickbreath,

    Did you not see the part of the first sentence that says ‘…one explanation for the difference…”??

    That’s because the Police reported figures are somewhat different to the England and Wales Crime report. However BOTH SETS OF STATISTICS SHOW THAT HOMICIDE IS AT A 34 YEAR LOW.

    And here’s a sentence from that very report that you somehow “missed”.

    ” 549 homicides (includes murder, manslaughter and infanticide) were reported in the year ending September 2012, a considerable drop on the previous year's total of 607. Homicides are now down to around half of the figure for 2001/2.”

    Handguns were banned in 1997.

    So either,

    a) You are too stupid to understand even basic statistics

    Or

    b) You are a deceitful cunt who deliberately took this sentence out of context to support your failed argument.

    Yep, it’s b) isn’t it?

    ReplyDelete
  25. Anonymous12:02 PM

    Ace Freeley said...
    "The government locked up a filmmaker because the filmmaker expressed his free speech rights in a way the president found politically problematic. Not only has the press shown no fears about this, they've actively campaigned for the man's jailing.

    That's frightening. Even if you come down on the side that the guy did what he's accused of and all that... to have absolutely no trepidations about the government jailing people primarily for their Speech Crimes? That's something."


    12:34 AM
    <<<<<<<<<<<<<
    It's time that Americans take a look at our free speech rights. Too many irresponsible yo-yo's with this right are extremely dangerous. It's like giving the mentally retarded the right to bear arms. We all know what will happen...a tragedy.

    The times are a changing. Free speech needs and demands responsiblity. Otherwise, it is not free, it is despair and imprisonment.

    That filmmaker almost started a war with his free speech. Anyone with a sense of right and wrong can see that.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Anonymous12:11 PM

    more proof that even the tea party has been far too reticent and kind re: the brutal blackish hitlerish hobama...

    cc ndaa/iran/mali/wwiii/civil war ii etc

    shame!!!!!!!

    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-obama-moves-iran

    http://blackagendareport.com/content/freedom-rider-iran-obama%E2%80%99s-cross-hairs

    http://www.blackagendareport.com/category/department-war/iran-arms-industry

    http://blackagendareport.com/content/obama-provoking-war-iran


    http://www.blackagendareport.com/content/obama%E2%80%99s-mideast-policy-burns

    http://aliciabanks.xanga.com/732463514/hobamas-global-serial-wars-will-be-worse-than-vietnam/

    http://aliciabanks.xanga.com/747103873/the-new-american-global-war-crimes-spree-%e2%80%93--hobama%e2%80%99s-international-thug-swagger/

    http://aliciabanks.xanga.com/732462900/hobama-king-shrub--poppy-bush-a-bloody-dynasty-of-blood-ties/

    http://aliciabanks.xanga.com/746893773/false-flags-and-real-ruses-%e2%80%93--on-osama-bin-laden%e2%80%99s-9-lives%e2%80%a6redux/

    ReplyDelete
  27. WOW. I'd hate to see the comments you don't let through moderation.

    ReplyDelete
  28. Anonymous1:01 PM

    Purple
    your blithering blathering race driven bloviating bores me. Your not a nasty liar, you are just stupid and doing the best you can with the limited equipment you have.

    You mention a decrease in murder rate in that piss-ant Island compared to the great U.S, that's nice. But it sure as hell doesn't have anything to do with a gun ban.

    You don't mention the UK is 1/4 the population

    the UK has always had a low murder rate dating back 30 years or more.

    yet you claim the murder rate decreased because handguns are banned.

    Well we all now the ban that took effect in 1998 resulted in a doubling of shootings/murders etc in the UK. So the ban didn't work but now in your feeble mind is kicking in because homocides dropped of last year over a decade later? Hmmmm...all crime decreased didn't it? What was that tenuous link in your web of deceit?

    You then claim the UK is rate/voted or whatever it is the most safest place in response to the violent crime rate. OK, that's swell still we all know about headlines where it is clear the UK is the most violent nation and shame of Eu

    You forget that the telling statistic is per capita not totals. Again remember even being flooded with third worlders the UK population is less than 1/4 of the U.S.

    The UK has 1,158,957 violent crimes or 2,034 per 100,000 residents. Higher even than south Africa who has A rate per resident is 1,677. Am I surprised, nope. flood a country with third worlders and you become third world.

    The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada 935, Australia 92 and South Africa 1,609.

    If the UK is so safe, why is your parliament looking to find ways to make knives less sharp and penalize those who carry pointed objects and a land where glassware has been removed from numerous pubs? Next will be boots for stomping and fingers for throttling and frothing at the mouth for purple cows.


    You bore the hell out of me with your nonsense and wordsmithing, piss off.


    http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2013/01/11/britain-the-most-violent-country-in-europe-violence-rate-is-4-36-times-worse-than-in-the-u-s/

    ReplyDelete
  29. Kersey1:45 PM

    The debate about guns, gun violence, and gun control in America is all wrong. Based on a simple look at the facts, the disarming of black people (and the strategic use and allocation of resources to combat gang violence in urban areas of the nation) would significantly - and instantly - reduce gun violence in America.

    More importantly, the fear of black criminality that convinces productive families to vacate urban America and move from suburb to suburb in search of a tranquil city to raise a family would also - instantly - be removed from the minds of white people.

    You see, rampant black criminality - and the rational fear of black crime - is the reason cities like Baltimore, Chicago, Atlanta, Memphis, Detroit, Baton Rouge, Birmingham, and St. Louis have become cities where few white faces are rarely seen in areas that are heavily black.

    Disingenuous White Liberals (DWLs) can blame white racism for the poverty and poor conditions found in majority black areas of urban environments, but the reality is simply this: wherever black people numerically become the majority, the physical conditions of the community will degenerate immediately to a level befitting its new majority population.

    Primarily law-abiding white Americans are (and always have) currently purchasing record amounts of guns and ammunition for three reasons: a rational fear of black crime; a rational fear that the government is clamping down on gun ownership and the 2nd Amendment and that it will ultimately use its power to disarm white America -- the only people capable of restoring order out of the chaos in the modern racial democracy that exists in the United States; and, finally, that a "collapse" of some sorts is imminent.

    But think about it: hasn't a collapse of Biblical proportions already happened to 90 percent black Detroit; 75 percent black Birmingham; and others areas of the nation that can scarcely be called 'civilized' anymore? Where black gun violence is as much a fact of life as welfare checks arriving at the first of the month and the EBT/Food Stamp/WIC card being reloaded at the same time?

    What if innovation and an entrepreneur class were to return to these cities via the magic of gentrification? All that serves as an impediment to the rebirth of cities like Detroit and Birmingham is the presence of scary black people - based on crime statistics, "scary" might not be too strong a word.

    What if it became a crime for black people to own weapons?

    ReplyDelete
  30. Part 1.

    Quote: Cletus-the-Slack-Jawed-Yokel

    “You mention a decrease in murder rate in that piss-ant Island compared to the great U.S, that's nice. But it sure as hell doesn't have anything to do with a gun ban. 

You don't mention the UK is 1/4 the population…”

    What the flying fuck has different populations got to do with the murder RATE? Do you know what the word RATE even means?

    **
    “…
the UK has always had a low murder rate dating back 30 years or more.yet you claim the murder rate decreased because handguns are banned.”

    I’m sorry but what part of “the homicide rate in the UK is now the lowest it has been since 1978” do you not understand, Cletus.

    The homicide rate is FALLING. Get it??

    **

    “Well we all now the ban that took effect in 1998 resulted in a doubling of shootings/murders etc in the UK.”

    Absolute lie

    **

    “So the ban didn't work but now in your feeble mind is kicking in because homocides dropped of last year over a decade later?”

    What’s a homicide, Cletus ? Is that killing gay people???

    Anyway, our murder rate is now the lowest since 1978, doesn’t your logic dictate that our murder rate should have RISEN after the gun ban?

    Mmmmmmmmm?

    **
    “Hmmmm...all crime decreased didn't it? What was that tenuous link in your web of deceit?”

    Errrrrr what the fuck are you talking about numbnuts? You say getting rid offirearms increases crime, right? We got rid of guns and crime has gone down.

    Get it yet? 



    **

    “You then claim the UK is rate/voted or whatever it is the most safest place in response to the violent crime rate. OK, that's swell still we all know about headlines where it is clear the UK is the most violent nation and shame of E.U.”

    It is nowhere near the most violent nation in Europe, for that you have to look behind the old iron curtain. You’re just pulling these alleged “facts” out your wobbly one again, aren’t you?

    **
    “You forget that the telling statistic is per capita not totals.”

    Err, no. That’s what I told you, when you claimed U.K.’s population was a quarter of America’s.

    ReplyDelete
  31. Part Two

    **

    “Again remember even being flooded with third worlders the UK population is less than 1/4 of the U.S. 

The UK has 1,158,957 violent crimes or 2,034 per 100,000 residents. Higher even than south Africa who has A rate per resident is 1,677. Am I surprised, nope. flood a country with third worlders and you become third world. 

The U.S. has a violence rate of 466 crimes per 100,000 residents, Canada 935, Australia 92 and South Africa 1,609.”

    You are comparing Apples and Oranges. (They are types of fruit, look ‘em up, you won’t find them on your trailer park) The definitions of what constitutes violent crime are totally different in the UK and USA.

    In the UK harassment is considered a violent crime – not in USA

    In the UK ALL sexual offences are considered violent crimes – in USA only forcible rape.

    In UK ‘Simple Assault (No Injury)’ is considered a violent crime – not in USA.

    The list goes on and on. Your violent crimes are low because you have gerrymandered your statistics.

    **

    “If the UK is so safe, why is your parliament looking to find ways to make knives less sharp and penalize those who carry pointed objects and a land where glassware has been removed from numerous pubs?”


    Well why wouldn’t they?

    **

    “ Next will be boots for stomping and fingers for throttling and frothing at the mouth for purple cows. 


You bore the hell out of me with your nonsense and wordsmithing, piss off.”

    Yep, there’s nothing more boring than someone giving you an intellectual public beat-down is there?

    But do try and calm down Cletus – I’m just here to school you. Think of me as a source of reliable information and analysis to make your life better, and your jaw less slack.

    It’s a tough task but someone’s gotta do it…

    **
    http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2013/01/11/britain-the-most-violent-country-in-europe-violence-rate-is-4-36-times-worse-than-in-the-u-s/

    That’s the difference between me and you.

    I get my information from proper news and information sources, you get yours from hysterical neo-fascist blogs.

    ReplyDelete
  32. The average state homicide rate is 17.3 per 100k for the black population and 2.5 per 100k for the non-black population. The FBI information cannot be used to directly compare black and white homicide rates, since the non-black rate combines the white, Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian rates. But even a casual glance will suffice to show that the states with the highest non-black homicide rates, the District of Columbia (9.1), Nevada (5.2), Arizona (4.4), and California (4.3) tends to coincide with higher levels of Hispanic population.

    If the thesis that crime is due more to poverty and gun ownership than race was correct, we would have to find that gun ownership and poverty are vastly higher among the black population than among the other U.S. populations. But this is clearly not the case with regards to gun ownership, since 44% of whites own guns compared to 27% of blacks, and the Hispanic poverty rate is 26.6%, nearly equal to the black poverty rate of 27.4%. Therefore, we can not only refute this argument that gun rights entail violence by comparing international crime statistics, but also conclusively show that gun control and poverty program recommendations for reducing violence are unrelated to the causal problem at hand, and as a result, extremely unlikely to reduce it in any substantive manner.

    The most sensible thing to do of course would be to ban gun ownership among most blacks.

    ReplyDelete
  33. Anonymous2:22 PM

    Ah--ha Field- You are clearly making too much sense. There is no other reason the trolls would come out and park in your comments section day after day. Clever of you to allow their idiotic comments to stay as they just reveal their ignorance and hatred. I found myself laughing at the one who goes all "third world nation" on the UK. This is the stuff copied and pasted into Facebook news feeds, emails and other blogs and thoroughly mocked for its blatant racism and stupidity.
    Oh...and Purple Cow.. you really do an excellent job of analysis and smack down using real facts...but leave out words like cunt... It's a given-- and the rest of us can read between the lines when you merely put them down with excruciating politeness.
    And trolls--keep it up with the junior high level comments about the President and the First Lady. Every time I share that with my friends all along the political spectrum, they wince and want to run from you. :-) You're a gift to the left. Truly.

    ReplyDelete
  34. Anonymous2:41 PM

    Purple Nurple Says...

    "So as usual you have picked these figures from your morbidly obese, wobbly, white ass"


    Oh really now.

    Compared with whites, Blacks had 51% higher and Hispanics had 21% higher obesity rates

    http://www.cdc.gov/features/dsobesityadults/index.html

    Did you know that 90% of blacks are murdered by blacks, and 83% of whites are murdered by whites?

    Did you know that there are 14.82 murders per 100K by blacks versus 2.17 per 100K for whites?

    Per capita there are 7x more murders committed by blacks than whites.

    ReplyDelete
  35. I see you've given up, Cletus. Sensible decision.

    **
    In my previous post I forgot to mention that 52% of all the U.K.'s 'violent crime' comes from just two factors that are not considered violent crimes in the USA - Harassment 15%, and Simple assault (No injury) 37%.

    That's without all the other offences.

    "Oh really now.

    Compared with whites, Blacks had 51% higher and Hispanics had 21% higher obesity rates"

    Yeah, but you've still got a wobbly ass.

    **
    "Did you know that there are 14.82 murders per 100K by blacks versus 2.17 per 100K for whites?"

    Every 1% increase in poverty leads to a 2.7% increase in violent crime.

    Every 1% increase in unemployment leads to a 4% increase in homicides.

    Every 1% increase in poverty leads to an increase in all crimes of 134 cases per 100,000 inhabitants

    Bullock [1955], Beasley and Antunes [1974] Mladenka and Hill [1976] Shaw and McKay [1969], Short (1951)

    **
    A study by Ludwig, Duncan, and Hirschfield shows teens commit more violent crimes when they live in high poverty areas than when they were relocated to low poverty areas.

    “The offer to relocate families from high - to very low - poverty neighborhoods (census tracts with poverty rates below 10 percent) reduces juvenile arrests for violent offenses on the order of 30 to 50 percent of the arrest rate for controls”

    Jens Ludwig (2000)

    **

    Hollingshead and Redlich (1958) demonstrated that poverty has a serious effect on mental health, and poor people with mental health issues are much less likely to receive treatment for their problems.

    56.2% of people in American prisons have mental health problems.

    http://www.hrw.org/news/2006/09/05/us-number-mentally-ill-prisons-quadrupled

    ReplyDelete
  36. parvenu4:50 PM

    Field, Thanks for the article about the Tea Party south. However, once all the pettifogging is taken out of the discussion it comes down to the simple 20th century decision for the ideal economic model that the south has traditionally chosen to hold close to its heart romances with its vision of a southern dominated world of agrarian commerce. Unfortunately this romanticized southern vision includes the superior breeding of millions of "plantation darkies" programmed to feverishly work those holy agrarian fields from dawn to dusk with a never-ending flow of infectious laughter and attractive appealing light hearted Negro humor.

    The writer of your article calls this Southern plantation ideology "dignity". This is the writer unconsciously attempting to blind the reader with the standard American societal veil of WHITE PRIVILIGE, which is almost always linguistically pressed into service when white folks are forced by the glare of obvious facts to say the nasty truth about the despicable behavior of other white folks. When faced with this inescapable reality they resort to "Sunday school acceptable" euphemisms designed to sugar coat the harsh unpleasantness inherent in the records of the pernicious deeds carried out by their fellow white brethren.

    The weak feeble efforts by ex-furniture salesman Bob Corker and other southern politicians to bring some measure of 20th century industrialization into the south by sucking up to foreign automobile manufacturers in order to get them to consider building assembly plants for their vehicles in southern anti-union right-to-work states will not be instrumental in causing "The South to Rise Again", a prophecy long cherished in the south from the day of the South’s defeat in the American Civil War. Foreign assembly plant relocation is not a long term credible solution to the South’s economic problems simply because industrialization of the south is antithetical to the cherished anti-bellum dream still worshipped throughout the south which envisions the coming of an American southern agrarian world power.

    IMHO the South’s dogged determination to cling to their dream to once again become a dominate prestigious agrarian society in this 21th century world driven by global commerce is the best recipe for consigning the neo-South and its 19th century slavery driven ideology to the dustbin of history.

    ReplyDelete
  37. Anonymous5:52 PM

    "The most sensible thing to do of course would be to ban gun ownership among most blacks."

    Most blacks...huh? You say that 27% of blacks own guns, yet you want to ban gun ownership of most blacks. In addition,that would violate the second amendment wouldn't it? That's not american...are you an anarchist?

    Listen Vox, take some writing classes and learn how to make an argument. First, your thesis is too vague. What type of crime are you refering to? Driving under the influence of alcohol is a crime but has no connection with poverty or gun ownership.

    "If the thesis that crime is due more to poverty and gun ownership than race was correct...But this is clearly not the case with regards to gun ownership"

    So do you conclude that poverty alone is responsible for crime? I would suggest you look at MSNBC's American Greed...these people (overwhelmingly white) don't appear to be impoverished.

    "...comparing international crime statistics..."

    What stats...More whites kill people of color than people of color kill whites.

    Now get to work and don't come back with any more of your lame ass arguments.

    ReplyDelete
  38. No love for the south for me. I tend to avoid former slave states, ha!
    I notice Bobby Jindal is talking like an adult and admitting the gop is the "dumb" party. Better late than never to the prom there Bobby, thanks for saying what everybody else knows.

    ReplyDelete
  39. As a Louisiana now living in the north I agree with some of what the writer said but reject that the foolish intransigence of the south is because of dignity. They hate because of their belief in their superiority to black and poor people. It ferments their rage against any black person being in charge of them. They harbor in their hearts the undying belief that the south will rise again and and blacks will be their foot stools.

    I would have been more impressed had the writer said that we need to wait a couple more generations and the matter will be moot. It is impossible to turn back a tidal wave. It is impossible to stop people from hating. However, giants do die and that may be exactly what will happen. Those old mean souls will die off. That's the revolution in the south...attrition.

    ReplyDelete
  40. Anonymous7:40 PM

    Purple Cow Said...

    But do try and calm down Cletus – I’m just here to school you. Think of me as a source of reliable information and analysis to make your life better, and your jaw less slack.


    Oh son, you are the one who is all uptight and pissed off. Imagine after being told to stop frothing at the mouth you have the audacity to play it off onto someone else.

    I told you already your game playing and semantics along with your anger bore the hell out of me.

    Never minded a good debate , however now discussing things with a disingenuous transgender drama queen isn't interesting in the slightest.

    Piss off.


    Oh and despite the crime rate that fell last year and your obvious love and obsession with the USA the greatest nation on earth, along with your penchant for wordsmithing - the UK is still a modern cesspool and but a shadow of its former majesty..... because of you.

    ReplyDelete
  41. Anonymous7:47 PM

    I found myself laughing at the one who goes all "third world nation" on the UK. This is the stuff copied and pasted into Facebook news feeds, emails and other blogs and thoroughly mocked for its blatant racism and stupidity.


    Yes, yes dear. The Cow knows Britain is third world and economically will be third world by next year.


    Britain last ran a current-account surplus in 1983. Since then, it has been in deficit. Worse, it has been borrowing money from countries such as China in order to buy goods made in, yes, China.

    Then there is the steady sale of our commercial assets to foreigners. Overseas investors possess nearly £200 billion more of British assets than our investors own overseas.

    Britain’s labour market is a mess – another sign of a relegation candidate. Many native workers, considered too unproductive and poorly trained to be of use, are paid beer money in the form of benefits to keep them quiet, while better qualified foreigners are recruited instead.

    At the latest count, four million of Britain’s 29 million workers were foreign-born. Two million Britons are registered as long-term sick, and 2.63 million are unemployed, using the broadest definition.

    There is a permanent rumble of discontent from the customers of both State and private organisations. Public servants demand additional upfront payments, in cash or kind, before they will perform their tasks (police overtime, GP contracts).

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2157055/Why-Britain-join-Third-World.html

    ReplyDelete
  42. "field, your wife is from Opelousas? Ask her if she's ever tried Billy's Boudin.

    Have you ever had good, REAL, boudin? If not, you've gotta try it, and Billy's is the best. It'll make you want to slap yo momma."

    Never had boudin. My father in law told me stories of when they used to eat blood boudin and unfortunately it turned me off from that particular food source for life. The Mrs. does partake from time to time.

    Man there has been a few great comments recently. -I see you deb,parvenu, Anon @5:52, and, as usual, Pilot & PC.- I love it when the comments make sense. :)

    ReplyDelete
  43. Uh Deb, tell us what you really think of the south. Ha.

    ReplyDelete
  44. "The Cow knows Britain is third world and economically will be third world by next year. "

    Yup, that's what happens when you elect conservatives to run your economy.

    ReplyDelete
  45. >"If the thesis that crime is due more to poverty and gun ownership than race was correct...But this is clearly not the case with regards to gun ownership"<

    So do you conclude that poverty alone is responsible for crime?""


    You obviously didn't read or at least comprehend my post, where I compared the poverty rates of blacks and hispanics (a non-black population).

    "More whites kill people of color than people of color kill whites."

    Wrong. It is also clear you don't understand the difference between absolute numbers and a per capita rate.

    Low-information morons such as yourself are the reason we have this mess.

    ReplyDelete
  46. Field Liberal9:25 PM

    "I love it when the comments make sense. :)"

    i.e. when they are simple, bigotted distortions that I agree with.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Anonymous11:34 AM

    I'm a fan of Purple Cow.
    And, Deb--I think you have an excellent point about the underlying belief by the old, white, southern conservatives feeling superior to Blacks and believing the South will rise again. Like children who've had their favorite toy removed for bad behavior, certain southerners have never let go...still believing a twisted version of events and clinging to the confederacy. In areas where there have been waves of investment into research and good jobs followed by newcomers, those attitudes are receding. But--just to be clear: ..."one Nation, under God (under God phrase making its appearance in 1954), indivisible, with liberty and justice for all." So to all of those still clinging to the fantasy of the Confederacy's resurgence...you can look up the meaning of indivisible (and while you're at it, check out liberty and justice) or you can stop saying the pledge and just go all out there and declare you are no longer a citizen...or you can leave. I, for one, believe in the promise of this great country and continue to work for "liberty and justice for all."

    ReplyDelete
  48. Bacopa7:36 PM

    I have to say that the Packer article pretty much nailed it. If anything, I would have gone a bit harder on the South, but that's probably because I live here.

    ReplyDelete
  49. I'm okay with the South burying itself with its stupidity. No loss to me. The liberals and minorities should get out of dodge before things get too sticky down there.

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete