Hi Ramona. I hope you’re well. A well written piece... and i hope you don’t mind me commenting. Feel free to ignore it, or if it is too much, mute/block away. It’s definitely not my intention to insult, offend or anything else.
But as i’m not from America, i have a different perspective on this particular part of your essay:
I know we all think we’re good and kind and an asset to, rather than a carbuncle on, society, but can we be good and kind and still work against about those people who aren’t? Those awful people who refuse to give a thought to anyone outside their own circles and have no desire to be anything but cruel to the rest?
Damn right we can.
Because the most dangerous, serial offender “people who are awful and refuse to give a thought to anyone outside their circles”’are the Elite circle and power structure of your country, not the deeply unhappy sad sacks screaming for attention like spoiled adolescents by saying admittedly horrific stuff. You do realise the chaos and destruction that power structure is sewing around the world, right, and has been for the last 70 years - i mean, ask anyone in Vietnam. Chile. Cuba. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Lebanon. Yemen. Palestine. (To name a few)
From bombs to starvation sanctions, from funding right wing fundamental wahhabi nutcases (when convenient to them) who make Todd from arkansas and his vicious racism look like a character from the little mermaid.... Ask the countless souls in your own country hopelessly addicted to the FDA approved Opioids that this cabal of crooks and psychos just took some bribery money, sorry, lobbying money, to rush through.
And because some spotty teenager who has probably been on ADHD meds since he was 6 types some horrible words, you would like to hand the censorship keys to every online speech platform to them. Then that’ll be the end of it, alongside the “anti-guillotine” robodog cops being rolled out in NY..... because you (plural, not personal. Anyone making the similar argument) will have cheered on and created the consent for all that power and money to label what is inconvenient to that power and money as something that is wrong and worthy of censorship. In other words, killing dissent and voices of reason who want to speak out.?
I don’t think that’s your intention, you clearly want a better world. But what you are arguing for here will absolutely have the opposite effect. It is one of the indisputable observable facts of every horrific authoritarian society of the last 200 years that they had censorship powers and were not afraid to use them. Why do you think that is? And please don’t bring up that state/private thing. That line is so blurry it doesn’t exist. Look at how censorship is achieved in China - it is operated in large part by private entities, not the state.
We all need to be able to call this power structure out, and that means ensuring legal protections to do so, particularly for you American Citizens, who can do the most to help sort that monster out.
If you have read this far, thanks. If you think about it, many thanks. Be well and use your eloquence wisely.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, MIke. I understand where you're going with this, but I look at the state my country is in right now and I can't help but believe it's no coincidence that the vicious and public declarations of hatred toward people who don't deserve any of it have grown exponentially since Donald Trump and his pals made it acceptable to humiliate and lie about anyone they didn't happen to like.
If they had stopped there I might not be as alarmed, but they didn't. They have been and still are promoting hatred and fear and people are getting hurt, not just emotionally but physically.
Laws that might have helped people live happy, productive lives were either overturned or ignored. The courts were filled with judges who treated the law as a tool to harm rather than heal.
We became a country where brown-skinned children were removed from parents seeking asylum, some of them never to be seen again. (We still don't know where some of them are because the Trump administration conveniently 'forgot' to keep records.)
We thought we might be past all of that after 2020, but then Florida governor Ron DeSantis began loading brown-skinned asylum-seekers, even those with families, onto buses and dumping them in locations hundreds of miles away, sometimes in the middle of the night, terrifying already miserable people for no other reason than to stick it to the 'liberals' who have the audacity to defend refugees' rights to asylum here.
After Sandy Hook, where innocent children and their teachers were slaughtered in a gruesome bloodbath we could barely bring ourselves to think about, Chief hater Alex Jones took to taunting the grieving parents on-air, claiming it never happened, knowing it would draw enough haters to back him up and make him a fortune. He must have been thrilled when he became a hero instead of a pariah after Trump took over and any victim was fair game.
That's the climate now but that's not the worst of it. Haters are real. They're not figments of our imaginations. The incidents against innocent people are escalating to such a degree I couldn't possibly list them all, but the underlying energizer is hate.
Hate, as misplaced as it might be, is responsible for the hundreds of mass shootings suddenly in vogue now and made possible by the proliferation of assault weapons--another deadly factor we're not supposed to want to go away.
You can think of 'hate' as a convenient buzzword, and I get that. It took me a long time to call it that, simply because I knew what the reaction would be, but, with all the excuses and cries about 'freedom' and 'liberty, the people doing these things are counting on our reluctance to consider the overwhelming evidence--that much of the disrupting of peoples' lives happens when people are hated.
If we continue this argument in place of figuring out ways to make it stop, what then? When does it stop? Must we tolerate hate because it's a word nobody wants to admit fits? Or can we finally address it and call out the haters, letting them know there's no place for them in a society that thrives when humanity overrides meanness?
I frankly can't believe I even have to say any of this. But here it is, and the least we can do is talk about it.
Look at the figures. They are publicly available. Obama did the same with immigrant/refugee families, and so is Biden now. Obama started the drone programme that has literally blown thousands of innocent black and brown people to pieces. He started the invasion of Libya, which is now nothing but a daily fight for survival. If you are for protecting people, then it’s all of them that are being brutalized by that power structure, not just the ones that appear on CNN, NYT etc or what have you.
I hate trump too, he’s a malignant human, who exploited anger for personal gain and did nothing that he said he would. but they all do horrible things. Take abortion. Obama ran on signing rowe v wade into law. One of his major campaign promises. He had a two year clear majority to do it, but he waltzed in that door and kicked it down the path..... so how, materially, is that any different from what that orange goblin did? That’s my point. Please don’t think it’s because of some people chucking around insults. It’s because that whole structure, no matter who is in power, doesn’t give a flying fook about you, brown people, or anyone other than its own power.
And if you help get this signed into legislation then if de santis wins, who do you think he’ll censor and silence? And you will not be able to put it back in the bottle.
Get what signed into legislation? A way to end hate? Good luck with that. You’ve missed my entire point here. This is about us as a society. This isn’t about people ‘chucking around insults’. It’s about how we should deal with a faction of vicious haters who aren’t going to stop threatening us on their own.
Blaming Obama for not institutionalizing Roe v Wade has nothing to do with this topic, and insisting the government isn’t interested in helping smacks too much of what the Right is pushing.
When I say we all need to work on this I mean the government, too. They’ll never eradicate hate but they can and must take steps to stop the violence so prevalent today. There are laws for that. Outside of government it’s on all of us, business included, to stop hate when we see it.
This is true. Democrats are a lot tricker but nevertheless just as bad. Since it is the case that we are getting more education, if that is what it is, the future is probably for the "liberal" group. They are probably the ones who are going to do the greatest harm, despite all the obvious reasons to reject Trump and those people. It is going to be crazy guys red vs. crazy guys blue. But each is just equally as nutsoid.
Stay well, i can’t go through this again. Do what you feel is right. I’ve read your message twice and got it all thanks. I just don’t find it to be rational or aware of a bigger global picture. And you can label my ideas right wing all you want - left/right means nothing to me. I’m for global solidarity, radically restructuring our whole system from government, resources, power, influence and wealth so that all 8 billion of us can survive, thrive and continue our journey through spacetime in peace. With no one hungry, abused, repressed or wholesale slaughtered, naturally. This will be our last interaction, i just wanted to try. :)
Isn’t that what most of us want? Right now I want to stop the hate I see all around us from becoming a cancer we’ll never be able to cure. That’s my goal. I’ve narrowed my focus here to that one issue and venturing outside that very real threat to look at the world or the restructuring of government systems waters the danger down.
If you didn’t come here to talk about hate, what then? My topic is pretty clear.
Hi Ramona. I hope you’re well. A well written piece... and i hope you don’t mind me commenting. Feel free to ignore it, or if it is too much, mute/block away. It’s definitely not my intention to insult, offend or anything else.
But as i’m not from America, i have a different perspective on this particular part of your essay:
I know we all think we’re good and kind and an asset to, rather than a carbuncle on, society, but can we be good and kind and still work against about those people who aren’t? Those awful people who refuse to give a thought to anyone outside their own circles and have no desire to be anything but cruel to the rest?
Damn right we can.
Because the most dangerous, serial offender “people who are awful and refuse to give a thought to anyone outside their circles”’are the Elite circle and power structure of your country, not the deeply unhappy sad sacks screaming for attention like spoiled adolescents by saying admittedly horrific stuff. You do realise the chaos and destruction that power structure is sewing around the world, right, and has been for the last 70 years - i mean, ask anyone in Vietnam. Chile. Cuba. Afghanistan. Iraq. Libya. Syria. Lebanon. Yemen. Palestine. (To name a few)
From bombs to starvation sanctions, from funding right wing fundamental wahhabi nutcases (when convenient to them) who make Todd from arkansas and his vicious racism look like a character from the little mermaid.... Ask the countless souls in your own country hopelessly addicted to the FDA approved Opioids that this cabal of crooks and psychos just took some bribery money, sorry, lobbying money, to rush through.
And because some spotty teenager who has probably been on ADHD meds since he was 6 types some horrible words, you would like to hand the censorship keys to every online speech platform to them. Then that’ll be the end of it, alongside the “anti-guillotine” robodog cops being rolled out in NY..... because you (plural, not personal. Anyone making the similar argument) will have cheered on and created the consent for all that power and money to label what is inconvenient to that power and money as something that is wrong and worthy of censorship. In other words, killing dissent and voices of reason who want to speak out.?
I don’t think that’s your intention, you clearly want a better world. But what you are arguing for here will absolutely have the opposite effect. It is one of the indisputable observable facts of every horrific authoritarian society of the last 200 years that they had censorship powers and were not afraid to use them. Why do you think that is? And please don’t bring up that state/private thing. That line is so blurry it doesn’t exist. Look at how censorship is achieved in China - it is operated in large part by private entities, not the state.
We all need to be able to call this power structure out, and that means ensuring legal protections to do so, particularly for you American Citizens, who can do the most to help sort that monster out.
If you have read this far, thanks. If you think about it, many thanks. Be well and use your eloquence wisely.
With respect and fellow human solidarity
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, MIke. I understand where you're going with this, but I look at the state my country is in right now and I can't help but believe it's no coincidence that the vicious and public declarations of hatred toward people who don't deserve any of it have grown exponentially since Donald Trump and his pals made it acceptable to humiliate and lie about anyone they didn't happen to like.
If they had stopped there I might not be as alarmed, but they didn't. They have been and still are promoting hatred and fear and people are getting hurt, not just emotionally but physically.
Laws that might have helped people live happy, productive lives were either overturned or ignored. The courts were filled with judges who treated the law as a tool to harm rather than heal.
We became a country where brown-skinned children were removed from parents seeking asylum, some of them never to be seen again. (We still don't know where some of them are because the Trump administration conveniently 'forgot' to keep records.)
We thought we might be past all of that after 2020, but then Florida governor Ron DeSantis began loading brown-skinned asylum-seekers, even those with families, onto buses and dumping them in locations hundreds of miles away, sometimes in the middle of the night, terrifying already miserable people for no other reason than to stick it to the 'liberals' who have the audacity to defend refugees' rights to asylum here.
After Sandy Hook, where innocent children and their teachers were slaughtered in a gruesome bloodbath we could barely bring ourselves to think about, Chief hater Alex Jones took to taunting the grieving parents on-air, claiming it never happened, knowing it would draw enough haters to back him up and make him a fortune. He must have been thrilled when he became a hero instead of a pariah after Trump took over and any victim was fair game.
That's the climate now but that's not the worst of it. Haters are real. They're not figments of our imaginations. The incidents against innocent people are escalating to such a degree I couldn't possibly list them all, but the underlying energizer is hate.
Hate, as misplaced as it might be, is responsible for the hundreds of mass shootings suddenly in vogue now and made possible by the proliferation of assault weapons--another deadly factor we're not supposed to want to go away.
You can think of 'hate' as a convenient buzzword, and I get that. It took me a long time to call it that, simply because I knew what the reaction would be, but, with all the excuses and cries about 'freedom' and 'liberty, the people doing these things are counting on our reluctance to consider the overwhelming evidence--that much of the disrupting of peoples' lives happens when people are hated.
If we continue this argument in place of figuring out ways to make it stop, what then? When does it stop? Must we tolerate hate because it's a word nobody wants to admit fits? Or can we finally address it and call out the haters, letting them know there's no place for them in a society that thrives when humanity overrides meanness?
I frankly can't believe I even have to say any of this. But here it is, and the least we can do is talk about it.
Look at the figures. They are publicly available. Obama did the same with immigrant/refugee families, and so is Biden now. Obama started the drone programme that has literally blown thousands of innocent black and brown people to pieces. He started the invasion of Libya, which is now nothing but a daily fight for survival. If you are for protecting people, then it’s all of them that are being brutalized by that power structure, not just the ones that appear on CNN, NYT etc or what have you.
I hate trump too, he’s a malignant human, who exploited anger for personal gain and did nothing that he said he would. but they all do horrible things. Take abortion. Obama ran on signing rowe v wade into law. One of his major campaign promises. He had a two year clear majority to do it, but he waltzed in that door and kicked it down the path..... so how, materially, is that any different from what that orange goblin did? That’s my point. Please don’t think it’s because of some people chucking around insults. It’s because that whole structure, no matter who is in power, doesn’t give a flying fook about you, brown people, or anyone other than its own power.
And if you help get this signed into legislation then if de santis wins, who do you think he’ll censor and silence? And you will not be able to put it back in the bottle.
Get what signed into legislation? A way to end hate? Good luck with that. You’ve missed my entire point here. This is about us as a society. This isn’t about people ‘chucking around insults’. It’s about how we should deal with a faction of vicious haters who aren’t going to stop threatening us on their own.
Blaming Obama for not institutionalizing Roe v Wade has nothing to do with this topic, and insisting the government isn’t interested in helping smacks too much of what the Right is pushing.
When I say we all need to work on this I mean the government, too. They’ll never eradicate hate but they can and must take steps to stop the violence so prevalent today. There are laws for that. Outside of government it’s on all of us, business included, to stop hate when we see it.
This is true. Democrats are a lot tricker but nevertheless just as bad. Since it is the case that we are getting more education, if that is what it is, the future is probably for the "liberal" group. They are probably the ones who are going to do the greatest harm, despite all the obvious reasons to reject Trump and those people. It is going to be crazy guys red vs. crazy guys blue. But each is just equally as nutsoid.
Stay well, i can’t go through this again. Do what you feel is right. I’ve read your message twice and got it all thanks. I just don’t find it to be rational or aware of a bigger global picture. And you can label my ideas right wing all you want - left/right means nothing to me. I’m for global solidarity, radically restructuring our whole system from government, resources, power, influence and wealth so that all 8 billion of us can survive, thrive and continue our journey through spacetime in peace. With no one hungry, abused, repressed or wholesale slaughtered, naturally. This will be our last interaction, i just wanted to try. :)
Isn’t that what most of us want? Right now I want to stop the hate I see all around us from becoming a cancer we’ll never be able to cure. That’s my goal. I’ve narrowed my focus here to that one issue and venturing outside that very real threat to look at the world or the restructuring of government systems waters the danger down.
If you didn’t come here to talk about hate, what then? My topic is pretty clear.
" I don’t have to tell you what they’ve done. You know who they are. " Why? Is it that obvious?