While polls find King's 'Dream' is elusive, so are commonsense attitudes about racism

Check out this quote from a recent Pew Research finding on race in America (under the heading King's Dream Remains an Elusive Goal... ). I make a few points in reaction to it, and the circular problem of misusing racism in today's America: 

Incarceration. Black men were more than six times as likely as white men in 2010 to be incarcerated in federal and state prisons, and local jails, the last year complete data are available. That is an increase from 1960, when black men were five times as likely as whites to be incarcerated.

SIX TIMES as likely?! Some want to call that racism. They are FOOLS of the highest order. Or, sad, piteous, willing victims of narrow-minded suspicions.

The disparity of prison time for whites versus blacks is about as much to do with race bias as someone being overweight has to do with food being advertised on TV. Not to mock actual racism, but those blame, the victimhood, and the paranoia that surrounds so much allegations of racism. That is: one's weight is about them, not food ads.

With criminal incarceration, it is about people being criminals, not some grand scheme to "keep them down." Racism exists, light and hard, but to run to it every time there's a philosophical or physical scuffle is a cycle of failure. That's not to minimize the matter, when facts prove racism had a hand in some event, but unreasonable aspersions ought not to be batched in with actual racist activities. Paranoia and habitual distrust isn't a reliable source for social change.

Committing crime and going to prison is a problem that cannot be solved through blame, racial or otherwise, but through improving one's plight. That's not easy, or simple, when one is steeped in a culture of victimhood, self-pity, misleading heroes, and a habit of blaming others for your problems. Changing the response of those who cry victim when it's not the case is what will change such a disparity as this prison one, not crazed claims of rampant racism in the courts.

Such lashing out is a cycle of failure, whether it is about racism or any other suspicion of being wronged. There is an understandable lingering sense of betrayal, frustration and anger in impoverished or dysfunctional communities, but that does not prove systemic racism.

How can getting jailed for committing a crime be racist, certainly to such an overwhelming degree, without it being proven as more than a mere suspicion? These claims amount to claims of having seen Bigfoot, though. Sometimes there is racial problems, but often, it's something else. You cannot call someone a racist for jailing a black criminal -- unless they let white criminals go SIX TIMES for every black criminal, for the same crime. Is this happening? Where's the exposés on that today?

Are we to all damn our lying eyes with regard to race and racial biases, or racial hypocrisy? I hope we can recover MLK's dream, but it won't be easy while people insist on pointing the finger, like stabbing their sword at imaginary dragons.

Let freedom ring, indeed. And let REASON reign! 

• See the findings and comments by Pew Research:  King's Dream Remains an Elusive Goal 

- jR, aka AirFarceOne (Twitter)

Ten years on, I regret its start, but I love what could have been in Iraq

We toppled Saddam Hussein, and he was found in a spider hole. He was tried, and hanged.
How dare we, huh? I guess Iraqis would have been better off if nobody died but the hundreds of thousands who would have died at bequest of the maniacal psychopath Saddam Hussein.
Or, is it only that tender-footed Americans would be better off had we not engaged his deadly dictatorship?
It was upsetting and offensive to me and many that the invasion happened over what proved to be bad intelligence. No matter the political or overemotional regard or hatred for Bush and his team, the bad intel stung him, and America. But once you're in, you're in.
Bush and his team knew, while America in general is afraid to accept it, that the only way to change a place in the Middle East is to look after it for an entire generation to prevent another brutal dictatorship. But we don't care enough to hold out that long, do we? Time to shut up and do your best, once you're in, though. And so many did their best, and, yes, many died in the pursuit of more freedom in the world, hardly meaningless despite what some cowards have said against the effort in Iraq.
So Bush wanted people to die? He enjoys death? Yes, the left is certain of it. Rumsfeld is EVIL, just like Cheney and Bush. Who cares that we toppled the most evil, imperialist bastard of his region?

Hussein kept his country in order, I recall several cowardly, halfwitted people noting, their apparent reason to regret our invasion. Like pinning a butterfly to a cork board keeps the insect in order, Hussein kept things in order. We should have let it be, those who demonize Bush suggest either directly, or indirectly. I guess these Middle Eastern furr-nurs are abstractions to some living the good life (whatever their intelligence or economic level) in the United States of America, huh?


- jR

(revised, July 2013)

Abortion Horror: Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Should Be a Major News Story

The Atlantic (where I read pieces of an article, linked below), USA Today (commentary, linked below), National Journal, for examples, and much of the conservative media are addressing the story of the Phillie mad doctor who essentially killed babies if they didn't die during late -term abortions. Not only that, he allegedly killed patients getting abortions, too.

While most conservatives are known as against abortion, certainly against abortion as a form of birth control, this story of Dr. Kermit Gosnell has little to do with the eerie media blackout on this horrid tale: this story goes beyond the abortion issue. Far beyond.

Web-only media are reporting this horrific story, too. But while standard-bearers for the common man's news have no problem skewing news against conservatives and skewering conservative views even on pretty lame evidence sometimes, they ignore this story. Why?

What's wrong with "mainstream media"? They are cliquish, posing, sheep. But some folks deep in the media business are noticing and worrying about it.

Conor Friedersdorf wrote a long piece about it, that I stumbled across, for The Atlantic and National Journal. I cannot stand to read the great detail he goes into. It stirs me into an internal rage while skimming what he's presented. But I found the following, well into the long article, and thought it suited sharing because I think it locks in my feelings about this story and the media's failure with it:

Says Kirsten Powers in her USA Today op-ed, "Let me state the obvious. This should be front page news. When Rush Limbaugh attacked Sandra Fluke, there was non-stop media hysteria. The venerable NBC Nightly News' Brian Williams intoned, 'A firestorm of outrage from women after a crude tirade from Rush Limbaugh,' as he teased a segment on the brouhaha. Yet, accusations of babies having their heads severed -- a major human rights story if there ever was one -- doesn't make the cut."

Well done, non-sheep media folks.

The rest of the half-blind leftist media can try to bring this horrific manner with which to control population and subvert sexual irresponsibility with an awful act of depravity, but they have already proven -- added another sample into the list -- that they are not reporting relevant news, but trying to lead society to a direction that suits them, the liberal, poorly engaged, weakly objective media elite.

Why Dr. Kermit Gosnell's Trial Should Be a Major News Story - Yahoo! News

Also see Powers' piece, subtitled "We've forgotten what belongs on Page One."


- jR, aka AirFarceOne (Twitter)

Independence is not a thing you can enforce

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY. Note: You cannot enforce liberty. 

The Founding Fathers, in the 1700s, understood the dire risks of pursuing liberty, and did not do so by enforcing some imagined (utopian) equality (see a Spearhead piece on equality), but by carefully separating themselves from an autocratic leader, by realizing and establishing not just a new government, but essentially a new form of government. That's a big deal. I think too many take it for granted, or only give it some general lip service today. The patriots of that age wanted to allow citizens who were law-abiding proceed in their lives, not be pinched at every turn of luck or at every respectable success.

The Founders' decision to leave the tyranny of Britain's King George was the promise of their ruin (Snopes.com), not knowing the outcome. They still took that chance. A calculated risk? Certainly. (What's the biggest risk of your life you've ever taken? Driving a car? Motocross? Bungie jumping? Or serving your country at a time of war? Saving someone from a burning building? Only the last two count.) Thanks to the Founding Fathers and many of their fellow patriots, the USA won its freedom, implausibly, from the most powerful sea and land force on the planet.

Look how far we've come, huh?

We can't say that today our leaders have the same thoughts that the Founders, or any patriots of the 1700s, had. We are a nation spoiled by our comforts, to the least engaged among us. The difference we can make is in recognizing those aspects of our lives that are spoiling us, and living beyond them.

The current Democratic chief in the White House (and by extension, those who surround him or share his ideas) has the notable trait of blaming others -- not a leadership trait. If you search for "Barack Obama blame" online, there are 58 million hits. That is the trait not of a true leader, but of an abuser, or a lowly wheeler-dealer, not a heroic and principled change agent. Of course, some of those are about average people seeing his lack of blame (Economist, unscientific poll), while others point out the irony of his claim and blame paradox (Economist article, June 2012). His rhetorical soundbites and longwinded speech-lectures too commonly amount to lies in the long run. See, just because you think something might be true doesn't excuse you when it is exactly wrong -- that's delusional. That's, apparently, a lot of Obama true believers in a nutshell. For instance, he pledged in 2009 that the ACA, or Obamacare, would help the needy and make costs go down for the middle class. Not happening.

Power grabs of one type or another have been too common since Sept. 11, sadly. Borne of concern for safety, they are obviously affecting freedoms, and it is far worse under Obama and the federal agencies under his umbrella than it had started out with under the equally security-over-liberty minded George Bush. The supposedly forward-thinking White House of 2013 is not an antidote to power over the people, but fully a part of that allegedly well-meaning, but nonetheless overbearing, attitude of enforcing fairness by playing favorites. This current condition is not in any way Americanism, it a whiff of totalitarianism.

In Texas, it seems that we've learned -- if one has no understanding of it for one's own -- that the support of abortion after 20 weeks is a right. Aborting a child after five months is a kind of liberty? For whom?! Unwilling mothers who are too dumb or delusional to decide to give up a child, in the worst way possible, before five months? Nationwide, we've seen the view that registering all legal guns is the only right thing to do, according to our president and those on the overbearing, nanny state, big government side of America. This is so, while letting arms slip into hands of known bands of killers to try and track the guns, and losing track of them (what the hell?!) is good for liberty. As well, while giving deadly arms to rogue activists akin to the Taliban, in this case, the Syrian rebels, is also acceptable. But. not entrusting Americans with their right to bear arms, a central tenet of the idea of liberty envisioned by our Founding Fathers. What liberty is Obama and the left in favor of? That which limits the rights of all in favor of coddling to the favored labels? How un-American have we gotten?

Slavery wasn't abolished by our founders and, out of context, that's shameful to me. In context, I realize that the civil war would have happened on the heels of the revolution, had that move been pushed. Still tragic, but to manage freedom from the King of England was a first step. The Founders were not perfect men. Obama is far from that himself, farther than they. That wrong does not translate well to the idea that the broad freedoms they envisioned in the 1700s were incorrect. Today, how is it that granting, to the government, more power over law-abiding citizens  somehow makes anyone more "free"? I think leaving aside slavery at the outset was a compromise, no matter how regrettable it was. We live in different times, but how dare people suggest that these times also call for a government that nannies us? That isn't liberty, that's comfort to the disinterested and lazy. We shouldn't be regarding independence as something administered by the government. Because it can only be taken from us by a government. We freed the slaves not by limiting their freedom, but by preventing their enslavement. There is a huge difference.

- jR, aka AirFarceOne (Twitter)

Hair on fire: Actor Jeremy Irons says some things about gay marriage, and then some

The UK's Independent and many other news outlets -- see this search and read plenty of outrage, if you wish -- went after Jeremy Irons for challenging, off the path statements. Media mostly couldn't separate what was bizarre with what was not bizarre, or what was reasonable comments and opinion with anything else.

In other words, too many media sites were trying to tell us all what to think of him, not that what he said was inaccurate, opinion, or arguable fact. They supposed that we should be outraged, naturally -- or, political correctly, to be exact. 

The stories out there seem to be a fine example of how firm political correctness is embedded into media, and how weak the effort to separate facts from non-facts is on many media sites. Here's the Independent version:

In an interview with the Huffington Post the 64-year-old actor, who stated that he didn’t “have a strong feeling either way” on the subject, mused: “Could a father not marry his son?"

When the interviewer reminded Irons about incest laws, the actor continued: "It's not incest between men," adding: "Incest is there to protect us from inbreeding, but men don't breed".

Independent then called that "bizarre" in their piece. So what if the purpose of incest laws is true, as he presented there. They noted comments he made in February about old men coming onto him, patting his butt, and said women who get a butt-pat should deal with it, too.

It is not the first time Irons has made controversial remarks during an interview.  In February he revealed that as a young actor he had to fend off the advances of older men and defended an earlier interview in the Radio Times in which he said “any woman worth her salt can deal with [being patted on the bottom].”

Speaking to the Times newspaper, Irons claimed his remarks about bottom patting were “misquoted”, explaining: “I love touching. I always touch people. I don’t think I said ‘bottom’ [in the Radio Times interview] but of course I was misquoted. Basically, I said that any self-respecting woman would tell you to f*** off [if she minded].”

He went on to explain: “I think we’re very robust as human beings. I had people when I was younger trying to feel me up. Older men. I just told them to get lost.”

Read the whole article" http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/jeremy-irons-makes-bizarre-remarks-comparing-gay-marriage-to-incest-between-fathers-and-sons-8559836.html

Another clumsy piece by the Examiner news-ish sites: http://www.examiner.com/article/jeremy-irons-gay-remarks-actor-compares-same-sex-marriage-to-incest

Of course, social media, as with everything else, is pooping themselves over his comments. The typical: how dare he, that's awful, bla bla, feckless reactions. Dinner party comments. Booring. http://www.newsmax.com/TheWire/jeremy-irons-gay-marriage-incest/2013/04/05/id/498043

Did I mention that a lot of what he said was bizarre? Yeah. But that people are crapping themselves over it makes it all worth it, to me.

Rare that a great actor offends social liberal drones. 

Just let me enjoy it! 

 

jR, aka AirFarceOne