DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Palus Politicus Charlottesville discussion continued...

I'd say thanks for trying ... but thats not what i was looking for ... *L* ...

Yours and Rockies reply just throws fuel on the fire ....

PLEASE try and respond to my questions before u get back on the hampster wheel of this forum ...

To any that give me a serious response ...

THANKS ...

To those looking to do business as usual in here ... BITE ME!!! *L* ...

Just because you can't handle the truth does not make it any less the truth.

It will all return to normal after November 2018.

The Truth of the matter is we don't need a President to bring us together when we have that power in ourselves...

When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the Systems Game. The Establishment will irritate you, pull your beard, and flick your face to make you fight. Because once they have got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is non-violence and humor.
-John Lennon

quote above by diam:



Because you apparently didn't want to hear my opinion of what I think.

You come back with:



I would have preferred a cogent reply. Something meaningful. Something that would have offered hope.

100% my fault. I apologize

I often forget this just a Cleveland Browns football fans board.

Don't take it wrong Rocky, he has changed his posting style and is ticking us off too these days.

Sorry Rock ... didn't mean to offend u ... hope u accept my apology ... it was not my intent to offend but i did not give u a proper reply .... BITE ME was a joke ... try and lighten the mood around here a little ... tensions run pretty high in there if u haven't noticed ... ...

Here's a proper reply ...

I agree for the most part ... the president can't do much if anything ... they can't do anything meaningful ...

The folks "gaming the system" aren't ever going to change ... thats not who I'm talking about here ...

I'm talking about the black and white folk that want to change things ... that want to try and make things better .... you made a good point in that claims of racism will never go away ... I'll add that racism will never go away ... it was invented by white americans or black americans ... it was around long beore this country was founded .... when are the pyramids coming down ... they were built with slaves ...

Sorry i didn't respond properly .. thanks for pointing it out ...

Well, what I'm about to say might sound sort of wrong, and i'm pretty sure a ton of people will disagree with me, but i'll take a shot at your question.

so the disclaimer ******my opinion***** my perspective***

for a simple and short answer, there are alpha's, and then there are betas.

for the long breakdown:

when you look at society and throughout human history, we have slowly evolved from straight up kings and queens and dictators to democracies and republics.

so in every form of government, whether it be a monarchy, dictatorship, or democracy, there's always THE leader: king/queen, dictator, president, Prime minister, etc.

now, i'm sure this board is intelligent enough that i don't need to break down the differences between these different forms of government, so i'll move on to what the president is suppose to do HERE.

even with our form of government, the president is still the alpha dog. So he's suppose to set the direction and agenda for this nation. that's why we elect him: to lead us. so we might all be alphas at home, or at work, or in a car club or something. but we all elect whoever to essentially rule over us (sounds bad but try to follow me) and to make sure we are headed in the right direction as a country.

so when crap starts to go south in this country, the president is suppose to step in and set the agenda. he is suppose to refocus us as a nation to heal from whatever events took place, that way we can continue progressing as a nation.

Now obviously I loved how obama address the nation, specifically his speech during inaugartion and the famously named "amazing graze" speech, but to make the point more clear to my conservative counterparts, look at this:



That was one of the most powerful speeches on god's green earth. now the full video is on youtube, but that's a snippet of the full speech.

i might not have liked Reagan's policies, but damn do i wish he was president to give us something like that right now after what happened in Charlottesville.

a speech like that can literally unite people, Diam. it can bring up emotion, make you cry, make you think, make you BELIEVE that something can be better. it can motivate and and metaphorically and LITERALLY tear down barriers.

that's how you address the people.

And Diam, i know trump is your boy, but as of right now, he has not remotely demonstrated that he can do that.

we already have all the laws in the world for these racist douchebags. while throwing them up on the terrorist organization list might seem good, that's not gonna change their ideology.

if Reagan or JFK was alive today, they would not be pulling this "all sides responsible" nonsense when it comes to this issue and what happened.

Diam, this issue is why we elect who we elect. it isn't just about conservative or liberal policy. it's about unity and peace and progressing together as a nation. it's just as much about social issues as it is economic.

and a president who can not handle both is simply unfit for the office.

That didn't answer my main question ... what can the pres do to fix this ...

All u did was make it political ...

I changed my style cause i was ashamed of how i posted ... its not who i am .... everyone comes here for different reasons ... and thats fine and i accept that ...

Eve for example seems to come here to blow off steam and talk crap to Swish and the others ... I'm not sure but based of what I've read over the last week or so .. thats what shes here for ... to each their own ... I'm not saying its a bad thing .... its just not for me ...

I'm trying to have discussions to try and clear some things up and help me to understand the opposing views and hopefully learn a few things along the way .... i may be wasting my time ... so far other than Swish no one else has bitten ... and thats fine .. it is what it is ...

That may not be possible here ... if not, thats fine ... I'll just leave ... but before i throw the towel in, I'm going to at least try ...

I still love u bro ... just got to be me .. .witch I'm sure your fine with even though its not as entertaining ...

LOL............still playing that card, I see.

I agree w/Trump and the amount of crap he is taking for telling the truth speaks more about the scum who is accusing him than it does to him.

nah, just telling the truth. please don't ruin the convo between Diam and myself.

That is a very good question and I will have to give it a lot more thought. A lot, lot more!

We both know the divide is wide. We both understand that it's ripping our country apart.

What would we do if something like this was happening in our families?

Work out the issues or resort to pettiness and play the blame game?

We got a lot of folks on here who love playing the blame game. They don't see how both sides are at fault. It's all the fault of the other side. LOL

Tell me, Diam. Is it ever completely the fault of the other side in such instances?

So, what should the President do? [And again, I have to give this a lot more thought] and maybe some of this is dumb, but it's off the top of my head.

How about if the President went on National TV and addressed the divide? What if he spoke of how great our country is? What if he acknowledged that problems will always arise when we have such a diverse population? How about if he asks for tolerance of opposing views? What if he were to ask for the country to set aside their differences for the greater good and for our own protection against enemies from other parts of the globe?

What if he announces that his administration is going to organize meetings between people on both sides in various areas of concern, including--but not limited to--race, political ideologies, religion, gun control, birth control, etc? What if he helps set in motion a series of town hall meetings where people try to work our their differences rather than allowing the divide to widen? What if he sets up a Commission of some of the finest minds in the country to conduct a study and file a report on how to best bridge our differences? What if he sets up educational training on how best to deal w/sensitive issues?

What if he were to look America in the proverbial eye, and tell us that he loves this country and he is going to do everything he can to help bring all Americans together and that he is going to lead the fight against hate, bias, bigotry, intolerance, etc?

Do you think those things might help?

LOL........okay.

All cool Diam.
Just keep in mind you may not be getting many hits because it is Sunday night. Patience.

Your reply to Diam was good even if I don't agree with all of it.

I would love to see an actual conversation happen around here but hope is low. Speak your mind.

i figured i'll try the Clem route.

Tired of going to DT prison all the time.

Well said my friend, some of your best work right there.

Americans are divided socially and economically in ways that have not been seen since the worst days of the Great Depression and as the world was heading into another global conflict.

"Democracies are threatened when the principles that divide people are more strongly held than those that bind them and when divided people are more inclined to fight than work to resolve their differences." "Conflicts have now intensified to the point that fighting to the death is probably more likely than reconciliation."

-Ray Dalio

And about a year ago the great separation got real legs.

I think that would be met with mockery and cynicism.. and probably rightfully so.

don't get me wrong, I wish he would do it. I wish he would take that tone and say much of what you suggested he say... but until he backs it up, proves it on a daily basis, folks aren't going to believe him. People have become very suspicious of anything Trump says because even when he does say the right thing, within 48 hours, he says something to contradict it.

Trump cannot fix what is broken with one speech. He can change the tide, he can bring a little bit of calm... but he's going to have to follow it up and his actions and future tweets are going to have to be consistent with his speech if anybody is going to begin to believe he is serious.

Thanks for responding. I actually thought that post would initiate conversation. I'm dumb that way.

DC, I did post quite a few examples of things he could implement before making the comment he quoted. I'm not sure if they were good ideas or not? I'm not sure if there are better ideas? Probably so.

The point was to implement change. To start programs, research, out-reach services, etc to help bridge the gap. That last paragraph was just kind of a general summary.

I am not naive enough to think that he would win people over right away. However, I do think:

--it beats doing absolutely nothing to oppose the negative impression most have about him and race relations.

--starting programs that are geared to solving our problems is needed in these troubled times.

Look man, in my profession, I was seen as a doer, rather than a talker. I think it is time for him to start an action plan to help unite the country. It beats the hell out of doing nothing!

This part of my post..

don't get me wrong, I wish he would do it. I wish he would take that tone and say much of what you suggested he say...

was addressing the paragraphs before the one I copied as well.. so yes, I'm in agreement with most of it, I just didn't feel the need to copy the whole thing.

I saw a tweet the other day that said something like, "Please stop coming to black churches to tell us you know racism is wrong, go to white churches and tell them it's wrong." That kind of struck me... just a little bit. Y'know?

I said in a different post, I'm not sure what he can do though I admit he needs to do something. His advisory panel on manufacturing has been scrapped because nobody wants to serve, another of his advisory panels was scrapped because nobody wants to serve. Simple fact is, NOBODY with a good name and reputation wants to be associated with him for fear that it will kill their business or kill their future political career, depending on which way they want to go.

So I agree, he needs to start DOING things... I'm just not sure who he is going to do them with.... he's rather quickly isolating himself with his core followers and that's about it to try to get anything done. And I'm not sure how much of his core group really wants him to take some big stand on bridging the divide..

I wasn't getting on your case. Just trying to further conversation.

There are messages between many of the lines I wrote in that initial post.

Btw----------I think that of the posters who post in this forum, you are one of the very few who is fair and willing to see both sides of a topic. I respect that.

Thank you and I did not interpret it as you getting on my case, just that we had a little miscommunication between us. No big deal.

I noticed the other day that half my neighbors where outside yelling tear it down, and the other half were yelling leave it alone. I listened to them go on and on for a few weeks. Finally I had heard enough so I went and removed my unpainted Lawn jockey from the yard.



Life is to short to waste it arguing about stupid useless crap.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/soc...m=.e006ab607fce


The road to hate: For six young men, Charlottesville is only the beginning

Wlliam Fears speaks with protesters at Texas A&M University in 2016 prior to a speech by white nationalist leader Richard Spencer, which he said solidified his alt-right leanings. His trip to Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally on Aug. 12 was much longer and more eventful. “Things are life and death now,” Fears, 29, said. (Spencer Selvidge/Reuters)

By Terrence McCoy

August 19 

For all that he did in Charlottesville, chanting anti-Semitic slogans, carrying a torch across the University of Virginia campus, he wasn’t even aware that the alt-right existed one year ago. It wasn’t until Hillary Clinton condemned the movement in a campaign speech last August that he first learned of it, and from there, the radicalization of William Fears, 29, moved quickly.

He heard that one of its spokesmen, Richard Spencer, who coined the name “alt-right,” was speaking at Texas A&M University in December, so he drove the two hours to hear him speak. There, he met people who looked like him, people he never would have associated with white nationalism — men wearing suits, not swastikas — and it made him want to be a part of something. Then Fears was going to other rallies across Texas, and local websites were calling him one of “Houston’s most outspoken Neo-Nazis,” and he was seeing alt-right memes of Adolf Hitler that at first he thought foolish — “people are going to hate us” — but soon learned to enjoy.

“It’s probably been about a year,” he said, “but my evolution has been faster and faster.”


Last weekend’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which ended with dozens injured, a woman struck dead by a car, a president again engulfed in scandal and another national bout of soul-searching over race in America, was a collection of virtually every kind of white nationalist the country has ever known. There were members of the Ku Klux Klan , skinheads and neo-Nazis . But it was this group, the group of William Fears, that was not so familiar.

The torch-lit images of Friday night’s march revealed scores like him: clean-cut, unashamed and young — very young. They almost looked as though they were students of the university they marched through.

Why white supremacists chose liberal Charlottesville to protest

One person was killed and 19 were injured amid protests of a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville on Aug. 12. Here’s how the city became the scene of violence. (Video: Elyse Samuels, Zoeann Murphy/Photo: Evelyn Hockstein/The Washington Post)



Who were they? What in their relatively short lives had so aggrieved them that they felt compelled to drive across the country for a rally? How does this happen?

[A neo-Nazi’s rage-fueled journey to Charlottesville]

The answer is complicated and unique to each person, but there are nonetheless similarities, according to lengthy interviews with six young men, aged 21 to 35, who traveled hundreds of miles to Charlottesville to the rally. For these men, it was far from a lark. It was the culmination of something that took months for some, years for others. There were plot points along this trajectory, each emboldening them more and more, until they were on the streets of Charlottesville, ready to unshackle themselves from the anonymity of online avatars and show the world their faces.

All roads lead to Charlottesville

From New Orleans, one man journeyed 965 miles. Another arrived from Harrisburg, Pa. — 247 miles. Another drove all night, more than 20 hours in all, from Austin — 1,404 miles. One more traveled from Dayton, Ohio — 442 miles.


The road to Charlottesville, 540 miles away from his home in Paoli, Ind., began decades ago for Matthew Parrott, who at 35 calls himself “the first alt-righter,” referring to a small and decentralized movement of extreme conservatives, many of whom profess white-supremacist and anti-Semitic beliefs and seek a whites-only ethno state.

Parrott had been diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome at 15, he said. So his family pooled their money and got him a computer with access to the Internet — a rarity in his neighborhood of mobile homes — which he came to see as his “secret portal in my bedroom.” In chat rooms, he developed a taste for intellectual combat, always taking the contrarian side, obsessing over how to dismantle progressive arguments until, as he puts it, he “ended up self-radicalizing.”

That radicalization was rooted, he said, in his own feelings of alienation, which intensified when he went to Indiana University and confronted an elite he soon came to disdain. “They made fun of my accent and overbite and they called me white trash and hillbilly,” Parrott said. “I was never able to identify with a single person.”

Matthew Parrott, 35, who calls himself “the first alt-righter,” drove 540 miles from Paoli, Ind., to Charlottesville. “I need to be more aggressive,” he said. (AJ Mast/For The Washington Post)

He dropped out after his first semester, and his disillusionment festered until, at age 23, he went to the national conference of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white-nationalist organization based in St. Louis. He considers this moment when comparing what white nationalism once was and what it has become. “I was the youngest one in the room,” he said. Old men, “asked me, ‘Whose grandson are you?’ They were baffled. . . . And now those guys are too frail to understand what’s going on.”


What was going on: The same alienation and purposelessness that once defined his life had come to characterize that of so many others. An economy capsized, a job market contracted, a student-loan crisis erupted, and feelings of resentment and victimization took hold among some members of Parrott’s generation.

“This is not some hypothetical thing,” said Parrott, who soon established the white nationalist Traditionalist Youth Network and started recruiting. “This is, ‘I’m stuck working at McDonald’s where there are no factory jobs and the boomer economy is gone and we have got this humiliating degrading service economy. . . . They feel the ladder has been kicked away from them.”

And who was to blame for all of this? Those who joined the alt-right did not view impersonal economic factors or their own failings as culprits.

“In some respects, it’s not that different from Islamist extremists,” Ryan Lenz of the Southern Poverty Law Center said. A similar set of conditions — disaffected young men, few jobs for them and a radical ideology promising answers — have fueled recruitment for the alt-right movement. These young men, Lenz said, were told “they were sold a raw bill of goods. The government is working against them and doesn’t give a s--- about white people, and they were told this during a period when the first African American president was in the White House.”

Peyton Oubre, 21, of Metairie, La., perceived it after graduating from high school when he was looking for a job. “Where I live, go to any McDonalds or Walmart, and most of the employees are black,” said Oubre, who is unemployed. “And I could put in 500 applications and receive one call. Every time I walked into Walmart, there were no white people, and how come they are getting hired and I can’t?”

“White privilege,” he said. “I’m still waiting on my privilege.”

For Tony Hovater, 29, of Dayton, Ohio, it came after he had dropped out of college and was touring with his metal band, for which he played drums, and he passed through the small towns of the Rust Belt and Appalachia. He started thinking that so much of the national narrative focuses on the plight of poor, urban minorities, but here was poverty as desperate as any he had seen, and yet no one was talking about poor whites. “You see how a complete system failed a group of people and didn’t take any responsibility for it and has done nothing to help,” he said.

For Connor Perrin, 29, of Austin, who grew up upper-middle class, it was during college when he felt campus liberals were ostracizing his fraternity because it was white. “If only people would stop attacking us,” he said.“I can’t say anything just because I’m white. I can’t talk about race, and I can’t talk about the Jews because I’ll be called an anti-Semite, and I can’t say I want to date my own race.”

For Eric Starr, 31, of Harrisburg, Pa., who has been convicted of disorderly conduct for fighting and possession with intent to manufacture or deliver, it was growing up white in a poor black neighborhood. “I got bullied and I got made fun of and I got beat up,” he said. “Cracker, whitey, white boy.”

And for William Fears, who has been convicted of criminal trespass, aggravated kidnapping and possession of a controlled substance, it happened while he was incarcerated. “I don’t think any race experiences racism in the modern world the way that white people do in a jail,” he said. “In jail, whites come last.”

From these disparate geographies, social classes and upbringings — rich and poor, rural and urban, educated and not — they converged on a single place last weekend, Charlottesville, with a shared belief that they, white men, are the true victims of today’s America.

Ready for a fight

“I wanted to be in the fight,” Perrin said.

“I need to be more aggressive,” Parrot said.

“We never fight for anything,” Fears said.

The violence that they would mete out and receive on the streets of the picturesque college town was the most pivotal moment to date in the evolution of the alt-right movement, the men interviewed believe. The alt-right has always been a diffuse movement, but it has also been intensely communal. People make and share memes that glorify President Trump and make jokes of Hitler and the Holocaust. They discuss events on 4chan, Reddit and Discord. They get to know one another despite a distance of hundreds of miles. They learned not to fear being called a racist or a Nazi, and in fact, some found those descriptions liberating, even “addicting,” as Parrott described it.

But Charlottesville represented an opportunity to further transcend what they called confining social taboos. Many came prepared for violence, like Fears, who was wearing a blue business suit, a helmet, gas mask and goggles. He rode a van with a group of other alt-right members, and described it as “being transported into a war zone.” Bottles burst against the van’s windows, he recalled. People hit the van. It stopped before Emancipation Park, and everyone started yelling to get out as quickly as possible. Gripping a flag like a weapon, Fears strode to the front and melted into the melee. He threw punches. He took punches. He felt disgust. “Someone hit me in the head with a stick,” he said, “and it split my goggles off.”

“Little savages,” Starr said of the counterprotesters.

“Subhuman,” Perrin said.

Neither the day’s events leading to the car crash that killed Heather Heyer and injured 19 others in Charlottesville, nor the condemnation from politicians and people across the country that followed, has persuaded those interviewed that their beliefs are wrong. For some, it only confirmed their sense of victimhood. They felt silenced and censored, deprived of their rights. They felt as if the death of Heyer had changed everything, and that uncontrollable forces had been unleashed.


“It was like a war... it was an eerie feeling,” Fears said. “Things are life and death now, and if you’re involved in this movement, you have to be willing to die for it now, and that was the first time that had happened.”

Soon after the rally, Fears started the long trip home to Houston, where he is a construction worker. He talked to his family, who “pretty much agree with me.” He tried to calm down his little brother, who was “shaken up by it.” He thought about what would happen if he died. “If I’m killed, that’s fine,” he said. “Maybe I’ll be a martyr or something, or remembered.”

He knows there will be another Black Lives Matter event soon, and he has plans to go. “I’ll take a megaphone and see what they have to say,” he said. “I would like there not to be more violence. . . . But it might be inevitable, so let’s get this out of the way. If there is going to be a violent race war, maybe we should do it, maybe we should escalate it.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the path of the march. This version has been corrected.



Alice Crites contributed to this report

Abraham Lincoln has joined George Washington on the list of those targeted by Chicagoans in a national debate over Civil War-era monuments.
Alderman Raymond Lopez took to Facebook Wednesday night to decry the defacing of a statue representing the nation’s 16th president in the Englewood neighborhood. The giant bust appears to have been damaged after someone in the 15th Ward sprayed and ignited a flammable liquid.

So much hate from the alt-right

ESPN bounces play by play guy because of his name.

Robert Lee was re-assigned from calling the Virginia game.

https://www.yahoo.com/sports/espn-remove...-122026966.html

Oh my God. ESPN has been a crapshow for years, but dang. This is so funny. Robert Lee is this dude.

This ^^^^^^ is just nuts!

Way over the top PC crap!

So you are comparing our forefathers to the people who committed treason against our nation when they seceded from the union? You're comparing our founding fathers to the people who wished to take it over?

You sound like Trump.

You talk about the past in terms of today's views.
You had Nation States Vs The Union back then. There was no Treason.

This is what the Civil War was fought over, States Rights to govern themselves vs Federal(union) Rule.

Colonel Robert E. Lee resigned from the United States army two days after he was offered command of the Union army and three days after his native state, Virginia, seceded from the Union. Lee opposed secession, but he was a loyal son of Virginia.

In a 2006 letter, Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia argued that the question was not in the realm of legal possibility because the “constitutional” basis of secession had been “resolved by the Civil War.”

Today it would be Treason.

And your saying, "You're comparing our founding fathers to the people who wished to take it over?

The South did not want to take over anything, they wanted out of the Union. They wanted the Country to be made up of independent states that would come together as needed for mutual protection.

The only place we really disagree is when it comes to "erasing our history". I don't see taking these statues down as erasing history. We have museums with which to document history. The teaching of the civil war will not be erased form our educational system. To me, that keeps the history alive and in its proper place.

I see a monument or statue as a glorification of someone. A celebration of someone. To me that's far different than our history. I'll give you an example of something I see on a fairly regular basis. I take my wife to see my mother in law about once a month. Driving from Nashville to western Tn, we take I-40 west to see her.

As such, we pass a sign for the exit to Nathan Bedford Forrest State Park. (confederate general) IMO, you name state parks and erect monuments/statues to honor people. To show your respect for them. They are already a part of history, but to name or place a monument in honor of an individual is to raise that person to a place of respect.

Other than this point, I fell we agree.

Yeah, the south didn't attack the north trying to take over our nation. That was just my imagination.

According to History, yes.

The plan was for the Confederacy to beat the Union Armies in Gettysburg and then swing south into Maryland, who they expected would join the Confederacy at that point, and then march on Washington to crush the Grand Army of the Republic.
This would end the war as the Union would dissolve without an army. Thus all States would be free to rule themselves again.

I'm glad you seem to support that idea.

And you said that I'm looking at things from the present day. Yes, of course. This isn't 1865 anymore. Thank God.

Maybe I missed something, but this whole tearing down monuments thing isn't so much about the South trying to secede. It's about what that movement stood for. The essence of the argument to take down the Lee statue is because, at the end of the day, he fought for a movement that wanted to keep slavery. Whether or not he committed treason is, imo, irrelevant. He fought for an idea that is evil (slavery).
That's why arguing to bring down other statues (Washington, Jefferson, etc.) is, again, imo... tenuous at best. Yeah, those guys did bad things. If we removed statues of everyone that did bad things in their lives, we probably wouldn't have any statues left.

Thus we must not make the mistake of judging the decision making and beliefs of those who lived in the past by our view of things today.

Those folks did not even comprehend what a germ was and they believed that bleeding you for Anemia was a cure.

We have the blessing of hindsight which is most often 20/20.
They were winging it like we do today. The future must judge us by what we are aware of today, not what they will know as fact in the future.

In other words "Treason"

Andrew Johnson pardoned everyone who fought for the Confederacy on December 25, 1868 including those who where charged with treason.

Thanks for posting the obvious.