grzegorz wrote:oragami_itto wrote:
Perfect timing.
Are you doing a racism on me, buddy?
grzegorz wrote:oragami_itto wrote:
Perfect timing.
Steve James wrote:
But Bruce, you can go to the Wikipedia (or Britannica) and look at the section relating to the United States and disagree. At least, try hard not to put words in other peoples' mouths. I know. I know. You didn't read closely because ....
There is not a single biological element unique to any of the groups we call white, black, Asian, Latino, etc. In fact, no matter how hard people try, there has never been a successful scientific way to justify any racial classification, in biology. This is not to say that humans don’t vary biologically, we do, a lot. But rather that the variation is not racially distributed. If you don’t believe me, check it out for yourself by having a look at some of the references below. Seriously, there are no biological races in humans today, period
oragami_itto wrote:grzegorz wrote:oragami_itto wrote:
Perfect timing.
Are you doing a racism on me, buddy?
greytowhite wrote:Tons of racism here in the United States. How many white Americans have family in the Aryan Brotherhood? Me, me, I do! Oh that's just the trouble side of the family but they've always been good to us even though we're half Mexican and most of the "white" side is Choctaw and Seminole we're still white passing. When I shaved my head in high school here in Gilbert, Arizona because my sister fucked up my haircut when she started cosmetology school I got plenty of winks, OK hand signs, Heil Hitlers, and people showing off double lightning bolt SS tattoos. Many of them would shrug it off and point to the Superstition Springs mountains nearby when challenged as racists but then have a swastika in a more hidden place. One of my first roommates out of high school left the Aryan Brotherhood after he graduated. As a 21st birthday present I helped him get a cover up tattoo over his swastika. My friend's older brother was radicalized toward white power through the Army Rangers. After serving 3 terms in Afghanistan he came back a raging anti-Semite and racist. I have conservative coworkers complaining about Alex Jones being deplatformed while daily my friends who talk about their experience with discrimination are banned and it doesn't ever bleed over to the conservative sphere because it's not their one black friend that got banned. I can go on.
after Steve started in with his bullshit claims of racism.
Michael wrote:
It's really very sad that in the UK there are quite a lot of people, especially in rural areas, whose attitude towards Germany has been shaped, apparently, by a long-term diet of British and American war films. Especially the ones from the 1960s and 1970s where the Germans were totally the baddies, i.e. scenery-chewing Nazis anywhere on the scale between monsters and buffoons. And the sit-coms (some of which were great, of course). And comics. And Indiana Jones. And maybe even Schindler's List. The fact that the Federal Republic of Germany, for all its faults, is a state and a culture that to the greatest part has really accepted, learned from and turned away from this terrible and justly guilt-inducing chapter of its past, that the FRG has today in many ways a much more 'democratic', resilient and well-functioning political system than the United Kingdom --- in large parts of the British population there is almost zero awareness of this. 75 years after the end of WW2, a not insignificant part of the British population doesn't really believe, or wish to believe, that things have changed.
Michael wrote:You've brought up a very important point, but let me just say at first that the particular meme I posted does mention Germany because it's considered the power in the EU and there are current policies that are the object of this satire. Because of the humor, I hadn't considered the larger implication.
The propaganda against Germany since WW2, really continuing to the present day, has been extremely harmful first to Germans, but has become so monolithic that it influences American culture in a negative way as well. After a period of time and a complete change in direction, there should be forgiveness, but instead there is a constant re-opening of the wound that ultimately is damaging to millions of people and I think benefiting no one really, at this point.
Some of the American movie releases of the past several years were still going at it, stoking a completely anachronistic contempt for German people. I watched the one with Bradd Pitt a few years ago with some family members and I don't see the point any longer in making these kinds of war films, except to promote war and degrade a group of people alive today who do not deserve it. That trash from Tarantino is disgusting in the context of its influence on people alive today. We had enough of those kinds of films by the end of the 60's. "The Dirty Dozen" (1967) should have been the last such entertainment on that topic.
But, please go on explaining how the media has made nazism seem worse than it really was.
Giles wrote:Hi Michael,
I have to say that politically speaking I am mostly on a different wavelength to you, also as regards the EU and Brexit, but I thank you for your considered and very civil response here.
And now back to the humor. Or 'humor'.
Return to Been There Done That
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests