Democrats Have A Nasty Case Of American Privilege

[motonoggin]

@Snoslinger

http://www.newslogue.com/debate/328 

I was chatting with an Armenian American clear-eyed rebel yesterday who said something that summed up so much of what’s wrong with the average rank-and-file Democrat in just two simple words, and I think it’d be awesome if those two words caught on. She shared her experience of telling her liberal friends how she couldn’t support Clinton because Clinton is an interventionist, and was she was told by her friends that interventionist is “just a word.” Same with warmongering; they honestly saw it as just an empty term that has no relevance to them or their fears and values.

 

That’s American privilege,” my friend said.

Boom. That’s it right there, isn’t it? Two words: American privilege. Democrats will gleefully accuse their political opposition of white privilege, male privilege, straight and cis privilege in their attempts to hand the government over to politicians who want to topple governments and drop cluster munitions on cities overseas, because the alternative might make things a little uncomfortable for them at home. How many of my readers were accused of “white privilege” for their decision to back Jill Stein over Hillary Clinton in the general election? Quite a few I’d imagine. They’d rather have elected a President with an extensive history of supporting disastrous military intervention after disastrous military intervention, who was promising to shoot down Russian military planes over Syria and provide “military responses” for Russian “cyber attacks”, than fight the political system that forces them into voting for World War 3 in a pants suit. All because the orange guy said he’d build a wall.

It’s good to be aware of the advantages one was born with in one’s society. It makes you a more intellectually responsible and sincere person to be aware that individuals of the opposite sex don’t enjoy the privilege of not having to fear rape in certain situations, for example, or that people of another race are at much greater risk of being shot by police at a traffic stop. Democrats do a fairly decent job of bringing consciousness to these kinds of privilege, but fall far, far short of consciousness when it comes to the privilege of relaxing at home watching The Voice while other people’s children are being slaughtered by their elected officials in American imperialist interventions overseas.

We got a clear illustration of American privilege Monday during a press conference with Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters. Waters, who enjoys neither male privilege nor white privilege, had earlier proclaimed via Twitter that her greatest desire was to lead Trump into impeachment, and defended her tweet to the press with a bizarre tirade about Trump’s lack of hostility toward Russia’s behavior in regions Waters couldn’t even remember the name of. She couldn’t recall the name of Aleppo, and then referred to Crimea as “Korea” when decrying Russia’s involvement in those regions. Again, this is a United States Congresswoman. People elected her to have a deep understanding of such issues, and she is not only conspicuously malinformed about what actually transpired in both Crimea and Aleppo, she can’t even pronounce them.

So to recap, this sitting member of Congress wants to (A) replace Trump, whose noninterventionist policies are getting him accused of isolationism, with Pence, who is a warmongering neocon, (B) increase tensions with Russia, (C) force Russia out of Crimea, and (D) force Russia out of Aleppo and presumably all of Syria, while demonstrating about as much knowledge of these international affairs as your average Samantha Bee fan. 

You could not ask for a more perfect illustration of the illness that pervades the Democratic establishment than this. Interventionism is just a word. Warmongering is just a word. Aleppo and Crimea don’t even get to have their own words, just throw some syllables out there and any arrangement of vowels and consonants will do. Destroyed nations, hundreds of thousands killed, millions displaced, terrorist factions arising in the midst of the suffering and chaos and being armed to the teeth to help them topple more regimes, children ripped to shreds by cluster munitions, all that’s fine as long as it’s happening in someone else’s backyard and I get to keep my Obamacare. That’s an extreme abuse of American privilege right there, and Democrats are the very worst offenders.

The good news is that people on the leftish end of America’s political spectrum are already fairly well-versed at bringing consciousness to the types of privilege that they enjoy. Tell a liberal their privilege is showing, and you’ve got their attention. If we can bring the term ‘American privilege’ into the liberal lexicon with a clear understanding of what that means, progressive rebels can do a lot of damage to the oppression machine. Let me explain:

The basic problem with America’s rank-and-file Democratic party loyalists is that they don’t understand what the oligarchy is or how it works. They still think that most of the problems America faces are due to bigotry and Republicans; they don’t understand the way a collaboration of billionaires has been able to essentially buy both parties and use them as two fists to pummel the 99 percent into the dirt. Bernie Sanders talked about the oligarchy throughout his entire campaign, but since that campaign ended it’s become evident that this concept never really took root in the collective consciousness of the average Democrat; it’s all about punching Nazis and “OMG Muslim ban!” and impeachment now. The fact that America has become an oligarchy —easily the single most important political concept for Americans to grasp— has been officially lost in the shuffle.

Luckily, the economy the oligarchs have constructed for themselves is dependent upon military interventionism. The ultimate backing of the US dollar is not gold, nor is it oil, nor even plutocratic fiats; ultimately, the US dollar is backed by the might of the US military. You could basically imagine America as a guy with a really big gun, pointing the gun at his neighbors and demanding that they treat the pieces of paper in his wallet as though they’re worth a certain amount of purchasing power. Without the gun, it’s just paper. Without using the carrot of military alliance and the stick of military retaliation to force OPEC nations to sell oil in US dollars and bully other countries into submitting to the hegemony of its currency, the whole scheme necessarily falls apart, and a new kind of American economy will have to be constructed. 

If this happens, Americans will be freed from the tyranny of the oligarchs, the world will be freed from the tyranny of the US military, and humanity will be free to start relating in a sane and collaborative manner with itself and with its ecosystem. This is why I see opposition to US interventionism as the exact opposite of “just words”; I see it as the single most important thing that Americans can do for themselves. And by bringing the concept of American privilege into consciousness for America’s Democrats, we can help connect those dots for them by cutting through the compartmentalization and helping them to really grok the horrors that US military interventionism inflicts upon the world. 

And make no mistake, it is a matter of compartmentalization, not malice. It’s not like Democrats sit around happily fantasizing about how many Middle Eastern children they’ll be able to kill once they can get control of the federal government; these are more or less good-hearted and well-intentioned individuals who simply haven’t been able to look squarely at the consequences of their party’s interventionist policies. If we can bring awareness of the evils of interventionism to high enough levels that Democrats start nominating and electing non-interventionist candidates, the oppression machine will necessarily fall to pieces. 

And then we’ll have a chance to push toward something beautiful. The US spends more money on its military than the next seven countries combined propping up its insane bomb-backed economy. Think about what could be done with all those extra hundreds of billions of dollars if they were directed toward helping the American people instead of holding the rest of the world at gunpoint. The economy wouldn’t collapse, it would thrive; the only people who’d lose anything from the new paradigm would be the tyrannical oligarchs themselves, and hell, even they could come play in our beautiful new world. This is something you can definitely build for yourselves if you want it, America. Please think about it.

[02sled]

To read all that propaganda BS would be a waste of time I would never get back. 

[Snake]

Savage is a cunt.

[Cold War]

HMMM, we often see the same problems, but often disagree on the why.

Americans in general have been privileged, and it has nothing to do with being gay or white.  We take our liberties and rights for granted because we have never had to look out our windows and see tanks driving by. We are lucky enough to live in a Country where things like "what bathroom should that guy, who thinks he is a woman use" is an issue.   

[racer254]

19 minutes ago, Cold War said:

HMMM, we often see the same problems, but often disagree on the why.

Americans in general have been privileged, and it has nothing to do with being gay or white.  We take our liberties and rights for granted because we have never had to look out our windows and see tanks driving by. We are lucky enough to live in a Country where things like "what bathroom should that guy, who thinks he is a woman use" is an issue.   

This, but if you say "thank a soldier"  for this ability, some go apeshit.

[motonoggin]

1 hour ago, Snake said:

Savage is a cunt.

Yup. Did you read the entire piece?

3 minutes ago, racer254 said:

This, but if you say "thank a soldier"  for this ability, some go apeshit.

Is oil a freedom?

[Snake]

2 minutes ago, motonoggin said:

Yup. Did you read the entire piece?

Is oil a freedom?

Is oil a freedom? No.

Is oil vital to national/global security?

[racer254]

14 minutes ago, motonoggin said:

Yup. Did you read the entire piece?

Is oil a freedom?

No!  And you ain't getting me into a rabbit hole about soldiers fighting for oil.

I thank a soldier for doing what his country asked of him. 

Edited February 9, 2017 by racer254

[motonoggin]

1 hour ago, racer254 said:

No!  And you ain't getting me into a rabbit hole about soldiers fighting for oil.

I thank a soldier for doing what his country asked of him. 

Yeah, fighting for corporate conquest is pretty frickin noble. 

[Snoslinger]

2 hours ago, Cold War said:

HMMM, we often see the same problems, but often disagree on the why.

Americans in general have been privileged, and it has nothing to do with being gay or white.  We take our liberties and rights for granted because we have never had to look out our windows and see tanks driving by. We are lucky enough to live in a Country where things like "what bathroom should that guy, who thinks he is a woman use" is an issue.   

good post. what do you think poor mexicans think, and others for that matter, when they see us taking advantage of their cheap labor, while many of us are living in nice houses, driving nice cars, eating good food, compared to what they have? all the while trump is running around crying that we're being taken advantage of my mexico and others?  we are very, very spoiled. 

Edited February 9, 2017 by Snoslinger

[Cold War]

3 minutes ago, Snoslinger said:

good post. what do you think poor mexicans think, and others for that matter, when they see us taking advantage of their cheap labor, while living in nice houses, driving nice cars, eating good food, etc? all the while trump is running around crying that we're being taken advantage of my mexico and others?  we are very, very spoiled. 

I want that. 

[Snoslinger]

14 minutes ago, Cold War said:

I want that. 

?

[Snake]

1 hour ago, Snoslinger said:

good post. what do you think poor mexicans think, and others for that matter, when they see us taking advantage of their cheap labor, while many of us are living in nice houses, driving nice cars, eating good food, compared to what they have? all the while trump is running around crying that we're being taken advantage of my mexico and others?  we are very, very spoiled. 

When I was in Jamaica, the abject poverty was awful.

We went on an excursion on 4 wheelers, and after there is a shopping area you HAVE to go through to get out. Now, I don't know if any of you have gone through this in places like that, but it is sickening.... they lie, put stuff in your hands and say you need to pay for it.... like Hillary at a fund raiser.

After 3 minutes you literally can't take it no more. So we beelined it out of there. Buncha locals started yelling shit at us, not 'helping out the local economy'.

I spent $6k to get there, and we spent over $200 on the excursion. We tipped both our guides, who couldn't have been nicer or more pleasant, $20 a piece, and bought a couple things. How much must I spend to make THEM happy?

Spoiled? No. Some of you? Maby.

[02sled]

It's like that in a lot of the Caribbean. We went to St. Lucia which is a poor island at best. The hotel posts security guards to keep the locals from bothering and stealing from the guests. We went on one of the Jolly Roger type cruises and while at the dock if you threw even a nickel into the water there were kids that would dive in to retrieve it. There was one wearing 3 pair of shorts. They all had holes in them but by the 3rd pair there weren't any holes that showed through to skin.

We commented about the coconuts on the trees at the resort and one of the guards scrambled up a tree and brought one down for us. We gave him $5 and a Frisbee for his kids. Apparently the $5 was a huge amount of money for him.

Often people don't know they are poor until someone tells them they are. All they have to compare their lives to are those of their neighbours.

[Snoslinger]

1 hour ago, Snake said:

When I was in Jamaica, the abject poverty was awful.

We went on an excursion on 4 wheelers, and after there is a shopping area you HAVE to go through to get out. Now, I don't know if any of you have gone through this in places like that, but it is sickening.... they lie, put stuff in your hands and say you need to pay for it.... like Hillary at a fund raiser.

After 3 minutes you literally can't take it no more. So we beelined it out of there. Buncha locals started yelling shit at us, not 'helping out the local economy'.

I spent $6k to get there, and we spent over $200 on the excursion. We tipped both our guides, who couldn't have been nicer or more pleasant, $20 a piece, and bought a couple things. How much must I spend to make THEM happy?

Spoiled? No. Some of you? Maby.

the irony. not to mention missing the point.

btw i'm not saying what you did was wrong, by any means. i'll also gladly admit i'm spoiled rotten, and damn lucky to be born in the USA and have great parents. 

Edited February 9, 2017 by Snoslinger

[Snake]

23 minutes ago, Snoslinger said:

the irony. not to mention missing the point.

btw i'm not saying what you did was wrong, by any means. i'll also gladly admit i'm spoiled rotten, and damn lucky to be born in the USA and have great parents. 

I'm not the least bit spoiled. Spoiled means something was given to me for nothing.

[Snoslinger]

9 minutes ago, Snake said:

I'm not the least bit spoiled. Spoiled means something was given to me for nothing.

spoiled can mean different things. like living in a mansion and complaining about the views to the poor folks who live down the road. trump is even going beyond that, and accusing the poor people of taking advantage of the people in the mansion

 

 

[Snake]

1 hour ago, Snoslinger said:

spoiled can mean different things. like living in a mansion and complaining about the views to the poor folks who live down the road. trump is even going beyond that, and accusing the poor people of taking advantage of the people in the mansion

 

 

So... YOUR definition of spoiled then....