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points by MomsAVoxell 15 hours ago | 0 comments

>Folks forget or underestimate how bitter the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement was.

It's especially jarring to understand this in the context of the utterly racist "war on terror", which is just racism under cover. Racists can't use the n-word any more, so they invented "terrorist" to continue their bigotry and hatred of cultures they've deemed inferior.

Its one thing to consider the West to be morally and technologically superior with regards to civil rights - its another thing to remember that our governments were the principle violators of civil rights, just a few short decades ago. What the hate-leaders tell us to think about the mullahs and Iran, we could easily have thought about our own nations just a half a lifetime ago...

[–] dragonwriter 14 hours ago

> It's especially jarring to understand this in the context of the utterly racist "war on terror", which is just racism under cover.

Not under that much cover, just the more overt part of it directed at a different demographic than the primary foci of earlier rounds of US racism (though it provided a lot of excuse for actions directed more in line with classic US racism, and set the stage for the renaissance of more classicly directed, out-and-proud racism that has characterized the Trump era.)

[–] bongofizzbuzz 13 hours ago

The Big Short (2015) | American Taxpayers Bailout The Banks | Steve Carell, Jeremy Strong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQGiEbj_GR0

"I have a feeling in a few years people are going to be doing what they always do when the economy tanks. They will be blaming immigrants and poor people"

[–] MomsAVoxell 14 hours ago

See, I happen to think that racists get some kind of perverse self-actualization from manifesting degradation of cultures they consider inferior - that there is a real 'buzz' to be had from such fallacious elevation as required to justify bombing another culture into oblivion. The murder is its own reward in such circles.

The "terrorism" tranche of this hate culture is particularly jarring, since the ones claiming moral altitude over 'terrorists' are delivering far, far more terrorism than their supposed enemies. It's just been homogenized.

[–] jknoepfler 11 hours ago

The irony being that the pieces of Western culture one might reasonable feel smug about (government of checks and balances, democracy, high standard of care for the worst off, careful jurisprudence with presumption of innocence, scientific freedom and literacy, free public education, etc.) are precisely the foundations that MAGA and their ilk despise and work so hard to undermine.

Like if you're going to get patriotic about post-enlightenment values and institutions, that's one thing... if you're going to just act like a bigoted, might-makes-right, my-country-right-or-wrong, personality-worshiping, science-denying, uneducated xenophobic dipshit, then you don't have much to be proud of.

[–] chuckadams 15 hours ago

> What the hate-leaders tell us to think about the mullahs and Iran, we could easily have thought about our own nations just a half a lifetime ago...

Or where they'd still like to take us. The only problem they have with Ayatollahs is that they call God by the wrong name.

[–] zulux 14 hours ago

Well, that, and the rapeing and the murdering. And sticking their women in sacks isn't a good look for the theocracy.

[–] jacquesm 14 hours ago

The fundamentalist 'christian' groups are not much better from my vantage point.

[–] sejje 14 hours ago

It's hard to discern detail with your eyes closed.

[–] GolfPopper 14 hours ago

Are you talking about American religious conservatives in power, or Iranian ones?

[–] MomsAVoxell 14 hours ago

See, there you go, doing it.

Do you think that subsistence-working at Only Fans, or the local strip club is a better alternative?

For every 'women in sacks' argument that can be made, there is a street downtown where women put themselves in immense danger just to be able to feed their kids, pay their medical bill debts, get themselves some kind of safety net...

Same shit, different social flavor.

[–] Arodex 14 hours ago

In America women can go to jail for their husbands' crimes, men are allowed to marry ten-year-olds, and abortions in some states are illegal, even in cases of rape.

https://letterboxd.com/film/americas-war-against-women/watch...

[–] MomsAVoxell 14 hours ago

I think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is a pretty good framework by which to assess the longterm viability of a nation/state/group. States which violate the principles of the UDHR tend to be dreadful places to live in many ways - and this is as true of Western states as it is the non-Western ones.

I couldn't live in a state which allows its police forces to murder with impunity, for example.

The point is that the moral authority we claim over other states is a fallacy. Until we are actually protecting civil rights to the extent we expect of other nations, we are hypocritically justifying our own states heinous track record.

Alas, this seems to be understood pretty well by the ruling classes, who have subjugated human rights to mean "this gives us a right to justify the destruction of sovereign states and their peoples' we have deemed inferior".