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Total number of comments: 5 (since 2013-11-28 16:44:04)

pragmatic realist

Showing comments 5 - 1
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  • They used to Burn Catholic Churches, now they Burn Mosques
    • pragmatic realist 09/09/2010 at 10:59 am with 1 replies

      I may be mistaken, but I don't think these actions were so much religious intolerance as they were racist riots against the Irish who were beginning to emigrate in great numbers to escape poverty and the famine of the 1840's.

      These Irish who happened to be mostly Catholic (as opposed to the earlier Irish immigrants who were the so-called "Scotch-Irish" and considered themselves to be the "real" native American pioneers) were considered to be racially practically subhuman Celts, far below the Anglo-Saxons who rated at the top of the racial scale.

      There were so many of them that they were politically threatening to the establishment as they became mostly democrats and organized to take over the big cities. Later all this hatred was romanticized into St. Patrick's parades and Celtic harps. But they remember.

      Do a Google image search of Thomas Nast Irish cartoons and you will see what I mean.

  • Iraqi Soldier Kills 2 Americans, Wounds 9
    • pragmatic realist 09/08/2010 at 9:53 am

      I don't know about this. People don't normally keep their weapons strapped on when they play volleyball.

  • Hellegers: American Income Inequality is the Cause of our Crisis
    • pragmatic realist 09/08/2010 at 10:17 am

      When my Dad came home from WW II there was a kind of golden age. The elites had learned from the Bonus Marchers that it is dangerous to have a corps of discontented and angry veterans who feel disrespected by the society they served. So there was the GI Bill, Veterans home loans, education and opportunity. An average man with an average education could put in a reasonable effort working and get a secure, comfortable life for his family and raise his children in confidence that they would have a still better life. He and his wife would be able to have some support in their old age and not fear to end their lives in poverty and destitution.

      At some point, after these people got into their 50's and 60's and their children grew up, society decided that on special people with higher than average intelligence and education deserved to have a comfortable secure life. Then the great mass of average people began to sink and the minority of special people began to rise. Who did it? They did it to themselves by not being willing to share their prosperity and tax themselves to support their country.

  • One Million Displaced as Rising Waters Threaten Major Cities
    • pragmatic realist 08/29/2010 at 11:43 am

      This is absolutely horrible, far beyond the destruction to be cause by any terrorist attack, or insurgent war or even one of Iran's mythical atomic weapons.

      It could well destroy Pakistan as a nation and release the hordes of hell on South West Asia. If the USA is to have any credibility in the world as a moral nation we had better do something serious to help these people.

  • Anzalone: From ‘Martyrdom’ Videos to Jihadi Journalism in Somalia
    • pragmatic realist 08/25/2010 at 9:45 am

      These movements are assisted greatly by our leaders' assumptions that their members are too backward and stupid to think through problems and plan sophisticated approaches to deal with them.

      Its a little like "globalization" where our continued prosperity and dominance was based on the racist assumption that only we in the USA could be educated and advanced. They thought that when "each country does what it does best" this meant that the USA would be doing computers and biotechnology while the other countries would be sewing soccer balls and making cheap Christmas tree lights.

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