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Comments
:D
I'm on the De Koninck tripel (8%) and the Grimbergen dubbel (6.5%) what's your excuse for posting such tosh?
Did I mention blacks? I'm just wondering how being Polish qualifies as being a different race? Unless race now just means you are from a different country? I'm in Belgium right now and I reckon there are more Belgians than English. Does that make me a minority?
You think the 2nd amendment is the most inviolable human right ever conceived do you? Well fair enough your logic is unarguable. I'm sure the victims of (insert the name of the latest mass shooting in the US here) would agree that everyone should be issued with a gun at birth to keep society safe.
There's lefty and there's righty. And then there's voting Trump which is fucking mental.
Thanks for the legal clarification. I thought every contravention of the law carried a mandatory 20 years in jug. It's a relief as I'm pretty sure I got flashed by a French speed camera this afternoon so I had been panicking about facing up to life in the showers with such a pert arse.
I think on balance I'd rather be me mate. I'm a tad drunk now but I'll be sober in the morning. You'll still be a moron.
Apologies to all. I think Belgian beer and such an emotive thread are not best bedfellows. I'll bow out till the morning.
Entertaining! :))
:D
Give me a break mate! I'm 6 Belgian beers of increasing strength down the line. That's way too deep at this stage!
Try asking @Mendes instead. We need to keep his mind occupied now that Turner has signed for another series of Poldark. Don't want him doing a Cobain (although, given his pro gun stance above, the irony would be amusing).
Not pro gun, pro choice. That's a position you lefty folk usually align with. But you'll be authoritarian when it suits, I see.
;)
A genuine thank you for that son. It's not often you are introduced to a new experience in life but being called a lefty is a first for me.
And you are of course correct. A world where a soccer mom on the school run in her Nissan Qashqai wasn't allowed to have an anti tank weapon in the boot (trunk) would be lunacy indeed.
Oh yeah..the song..here it is...you decide about how you feel about 'people whose skin is a different shade',
You've got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You've got to be taught
From year to year,
It's got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff'rent shade,
You've got to be carefully taught.
You've got to be taught before it's too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You've got to be carefully taught!
We got mangoes and bananas you can pick right off a tree
You're in Belgium right now? Getting loaded on Belgian beer? Thank you for sponsoring our economy, sir. ;-)
I agree @bondjames. But I would add that in the U.S., the stratification goes beyond that. Socio-economic status plays a huge role.
If you're black and have money, you're better off than being white and poor. For instance, in the St. Paul shooting: does that happen if Philando Castile is driving a Cadillac Escalade and wearing a dress shirt and tie? Probably not.
So maybe we need to call it white-wealthy-Judeo-Christian-male privilege.
Having said that, I still don't think a poor white male is more likely to be arrested and or suspected of a crime just because of his low socio-economic status in the US. It's more likely that this will happen to a black male, even if he is wealthy.
I hate racism, and the way I was raised makes me a passionate opponent of anyone who slings negativity towards members of any community classified as a minority simply because they were born differently. With this being said, I do not think, however, that it would help us whatsoever to "ban" racism. It's simply a ludicrous idea, to be quite frank, and in many ways, it could develop into an Orwellian nightmare of epic and unforeseen proportions.
If I overhear people using the term faggot to describe a gay person or one of the myriad of slang terms for describing a specific group based on their skin color or ethnicity, of course I don't like it and lament its existence in the world. I would not, however, be so brash as to make it so that those persons couldn't say those things, as it trumps our natural human rights to free expression. We are already such a negatively PC culture, to the point that you can't have any so-called controversial, against-the-grain opinions on anything anymore without receiving massive backlash on a global scale that force you into making a public apology for what you did or said like you'd murdered someone and needed to repent. What would banning racism solve, as if it could even have any life whatsoever off the paper and into actual reality? When someone uses the n word, will a special unit of police be on site to take the person into custody and keep them locked up until they're bailed out? Will fines be dished out starting at $300 and increasing in cost in relation to the perceived level of racism a person is expressing? How do we determine what opinion is racist and what one is simply misguided? Will regular people be called on by police departments to make civil arrests any time they hear or witness a racist word or act being performed?
This all recalls to my mind Stalin's secret police, with much the same goal: let's find people whose views stand counter to ours, and snuff them out as quickly and efficiently as we can. People bemoan modern surveillance and our collective lack of privacy with the major push of intelligence agencies working on behalf of governments to dig into our digital lives and records all in the name of protection and safety on a hunt for terrorists, but how is this all any different? Do we think things will actually get better when we're now making it illegal to have an opinion? Come on, now.
As I've said before, I don't agree with racism and it's inarguably tragic that it exists, but by calling for such a restrictive set of protocols to muzzle people's mouths and beliefs, we are only ushering in more PC movements that call for peace and unity while separating and burning those who don't follow our beliefs in the exact same breath. The PC movement is like every other movement. One side thinks one thing, the other side another, and neither side likes or enjoy the existence of the others, no matter how much each express their views of freedom and liberty, blah, blah, blah.
By discounting racists and calling for massive action against them on such a bizarre and misguided fashion as in the form of bans and arrests, we really have lost focus on how to sensibly deal with the problem. The first thing people need to realize is that racism is spat by people who are just that-people. Their views may be disgusting or repulsive to you and run counter to all that you hold dear and salient in your life, but your views also cause that same reaction in them. You both have unique perspectives, and neither is objectivity wrong or more worthy of retort when looking at things impartially.
People view racism as evil and malicious, labeling it as that through any number of negative adjectives, but we must realize that beneath hate speak there is a human being who began this life as an unprejudiced child. They didn't start out this way, their beliefs were developed into what they are over time and through life experiences we didn't witness. We don't know what the narratives of some people are that caused them to feel what they do, though a lot of it is birthed in children following the lead of their parents and how they act, as well as replicating in speech and action the things they saw at a young age and perceived as correct and normal behavior simply because everyone they knew was doing it. We don't know the story of a black man rallying for "pig" policemen to be fired, or a white man crying for specific immigrants to leave the country. By making them out to be real life Lucifers, we sabotage our own mission entirely and damage our reputations and all we wish to fight for and against.
By vilifying all those who carry views that could be seen as racist and giving a face to the term, we lose the focus that beneath all that speech is a human being who feels that way for a very specific reason, reasons that are a summation of all the life circumstances and events they've faced in their time on this planet. Events we couldn't begin to sense or understand. These individuals don't view themselves as evil or vile or malicious, because humans don't ever really comprehend their individual selfs as being evil; we are much more likely to view what we think or do as natural and good, because how can we not be good? It's hard to see ourselves as flawed or in need of improvement, and so we shouldn't be so quick to aggressively point out the flaws of others in such a strong fashion.
The key to dealing with racism is all down to discussion. Talk of bans and strict retaliations for what are in its most basic form expressions of opinion are as insensitive and short-sighted as they are inane and counter-productive. Fighting hate with hate never works. All we can do as a community of people who desire to see a more understanding populace develop around us is to be fair, level-headed and aware of what we're facing, while never letting it turn us ugly. When we see racism or any other form of hate show its face to us, the best we can do is address that person in a non aggressive fashion and try to show them our perspective, showing them that their views may be offensive to some, and how their words or actions affect others. Some may change their tune and see what their words spoken or actions taken in the heat of a vehement moment caused in another person who felt hurt by them, and over time, they may see things as you see them and understand those different from them better. Others, you will never change, and we have to understand that and accept it, as well as that the wrong way to challenge racism is by trying to fix it or change it in everyone world wide.
As with the war on drugs, poverty and starvation, it is not possible to eradicate racism. A new one is born every day, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. All we can do is look around us each day, in our own local spheres and try to bring our perspective and action into the lives of those whose actions and words are serving to divide us as a people to try to show them a better, more positive road to follow. As with hunger and poverty, we can't get rid of every sign of it, but we can do our damnedest to lessen its impact on our world every chance we get.
The world is a boxing ring, and our opponent is a representation of all we hope to fix in it. They'll keep punching at us, harder and harder, and what we have to do is block as much of the hits as we can in the knowledge that the rounds of the fight nor the punches will never end, and that we've always got to be on guard and aware of what we're going against. Doing anything less serves to break us apart and jeopardize our delicate ecosystem of differing cultures and lives worldwide, and doing too much, such as banning racism, will do the same thing in the long run and only serve to express our aggressive intolerance for a group we don't admire for their own lack of tolerance, and that soils us both.
It all comes down to understanding each other for what we feel, no matter how much we may disagree on either side of the divide. Once we understand how and why racism exists, only then can we begin to try and change it, but always in a fair and sensible manner, as going too far in our opposition is destined to make us no different from the very things we're fighting against.
Just my two cents on this, all. :)>-
Did I bully kids my own age when I was young? I did. And despite the fact that I was bullied a lot, I did it too. I started to think of certain young kids in my class as 'weird' and not fitting in. I remember that at age 8 my parents friends adopted an African kid with polio. He was a bit older, 10, but once he visited our farm......I felt scared, afraid, of this dark skinned kid in a wheelchair. I didn't dare to talk to him.
Obviously, these examples are not instantly racism. But they always are facilitators of that very same thing. And ever since the above things happened, I try to be a good human being. Yes, our surroundings are less friendly these days, but as long as we can not self-criticize ourselves first, finding examples of ourselves that show off fear, we will not fully understand the implications of all this.
Banning this topic? Closing it? What a nonsense. I think in this post I criticized myself, and not others. I think I searched for the problem of racism by finding examples of myself that could be a facilitator, not by necessarily defending other groups, majorities or minorities. We all should do that a bit more often. Because in the end we all are flawed human beings, but it's in our own power to better ourselves. We don't better ourselves by pointing fingers, or speaking for entire groups. Speak for yourself first. Especially now. Like I did.
One wonders how close or far from home a foreigner has to come to qualify as a target for 'proper' hate? Is that hate somehow more agreeable because it's not based on racism but on manic jingoism and rampant nationalism? Maybe that hate is not a deficiency of character, maybe it is an actual medical condition like alcoholism (and is that perhaps why the one often goes with the other?)
In a way one must be deeply challenged in one's mental stability to feel at the same time enormously superior because of one's nationality (a coincidence) and threatened in one's cultural identity to the point of paranoia.
Start with addressing the fact that you never answer personal messages.
Easy now. I will answer your PM, but the mobile version of the forum is not easy to navigate ok?? It's not nice to be so harsh. I will answer your PM. Once I am back home.