winsor

My point regarding various groups comes from observing Americans overseas. If you asked your average 19 year old kid in Vietnam who he saw, the answer would likely be 'a bunch of gooks.' Some of the more experienced people would say "those guys are Viet, but those are Annamese, while that group over there are Hmong, those guys are Korean and that group is ethnic Chinese. Some of them are Buddhist, while a lot of those are Roman Catholic, some are Animist, and others are hard core Communist." Failure to understand who's who and what to expect of them often proved fatal. Cultural differences amongst groups of identical ethnicity can be remarkable, and quite a few wars have resulted thereby. FWIW the cultural differences where I work are basically occupational. It's more a matter of PhD vs MD, Biologists, Chemists, Electrical, Mechanical, or Chemical Engineers, Operators, HR, Accounting and Maintenance than of Country ABC or Ethnicity XYZ. If someone ever talks about 'back home,' it could turn out to be Alabama or Sierra Leone, Puerto Rico or Peru, but if they don't bring it up, it's immaterial. The primary line of demarcation is either you are competent and reliable or you are not. That's it. The key to getting past all the racist nonsense is to actively get over it. All the staring at your navel and wallowing in 'the conversation' does nothing but perpetuate the lines of division, which is unacceptable. BSBD, Winsor

I agree that a 'diversity hire' is often as competent (or incompetent, as the case may be) as candidates that otherwise work their way through the HR system. Having said that, I have encountered people who were downright scary (von Moeltke's fourth type of officer: stupid and energetic and thus dangerous). The problem is that you can't fire them like you would a non-protected class employee, so they often get promoted into a role where the hope is that they can't do as much damage (I'm not kidding). Niccolo Machiavelli in 'The Prince' noted that it is all well and good to be good, but if dealing with evil one must also be evil. Thus, given how vile racism and sexism are it takes an approach that is equally awful to counter them. The problem is that the evil used to defeat evil is still evil. I'm not a big fan of the Third Reich, and its defeat was largely at the hands of the Soviet Union. It's a good thing that Nazis were defeated, but that does not change the fact that Josef Stalin made Adolf Hitler look like a rank amateur (ok, maybe Junior Varsity) when it came to brutality and murder. Similarly, Mao Zedong outdid the Japanese Empire in brutality and murder, try though they might. As far as inappropriate office behavior goes, I'm with you. In the same sense that people wouldn't dream of bragging about finding their car in the yard after a night of drinking the way they might have in the '70s, you don't have people making the kinds of tasteless jokes in the workplace that you would have then, and that's a good thing. Yes, I have been denied jobs because another applicant checked 'diversity' boxes that I didn't. I was selected by the manager but overridden by HR. Luckily I have not worked much of anywhere that finding love at the office was acceptable. The sexual preference/orientation/whatever of coworkers was basically not a factor. My point is that if discrimination is bad, it's bad. If you okay much of any form of discrimination, your really can't bitch if someone engages in a form of which you do not approve. Double standards don't cut it. BSBD, Winsor

Since both sides would have to improve greatly to achieve mediocrity, I agree that it is neither one nor the other. One significant datum is that every trillion in debt translates to $10,000 on the tab of each and every taxpayer. Thus $30 trillion works out to $300,000 per, above and beyond any other obligations. With my High School dropout arithmetic, paired with reading the odd history tome, it appears that we are royally screwed - and there is plenty of blame to spread around when the chickens come home to roost (I'm amazed we've made it this far). If a people get the government they deserve, we are a rather large group of petty morons. BSBD, Winsor

'Gender' is a grammatical construct, while 'sex' is biological. 'Der Kitzler' and 'die Klitoris' are German for 'clitoris,' one is masculine ('man in the boat' maybe?) and the other is feminine. Either way you describe it, it is usually an indication that a female is present. As far as left-handedness goes, I recall learning to write with the hand that didn't hurt from being smacked with a ruler. I am now very much ambidextrous. I do not get the impression that homosexuality is more prevalent than it was 50 years ago, just that it is less closeted. Perhaps that is due to having grown up in artistic circles. If homosexuality is, indeed, more prevalent, I suspect it is related to conditions described as ''Behavioral Sink." I consider Veterinary Science to be a better standard than similar human studies in the sense that it is fraught with a different range of emotions than are human studies. By this I mean that one can place a bet on a stallion, mare or gelding, an Arabian, Appaloosa or Paint and nobody will freak out with charges of racism and/or sexism. If someone doesn't think there is a difference, they are free to bet on a Clydesdale against a Thoroughbred. Americans like it simple, but life isn't always like that. If you are in Asia and treat Han Chinese, Koreans, Ainu, Annamese, Khmer and Thai as interchangeable, you are in for a rude awakening. The same goes for losing track of the differences between Maori, Zulu, Yoruba, Ibo, Tutsi, Hutu and Mandingo, or between Sicilian, Finnish, Castilian, Norman, Scottish, Welsh, Czech and Albanian. Thomas Sowell has done a rather good job of putting Woke ideologies into perspective. Where he is wrong, if you wish to disagree with him I strongly suggest that you have your rhetoric in order. Having had enough family that went up in smoke, I am sensitive to the concept of 'special treatment.' When a group demands to be treated differently, my feeling is that one should be careful what they ask for. I agree that many things sucked 150 years ago but, even if they require a great deal of improvement, they are by no means the same as they were then. To bitch about things that were true 4 or 5 generations ago is kind of pointless. Also, many of the 'solutions' that were put forth in the mid 19th century have been tried and found wanting, Socialism/Communism for example. What made sense as a means of survival for a Shtetl in the Pale against Cossacks et al. is hardly suitable as a universal basis for government. It's been tried. Like George W. Bush, we have to come to a point where we declare 'Mission Accomplished!' and move on. Of course there is a bit of tidying up to do, but we will make short work of it as usual. If, when someone like George Floyd is killed, and the hue and cry is raised to the effect that no CITIZEN or HUMAN BEING should ever be treated like that, I'm with you. Make it all about race and you've lost me. If I come across a case where a deadbeat junkie without a fashionable skin color similarly comes to grief at the hands of the authorities and nobody bats an eye, I call foul. If the goal is equality, I'm in. If you want to focus on differences, again, be careful what you ask for. Pretending everyone is 'the same' is a fool's errand. That is not necessary to have the standard of 'equal rights, equal responsibilities - no more, no less.' BSBD, Winsor

Wouldn't know - never met any of them. IIRC, Douglass and Tubman had skin in the game from the standpoint of having been slaves. The institutional racism against which they fought was a matter of record. Believe it or not, much has changed since then. As I recall, Dr. King was a proponent of equality, not 'equity.' I'm all for the former and recoil at the latter. My point is that someone to whom everything is all about race is a racist. Someone who makes decisions regardless of race isn't. There, that was easy, wasn't it? BSBD, Winsor

Ironically enough, Woke ideology is singularly humorless. As Gandhi said, "fuck 'em if they can't take a joke." Like most religiously held beliefs, any parody must be accompanied by appropriate emoticons to so indicate, since any attempt at being more absurd is futile. Much of Woke liturgy seems to have been lifted verbatim from humor anthologies. The response to the question of whether the Radio Announcer job application was successful of "N- n- n- no, they di- di- di- didn't hire me 'cause I'm j- j- j- jewish" was not a case of antisemitism. It is unfortunate that much of the efforts of the Woke mob are entirely counterproductive. For example, the effects of Affirmative Action tend to call into question the qualifications of people who actually have paid their dues and are well qualified. Working with Lethal Service equipment, I do not want to be anywhere near a 'Diversity Hire' of any stripe. I have lived long enough to have seen vast improvements in some of the issues that are dear to the hearts of the Woke, and take exception to their misrepresentation. I have worked with and for people from every continent but Antarctica, male and female (there's a difference), straight and gay, and the only criteria that matter are integrity and professional competence. The most patently racist people I know are those who complain the loudest about 'racism' and so forth. The academics who claim it's 'racist' to expect employees to show up on time or know mathematics are viewed as insulting by many of the people to whom they refer who are entirely reliable and mathematically literate. Someone stating Dr. Martin Luther King's standpoint verbatim would be labeled an Oreo or worse. Judging only by the content of one's character? Heresy! Blasphemy! Do we still have problems as a society? Most certainly. Are they accurately characterized by Woke orthodoxy? Not even slightly. Do any of the 'solutions' put forth by the Woke have merit? No more than filling a fire extinguisher with gasoline. I have spent enough time in Socialist Workers' Paradises to be skeptical of solutions implemented by committee. I am also skeptical of those who wish to be on the committee. BSBD, Winsor

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. If they want to go back to the Dark Ages, why is it out concern?

If nothing else, he overlooked one of the prime criteria of Project Management - define your scope. When deciding to go into some place known as 'The Graveyard of Empires' such as Afghanistan, it might be useful to clearly define A) what do we expect to accomplish? and B)_how do we know when we're done? Though we had some semblance of cassus belli for the invasion of Afghanistan, and none whatsoever for the invasion of Iraq ("We know he has Weapons of Mass Destruction - we have the receipts!"), both endeavors were exercises in cluelessness. If the goal of attacking was to bring a nation to ruin, I suppose it was a success. Unfortunately we were among the nations ruined by the adventurism. I wish we didn't insist on leading with our chin. BSBD, Winsor

I am struck by how "Anti" fascists' tactics are those of the Brown Shirts, and "Anti" racists are every bit as egalitarian as the Klan. Any time I encounter an "Anti" organization I suspect conflict of interest (COI) of some sort. If, for example, I am an exorcist, my livelihood is dependent upon finding demons, if my job is to uphold Truth, Justice and the American Way I need to find subversion everywhere. It is my observation that nobody thinks of themselves as evil. Heinrich Himmler described himself as a "simple policeman" (no need to thank me, just doing my job...). It thus strikes me that the current crop of Social Justice Warriors is no better or worse than the rabid ideologues who came before them, all of them fueled by self-righteous zeal. I do not seek to do battle with any of them; quite the contrary, I greatly prefer to stay as far from fanatics of any stripe as I can manage. The best way to survive a Pogrom is to be somewhere else. The trick is to know where that is and how to get there. BSBD, Winsor

Who?

No sex toads.

My old home town.

I think being a 'racist' is a given. It wasn't until, during a discussion about something unrelated, someone pointed out that I was "a racist honky motherfucker," that I came to that realization. How can I dispute that logic?

Oddly enough, a large percentage of the 'cowboys of the old West' were former slaves. With Western expansion, a significant number of people were needed who were skilled with livestock, were accustomed to bad food, bad pay and terrible conditions, and for former slaves this was nothing new. A great uncle of mine was lured to the West in the 1870s by romanticized popular literature of the time, and lasted a couple of years. He returned to Massachusetts, where he became a successful merchant and never looked back Rather a few cowboys of renown were former slaves, though not much was made of it at the time. Deadwood Dick comes to mind, in that you can read much about him that doesn't make mention of race. We tend to view the past and future as extensions of our own experience, but this can be misleading. In some cases where we might assume that, if things are not okay now they must have been worse in the past, this is not at all the case. Various prejudices that seem deeply entrenched now were almost unknown in the past, and vice versa ("no dogs or Irish allowed").

A significant percentage of Rabbis are functional atheists, whose treatment of the Tanakh and the Talmud has nothing to do with the 'God said it, I believe it, and that settles it!' mentality. Much of the strictly religious practice of Judaism is as fucked up as a football bat. Groups that use Judaism as the basis for their religions, however, took it to a new level. The 'Jewish holy books' are a compilation of family lore, which has been coopted by various organizations as the basis of 'Universal Religions' of one strip or another. The matrilineal identity is a recent thing. As Max Brooks pointed out when people questioned his Jewish identity, given his Shicksa mother, "if it's good enough for Dachau, it's good enough for me." You will note that the books of Matthew and Luke, IIRC, delineate the paternal lineage of Joseph as the firstborn of the House of David to qualify as Messiah per the book of Isaiah, which conflicts with the whole 'virgin birth' thing (a seriously European concept, btw).

Conflict of Interest is a factor that is largely glossed over in consideration of organizations that are committed to good works. The Polio vaccine damned near put the March of Dimes out of business. It took some reorganization to come up with another cause that justified the constant flow of cash. They finally hit on Birth Defects, so they're in the clear. If someone came up with a treatment for Stage IV cancer that had 99% effectiveness and involved taking 2 pills a day for a month at $0.35 a pill, I suspect that it would get a lot of pushback. MD Anderson, Fox Chase and the like would be out of business, and Oncology would be like 'Advanced Buggy Whip Studies.' The likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson need to find 'racism' under every rock, or they're out of business. When any organization behaves in a manner that appears contrary to the available evidence, it helps to follow the money.

Judaism is tribal identity with some very fucked up traditions. One can be quite Jewish without adhering to any of the vile nonsense in the family lore. The Cult of the Magic Jewish Zombie, however, is entirely voluntary, and wearing a symbol of how Romans executed Jews is, indeed way offensive. Yeah, I agree that oppression, rape an mass murder (even small scale murder) are bad things.

Everyone who voted against Biden did not support his opponent per se. There were irregularities in the election, but that's typical. The Mango Mussolini lost. COVID-19 is real and a big problem, but the approaches put forth by various factions are not 'solutions.' Our space lasers aren't secret, and they didn't start the fires. School shootings are all too real, and again, the 'solutions' to the problems aren't. Global Warming (tm) is a simplistic treatment of a complex systemic malfunction. The Capitol riot was a clusterfuck, but was easily as 'largely peaceful' as any number of social get-togethers in the past year. Vaccines have their place, but not to the exclusion of a wide variety of prophylactic and treatment protocols that get zero coverage by both media and health organizations. Science is fundamentally skeptical. Hillary doesn't need any Q nonsense to qualify as a perfectly dreadful human being.

If someone is wearing a swastika, a hijab or other symbol of a hate group yes, it gives me pause. In practice I have worked for and with Nazis and Muslims without issue. Race, sex and national origin are accidents of birth. Adhering to an ideology is not. The tenets of Islam mandate that I should be killed on the spot without repercussions on a number of bases, and I have no qualms pointing out that this is seriously evil. I do not, BTW, advocate putting them to death in return.

Just an aside, but people who perseverate on race are, by definition, racist.

This would appear to presume that I give a rat's ass about the race, sex, national origin or whatever of the individual of concern, one way or another. I reserve the right to judge an individual on the content of their character, without weight given to any of those things. Does that address your question?

That was part of why JFK took LBJ as a running mate. That and Johnson was guaranteed to win Texas, regardless of quite who voted for whom. Unfortunately, Johnson did not serve as an effective life insurance policy, and wound up in the Oval Office. I thus hope our current CIC lives out his term. His veep is one of the most amoral people in the beltway, which is a pretty lofty standard. BSBD, Winsor

Marijuana therapy has been remarkably effective in removing violent tendencies from malevolent adherents of a wide range of ideologies. After 'stretching hemp' the most vicious malefactors became entirely peaceful, with absolutely no recidivism. BSBD, Winsor

The demographics in the sport have changed over the years, and they vary greatly from area to area. The DZs I have frequented of late have mask requirements posted, but enforcement was somewhat iffy. An N-95 keeps the inoculum down and it works fine in freefall, so I'm not too strung out about it. BSBE, Winsor

I'll credit you with being obtuse or using a straw man argument. None of that is what I said or meant. It is instructive to define your terms, since people will routinely use vastly different meanings in a discussion, and 'racism' means different things to different people. Let us allow for the awareness of different races, nationalities, tribal identities and cultures without implying bias. One can be aware of the differences between, say, Lithuanian and Hmong without favoring one over the other oh the basis of anything but individual ability, integrity and what have you. Also, to conflate Kikuyu, Yoruba, Zulu, Atlanta gang bangers and Palo Alto coders is disingenuous, as would be equating Navajo, Cheyenne, Iroquois and Aztec. Part of unintended consequences is that by perseverating on the racial divide it tends to reinforce said divide, which is a bad thing to my way of thinking. Treating people differently because of who they are and where they come from is as unacceptable if one is a 'legacy' admission to Harvard or an 'affirmative action' admission without the tools to succeed. In the long run, graduating people who got a pass on grades and knowledge tends to backfire. As an example, United Airlines decided to achieve 'diversity' by hiring any female pilots they could find with 1,200 hours, and they then had all too many First Officers that could never upgrade to Captain. This was a great disservice to the women who had every bit as much skill and dedication as their male counterparts (if not more), and I shouldn't have had to stick up for pilots who were absolutely superb - and had achieved success in spite of being stunning. Thus, a black engineer is more likely to require a P.E. or advanced degree to dispel the notion that they received the degree without meeting standards that would apply to anyone else. I have worked with people from all backgrounds who were downright dangerous, and have been told not to fail a student when doing so would bring pressure groups to bear, so I've seen it from a number of sides. To have policies in place that reinforce the expectation of incompetence in a particular group is counterproductive. My main point is that although some peoples have been screwed royally, one should be careful how to address the issue. As a Jew, the concept of 'Special Treatment' sends chills up my spine. BSBD, Winsor