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Bill Maher roasts woke 'presentism': 'A magic moral time machine' where you always win

Why do you think? The Africans were practically enslaving millions of their own kind to get rich. So if you want someone to blame, go directly to the source.

So if the US had cut a deal with Hitler to buy German Jews and use them as slaves, it's a supply problem and not a demand problem?
 
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So if the US had cut a deal with Hitler to buy German Jews and use them as slaves, it's a supply problem and not a demand problem?
It's a both problem. And if the Germans were also enslaving people themselves, then there would be no cause to lay special blam on the the US, now would there?

The issue with slavery is that it is the West which ended it first. The MSNBC and 1619 project dipshits want to blame the UK for slavery, when it was the UK which first ended slavery in the world and fought to end the trade. That doesn't mean they were never guilty of slavery, but so was every other society in the world up until the British empire ended it, and the US followed about 50 or 75 years later.

The Portuguese and the Spanish were far bigger slave traders than the British and the Anglo-Americans, yet the focus is on the US, not South America and Central America. The north African slavers enslaved millions of people over hundreds of years - including mostly white Europeans and even white Americans. ]

Slavery was the rule in human history. It wasn't an invention of the evil white race.
 
Woke presentism is a way of ignoring the fact that even for the founders time they were being rebuked by abolitionists so they actually did know better, hell they even had cancel culture just abolitionists were the ones being physically silenced. It removes the culpability of oppressors
Thomas Jefferson even wrote about the evils of slavery and how it would become a yoke around the neck of Virginia... yet he did nothing about it because even for him changing the system was too hard.
 
It's a both problem. And if the Germans were also enslaving people themselves, then there would be no cause to lay special blam on the the US, now would there?

The issue with slavery is that it is the West which ended it first. The MSNBC and 1619 project dipshits want to blame the UK for slavery, when it was the UK which first ended slavery in the world and fought to end the trade.

Jesus H. Christ, once again, why would any African American give a shit about what the UK did or didn't do with respect to slavery? 1619 doesn't seek to educate Brits; it seeks to educate Americans about the impact that their racist economic and political system has had on people of color.

What about the Ottomans? What about the Romans? What about UK outlawing slavery?

Yeah, what about it? It's not germane to the discussion. It's a strawman that Bill Maher created to persuade people that he shouldn't feel guilty for saying the n-word on his show - because other groups of people suffered through stuff too.

That doesn't mean they were never guilty of slavery, but so was every other society in the world up until the British empire ended it, and the US followed about 50 or 75 years later.

And then replaced it with racial apartheid for another 100 years. Hardly the kind of Up From Slavery progress that Booker T. Washington envisioned I'm guessing.

The Portuguese and the Spanish were far bigger slave traders than the British and the Anglo-Americans, yet the focus is on the US, not South America and Central America. The north African slavers enslaved millions of people over hundreds of years - including mostly white Europeans and even white Americans.

Yah yah yah...talk to the hand.

Slavery was the rule in human history. It wasn't an invention of the evil white race.

But it became a race-based institution, and colonies were literally founded on this peculiar institution. That's what you and others who think you know history (but actually don't) seem to miss: slavery in the United States, particularly the South, was a cornerstone of society. It was written into the original constitution. Things like congressional apportionment, political representation, and the Electoral College...these are elements that were intended to allay concerns that slave-holding states had about joining the Union. I can't think of a modern government on this planet that has this distinction.
 
It seems that every wokist says that American white males are responsible for everything thats wrong in the world, including what happened in the distant past. That's the whole premise of that 1619 project isnt it?
I read the 1619 project.

That is not the premise of it.
 
Jesus H. Christ, once again, why would any African American give a shit about what the UK did or didn't do with respect to slavery? 1619 doesn't seek to educate Brits; it seeks to educate Americans about the impact that their racist economic and political system has had on people of color.
Sure, and I was using the example of the UK getting special blame to compare that to the US getting special blame. The US had slavery, but so did every other country in the world, up to a certain point. There were slaves in Africa, too, millions of white ones as well.

That's the point.

The 1619 project is an a-historical narrative to push a false agenda, not "education."
What about the Ottomans? What about the Romans? What about UK outlawing slavery?
Yes, exactly. What about them? What about their impact?
Yeah, what about it? It's not germane to the discussion.
Of course it is. You can't say the US has some special guilt that we have to atone for, when it was the normal practice in the entire world, and every race was subjected to it. Why aren't folks troubling Brazil over their slavery? They had more slaves than the US, and they kept it going a generation longer. But, the focus is on the US.
It's a strawman that Bill Maher created to persuade people that he shouldn't feel guilty for saying the n-word on his show - because other groups of people suffered through stuff too.
It's not a strawman. It's a reasonable person being sick and tired of the Left constantly moralizing and pontificating over bullshit.

He is absolutely right. If you and I were alive in 1800, we would be racist. Everyone was racist. Blacks were racist. Whites were racist. Abolitionists were racist. It's not a uniquely white thing, and that's what the Left and the 1619 project and the Woke crowd seek to do - they seek to make it a white thing. It is not.
 
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Sure, and I was using the example of the UK getting special blame to compare that to the US getting special blame. The US had slavery, but so did every other country in the world, up to a certain point. There were slaves in Africa, too, millions of white ones as well.

That's the point.

The 1619 project is an a-historical narrative to push a false agenda, not "education."

Yes, exactly. What about them? What about their impact?

Of course it is. You can't say the US has some special guilt that we have to atone for, when it was the normal practice in the entire world, and every race was subjected to it. Why aren't folks troubling Brazil over their slavery? They had more slaves than the US, and they kept it going a generation longer. But, the focus is on the US.

It's not a strawman. It's a reasonable person being sick and tired of the Left constantly moralizing and pontificating over bullshit.

He is absolutely right. If you and I were alive in 1800, we would be racist. Everyone was racist. Blacks were racist. Whites were racist. Abolitionists were racist. It's not a uniquely white thing, and that's what the Left and the 1619 project and the Woke crowd seek to do - they seek to make it a white thing. It is not.

You might want to look into what media you're following, because they might be going out and looking for it to show you because they know the visceral effect it has on you. Otherwise, I don't really notice it.
 
So if the US had cut a deal with Hitler to buy German Jews and use them as slaves, it's a supply problem and not a demand problem?
Moving the goalposts with an apples to oranges fallacy means youve lost the argument. Try again.

I read the 1619 project.

That is not the premise of it.
Oh yes it is. One of the authors made a claim that the American Revolution was fought by the patriots in order to preserve slavery. That's how twisted it is.
 
Bill maher has been conservative for a while now
 
It's not silly and woke when the system of slavery is largely race-based, which is what it was throughout the Americas and the Caribbean. It's historical fact. Sure you had some indebted and indentured white servants but slavery refers to condition of being treated as human property. It was institutionally racist, as were the attempts to strip Blacks of political power and equal protection under the law once the Civil War ended.

You wanna know what's dumber than wokeness? Complaining about wokeness. People were complaining about "political correctness" in the 1990s - "woke" is the updated version of "political correctness." Nothing more than a refurbished grievance by whites that they're getting called out and held accountable for their bigoted and intolerant attitudes.
This is spot on.

Cripes.. have these folks complaining about "wokeness".. even try to define it. They can't.
Just like when complaining about CRT they can't correctly define it either.
 
Really? It seems that every wokist says that American white males are responsible for everything thats wrong in the world, including what happened in the distant past. That's the whole premise of that 1619 project isnt it?

The bottom line is that Maher has a point. Ethics and morality have changed since the dawn of civilization. Back then human life didnt mean much, but the wokists claim they should have known better- and that's why he's calling them out.


Have you been to Muslim countries? I have, and I can tell you that most of the women who wear veils there do so voluntarily.
Yeah.. "every wokist". Like he said.. you have made up a boogie man..a strawman to argue against.
And nope.. not the whole premise of the 1619 project. Its simply recognizing the facts of slavery in america and its lasting legacy.
 
Thomas Jefferson even wrote about the evils of slavery and how it would become a yoke around the neck of Virginia... yet he did nothing about it because even for him changing the system was too hard.
Jefferson signed into law a prohibition on importing slaves into any port or place in the US.
1807.
 
Moving the goalposts with an apples to oranges fallacy means youve lost the argument. Try again.

Really? Let me paraphrase the entire thread:

You: Slavery wasn't invented by white Americans - been around for thousands of years.

Me: Slavery in America was a race-based institution.

You: It's not race-based - there were slaves in the Ottoman empire.

Me: Why would Blacks in the Americas care about whatever the hell happened in the Ottoman Empire? In the Americas, it was race-based.

You: The reason why the American trade slave was race based was because the African kings were enslaving their own and selling them to the Europeans.

Me: And why were the Europeans buying slaves from Africa and not England or France?

You: Because African kings sold their own people.

Me: So this is strictly a supply issue, not an issue of demand.

You: You're moving goal posts.

How am I the one moving the goalposts, lol? You were the one who didn't acknowledge that slavery in the U.S. was race-based. When you finally do acknowledge it, you say it's because Africans created a supply. You conspicuously overlook the obvious, which is that while Europeans created the demand. Even as Europeans fought wars with each other over the centuries, they held prisoners of war, but they had gradually stopped having European (white) slaves. You had to be regarded as subhuman to be a slave. That African peoples capitalized off of the slave trade (and other forms of trade) isn't a surprise - indigenous Americans did the same thing with European settlers.
 
Nobody in the history of arguing about slavery has ever argued that slavery was unique to America.

"Presentism" is also a shit argument.

Normalizing the behavior of oppressors does a ****ing disservice to their victims.

You know who knew slavery was wrong and evil? The ****ing slaves and abolitionists. Kinda why the slaves wanted to run away and shit.

Is true evil actually NOT evil because a majority normalizes it? Do we excuse the Holocaust and say, well, ****, it was cool and shit cause the vast majoruty of Germans hated Jews or at least found anti Semitism to be acceptable?

Hell, the Founders wrote flowing poetry about liberty, justice, and equality while they were treating Blacks as less than human, because to admit their intellectual hypocrisy would be against their own interests.
Looks like the point went over your head. Btw..."the slaves knew" because they wanted to run away is demonstratively false. History is full of the enslaved then enslaving others.
 
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The country did not have to allow the colony to have slavery to survive. They only needed it to have a wealthy ruling class to lord over the rest of the country like they still had in Europe.

The good news ignores 100 years of Jim Crow.

Didn't need slaves so long as nobody was free, eh? :unsure:
 
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Jefferson signed into law a prohibition on importing slaves into any port or place in the US.
1807.
That soooooo didn't get rid of slavery. There was also a very active black market slave trade.
 
Oh yes it is. One of the authors made a claim that the American Revolution was fought by the patriots in order to preserve slavery. That's how twisted it is.
I read the book. The claim is made that the preservation of slavery was on the mind of some of the founders. This can be shown that Jefferson wrote an anti slavery passage to the Declaration of Independence blaming the King for importing chattel slaves, that passage was later removed because the economics of slavery was already ingrained in 1776.

I will say that the book is inflammatory and good portions of it should not be taught in high school... mainly because there is in my opinion a failed attempt to connect politics of the late 1700's and early 1800's to the past decade of American History... that is sloppy work.. but the analysis of history that it offers isn't wrong.
 
That soooooo didn't get rid of slavery. There was also a very active black market slave trade.
You stated " he did nothing about it".
You were wrong.
 
Yeah.. "every wokist". Like he said.. you have made up a boogie man..a strawman to argue against.
And nope.. not the whole premise of the 1619 project. Its simply recognizing the facts of slavery in america and its lasting legacy.
It also said that the American Revolution was only fought to protect slavery, if you believe that, then hey, thats you.

Really? Let me paraphrase the entire thread:

You: Slavery wasn't invented by white Americans - been around for thousands of years.

Me: Slavery in America was a race-based institution.

You: It's not race-based - there were slaves in the Ottoman empire.

Me: Why would Blacks in the Americas care about whatever the hell happened in the Ottoman Empire? In the Americas, it was race-based.

You: The reason why the American trade slave was race based was because the African kings were enslaving their own and selling them to the Europeans.

Me: And why were the Europeans buying slaves from Africa and not England or France?

You: Because African kings sold their own people.

Me: So this is strictly a supply issue, not an issue of demand.

You: You're moving goal posts.

How am I the one moving the goalposts, lol? You were the one who didn't acknowledge that slavery in the U.S. was race-based. When you finally do acknowledge it, you say it's because Africans created a supply. You conspicuously overlook the obvious, which is that while Europeans created the demand. Even as Europeans fought wars with each other over the centuries, they held prisoners of war, but they had gradually stopped having European (white) slaves. You had to be regarded as subhuman to be a slave. That African peoples capitalized off of the slave trade (and other forms of trade) isn't a surprise - indigenous Americans did the same thing with European settlers.
Your argument is moronic. Nobody forced the Africans to enslave huge numbers of their own kind, they did to themselves that to corner the market. Contrary to what you and your woke friends believe, African wasnt a utopia with everyone singing kumbaya and having mountains of food to eat, thats your silly fantasy.

And the so-called concept of universal human rights and all that, is a 20th century invention, no such thing existed in the past. Therefore, to apply such standards for historical purposes is idiotically silly.

I read the book. The claim is made that the preservation of slavery was on the mind of some of the founders. This can be shown that Jefferson wrote an anti slavery passage to the Declaration of Independence blaming the King for importing chattel slaves, that passage was later removed because the economics of slavery was already ingrained in 1776.

I will say that the book is inflammatory and good portions of it should not be taught in high school... mainly because there is in my opinion a failed attempt to connect politics of the late 1700's and early 1800's to the past decade of American History... that is sloppy work.. but the analysis of history that it offers isn't wrong.
Their analysis is totally wrong. Its so twisted to the point of being pure fantasy.
 
It also said that the American Revolution was only fought to protect slavery, if you believe that, then hey, thats you.


Your argument is moronic. Nobody forced the Africans to enslave huge numbers of their own kind, they did to themselves that to corner the market. Contrary to what you and your woke friends believe, African wasnt a utopia with everyone singing kumbaya and having mountains of food to eat, thats your silly fantasy.

And the so-called concept of universal human rights and all that, is a 20th century invention, no such thing existed in the past. Therefore, to apply such standards for historical purposes is idiotically silly.


Their analysis is totally wrong. Its so twisted to the point of being pure fantasy.
1. Again..not the main aim of the 1619 project. But you hang your hat on that. Lol.
So silly.
 
Your argument is moronic.

Says the poster who repeatedly seems to be saying that race-based slavery is an issue caused by supply and not demand.

Nobody forced the Africans to enslave huge numbers of their own kind, they did to themselves that to corner the market. Contrary to what you and your woke friends believe, African wasnt a utopia with everyone singing kumbaya and having mountains of food to eat, thats your silly fantasy.

Speaking of moronic arguments. Pretty much every single post of yours on this subject has been a dodge and they just get more and more senseless.
 
1. Again..not the main aim of the 1619 project. But you hang your hat on that. Lol.
So silly.
You seem to be hanging your hat on this revisionist nonsense. You be you I guess.

Says the poster who repeatedly seems to be saying that race-based slavery is an issue caused by supply and not demand.



Speaking of moronic arguments. Pretty much every single post of yours on this subject has been a dodge and they just get more and more senseless.
So youve failed to refute my points and resort to ad homs instead. Desperation noted.
 
You seem to be hanging your hat on this revisionist nonsense. You be you I guess.


So youve failed to refute my points and resort to ad homs instead. Desperation noted.

You didn't have a point to refute. The fact that Black slaves were sold by Black kings to white merchants and then imported into a social caste system that put the Black people and their descendants at the bottom and the white traders and their descendants on the top pretty much speaks for itself. Black kings didn't create the caste system that, to a great degree, Black Americans are still living with today (we rank near the bottom of major world economies in socioeconomic mobility, in fact, owing a lot to past and present racism). African slave holders didn't create that system. Nor did Ottoman slave holders, nor Roman slave holders, nor did PW Botha for that matter. It was the white political, economic, and social order that created the system and its legacies. That's not woke, that's fact. You're the one whose unable to comprehend how you've basically destroyed Bill Maher's, and thus your, stupid strawman that Black and white liberals are somehow saying that slavery only existed in America - that was not at all what they're saying. They're saying America's white establishment has never fully acknowledged its impact.

See the difference? Probably not.
 
You didn't have a point to refute. The fact that Black slaves were sold by Black kings to white merchants and then imported into a social caste system that put the Black people and their descendants at the bottom and the white traders and their descendants on the top pretty much speaks for itself. Black kings didn't create the caste system that, to a great degree, Black Americans are still living with today (we rank near the bottom of major world economies in socioeconomic mobility, in fact, owing a lot to past and present racism). African slave holders didn't create that system. Nor did Ottoman slave holders, nor Roman slave holders, nor did PW Botha for that matter. It was the white political, economic, and social order that created the system and its legacies. That's not woke, that's fact. You're the one whose unable to comprehend how you've basically destroyed Bill Maher's, and thus your, stupid strawman that Black and white liberals are somehow saying that slavery only existed in America - that was not at all what they're saying. They're saying America's white establishment has never fully acknowledged its impact.

See the difference? Probably not.
LOL what a moronic lie. Everytime a slave in Rome had a child, they would also be slaves. They were considered property and had no legal personhood. Same thing with Ottoman slaves.

Your bullshit is becoming more pathetic with each reply. Keep it up.
 
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