Pew Research political ideology

[SmartCat]

"Identity politics" is a dog whistle for opposition to civil rights.

The civil rights movement was inspired by An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy. This was written by Gunnar Myrdal. It was published in 1944. Gunnar Myrdal was a Swedish academic who later on won a Nobel Prize for Economics.

In this book Dr. Myrdal acknowledged that blacks tended to perform poorly academically and that they had higher rates of crime and illegitimacy than whites. He attributed these deficiencies to racial discrimination. He predicted that when blacks were no longer discriminated against they would perform and behave as well as whites. I used to think that way myself, even though I only learned where those beliefs came from about ten years ago.

An American Dilemma resonated in 1944 and in subsequent years. Because of the Nazi movement and revelations of the Holocaust fewer people wanted to believe that racial differences mattered, or that they even existed. Moreover, blacks had contributed loyally to the war effort during World War II. An American Dilemma was cited in the 1954 Brown vs Board of Education Supreme Court Decision.

Unfortunately, the optimistic predictions in An American Dilemma has not been realized. The civil rights legislation passed during the 1960's ended discrimination against blacks. Now blacks are discriminated in favor of with affirmative action policies. Blacks still tend to perform significantly less well than whites. Their rates of crime and illegitimacy have risen.

Because liberals cannot point to improvements in black behavior and performance, they have made it dangerous to express negative feelings about blacks. They have not changed these feelings. That is why what liberals call "dog whistles" and "code words" for racism persist and appeal to millions of whites.

Dog whistles and code words should not be necessary. We should have the dialogue on race proposed by Bill Clinton. It should be an honest dialogue, where there are no taboos and sanctions against expressing facts and opinions.

 

[joko104]

BEWARE! At the end of the questionaire you are required to give access to your computer before you can submit your responses.

That is the latest thing now - tiny print hoping you routinely click on it without reading it. For example, now to read the UK version of Huffpost you have to give them total access to your computer so they can take any information from it they want to. Millions of people stupidly agree - then wonder why their credit and bank card information and other ID theft occurs, and why they get a million spam emails and 50 robocalls a day.

 

[Surrealistik]

The Democratic Party has come to be dominated by well educated, well paid bi coastal professionals. These lack the public enthusiasm for tax cuts for the rich the Republican donor class has, but they do not mind because they benefit from those tax cuts for the rich.

By advocating de incarceration and sanctuary cities and, promoting the interests of homosexuals and transsexuals, former new left radicals at elite universities who now earn big incomes convince themselves that they have not really compromised their youthful ideals.

While I agree this is partly culpable, to be honest, DP leadership has long been typified by such people. It would be naive to dismiss the probably greater impact of campaign finance and lobbying on the party, that has made them accessories, and even originators, to not only tax cuts for the rich, but things like the Glass Steagall deregulation during the Clinton era which certainly would have made FDR turn over in his grave, military adventurism, and further increases to military spending during peacetime, while stoking ardent resistance to a return to form on the economic agenda that the Bernie wing represents, circling the wagons at every turn and at seemingly almost any cost to stop a resurgence of this traditionalism.

The Democratic party didn't really start to transform in this way until around the late 70s early 80s soon after SCOTUS ruled unlimited political spending was tantamount to free speech; I don't really find that to be much of a coincidence.