Each of us is an expert in our own experience, and every experience is as valid as the next.

You may disagree with another poster on any number of issues, but it doesn't necessarily make them wrong, or make DU a bad place to be.

I recommend that you accept others as they are and if you feel strongly about something, use facts to back up your position.

And if you find that you were wrong about something, freely admit it and move on.

I feel the same way today. You probably are running into some libertarians who think they are democrats or are pretending to be.
I said old white dudes aren't victims in our society and got a hide. I fully admit that i was cussing and pissed off. But they still are not victims in America no matter if my post gets hidden or not.

I also pissed people off by saying older white men are standing in the way of progress in America. I see them pushing laws to limit voting in Minority districts and trying to legislate our wombs while simultaneously giving big business more power to screw us over and standing in the way of gay rights and immigration reform. I do not think i am lying. I googled it.

Yes, we are surrounded by alleged liberals who are actually wanting to disenfranchise minorities and ultimately harm Women by preventing proper reproductive healthcare.

But we also have holier than thou liberals who get on my god damn nerves like you cant imagine.

You are my air, today, thanks...or like Bill Cosby said "Why Is There Air"

The ones i find the funniest are the ones who only care about black people being jailed disproportionately for drugs, so that they can smoke a joint. Personal freedom liberals. ( you know, libertarians)

Older, white males are absolutely the most privileged part of our society, compared to women, to young people and to POC.

Sid

But somebody was alerting lots of my posts in that thread so they were bound to get what they wanted. I know of three alerts just on that one, so whatever. I said voices like mine get shut down so they proved me right.

When i say white and men together in a sentence, certain people get all bent out of shape in a way that would never happen if i used the words Black and Men in a sentence together. Madre de dios!

in a way that would never happen if i used the words Black and Men in a sentence together."

This right here.

Nice of them to race to find a black person to call racist. They have no idea how they prove me right by doing so. I told them they sounded like the republican boards i like to read. Funny jokes there sometimes. They laughed at me once. I loved it. They said i was hanging out with the real racists and just was too dumb to notice. They must never read the african american group.

Let me mark my calendar!

I was angry. It was a thread asking when we could praise Obama. The answer is no.

Of course I voted to leave it. It's truth. They must have kept alerting.

How hard some will try to shut up a little black lady for saying things that make white people uncomfortable. Liberals no less! Must be part of the big outreach to older white males.

White people NEED to be uncomfortable IMO-- being uncomfortable with topics like race led to some of my greatest learning moments. Opened my mind for more. Starting with reading "Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee" at a young age. Reading that book is uncomfortable as hell.
The largely older male white community that runs the country won't learn if it's not challenged almost on a continuous basis, challenged to acknowledge how history affects the present, challenged about privilege, challenged and made to feel uncomfortable. As we see here far too many people bunker down in anger or dismissal instead of facing uncomfortable truths.

When you're white, it's too easy to forget you're an invisible standard. You don't have to pay attention. You have to make an effort. To me, the effort is well worth it.


And with that, I feel like posting an uncomfortable song

I wish that was a joke. But nope, that's actually portrayed as a serious issue here
Well no, I guess it's more about white men in general, and not just older ones.

"Explanation: Yes, old white men n the way of progress. Exactly that."

You get it all the time.

i read this shit now and it is interesting the awareness. and the people that says it the way it is

and those that have the need to hide.

ya.

i knew, you knew. lol

You spewed out racism, ageism, and homophobia (or it could have been sexism) all within that thread where you had a hidden post.

The problems we have are not due to any persons race, age, or sexual preferences. They are due to a person's GREED, which has nothing to do with any of the other variables.

Anything else? I was right, and i know it. Some people like to lay out critisism of others but get super sensitive when they feel like critisism is directed at them. In this case it's just white privilege.

So you can go yell at somebody else unless you all want to alert stalk me.

I do not want ur need your lecture.

I have no idea where you saw homophobia. Where is your proof? Or are you just going to spew accusations and not provide evidence?

There was no racism in pointing out that white men have the power and are not of the oppressed class. And that the laws wriiten to disenfranchise people who look like me are written by white men. And that those who seek to legislate my womb are predominantly white men. And that the white men who want to take my rights are mostly old. I goggled it to be sure. Yep. I'm right.
You done now? Or do you want to alert this one?


You are angry and wrong as hell.

I have nothing to hide. Are you done?

for anyone to quibble it was anything else is bullshit. you got in trouble by saying old white men ... are the oppressors. lol

wow.

well, you did not even get to the point of saying white males are oppressors.

i did not read all the posts in the thread. just your bogus, bullshit hide.

Look! They showed up to call me a racist. I love the smell of reverse racism in the springtime! Smells like bullshit.
Had i called a white man racist, they would get the admins to give me a talking to. And have me banned. This is funny. I smoked after the hide and now it's just hella funny.

The whole thing Reminds me George Washington-- you know Howard Zinn is often revered around here? They must not, er, actually take the time read him.

Now this is more a classist piece of history, but the whole picture is there-- for those who care to be uncomfortable, and see. Those who do not, will point out the conscription of poor whites, the privilege of upper classes and use it to go cherry picking through history. You can deconstruct history, and find white privilege everywhere.

And I'll just leave it at that.

and tells her she is poor not because they kept her family as slaves and in poverty under Jim Crow and limited education for her kind to the point where her mother is the first generation to graduate from high school and tries to limit her access to voting, calls her a welfare queen and makes watermelon jokes.
Not it is her. For even saying that older white males have been oppressing her people not the ones being oppressed.


Done with you now.

As the 'White Male System' I don't remember what book it came from but I feel it pervades all institutions such as religion, government, education, medicine, law, etc. I'm tired of the right/ wrong, all or nothing, black and white thinking of the past. I want to the gray areas to be included.

It's a thing that they don't notice until somebody forgets to play their part. Then they get pissed and feel like they are being oppressed.

Recently and I think the title was something like:
This Country was built on White Supremacy and Slavery

And the jest of it was; as opposed to, 'freedom' and 'liberty', which is the rallying cry in our history books. We have the genocide of native Americans and the enslavement of hundreds of thousands African Americans on our hands. The least we can do is take an honest look at the past.

That the future people will not see the founding of this nation as something to be proud of but to feel shame for, and manifest destiny will mean something far different in a hundred years when the nation is brown. The pilgrims will be the murdering land thieves, the founding fathers the founding hypocrits and so on. Thats how i see it today, and i suspect many who look like me do as well.

When liberals wax nostalgic i get pissed off. I think i posted my reasons in my journal, but they were good reasons that people might feel sensitive about since i used the words white and man somewhere in proximity of each other.

that people use to describe poc who don't know "their place" .

And we all suffer in a way. It colors attitudes, contributes to the overall sense of powerlessness and inevitability. But the newer generation, they say, is more liberal.

Hope is still in the air. Don't give up.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]A 90% chance of rain means the same as a 10% chance:
It might rain and it might not.[/center][/font][hr]

We would all like the entire world to wake up at once and end all sorts of injustices, but huge shifts take time. It can be really frustrating because people are suffering NOW and I really think that vast, vast majority of us on the liberal side of things want that to end. But as things change, those who have it good under the current/old system are going to feel attacked and as though they are being dragged down, so they are going to fight and get crazier and angrier and more hateful the more "losses" they suffer. They world is changing around them and they are being left behind. As they have fewer and fewer means of keeping things the way they want them, they are going to get more and more desperate. Thankfully, a LOT of that is just a lot of hateful crap spewed on the internet.

Message boards are mainly useful for fine-tuning your own opinions and for sharpening your rationales and arguments in favor of those opinions. As far as changing things in the real world goes, they aren't all that useful.

Be More Interested in Your Reaction Than In Who/What Triggered It

If we tend to always react in the same old ways to specific scenarios, it might be time to question our reactions instead of pointing our fingers out there. I can tell you from experience: focusing solely on external triggers leads nowhere. When we accept that outer circumstances and other souls can play certain roles to make us aware of our sensitivities, we realize it is futile to shoot the messengers. We should actually thank the messengers for the message they bring! Sure, the urge to react can be strong, but this is a perfect opportunity to apply the wisdom and simply sit with our feelings. By allowing what we feel to just be, we are able to detach from our reaction and see things from a higher perspective.

“I reacted this way because I let myself be affected by other’s judgment,” “This person attacked me because of their own insecurity,” “It upset me because it reminds me of a past scenario I have not yet made peace with…” These are examples of what realizations may occur when we take the time to observe what is taking place. When we acknowledge the core beliefs behind of our reactions and let them go, our consciousness naturally raises beyond old patterns.


Even when it comes to the corruption of this world, it is not by always RE-ACTING in the same old ways that we are going to CREATE real change. Observing the world instead of reacting to the world doesn’t mean apathy or being passive. It is a complete and neutral acknowledgment of reality, in which we are free to create something different. Reaction tends to go in circles and perpetuate a victim mentality instead of bringing the awareness that we are all co-creators.


I think you are on the right path and I hope you did not take my post as an attack but for consideration

and thank you for reminding me of it...

I don't even respond anymore to some of the bullshit middle school crap see these days.

Some just want a reaction for reaction sake and not for intellectual discussion or consideration.

State the truth and seek the truth and then ....... move on and try to raise consciousness with yourself and others with detachment of ideologue
I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.


We are currently living in times where a lot of stuff is coming to the surface for release, whether it be belief systems, blocked emotions, trauma imprints, identities and perceptions.


I PERSONALLY THINK THINGS ARE GETTING WORSE but the pendulum is swinging in our direction as world and individual consciousness is raised

The smoothest way to move through it all is to not only release the fear of feeling, but to not always jump to identify with what stories and emotions come through. This can be a challenge, but it helps to know that dis-identifying is not something we DO, but is something we ARE underneath


Freedom and love go together. Love is not a reaction. If I love you because you love me, that is mere trade, a thing to be bought in the market; it is not love. To love is not to ask anything in return, not even to feel that you are giving something- and it is only such love that can know freedom.

Love is something you give. If you can't give, you can't know True love.

Here on DU we have all kinds of people. Some take DU too seriously, some thing it's all a joke, and everyone in between.

And then there are the occasional gems of posts, the likes of which you have exposed here and now. Thanks. Love ya man.

that switches my DNA's frequency at 528hz for health reasons........lol

But actually this has been proven on turning on coding in the DNA that is skipped.

Scientists Prove DNA Can Be Reprogrammed by Words and Frequencies

http://www.zengardner.com/scientist-prove-dna-can-be-reprogrammed-by-words-and-frequencies/

Anger and trauma misdirected can cause biological harm the embryo's DNA


Pregnant 9/11 survivors transmitted trauma to their children

http://www.theguardian.com/science/neurophilosophy

Thoughts and words have vibrations which affect your reality

http://www.starstuffs.com/physcon/thought.html


I really need to stop smoking this great bowl I have right now........LOL
or I might go Maureen Dowd on you....LOL


Seriously ..... we really need to stop some this middle school crap I see on DU these days and

Seek the truth no matter how painful it is or where it leads you because
Truth is a pathless land,

Did you really think posting something on the internet had that much of an impact on society? Why would anyone listen to you, or any of the rest of us for that matter?

And moaning about it on an anonymous message board won't change that.

[link:|

Thanks for a beautiful start to my day.

Waste of time, just trying to bait you i'm sure.
Some people like to tone troll.

Actually it does. Not every blog tweet or post or comment, but it's a valid form of communication, and it does affect how things are done by spreading information, and bringing together viewpoints. Even arguments can be productive.

Responding to this particular post, if the thread stays up, will result in a lot activity. Change? Perhaps not, but the internet reminds me of chaos theory sometimes.

Chris Hedges has called the internet an "intellectual ghetto" for good reason. Remember, if you are not buying something on the internet, you are the product. DU is a fine example. Not only is it for like minded people to gather and agree with each other, if we have a problem agreeing, we have protected groups where people can agree even more stridently.

Internet conversations may cause more harm than good. I ran across this guy here.

DU is one of the primary places I hang out-- but I don't take it entirely seriously. Other sites seem to promote more activism, and I do much better face to face-- that being said, I still say the internet gets conversations going, voices to the voiceless can raise a ruckus when needed and unfortunately, outlets for certain hateful behavior.

The internet can lull you to get all your information from mass emails or twitter or Facebook. This is true. It can spread misinformation and rumors at light speed. And you are right, it is a business.

Me, I'm a reader, which still requires a product--and to take a point that's been argued here (I don't want to argue) the concept of privilege, a great way to research this is looking at landmark surpreme court cases. From 19th century on. The problem is you can't convey that kind of history in 140 characters, long posts are often boring, and people aren't interested in reading dissenting opinions of those long gone

But on- line is the way kids are communicating, and I think I have them in mind more than those of us solid in our opinions.

before it gets better. It's a fight. But everyone needs a rest once in a while. Recharge. And if you feel you can come back, the front lines will be waiting for you.

the answer is very simple, take a break.
put your energies elsewhere for a while, mow you lawn, walk you dog, plant something.
Maybe you'l return re-newed, maybe not, either way you'l be better off

Without naming names--but come on, we know 'em when we see 'em--these are the trolls who are just SO SHOCKED and SO OFFENDED that they'll hit the alert button and scream "Waaaah, so-and-so said something that could be interpreted as dismissive of/insulting to (fill in category of person)." I'm not talking about blatantly sexist/racist/homophobic stuff, or dog-whistling commentary, I'm talking about the kind of things we hear on television during what used to be quaintly called "The Family Hour." I'm also talking about things that could be taken more than one way.

Rather than say "WTF are you talking about?" or "What, pray tell, did you MEAN when you said that?" they hit the alert button and create a scenario. No. 23 is geting alert-stalked by people like this, I've observed, and I think that kind of thing absolutely sucks. I really wish the admins would check her hides and see if they're all from the same source--or ISP.

What you might want to do is trash certain groups/users, if it's really too frustrating...or try out that HIDE BY KEYWORD feature, to avoid some of the threads that have what to you is the most grating stuff in them.

Half my jury service seems to be saying to leave it and just talk it out rather than hide it. It seems like so many people alerting qualify as the "won't someone think of the children?!" screech from the Simpsons.

Agree completely, especially about the alert stalking. Betcha those could be traced back to the same 2-3 people.

I'd put money on it.

See you in a week.

I also like to think that with knowledge comes a certain ease with opposite viewpoints. Whereas the fundies lose their shit at opposing views, we have a certain comfort level. We might disagree with them, but in a rational way. DU pretty much destroyed that notion for me.

How did you all make it through your university with such a low tolerance of people who disagree (or people who simply don't fully agree)? If disagreement bothers you so much, then maybe politics, and political forums, aren't for you.

Why would you think everyone went to university?

Getting upset because everyone on DU doesn't agree with you, to me, is pretty small-minded stuff.