Aspies For Freedom

P.S. Who on earth is John McCain?

Crazy right-wing wack-job who's been running for president for a couple of decades. Currently he's pretending to be very, very religious (he's not) in order to get the votes of the fundamentalists who loathe his more successful rival, Rudi Giuliani.

I'm voting for CJ!

Actually, we do have a candidate with that kind of vision (Dennis Kucinich) but he's treated as a joke. We apparently prefer the corporatist "Greed Is Good" mentality, even though that philosophy is destroying democracy and sucking the life out of the middle classes.

Which makes it a perfect example. They maintained domination and oppression not through numbers but through exclusive access to the levers of power.

You can't learn about it or change it without reaching an understanding of what it really is and how it really works. That will always require argument because those who receive benefit and privilege from an oppressive system will always try to discredit, shout down, censor, and ignore the truth about that system.

"Let's not argue" benefits the oppressor class because without argument, everything quietly, politely reverts to the status quo, which is that those on top stay on top.

Which has nothing to do with oppression.

That really makes no sense at all.  Perhaps you can explain it. Do you perhaps just mean 'free expression" rather than "free thought"? That makes a little bit of sense.

Are you trying to make a distinction with the "a problem" and "the problem."? What is that distinction?

"Offensiveness" really has nothing to do with oppression. Why are you confused about this? Because they both start with an "o"? Offensiveness, oppression, oatmeal, ocelots...? Where does it stop?

If any connection is to be effortfully constructed, I would say that people of the "superior" group are prone to crying "Offensive! Offensive!" when people of the oppressed group speak upn. They can't say they are actually being harmed, oppressed or otherwise molested, so they say "I am offended" and expect the world to come to a halt. It's a joke, really. "Oh, you're offended? Really? Oh, dear, what can we do?" I see 'that is offensive!" being used as a tool of the oppressors to silence dissenting speech and actions.

Everybody is pretty much guaranteed a degree of 'offensiveness" just by getting out of bed and facing the world every day. Everyone is offended by something.  e.g., I'm offended by ignorant opinions, but people have a right to express them.

Being offended is not being oppressed.

If there's some rational connection between the two that I'm not seeing, please explain it to me.

I think that is the intent of the oppressors, or at least the fondest wish -- but it's not achievable. An example i'm thinking of is slave-owners (part of the oppressor class) making it illegal for slaves to read -- and even illegal for anyone to teach a slave to read. The intent was to keep slaves from learning, receiving information, communicating and telling their experiences. But you can't actually prevent thought. Although as soon as it's technologically possible, I'm sure the Bush administration will implement it on a grand scale.

Yes. This is why the 'oppressor class" hates the internet and wants to crush it through corporatist control.

In order to advance and develop thinking, people also need access to truth -- which is why censorship is such a powerful and essential tool of oppressors... and another reason they hate the internet. And hate democracy.

Brushing aside what's-his-names asinine comment, I think I can explain what oppressor classes are. There are other names, but I'm okay leaving it at this one. And they're not really my definitions, it's just the way things are.

The oppressor group is defined by a complex of power and privilege (largely or completely unearned) that goes along with being part of that group. The correlative, of course, is that being outside those groups carries disempowerment and disadvantage.

The complication here is that all people have multiple group/class identities and that in some of those identities we may be part of the oppressed and in others we may be part of the oppressors.

I get a lot of systemic advantage and privilege because I am part of several such groups -- I'm white, I'm male, I'm educated, I make pretty decent money. but on the other hand, I am shut out of heterosexual privilege and I am reaching an age (54 in two weeks!) that I don't get the privileges that go with being of prime age. I don't get full NT advantage because I'm ADHD, but i probably get more NT advantage than a lot of people on the spectrum. There are isolated times and places where my 'disadvantaged" identities may actually work to my advantage, but they are isolated and atypical. They are not the way the greater society tilts.

When this is pointed out -- as obvious as it all is -- people rush to deny that they are part of advantaged groups. Maybe that's better stated as: they deny that the groups they are part of have an unfair advantage in terms of power and privilege. No one wants to admit they have systemic unearned advantages. Everyone wants to believe everything good that falls their way happens because they have somehow "earned" it, either by their hard work or their inate, overwhelming natural wonderfulness.

My favorite current example of this is the eternally despicable George W. Bush. He has repeated the following little shtick in several recent appearances. He apparently thinks it's very clever and that it demonstrates what a terribly superior individual he is. He says of his supposed dear friend and closest adviser, Condoleeza Rice, "She's got the PhD and I'm the C student -- but look who's the president. I tell her, you may have the PhD, but look who's the president. It's me, not you."

Yes, it's you, you crusty piece of dog crap. Do you suppose it has anything to do with you being a white, male, millionaire, son-of-a-president? No, no. It's just that George is a natural-born sweet-smelling pile of Superiority.

Denying one's own group privilege means they also must either blame the disempowered and  disadvantaged, or somehow deny that such disempowerment and disadvantage exists.

If you make two columns on the blackboard, one saying "empowered group" and the other saying "disempowered group" (or whatever labels one might use) even kids can list the groups. It's no big mystery. We all know. It's just that some desperately need to deny.

If I say "white" -- they know which column it goes in. if I say 'female" they know. We all know.  The +/- dyads of systemic advantage/disadvantage form a very long list, and most people see themselves on both sides of the ledger from one dyad to the next.

male/female
whiite/black
straight/gay
NT/AS
rich/poor
Christian/atheist
able-bodied/disabled
IQ>100 / IQ<100
native born/foreigner
thin/fat
homeowner/homeless
attractive/unattractive

It has amazed me some of the things kids see and realize and add to the list.

And it's fascinating to look at what powers and privileges the + list has vis-a-vis the - group. And to look at what exploitation of the - group takes place.

It's also important to note that not every group identity one holds is of a particularly defining nature. My being white gets me a lot more advantage than I lose for being ADHD. Race in America is a much more powerful identifier than is ADHD/non-ADHD.

Anyway.

that's a bit about how I see it.

Agreed. Willfully blind. They hate having to see it. And I don't really understand why. They (we) have so much, why not be generous enough to at least contribute some honesty to the discussion.

There is a certain sort of black person that the right-wingers just love -- and subservience is a big part of it.

I don't need to turn in book reports to a crazy lady in order to discuss racism.

Your assertion that there are no facts and no substantial information outside of four books written (ghostwritten, actually) by two radical self-loathing right-wing authors is ridiculous.

The right wing has its small (very small) but well-paying cottage industry of anti-black black people (like Parker and Alan Keys) anti-female females (Ann Coulter, who advocates taking the vote away from women) and anti-gay gay people (Bush buddy "Jeff Gannon" and Matt Sanchez) who are despised by their own people and who pander to the bigotry of people like yourself.

You make this increasingly transparent with each progressively loonier post.

In America, the right-wing conservatives equate welfare with blacks and they hate welfare because they hate black people. The Reagan administration invented The Myth of the Welfare Queen -- a racist stereotype of a fat, lazy black woman who pops out baby after baby and drives around in a new Cadillac paid for with the Big $$$$$ she has made cheating the system and robbing the government who, in turn, rob the poor victimized super-rich by forcing them to pay taxes.

Star Parker saw a great opportunity (as opportunists do) and stepped up and said , "Yes -- it's all true! I was the very Welfare Queen of Legend! I was a slut and a criminal and a liar (you know, like most black people) but now I am a  Born Again Christian and I will work for the Republican Party, villainizing evil negresses like my former self. Please buy my shitty book and burn a cross for Jesus. Oh, and I must mention that fags are the scum of the earth and they are the cause of all America's problems. Thank you."

In America, you can make a lot of money with an act like that. They used to call them minstrel shows.

Yes. Now the performers are considered "experts" by people ignorant of social realities.

Soooooo true. It's a shell game -- a cheap diversion with the politicians funnelling public money into their own pockets and the corporate coffers, while they point an accusatory finger at struggling mothers and kids and cry "There are the scoundrels!"