We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides, on many sides.
— Donald J. Trump
He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.
— Martin Luther King, Jr.
I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the involvement of President of the United States in the evil of racism. The counter-protesters in Charlottesville lapsed into evil, to be sure. Meeting violence with violence, they handed their adversaries a huge victory. But their error does not make them the moral equivalent of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and Klansmen. Seizing on their error to construct such an equivalence, as Donald Trump has done, is positively obscene. “Grab them by the pussy” pales in comparison.
You have to take care to not let it consume you, give yourself time to heal. It may be my perversity but my belief that the worse is yet to come allows me to appreciate those things that have yet to be corrupted. We need to survive until next fall’s election, that is the first step back to sanity
I’m taking it in stride.
On the positive side, Trump is so hopelessly incompetent that he probably isn’t going to do as much damage as we might fear. And his clear embrace of white supremacy over the last few days is going to weaken his support base.
You’re probably right, but it will certainly exact a heavy cost on civil discourse in the meantime. As of today, it appears that Trump has walked back his specific (albeit late and clearly prescripted) condemnation of white supremacists with a couple of follow ups.
It reminds me of when Trump was interviewed by Bill O’Reilly and seemed to think that the US government was equivalent to Putin’s regime. “You think our country is so innocent?”
That is one of the few things Trump has said that was correct. Take a look at the numbers of times that the U.S. government has been involved in overthrowing democratically elected governments and replacing them by military dictatorships (the 1950s – 1970s were a particularly busy time for that). Where Trump is wrong is thinking that this makes it OK for Putin to try to interfere in the U.S. elections.
The only thing that has been bothering me about the coverage of the Charlottesville incident is the repeated statement that it ‘claimed the life of a woman and two police officers’. The death of the officers was tragic, but the crash of the helicopter appears to have been unrelated to the protests. If the helicopter had been viewing a car accident and crashed, it would seem odd to say that the car accident ‘claimed the lives of the officers’ in the helicopter.
It just seems odd to me to lump the death of the officers from what appears to be an accident in with the death of a woman hit intentionally hit by a car.
I was under the impression that O’Reilly was talking more about how Putin treats his own citizens rather than interventionism when he labeled Putin as a killer.
Though Tom and I have different views on some things, I do want to thank him and others here for their support of equality and protection of people of other races.
Speaking as a non-white, I’ve very much appreciated the moral fabric of so many people in the USA who despise the KKK and the white supremacists and neo-Nazis.
Neo-Nazi’s are especially repugnant. Did these clowns forget how Hitler’s SS were gunning down and toturing and mutilating American prisoners at the Battle of the Bulge?
But I think that moral fabric is sometimes exploited to evil ends by cop haters and anarchists. It was only a few years after I graduated from a school in Baltimore when the BLM started to incinerate the city. I was freaking glad I wasn’t driving to school there at the time. A lot more blacks and others have died and suffered crime because of the cop-haters representing themselves as some sort of defenders of minorities.
Nevertheless, thanks Tom for that part of your moral fabric and thanks to others at TSZ who support the rights and treatment of minorities.
You may be right there. But I do get annoyed when Putin’s interference in the U.S. is denounced (rightly) but no mention is made of the U.S. having overthrown democratically-elected regimes. Worked out real well in Iran in 1953, didn’t it? Would be good if young people in the U.S. were taught that history.
I’m right there with you. And for some us, there was never any pretense.
Agreed. There is enough hypocrisy to go around. However, I think that they represent different problems. The interventionist policies of the US (and other governments), while appearing misguided through the lens of hindsight, are at least admitted as historical fact. The unwillingness of many on the right to accept the appraisal of all major intelligence services that Russia actively worked to influence the election is an assault on the idea of objective evidence.
It goes hand in hand with the ‘scrubbing’ of Confederate motives to hide the connection to slavery. Revisionism like this is, IMHO, much more insidious in the long term.
Have you seen some of the changes that Texas has made to public school history texts? McCarthy is now a hero and slavery was a side issue in the Civil War. It would be nice if young people in the U.S. were taught a history consisting of objective facts.
I’m rewriting the books to say that ID won at Dover!
Couple of points:
1. The only thing I’m familiar with is the Malmedy massacre. Don’t know of any torture or mutilation. What are you referring to?
2. Why should the deaths of a few American soldiers in one spot be the thing they should remember, rather than the many millions of other deaths caused by the Nazi regime?
Just curious Sal, when you discuss BLM do you always include a paragraph on the evils of Neo-Nazis, the Bundys armed takeover of my property?
Did BLM call for the incineration of Baltimore?
Police are like everyone else, some good ,some bad. Should we tolerate bad police?
Don’t you mean the War of Northern Aggression?
newton,
I take the picture in Ferguson to mean “let’s do unto Baltimore what we have done unto Ferguson.”
I had a dark skinned female classmate that sometimes traveled with me to the the Baltimore campus of JHU when we were studying solid state physics a few years before the Baltimore riots broke out. We didn’t feel safe driving through the neighborhoods to get to the JHU library to do our term paper research.
Given the black on black violence in Baltimore, black on Asian violence in Baltimore, I would have felt even less safe driving through Baltimore during the riots. Did I feel being non-white would be some sort of protection for me and my class mate? Would I have felt protected by armies of BLM SJW warriors “protecting” my safety? Heck no. I felt safer with the police (BLUE Lives) near me, beside me and above me in their helicopters.
Even before all the BLM protests, police helicopters were flying over head EVERY night with search lights. Cops and campus security encircled the campus with one of them about every 50 yards in certain areas frequented by students.
Word on the street was the boys on the hood hated all the privileged students on the JHU campus, except the composition of JHU isn’t all that white it’s — ahem — over represented with Asians. And not too far away the former black mayor of DC Marion Barry made racist remarks about Asian store owners.
So, no, BLM and Antifa doesn’t make me feel safer neither do neo-Nazi’s nor white supremacists. BLM and Antifa don’t speak for me and my rights as a minority and they don’t serve the black community, they are an engine for it’s continued suffering.
And from an economic standpoint, I don’t see how whites would want Blacks to stay poor and uneducated and unemployed and tempted to be criminals.
Blue lives matter, and condolences not only to the family of the young lady killed in Charlotteville, but the two Blue lives that were lost in the riots, one of them from near my home town in Burke.
The Werth 11:
John asked:
That wasn’t the point I was trying to make. I pointing out, with things like Malmady massacre, American neo-Nazi’s are effectively siding with an ideology that killed other Americans. But on second thought, maybe neo-Nazis liked the SS brutality on the black soldiers of the Werth 11.
I doubt the Neo-Nazis have any qualms about extermination of presently living Americans if they are on the list.
Thanks. I didn’t know about that. But you’re right, the Nazi marchers probably would approve. Just “taking our country back”, right?
Sal if very clearly a defender of rights and policies which directly affect him.
Others? Meh…
The present day Imperial Grand Wizard of The KKK demonstrates his complete misunderstanding of what freedom of speech is:
“They were a bunch of Communists out there protesting against somebody’s freedom of speech,” he added. “So it doesn’t bother me that they got hurt at all.”
Remarkably he did not mention BLM.
stcordova, I ignore the majority of your comments since IMHO you’ve lost all credibility with your unapologetic quote-mine of Jerry Coyne on the ‘Academic Chauvinism’ thread, but this statement is particularly reprehensible.
Perhaps if you worked on agreeing with people because their viewpoints were rationally coherent instead of simply because they have the correct color jersey on, we’d all be a bit better off. Just my opinion though…
That’s a fair criticism. I’ll think on it.
I think saying “blue lives matter” is a racist statement. I hope Lizzie will ban Sal.
More racist statements from Sal.
Lizzie is going to need some new pitbulls.
What the “antifa” was actually doing in Charlottesville, as reported by people who were there: protecting people of faith from being attacked by white supremacists.
Kantian Naturalist,
More on Antifa in the NYT
Seems to me, reading various reports and statements from politicians and commentators, that the dividing line between those who have moral integrity and those who appear wanting is whether they are prepared to condemn Donald Trump by name.
As a citizen of the UK, I am saddened to see our current prime minister, Theresa May, so far appearing on the side of the mealy-mouthed.
It’s always amusing when moral subjectivists exhibit moral outrage about something like racism. I mean, isn’t racism just another evolutionary trait that may or may not work out, in the long run, for the survival of the species? Racism is just another happenstance product of chemistry, is it not? Doesn’t this make “anti-racism” equivalent to “racism” – both being happenstance products of evolution, chemistry and physics?
Hmmmmmmm? Oh, the irony! Oh, the hypocrisy! It’s the age of the outrage!
Hi William,
Just driving by or are you stopping? No buyers remorse for you, I take it?
Does racism violate natural law and if so why?
William, it’s beyond me at this point why you persist with this fallacious strawman of moral subjectivists. Do you believe that such moral subjectivists feel no pain when we…say…stub our toes or get cut? If not, what makes you think we have no feelings, desires, and emotions? And further, why do you persist with the obviously erroneous implication that subjective desires any less behaviorally and emotionally motivating than objective ones?
Presumably you are allowing “objective desires” for the case of argument! 🙂
…or I’m behaving like I am?
William has already indicated why he thinks this: it’s because that’s what he thought when he was an atheist. And William has — I believe, but I don’t have any links or references at my command — once indicated that he’s basically a high-functioning sociopath. (As perhaps indicated by his support for Trump, among other things.)
So why does William think that atheism logically entails nihilism? Not because he has any argument at all, but only because, as a high-functioning sociopath, he himself was a nihilist when he was an atheist.
There’s no rational argument here. It’s just his idiosyncratic pathology on display.
The only straw man, Robin, is yours. I did not say or imply anyone was feigning moral outrage. My post makes clear the case I am making; it appears you didn’t understand it.
Newton asks:
I think it would be difficult to make the case that some humans are “less deserving” of moral rights and of our moral obligations towards them than others.
Thanks for giving it your attention, SJW!
If you mean Trump, why would I have buyer’s remorse?
That’s what they were specified to do. Or it might be a bug… Who knows.
I understood the point you attempted to make (concerning the the success or failure of traits based on evolutionary pressure), but you obviously (still) don’t understand evolutionary theory or the actual concept of moral subjectiveness. ‘Fraid the only strawman is yours.
Here’s why your assessment is just plain bogus: moral subjectivists are environmental conditions, just as much as weather and resources and geography are (from an evolutionary perspective anyway). As such, our moral outrage is just as much a legitimate natural selective pressure against a racist trait and subsequent behavior as any other.
Making a case would depend what the moral rights and obligations were, I would guess.
From what objective source that we can objectively know do these moral rights and moral obligations come from? Examples would be helpful to the subjectively impaired.
You oppose social justice?
Yes. Well, I would say I ridicule it more than oppose it, but yeah.
Nobody can “objectively know” anything. All any individual can do is subjectively know certain things and believe other things. The “objective source” would be objective morality, of course – that’s what it would have to be, logically speaking. For it to be a natural law morality, it would have to be part of the unalterable, fundamental nature of reality. An example would be the classic “it’s wrong to torture children for your personal pleasure”
That’s exactly the problem, Robin. Your argument makes the racism just as legitimate as any other view as well. Every emotion or view generated by evolution is equally “legitimate”. Why get emotionally outraged at perfectly legitimate views generated by evolution?
You might as well be outraged that some people have curly hair – I mean, as long as we’re being outraged by the happenstance outcomes of chemistry and physics via evolution, why not? It’s all perfectly “legitimate”.
Generally, when people express moral outrage over someone else’s views or behavior, they try to make the case that the offending view is worse than their own view and shouldn’t be held. But, unfortunately, evolutionary subjectivists cannot argue that Joe and Jill “shouldn’t” hold the views chemistry has produced in them; of course they should.
Which makes your moral outrage all the more sad and pathetic. You’re holding the racists responsible for their views as if they have some magical power to intervene in what chemistry and physics has wrought and force their chemistries into some other state – as if they were something other than those chemistries.
And here I thought most evolutionists tried to avoid magical thinking.
Oh fuck, another go-around on moral subjectivism. What’s this, fifth, sixth?
At least. And not the last, either.
Unfortunately, WJM is unable to convince anyone else that atheism logically entails what he thinks it logically entails, because his only argument for the logical entailment of atheism depends entirely on what he himself personally believed when he was an atheist.
But that has nothing to do with logic — that’s just his individual psychology.
At bottom, his argument for what atheism logically entails is nothing more than an imperious demand that everyone else share what are just peculiar facts about his own psychological structure.
All of the rest — whatever he says about “subjectivism”, naturalism, materialism, etc — is just a further attempt to dress up his idiosyncratic worldview as logically entailed by the very nature of concepts.
Spoken like someone who really, truly does not comprehend the implications of evolutionary theory. At all.
Well, my days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle.
I understand, so what you find amusing is the way certain other moral subjectivists deal with the concept of right and wrong. Not moral subjectivism itself.