Louis
Posts: 6436
Joined: Jan. 2006
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| Quote (dheddle @ Nov. 05 2008,20:11) | | Quote (Louis @ Nov. 05 2008,13:29) | | Quote (dheddle @ Nov. 05 2008,12:29) | Just got to the lab from the gym. (When I left the gym, I noticed the sun had risen.) Usually I'm just about the only one on our wing of the lab's main office building at 7:00 am. I met a good friend, an extremely talented Moroccan physicist, a woman. She was sooo happy and told me she'd been crying. She asked me how I felt--knowing who I voted for (though we never discussed it.) I told her it was hard not to be happy at the history that had been made.
She startled me with almost the exact comment I made on here or Brayton's blog--that this could happen only in America. She used two of the same examples--she could not imagine a Moroccan leading France or a Turk in Germany.
Congratulations America. |
Odious comparisons thy name is, Heddle.
Children of "immigrant races" have been leading European nations on and off over the centuries. Obama is not a foreigner he is a native born American citizen. Count the Jewish first ministers of various nations throughout history for example.
Not only could this NOT only happen in America, it's happened elsewhere with vastly less pomp and effort. Comparing Obama to a Turkish immigrant in Germany is not comparing like with like. Maybe you should get yourself a passport and visit this little place the rest of us like to call "The Rest of The World", it might surprise you.
Louis |
Louis you raging imbecile.
You will note in this case the comparison, though similar to one I have made in the past, comes from a Moroccan, a woman, Muslim, a scientist, an Obama supporter, and who, by the way, did her Ph.D. in France. She is now fairly high-ranking here at Jefferson Lab. And of course she wasn't talking about immigrants--the US has had multitudinous presidents one or few generations removed from immigrants--that would hardly be worth mentioning. She was talking about people of color. Her words to me were “only in America.” If she meant “it has only ever happened in America” then she is demonstrably correct—unless you can provide an example of a person of color elected to lead a European nation. If she meant “it could only ever happen in America,” we’ll have to wait to see if she is correct, but so far the hypothesis fits the data.
When someone of color leads a European nation, or when you say something intelligent, whichever comes first, you can take the high ground. Prior to that—get lost. You bore me to tears with your pusillanimous, self-righteous, inchoate hissy-fits. |
Touch a nerve did I Heddle?
You can chant "USA! USA! USA!" all you like and tout your patronising drivel about "I has a black friend" until you're blue in the face. Your friend's colour etc don't suddenly make her claims valid. Her ignorance, brilliance or combination of all three (see under: humour) is irrelevant to her religion, race, sex etc. Nice try, your attempt at being "liberal" (more accurately, a caricature of one) = FAIL.
Is Barack Obama the first black person to lead the USA? Sure. Are we all pleased about it? Absolutely! But trying to turn that victory for the world (and I truly mean that) into some point that this somehow demonstrates that the racial divisions that wound all nations are somehow now miraculously less present in America than elsewhere is incoherent babble in the extreme. Figureheads do not integration make.
No "high ground" has been taken, your desire to see it as such bespeaks your own insecurity, not any flaw on my part. My quibble is one of fact, racial integration and enfranchisement in many European nations has, demonstrably across history, been vastly superior to that of the USA. Care to challenge me on the facts? Let's examine (for example) just when and how black people were given the vote, just when segregation laws were abolished, black people/immigrants/people of different faiths and none in positions of substantial power/parliaments etc. It's a long old list! Even South Africa had a black person as president before both our respective nations, a nation utterly riven by racial strife and apartheid. A fact that should, under your {cough} logic, demonstrate the integrational superiority and uniqueness of South Africa. Oh and incidentally, I know I am not comparing like with like, my choice is quite deliberate. That is a major part of the point I was making.
Does that mean we are perfect in Europe, or that we can adopt some position of moral superiority? No, no and thrice NO! Nor did I claim such, learn to read. One would hope an academic would have managed such a task by now....
If we want to pick single examples, then you're almost 30 years too late, by your method of "thought" (I use the term advisedly) I could claim that the UK is vastly less discriminatory to women because we elected Thatcher in 1979. Just to make it clear: I WOULDN'T claim that. One would hope an academic would have learnt the basic elements of logic by now.....
That you see the successes outside of America as somehow a slur against America's good name and some kind of adoption of moral superiority (which it ain't, we have our own issues, many of which we lag far behind the USA in solving) is just the type of identity political puerility that I have been condemning you for from the start. You project your own idiocy far too severely. See past it.
Not only do I (and many others) celebrate a black person in the White House, we hope other nations will follow suit (should suitable candidates arise. Meritocracy after all is my personal ideal). After all, even India is ahead of us all in this respect having elected a member of a minority race/religion (a Sikh) to its premier political post....oh but wait...they all look a like so they're the same, right?*
So as usual, in your whiny projectionist identity games you have missed my point, which is not that America = bad, Europe = good (or any such drivel), but that not only can such political victories for racial equality happen elsewhere but that they do and have. It's related to a little thing called context, I might have mentioned it before, don't worry, you won't have noticed, it's far too complex for you to comprehend, you just stick to "Duh they be like me so I be a-votin' for um", it'll get you so far in life.**
For you to trumpet Obama's victory as some uniquely American possibility is so laughable it's unbelievable, and you examples of a Turk in Germany etc fall so far short of an actually valid comparison as to make one question what limited sanity you must possess. Do you really think that the 138 or so year gap between the election of Hiram Revels to the Senate and Obama's victory will be similarly repeated in (for example) the UK? By that token we should get a black PM sometime in 2125 or so (or 2060, depending on how you count certain nuances, or even...hmmm I wonder if my point has been made sufficiently clearly). Given that we've had more black/immigrant MPs in a tiny space of time than you've had black senators ever I'd err on the side of optimism! (Now what was it I said about inaccurate comparisons....)
However, as previously noted, you'll doubtlessly miss the point as usual and see the above as some vile piece of Eurocentric egotism designed to slur the stainless nation of America. Frankly, yanking your chain and making you yap isn't that much fun (no matter how bored you claim to be, you're insults give the lie to your poor veneer of faux dispassion) so I don't bother with it. Mocking you for the utter vapid nonsense you spout whilst you swagger about pretending to be an intellectual however, well now that IS fun. Especially when a little barb pokes at that massive ego of yours by deflating a puffed up claim you've made. Not one of god's more special special children are you? I note, of course in passing, that you've moved those goalposts and failed to answer the substantial point, instead opting for the identity politics. Well done. Oh and thanks for doing my job for me.
Face it Heddle, you are as I dubbed you, a seat warmer. Occupying a space a more rational and better candidate could and should occupy. Your irrationality and inability to read for basic comprehension give you away. Perhaps that candidate could even be black.....
Oh and what hissy fit? I took you to task for your admission of shallow identity politics before and I took you to task again for your equally shallow and inaccurate jingoism. Please stop projecting your own problems onto me Heddle, it makes me feel dirty.
Louis
*This, for the hard of thought, is sarcasm. Anyone who understood the persecution the Sikhs/Punjabis have suffered in very recent times (and more ancient ones) should realise what an enlightened (and expertly politically manoeuvred) coop this was.
**Also sarcasm. I feel I have to point these things out.
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Bye.
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