If “incompetent” is a new codeword…
…for “black” in the eyes of Democrats, what does that say about what they actually think of black people?
And what words are left that are PC enough to pass codeword muster when criticizing a black person (or a woman, for that matter)? Has all criticism of them become verboten as racist and/or sexist (unless, of course, they’re Republicans such as Condoleezza Rice or Sarah Palin, in which case every explicitly disgusting epithet that comes to mind is perfectly fine, no code words necessary)?
So, what negative words could Susan Rice be called that would be okay? Are there any?
(And did my use of the word “verboten” in paragraph two mark me as a secret Nazi?)
Of course this is all patently absurd. Any thinking person should immediately see the logical flaw in the left’s charges about the racist/sexist nature of criticism of Rice and words like “incompetent,” which used to be perfectly good and completely race- and sex-neutral terms. Any thinking person knows that blacks and women—and people who are both—can actually be incompetent, and to consider criticism of them to automatically be racist and/or sexist is not only foolish but is playing the race/gender card in an especially pernicious, hypocritical, and self-serving way. What’s more, it encourages the persistence of the truly incompetent in high positions.
But it works to demonize the right, and that’s all that matters to the left.
This behavior didn’t begin with this administration, by the way. But the use of the ploy by the left has most definitely increased since Barack Obama has become president, and that’s no accident. Obama explicitly gave the green light to practitioners of the art by modeling the behavior during his 2008 campaign. Remember this, for example? I do:
We know what kind of campaign [Republicans are] going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?
The president not only said this himself, and quite early on (that statement was made in June of 2008), but can you think of a single time he’s spoken out against others who use the race or sex cards in this particular way? I doubt you can, nor do I think you ever will.
Obama, the great uniter.
“What’s more, it encourages the persistence of the truly incompetent in high positions.”
Hey, there have to be jobs for everybody. The Fed, for decades now, has been the incompetent employer of incompetent minority candidates. Run that for a few decades and you have the incompetent hiring the incompetent in a self-perpetuating circle of SNAFU. Idiocracy in action.
Happy Incompetent Friday!
Have you heard of the 1982 agreement the Republicans sign a consent for that allows Democrats to commit voter fraud and the Republicans are not allowed to investigate or punish fraudulent voters?
Democratic National Committee v Republican National Committee
Case No. 09-4615 (C.A. 3, Mar. 8, 2012)
In 1982, the Republican National Committee (“RNC”) and the Democratic National Committee (“DNC”) entered into a consent decree (the “Decree” or “Consent Decree”), which is national in scope, limiting the RNC’s ability to engage or assist in voter fraud prevention unless the RNC obtains the court’s approval in advance. The RNC appeals from a judgment of the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey denying, in part, the RNC’s Motion to Vacate or Modify the Consent Decree. Although the District Court declined to vacate the Decree, it did make modifications to the Decree. The RNC argues that the District Court abused its discretion by modifying the Decree as it did and by declining to vacate the Decree. For the following reasons, we will affirm the District Court’s judgment.
Does this not make all republican as well as democrats votes worthless?
Why vote, same party wins no matter the R or D behind their name.
Next time mitsu and his lib buds come trolling by, ask them who served as Secretaries of State in the Bush administration. And then ask them how the accusation that the criticism of Susan Rice is based on her being a black woman is anything but a cynical, dishonest race and gender card play.
As we learned from South Park: black people are incapable of doing anything wrong.
It’s always about playing both sides of the coin. The left will admit, but of course, that there are individual members of minority groups who are incompetent; incompetence, in theory, knows no racial bounds. However, in practice, the moment anyone identifies one of those incompetent minority players, then clearly such a criticism is borne of racism. Thus, any criticism of Rice, Obama or any (liberal) minority is racist (which is intended to give them a free hand in whatever they do).
It’s the dark side of the aphorism that in theory there’s no difference between theory and practice; in practice there is.
I have found some utility in flat out refusing to apologize. There are important events happening all around us that we must discuss if we are going to keep our civilization intact. Trying to derail a conversation with accusations of racism, or misogyny, or hate speech etc etc etc breaks the communication game and I will not play.
Calling someone a racist is the new McCarthyism. At some point, people who are being demonized will say ‘have you no decency?’ I’d say the sooner the better.
“Next time mitsu and his lib buds come trolling by, ask them”
Why would you bother? Of all the trolls I’ve seen Mitsu works overtime to be boring. A boring troll is an ineffective one. Just spacebar past these dolts.
vanderleun said, “Why would you bother? Of all the trolls I’ve seen Mitsu works overtime to be boring. A boring troll is an ineffective one. Just spacebar past these dolts.”
Most trolls almost immediately go for the ad hominems, which are at least stimulating. Mitsu is not given to ad hominem and thus gives the appearance of someone who might be interested in real debate. When you engage him though, it turns out his mind is inalterably made up. Yes, a waste of time to engage.
Neo, there are ways of dealing with Racist people who criticize. You don’t want to find out what they are.
I hope that you never use words like verboten again. Although ignorance is no excuse, you will probably be forgiven this one time in the spirit of togetherness generated by the glorious election. But, not again. I would miss you if you went away.
Oh, and welcome to 21st century America.
“Obama, the great uniter.”
To be fair; that was a 2008 thing. He let it all hang out, this time around, in regards to what he really was… and won….
I do not think the real idiocy of the Clyburn’s has sunk in yet. When he claims “incompetent” is a code word, he is saying incompetent is a synonym for “black”. Is that really the argument these guys want to make?
“rickl Says:
November 23rd, 2012 at 12:09 pm
Happy Incompetent Friday”
It sort of is. I don’t have the day off but so many other people do it is hard to get anything done.
Of all the extant men or women I would like to meet and spend substantial time with, Clarence Thomas ranks high. Right behind him would be Thomas Sowell.
Are there any black men who rate higher in power of thought and scholastic achievement. Mr. Sowell’s “random thoughts” are so simple, so well written, and so penetrating that they can only come from a mind who went deep, so deep. Same for Justice Thomas.
Thus, I a white man, find heroes in these two black men. Their skin only enhances for me their erudition and wisdom because it created the conditions whereby they chose integrity over racism. May that I do the same and forego the ready made traps of stereotyping and snot-blowing.
Neo: So, what negative words could Susan Rice be called that would be okay? Are there any?
there is more to knowing than just ticking off a fact and putting it on a shelf. even more so when the fact is a operative one, not a temporal locality type fact.
the “personal is political” the oppressed refuse to take or accept blame any more, or let the oppressors define them.
so, what are the IMPLICATIONS of such doctrines when taken to their end results? its not that some person wrote a memo/paper and thats that. its that they wrote it and this became a cornerstone, or keystone in the arch that holds up their power base.
i dont just bring up facts to put some curious factoid on something, i keep trying to point out whats key and what that key thing means.
no, there is nothing an oppressor can call an oppressed person. even compliments are dirty, as one can be giving them to try to manipulate the oppressed again. it is also a given that the oppressed once no longer on top, will try to regain that, and do so by any means, including ingratiation.
since you brought up verboten and Nazi, let me point out what your not seeing. the Volk were oppressed by the ‘juden’ as they called them, the capitalists. these people, like kulaks in Russia, had managed to become doctors, lawyers, priests, bankers, and merchants and over the years had eventually taken disproportionate control of such business. the volk were told, that the proof of these oppressors were that they were 14% of the population, but controlled 40% of the businesses.
so here was the justification that proved that the volk were being oppressed by that other group. this dialectical reasoning became more formalized since those years. but its what is behind affirmative action, redistribution, euthanasia, eugenics, and so on in the USA (as it also was in Germany, but there it was overt).
the left designates who the oppressor class will be, and all the various groups focus on the one. this is what then justifies taking money in taxes from them, but not allowing them to get returns by restricting them from the programs. or doing things like expanding title IX for stem, which are all euphemisms for targeting one group and always one group.
part of these rules are also to focus solely on the bad of the oppressor, but to erase or negate and even ignore the good or other things that could be seen as contradictions. so you attribute the germans nazi experiment to a fait accompli of genetics across the whole group, and ignore the civil war, and open borders, and amnesties, and charity moneies, and state moneies, etc.
under social justice the oppressor group is restricted from education, employments, children are harder to have, and now medical disfavoring is on the table too.
basically the only right the designated oppressor group has is to die out (slow genocide). they do not have a right to defense, or self protection. they are less equal than the equals. their culture is to be torn apart, their influences erased, etc.
we are experiencing the derivative of such ideas taken to their extremes. if you know the ideas and the way they discussed them and that they never change them, then you know that the behavior around the focus your bringing up neo is the outcome of accepting that kind of thinking.
to allow the oppressor to be able to label them as incompetent, all he is doing is then creating a hierarchy where he is on top as not incompetent. under equality logic, no one is incompetent, but oppressors create that for their ends. (its why the countries that follow this dont appreciate aid)
not much different than the contorted logic recently employed to pass or make precedents in law.
go to nazi Germany and try to imagine a oppressor trying to get on the good side of a loyal and hard working volk?
by the way, any attempt by the oppressors to stop this end or change the outcome is proof they are oppressors. so absent the good will of the oppressed or some external something, this will just keep going and increase through feedback.
the proof is not rational, so no rational proof will negate it.
the proof is in the ills, so the more ills, the more proof they are responsible (and so the system is justified to act in various ways to re-balance the equation).
Parents are oppressors. We all know it. Damn them not being perfect.
You know who is perfect? The state. It’ll raise said children rightly.
J.J. formerly Jimmy J., 2:09 pm — “When you engage him though, it turns out his mind is inalterably made up. Yes, a waste of time to engage.”
But how many of those here have our minds “unalterably made up”?
I see it this way: Whatever is the topic at hand, if you can present me with a way of looking at it that I have not considered before, I am genuinely interested in what you have to say. But if you’re handing me the same old same old that I’ve heard a gazillion times before, then no thanks. We ^both^ have other fish to fry.
At my advanced age, when it comes to a political topic at hand, there is not too much that I have not already heard and considered — especially given that I’m from a leftie family and have hung with leftie friends and have always lived in leftie communities. There’s just not very much new under the sun for me. Your mileage may vary.
Therefore, barring the unforeseen — which ^has^ happened on occasion — my mind is “unalterably made up”. But that’s because after a point, I’m not interested in what I call the dance of the talking points, where . . .
A puts forth a point, hoping that B doesn’t know the all-too-common comeback to the put forth point. Should B know the comeback, B uses it, and A puts forth an all-too-common comeback to B’s comeback.
And ’round and ’round it goes, until someone, very often the leftie, calls the other something distinctly uncomplimentary, like racist/sexist/whateverist if it’s a leftie doing the calling.
Phooey on that; I got off that merry-go-round many years ago, and I recommend the same to my political friends and enemies alike.
MJR, your point is well taken. However, does that not concede that all is lost. Minds must be changed if we are ever to reverse course on the drift toward becoming a failed state. That’s why I often engage in the hopes that maybe I can turn lead into gold. A fool’s errand perhaps, but that is just the way I’m wired.
Whenever I read or hear of a new take on conservative issues, I often think maybe this is what will change minds. And I try to use it in my argumentation. Like Curtis I am a huge fan of Thomas Sowell. His writings are so rational, clear, and well argued that I think we could do worse than use him as a major spokesperson for the conservative cause. Unfortunately, he’s not getting nearly the attention he deserves anymore.
As to incompetent being a code word for racists, here’s the final word from Representative Clyburn:
“‘All Republicans is racist,’ Congressman Clyburn said, ‘therefore whenever they use English, they are using it to hiddenly express racist ideas. Whenever they speak, they are speaking entirely in racist code words. But when Democrats like us speak English, we’re using tolerance code words.’”
Absurd beyond belief. Read the whole piece by Daniel Greenfield here:
http://tinyurl.com/bzsdrsx
Have done some searches on the quote cited above and can’t verify. Apparently this is wicked satire by Daniel Greenfield. Fooled me, but it does make the point quite well.
J.J. formerly Jimmy J., 9:32 pm — “MJR, your point is well taken.”
Yours is as well, honestly.
I know I ain’t gonna convert NOone. But slight shifts in the other one’s thinking are a possibility, just as slight shifts in my thinking are a possibility. (It’s even happened.)
At one time, I wanted very much to demonstrate to lefties that I was not the eeeevil monster of their imagination. I stopped doing that — I got very tired of essentially begging for acceptance. Skrew that. If they didn’t think of me as evil any more, they thought of me as deluded, or a tool of big oil/carbon/pharma/whatever. Skrew that, too.
I’m getting to be of the conviction that it’s largely cultural, and “cultural” does not lend itself to rational persuasion.
Of course, I genuinely hope you are successful in your “fool’s errand” . . .
I’ll make it real easy for the black dems: We can just use the N word, as they so affectionately call their homies, and relieve them of their duty to break the ciphers. That way ‘incompetent’ will remain ‘incompetent’ and the meaning of words will be clear to both sides. Kind of a truce.
neo, you point out that Leftists under pressure retreat to their core arguments:
1. the genetic fallacy/argumentum ad hominem
2. tu quoque
This may be illogical, childish, stupid, and wicked in various degree, but it is all they have. We will hear a lot of both of them.
“‘All Republicans is racist,’ Congressman Clyburn said, ‘therefore whenever they use English, they are using it to hiddenly express racist ideas. Whenever they speak, they are speaking entirely in racist code words. But when Democrats like us speak English, we’re using tolerance code words.’”
“All Republicans is racist”
“hiddenly”
“Democrats like us”
Somewhere an English teacher is weeping.
OB-
Ebonics is his 1st language.
Don Carlos, yep. Perhaps he was the victim of a poor translation from Ebonics into English.
All kidding aside, how and why does anyone take seriously someone who is obviously functionally illiterate, and whose reasoning (if you’ll pardon the exaggeration) is of a piece with his linguistic skills?
The best way to win the Race Card game is not to play. After it has won the Marxists two elections straight, it’s time conservatives understood that truth. A moratorium on all use of the Race Card must be put by conservatives everywhere as a precondition to dialog and debate.
ziontruth- Dream on. How you gonna make dat stick (oops, momentary ebonics slip)? As Clyburn well illustrates, they bring the race gun to the knife fight.
As Mary McCarthy once said of Lillian Hellman the commie and Pulitzer playwright, “Every word she speaks is a lie, and that includes ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’.” How do you propose to dialogue with these people? If you speak not, you leave them the field, and lie away they will. The race card is their Ace of Trumps.
Once again, the left has played to their main advantage, redefining the language.
From Wikipedia:
“The totalitarian aim of the Party is to prevent any alternative thinking–”thoughtcrime”, or “crimethink” in the newest edition of Newspeak–by destroying any vocabulary that expresses such concepts as freedom, free enquiry, individualism, resistance to the authority of the state and so on…
The Newspeak term for the English language is Oldspeak. The Party intends to replace Oldspeak completely with Newspeak before 2050 (except among the Proles, who are not trained in Newspeak and whom the Party regards as barely human and unimportant).”
That would be Orwell, Bill, as quoted on Wiki.
Just sayin.
Don Carlos,
I did not call for gentlemanliness. When I speak of a moratorium on the Race Card, it is not one that is asked for nicely but taken by force (be it only verbal force é la filibuster). The Marxists are oppressors par excellence, and it is not in the nature of an oppressor to cede power unless forced.
My apologies if my point of view is inapplicable to American politics. I’m still reeling from the way the recent conflict with Gaza has been mismanaged by the timidity of my country’s leadership. I’ve come to the conclusion that the biggest problem is not the side of evil, but the moderates, the squeamish, the gentlemanly on the side of good, and my take on all political issues everywhere is now colored by this view.
I never attribute to stupidity what is adequately explained by malice. The Progressive Left are not stupid and therefore should no longer be treated as such.
ziontruth:
Thanks, Neo. I thought you’d delete that comment (and would have understood if you had). The worst emotion that’s been swamping everyone, on both sides of the world, including me, is impotent rage, the feeling that there’s nothing you can do that matters, nothing that could change things for the better.
These are trying times. But, we must keep on believing we can change things, because the only alternative is to go under with perfect certainty. The great test of hope is to have it just when the situation seems devoid of it.