The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    barefooted's picture

    Family

    By barefooted on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 1:40am |

    Maybe it's just me, but I'm uncomfortable with a candidate who writes off an entire portion of our country. He's fundraising like a monster but couldn't bother to even campaign in the heavily black southern states? That's not just a lack of outreach and respect it's a deliberate snub.

    I've lived in the South all of my life. I'm not black but ... no, there's no but. I'm not black. But trust me - those of us who have lived our lives among and amidst the depth of any southern community know that family lands hard. It fucks you up, it turns the world on a dime and never - EVER - means letting go. Full stop.

    I feel sorry for those that don't get it because it's so simple. The Clinton's are family because they've been there time after time; decade after decade. The family fights, fusses, argues and turns away from each other with loud words that are elevated by those who don't get it. Bill and Hillary are family. Yes, they've screwed up. They're still here ... forgiveness is bigger than politics if it's earned.

    It took us awhile to reach the level of "diversity" that we've amassed (I put that in quotes because it's a whitewashed term). You know why it didn't happen overnight? Yep. Tons of reasons. But not a single one of them involved someone walking in and saying, "I know more than you do, I know what you need, and I have all the answers you never knew. Revolution!" So no, Senator Sanders, you'll never break through because you don't get why you won't. Which is why Hillary will win the nomination.

    She's family.

    Comments

    You say the Clintons are family.  If I'm desperate, I go to my family and they'll help me.  Likewise, if they're in need, I'll help them.  Simply put, my interests are important to my family and their interests are important to me.  Perhaps you can provide examples of the Clintons putting the economic interests of poor, working, and middle-income Americans above those of the 1%.


    by HSG on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 8:26am

    Hal, after all this time, after answering this same question, you must now have some idea of what the Clinton's have done for the country.  They've made mistakes and done dumb things but to keep insisting they've NEVER done anything for anyone but the 1% when all evidence shows otherwise means you really don't want answers.  You already have them.


    by Ramona on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 6:07pm

    Ramona - that's kinda where I see you.  Somebody who's unwilling to reconsider her view of the Clintons.  I guess because you have all the answers.


    by HSG on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 6:22pm

    No, Hal, I don't.  Why would you think that?  And why would you think it's your job to make me reconsider the Clintons?  Do you think I've been living in a cave for the past 25 years?  Do you think I've become so dotty I couldn't possibly sift through the info and come to my own conclusions?  Your condescension is not appreciated.


    by Ramona on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 6:56pm

    You scold me for allegedly not being interested in hearing all the good things that the Clintons have done.  If I am wrong not to listen to those praising them, then are you not wrong for refusing to hear those who criticize?


    by HSG on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 7:12pm

    You said to Barefooted, "Perhaps you can provide examples of the Clintons putting the economic interests of poor, working, and middle-income Americans above those of the 1%," and I responded to you by saying you have those answers already because we've been over and over and over it.  And you respond by telling me I'm not willing to reconsider how I feel about the Clintons.  And then you say, "I guess you have all the answers."

    Now what have I missed?  Do you or don't you agree that we've answered all of this already?

     


    by Ramona on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 7:37pm

    You criticized me specifically because "all evidence shows otherwise means you really don't want answers.  You already have them."  I'm trying to understand how this criticism of me isn't much more fairly applied to you since you have actually chided me for trying to persuade you and others to support Bernie Clinton.  Obviously, this means you think you have all the answers and I don't have any.

    The fact is Ramona I am very open to the proposition that I've missed something about Clinton.  Perhaps there really is there there.  It's very hard for me to believe that articulate (presumably intelligent) people like you and Barefooted and others who post here haven't got some evidence showing Clinton to be a lot more progressive than anything I can find in her record.  That's why I keep asking for support for bald assertions that she's smart, she's progressive, she'll govern to the left, she's not captive to Wall Street, she's not a war monger, she's not dishonest, etc.

    I praised her speech here on super Tuesday because she seemed to "get" it in a way she hasn't previously.  Maybe she'll keep it going.


    by HSG on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 8:02pm

    I've never chided you for trying to persuade us to vote for Bernie, I've asked you numerous times to stop trashing  Hillary Clinton in the process.  If your guy has attributes you admire, it helps him much more if you concentrate on them.  What he does and says is far more important then dredging up every little nitpicky thing you could find in 25 years of Hillary.

    If you're open to the idea that you might have been wrong about Hillary, that's a start.  It's not my job to provide a crash-course in Hillary the Good.  I found it by taking the time to look for it, and so can you.

    (Thanks for mentioning her speech without adding that she must have stolen it from Bernie.  That's refreshing.)

     


    by Ramona on Fri, 03/04/2016 - 8:45am

    By the way, nobody has said she'll govern to the left.  She'll no doubt be center-left, based on her past history, but she's not a leftie by any means.  A true leftie president wouldn't have a chance in this environment.  Maybe someday, but we've never had a true left president so I'm not sure how that would work.


    by Ramona on Fri, 03/04/2016 - 9:24am

    Hal, I've read your comments regarding this particular subject on other threads here today. So because I value my time, I have no intention of engaging with you on this one.


    by barefooted on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 7:08pm

    On occasion, you have appeared to have interest in what I have to say.  I guess that was merely appearance.  It's too bad because you say the Clintons are like family.  I'm really trying to understand how anybody who's not actually in their family could think that way.  Indeed, I am actually interested in what you have to say.

    You have also completely misrepresented Sanders' position.  He never says he knows better than anybody.  He talks about people coming together, listening to each other, and building a better America together.  The top-down approach is one the Clintons pursue.

    But I understand you're not interested in any challenges to your worldview.  Sad.


    by HSG on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 7:27pm

    I have repeatedly posted of Hillary Clinton in Alabama working for Marian Wright Edelman. I'll post again here.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/28/us/politics/how-hillary-clinton-went-u...


    by rmrd0000 on Tue, 03/15/2016 - 2:42pm

    You know Missy, I always thought about the fact that 'southerners'  were weaned by slaves!

    The Whites, in the olden days, were weaned and nurtured by slaves.

    Hell, California and Illinois were racist in their attitudes toward Blacks.

    So the South, fifty years ago, could not figure out why the North could be so hypocritical about the race issue.

    I just think about this disparity sometimes!

    But Cal and a number of other states decided that the law in the old days was WRONG!

    And I just wrote a blog concerning the old LBJ days.

    The days when our President issued new Emancipation Proclamations.

    It is now 2016 and yet, we have refused to free the Slaves!

    Nice blog by the way!

    Thank you!

     


    by Richard Day on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 12:38pm

    Thank you, Dick. Your opinion always means alot to me!


    by barefooted on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 7:11pm

    I am not sure about how far family works but I spent some time in Arkansas when the Clintons were coming up and they were both of the people while against the people. And they won their argument against improbable odds.

    If one completely erases the importance of Wallace as the integrator of southern politics, then it is impossible to understand the Clintons as a successful resistance to it. 

    I will always respect that element even if I choose to complain about other stuff.


    by moat on Thu, 03/03/2016 - 11:19pm

    Perhaps family is respectable, and worthwhile, if it's elemental.


    by barefooted on Fri, 03/04/2016 - 1:29am

    I come from the congenital idiot side of the fence. We eat critters, bay at the moon. Respectable ain't coming in my lifetime. But we got fambly - blood's thicker than likker. Now go gitcher gumbo on.

    But George? That boy was crazy. Like a fox. When he had to have black folk wipe his ass for him, even started to turn a bit nice. What was it Flannery O'Connor said, would have been alright if there was someone there to shoot him every minute of his life? A good man is indeed hard to find.


    by PeraclesPlease on Fri, 03/04/2016 - 3:13am

    This is so sad.  You're saying that Southerners, white and black, are rejecting Sanders because he's an outside agitator who didn't grow up there and doesn't understand that 'family' trumps political opinion.  Yet Sanders, in his youth, went down South and put his body and his life on the line in order to help blacks get the vote.  The civil-rights marchers were denounced at the time as "outside agitators" who didn't understand that Southerners were all family, and wouldn't welcome intruders.  Some were murdered, many were beaten and jailed.  And now, the very people who got the vote thanks to Sanders and his friends, are voting Clinton, because Sanders isn't "family".  So sad.


    by Lurker on Sat, 03/05/2016 - 7:01pm

    At least we didn't put them in a pot and boil them, like they did to missionaries elsewhere...


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 03/06/2016 - 4:06pm

    And that was such an egregious mistake. I was once chatting with a couple of cannibals and heard this dialog.

    I cooked up one of those missionaries last week and he tasted awful.

    How did you cook him?

    Put him in a pot and boiled him with some yams.

    Ah, that's your problem. He was a fry-er.


    by ocean-kat on Sun, 03/06/2016 - 5:31pm

    Not quite - in the tropics needs to be pastor-ized or goes bad.


    by PeraclesPlease on Sun, 03/06/2016 - 5:56pm

    I'm surprised this sort of racist drivel passes the Dagblog Terms of Service.

    I should have remembered that Lincoln was a Republican, and that the Democrats stayed in power for a century in the South thanks to the Jim Crow laws.  But not all Democrats were racist:  there were Democrats among the Freedom Riders,  Bernie Sanders, for example.  I guess you never forgave him for that.

    Even now, it's not so easy to find Democrats who aren't racist.  Compare how many voted for Obama because they thought that being a neighbourhood organizer with no executive experience would be a good background for a President, with those who voted for him because of the colour of his skin.


    by Lurker on Tue, 03/15/2016 - 12:53pm

    A tribe in Papua New Guinea has apologised for killing and eating four 19th century missionaries under the command of a doughty British clergyman.

    The four Fijian missionaries were on a proselytising mission on the island of New Britain when they were massacred by Tolai tribesmen in 1878. 

    They were murdered on the orders of a local warrior chief, Taleli, and were then cooked and eaten. 

    The Fijians - a minister and three teachers - were under the leadership of the Reverend George Brown, an adventurous Wesleyan missionary who was born in Durham but spent most of his life spreading the word of God in the South Seas.

    Thousands of villagers attended a reconciliation ceremony near Rabaul, the capital of East New Britain province, once notorious for the ferocity of its cannibals.

    Their leaders apologised for their forefather's taste for human flesh to Fiji's high commissioner to Papua New Guinea.

    "We at this juncture are deeply touched and wish you the greatest joy of forgiveness as we finally end this record disagreement," said Ratu Isoa Tikoca, the high commissioner.

    Cannibalism was common in many parts of the South Pacific - Fiji was formerly known as the Cannibal Isles - and dozens of missionaries were killed by hostile islanders.


    by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 03/15/2016 - 1:01pm

    Can you post a link to when Bernie Sanders went to the South in the Civil Rights era? I posted a link elsewhere on this blog to Hillary Clinton investigating segregation in the South. I would like to hear of Sanders in the South.


    by rmrd0000 on Tue, 03/15/2016 - 2:48pm

    I thought it would be easy to find, but when I started looking it turned out that I was wrong.  Either I misheard or I misinterpreted.

    Sanders was very active in the Civil Rights movement, in CORE and SNCC and the March on Washington, to the point of getting arrested, and nearly thrown out of college, but it all took place up North.  I apologize for my mistake.


    by Lurker on Tue, 03/15/2016 - 8:48pm

    No problem, it is a common mistake.

    Bernie Sanders had brief Civil Rights career that probably ended  ended by 1963.He attended but was not very active in the March.

    http://www.snopes.com/sanders-mlk-selma-march/


    by rmrd0000 on Tue, 03/15/2016 - 10:18pm