Usa Thread

[Coss]

Think of a list of 1,000 things that the majority of Americans would not agree with but that the most ignorant of Trumpanzees would swallow hook line and sinker.

That'll be what Trump spouts, in the  slow decline into his removal from office.

I saw a Trumpanzee saying that Obama and Hilary posted the pipe bombs to themselves, when queried a little harder , he altered his posture to,  well they probably paid the guy to send them to themselves.

[Steve]

I think the far right will end at some point in terms of power and influence for a few reasons. When the crash happens, people are losing their jobs and houses and if it comes to a depression (and it very well could be with 4 bubbles simultaneously, which has never happened before), people will start focusing on the real enemy, the banks, big corporations who have undue influence over the government. I think it may even spell the end of Citizens United court case which basically says you can legally bribe the government, because 'money is speech'. 

Also that the millennials are for the most part progressive. Those 35 and under grew up in an America that is largely progressive, have classmates who are diverse, sometimes openly gay and are not fans of the far right by any stretch. They grew up in schools that have for the most part preached diversity is good, and to be sensitive to differences. Us old timers may ridicule the extent schools and parents preach that but its influence is substantial. The Parkland HS students when you here them are very progressive. They are from an upper middle class, mostly white school and reflect what most kids their age think. 

[Flashermac]

I can certainly see stopping it for the children of illegals, but not for the children of parents who are legally in the country.  And if Trump thinks he can do so by executive order, he should be well aware that any future president can revoke the order.

 

[Steve]

There are tons and tons of Chinese women who come here for 'anchor babies' to guarantee their child being able to come to America. Thoroughly preventable, they come here pregnant. But we never hear about it. But latinas? We do. I have to ask why? 

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-asian-anchor-babies-wealthy-chinese-20150826-story.html

I am certainly no fan of women coming here legally or illegally just so their child can be born in the U.S. but we have as a society accepted it. If you can get past us and do it, then okay...lol. What we also don't talk about is that the European immigrants of 150 years made sure they had a child born in America as well. We had open immigration. The modern immigration process is new. 150 years ago, you came here, and that was it. Not many people were sent back if at all. If you had a disease you were quarantined and then allowed in. Had we installed modern immigration systems 150 years ago, I'm guestimating 80 or 90 percent of folks wouldn't be let in. The Slavs, Irish, Sicilians, Polish of yesteryear were the 1800 versions of Mexicans...no, worse than that in most instances. If we really understood our history, they were despised far moreso than the Mexicans and Latin Americans of today by the self described 'nativists'. 

There was a court case that is the 'Roe vs Wade' of Immigration law regarding a Chinese American named Wong. Pretty much this case established the definition of birthright citizenship which was still a murky definition. We accept it as cemented now, you are born here you are American, end of story but it wasn't always like that .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Wong_Kim_Ark

Culturally and traditionally since this case, the courts have treated simply being born in America (including embassies, naval vessels, etc and any other places deemed U.S. sovereign property) as American the same as anyone else irregardless of parentage. 

Trump wants to re-define what is accepted law and perhaps he thinks it will win in the Supreme Court if challenged now that the court is now clearly conservative but this may be even too much for the court. They are not nationalists, conservative but nationalists. 

 

 

[Steve]

Something else that has seen a huge upsurge but is not discussed...yet...is the suicide rate in America. It's alarmingly high. Why are we killing ourselves in unprecedented numbers? 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/06/07/u-s-suicide-rates-rise-sharply-across-the-country-new-report-shows/?utm_term=.edb704924714

and its also very high among Blacks. I never heard of Blacks killing themselves when I was growing up. There was never a history of it. Even in slave times. One would think that if you were born into a system where you realized that you were going to be enslaved for the remainder of your life and any children you had and their children's children's children were going to be enslaved in the same condition, what better reason to kill yourself? I certainly would in all honestly. I simply wouldn't put myself through it or have kids if I can help it. What's the point? But even under these circumstances the suicide rate among slaves was astonishingly low. 

Now there is a sharp rise in Black suicide rates. The only time I heard of some blacks committing suicide was if a middle class black guy got a life sentence. Other than that, growing up you simply didn't know nor heard of any black person who killed themselves other than the occasional heart broken guy, so broken he did a murder suicide. And even that was ridiculed. These days though, times have changed. 

https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/health/ct-suicide-rate-black-children-20180521-story.html

I know of a few people who have killed themselves. A former employee, Irish, real Irish..haha..from Dublin who stayed at my home for about 6 months when his wife left him (by this time he was my former employee), he killed himself when it seemed like he was settled, good job, good friends, etc. 

There is a Canadian guy I knew in Asia, white guy (for informational purposes only) who had an overbearing mother and ended up killing himself. His mother literally drove him to kill himself. 

I have heard of friends of friends committing suicide and a few attempted suicides all this in the last 10 years. As a kid, it was kinda rare. 

 

[Flashermac]

Maybe part of it is a decline in religious belief. Suicide has always been considered bad by churches, and the Catholic Church once upon a time wouldn't even let suicides be buried inside the church yard. Many nowadays are becoming if not quite atheists nevertheless sort of non-religious. If they don't believe in an after life, they might not see much point in continuing a life they are unhappy with. Just end it all and have done with it. As to immigrants coming 150 years ago, they had no social welfare blanket waiting for them. It was root hog or die. They also faced considerable prejudice when they came here, especially those who were Roman Catholics (Irish, Germans, Italians etc). The Latinos now slipping in illegally are seen rightly or wrongly as coming in for the freebies. It wasn't like that in the 1950s and '60s, when many crossed the border legally to come and work. I don't think the Chinese are viewed the same as the Latinos .

p.s.  The only suicide I remember personally was a clerk in my battalion's headquarters company in Vietnam. He wasn't a combat soldier and never had to go on a mine sweep, recon, or anything like that, plus he hadn't been drafted. But one afternoon he went to his hootch, put the barrel of his M14 into his mouth, and pulled the trigger. No one ever knew why, since he hadn't talked about anything being wrong at home or elsewhere. He just casually left his desk in the TOC with saying a word and went to blow his brains out. He was a white guy in his early 20s.

 

[Steve]

I am not so sure its a decline in religious belief. If that was so, The Bay area, Los Angeles,  New York and Miami would always have high suicide rates way above the norm. 

The Chinese are not viewed the same as Latinos for doing the same exact thing and that's the point. NYC and Boston literally have tens of thousands of illegal Irish. Openly, and are viewed different. The southwest and the far west had Latinos already there when America took the land as spoils of war after the Mexican-American war so its not like Americans were unaccustomed to seeing Latinos in Texas, Arizona and California. 

One of my unsaid points is that as much as we advertise ourselves as the land of immigrants we have always treated the newest immigrants harshly, after a few generations they do the same to the new immigrants because they are now fulfledged Americans. I've heard some of the most anti immigrant talk from 5th 6th generation Latinos who were always here. Latinos aren't new in the classic sense. However, politicians have always exploited the newest immigrants. What we hear on Fox News these days is nothing compared to what was said 150 years ago, We romanticize that time but I heard a lecture once on those times in a history class and it was mind boggling. The modern IQ test came from those times. From Americans justifying a movement to end immigration because certain European immigrants were genetically less intelligent and therefore prone to violence and would make us a nation of dullards. Jews were included in that ironically. They were satisfied they proved it "scientifically" which is easy to do when you start with the answer you want and work backwards. I posted some pics a while ago of how some of these immigrants looked at Ellis Island. I'd be scared of some of them. 

Anyway, I digress. I think the reason we see white males over 50 lead the suicide increases is that is the group who will go into old age much worse off than anticipated. They bought into the American dream and at the end of a long, hard road are facing a future that is bleak. Maybe? 

[Mekong]

 It’s called the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it

[radioman]

Shit! If, as a man in my fifties, my future included only American women I'd be pretty suicidal!

 

[Coss]

Gentle folk, as someone who has bounced around the door to suicide, for the last 10 years, please let me say this. 1st, MLG has saved me and my sanity, even though she has done this unwittingly, the goodness and pure kindness of the unadulterated Lao Buddhist is a wonderful thing.

But importantly, the rise in male suicide is a corollary for the changing times we are in. The changes in the conduct and expectations of the Family unit, the attitude of Society towards males, all of these and like changes, are inevitably responsible for males, particularly older ones, looking for the chop.

Imagine: Society and Family are made up of and in equal parts, 4 kinds of ducks. Suicide is at a rate of 5% in each group of ducks. The Society and Family reduce the value, input and importance of one group of ducks (call 'em group A), the other three groups of ducks have in different degrees, their value, input and importance increased, by varying amounts. Ducks in group A, find their suicide rate increase by about 3% to 8%, the other groups rates fall by 1% to 4%.

This may be simplistic, this may be wrong, but in my humble way, I've tried to demonstrate what happens when you reduce the utility of a group of people, over time.

Anyone reading this, and feeling they need help, please get help, google is your friend and there are places that will help. Don't be too proud to ask.