Elections Pete Bootyjudge said the Dems need a landslide; not just to defeat Trump, but to "defeat Trumpism."

[weed]

The Klan has traditionally been broken up. Even with David Dude there were two klans. Beside even together it didn't make all that much of an organization. It's still small potatoes at best

just watch that JRE episode. that guy goes to klan rallies all the time. the "alt right" is today's "rebranded" version of the klan. he goes into it extensively.

 

[Pseudo Sane]

That dude knows a shit ton of history about racism in America. Its unbelievable how he has convinced something like 200 KKK members to quit the KKK. Someone in Washington should put him to work on the race problem because he is equipped with a tool set that few people have.

Yeah, not so sure about this idea. Personally befriending racists to bridge the chasm fixed between every human soul isn't really something that scales to a policy level.

 

[Pseudo Sane]

I don't think that's impressive. You know what's impressive? A doctor who invents penicillin and saves millions of lives. An inventor who creates a printing press that allows information to be distributed to the entire world. Now that's systemic, broad change.

The KKK is an irrelevant, dying organisation with a few hundred members in a country of 320 million people. Convincing a couple of members to quit the organisation (and probably remain racists in their daily life anyway) isn't impressive. It's actually, if anything, an incredibly inefficient use of time. A video on youtube can reach potentially millions of people. Yet this guy wastes time speaking to people one-on-one.

An average cop probably does more in one week to enact change in his community than this guy ever did in his life. It's just a feel good story. Mysteriously works great on most people even though the scale and impact is meaningless.

It's like when people are proud to themselves because they used a reusable bag at the supermarket. Meanwhile, some of us are petitioning the government to regulate plastic and enact broad, sweeping changes in society. A completely different scale...

I respectfully disagree. I think systemic changes can be great blessings (like, as you mention, penicillin), but a big part of the problem in the modern West is the erosion of personal (especially unchosen) bonds. Read Bowling Alone by Robert Putnam, if you want a sense of the problem I'm talking about. The issue is arguably a systemic one (in that it impacts the system as a whole), but it can't be approached on a systemic level. The ongoing deterioration of all intermediate institutions which traditionally acted as a buffer between man and state is one of the major political challenges in modern life.

It's easier to petition the government to change than it is to make a change yourself. This is an abdication of an important responsibility, and it is part of the problem, because you will note that the problem that Davis is addressing actually isn't one that is particularly amenable to systemic solutions. In order to actually do something about racism in America, since that's the example in play, you basically have to do something like what Davis has done; reach out to individual people and build common ground.

What you mention with Youtube is interesting, because I think you can actually, in certain circumstances, get some of the value of the one-on-one connection in this medium, particularly where there is an interactive element to the presentations (see Jordan Peterson and the young men who claim to have been helped by his message, for example).

 

[ElKarlo]

just watch that JRE episode. that guy goes to klan rallies all the time. the "alt right" is today's "rebranded" version of the klan. he goes into it extensively.

I saw some of it. I'm familiar as the guy was from near by where I'm from. The KKK like the ALT right is small and the violent ones are rare. They are a boogieman at this point used by the media for ratings.

 

[CaptainEarth]

Idk, Trump has a lot of economic wins, it's gonna be a tough one

 

[drstrangelov]

It’s just a statement of strength, Trumpism is support for a reality tv depiction of a rich guy as an authority figure. His movement is driven by the candidate alone, when it’s back to republican candidates as usual these guys will go back to apathetic hatred of all politicians. Trump’s the rare example of a guy who can raise even the most cynical and bitter types of citizens to get out and vote. That’s not a problem, the problem is they voted for a guy who can’t take accountability for anything to be President.