What’s our biggest problem as a country?

MayCaesar

@Factfinder

There is no known mechanism by which suffering of people is genetically encoded and transferred to their descendants. All of the effects these people suffer are a result of them embracing a certain picture of the world today. I can look in the past and say, "5 generations ago this, this and this happened to my ancestors", and this in itself does not make me feel one way or another: it is in the past. It is a very different thing to say, "Because 5 generations ago this happened to my ancestors and the system that did it to them is still around, my success is impossible". The choice to frame it in this way is not dictated by historical facts, but by today's philosophical outlook. Outlook that a thinking individual can change by means of working on themselves.

One's own past certain can leave some scars. If you grew up in a warzone and heard explosions in your neighborhood every day, you will likely have developed some mental damage that will take a very long time to heal - perhaps, it will never heal entirely. But one cannot experience the world through the eyes of other people.

My entire philosophy warns against association with groups like this. The problem is not that many black people today are descendants of slaves or Jim Crow law victims of the past, but that they think of themselves as "the black community". There is no such thing in the objective sense, any more than there is "the brown hair community" - but people choose group associations based on considerations of comfort and familiarity more often than goal alignment and practicality, and it is comfortable to feel that there are people out there looking out for you and protecting you from the scary world outside.
I think that this is a terrible way to live, and it does not just apply to black people thinking of themselves as part of "the black community", or even members of communities in general. It is about giving up one's autonomy and becoming a part of a collective with its own will - and a collective will always sacrifice the interest of its individual members for the sake of achieving its goals of power and control.

The good association between people is one in which all participants understand that the association benefits them. Nobody benefits from living in a community in which they are systematically told that they cannot succeed in the world of enemies. There is a ton of benefits, however, from, say, working in a prosperous company, where everyone does what they are best at, and the synergy multiplies everyone's productivity. It would be so much cooler if people looked for group membership not among those whose ancestors looked like theirs or spoke the same language as theirs, but those association with whom can lift their lives into the sky.

I understand historical realities and everything, but I refuse to accept a choice to be defined by history. History, by definition, is in the past. The statistics I brought before shows that inheriting wealth does not statistically make one richer than starting out with nothing, so it cannot be about the material wealth either. If it is not about history and not about initial capital, then what is it about? Well, I think it is about what mentality one chooses to adopt - and mentality can be changed through intense inner and outer work. If you see that your community is all about victimhood - move out. If your country is all about victimhood - leave. Nobody is forced to live among those stuck in the past.

Factfinder

@MayCaesar

Very solid argument. There is no genetic code that we're aware of that transfers memory or experiences. Never the less we see the psychological effects not only here in america but the world over. I don't think people should let history define their modern world views either yet it does despite the fact it's detrimental to their own welfare. In Russia, since you brought it up, I've read in interviews where the middle aged to retirement age deeply hold to the idea the west, (America particularly) is planning an invasion. They talked about how they survived on potatoes and vodka before and they'll do it again. After all the 'west' to them did invade once. When I read this putin had not completely clamped down on the media yet. So the young were telling and showing people that that was not actually the case. The world didn't have anything like the animosity that putin tells them it does towards them. They just see putin as the pariah that he is. Rewriting history to justify going to war with neighbors. The people were told. But like here, they cling to world views that just aren't so. Sure, some can see the forest through the trees like you did but as a whole, just like here the issue remains. Because of this in this way I also agree with the idea that futures and wealth are pillaged when slave traders, dictators, soothsayers act in sinister ways. Look at an abusive husband towards the wife. No matter how much when you plead with the wife to leave him, it turns out she can't because the life she has is the only one she's known. If one can be psychologically dominated, then the issue is real despite the fact nothing physically holds them down.   

Bogan

@Openminded ;    There´s no record of that Bogan. It was not an inconvenient truth. It was a lie. Be decent.

It is not a lie at all, Closeminded.     It is what Prime Minister Nakasone of Japan stated in public.      Like I said, I can probably verify it for you because what he said created such a furor, but I won't bother.   The last time you challenged me to prove a statement I made, I did just that and you still refused to acknowledge it.    It was when I said that Biden had self incriminated himself on video about using UIS taxpayer funds to bribe the Ukrainians into dropping an investigation into a company that was paying a million bucks a year to Hunter, (for what?)    When I posted up the offending video itself, you refused to acknowledge self evident reality because it was on Fox news.       So, what we had was Joe Biden on camera bragging about breaking US law and thinking that it was funny, and you refuse to acknowledge the inconvenient truth because Fox news showed the video.    No wonder you can't think straight.    If you had half a brain, you would be a half wit. 

maxx

people who do not hold themselves responsible for their own actions. Think about it.@raisin98

MayCaesar

@Factfinder

I think that it all comes back to what I lamented on earlier: that people value comfort too much and do not experiment and push the boundaries enough. It is not like people in Russia, or in Iran, or in China are forced to hold the views they do: regardless of how heavy the propaganda and the conditioning starting right off kindergarten is, people do have access to external information and have the tools to process it and see propaganda for what it is. My father back in the Soviet days had a friend who at that time would find some ways to get books and newspapers from Western countries, had friends among foreign students and diplomats, and thought that communism was an abomination. If one truly wants to understand how things are and is willing to accept the possibility that everything they have been told so far is a lie, then it is not too difficult to start seeing through the smoke.

The problem is, people do not want that. Learning that something you believed in for a while is a lie is painful, and people tend to prefer sweet lies to cold truths. As with the wife with an abusive husband you mentioned, leaving him can be unthinkable to her as it would open a huge can of worms, forcing her to accept not only the uncertainty and unfamiliarity of the single future, but also to admit that she married the wrong man and that she tolerated his behavior all these years only to finally give up. 

I think, however, that it is the kind of pain that one must become intimately familiar with and comfortable - in fact, I would go as far as to say that one wants to intentionally seeking it. Every time you intentionally face something undesirable - realization that you were wrong, rejection, hard, but important argument, fear of heights - you expand the world you are familiar with. Your world almost literally becomes bigger than before, you acquire new action choices, new destinations, new partnership opportunities. Ideally, you want to get to the point where if you have not experienced this discomfort in a while, you start feeling extremely uneasy: "I am stagnating".

This is what members of the so-called "black community" should learn: to travel outside of the narrow world their community lives in. Suppose you are a black teenager living in a bad neighborhood in Brooklyn... Walk to Manhattan on the weekend, walk around, see what happens there, chat up a few baristas, come to a book club session. Get used to the idea that you are not a part of the "black community", but a part of the entire world, and everything that is available to other people is also available to you, you just need to learn about what this "everything" is. Get acquainted with the people who push you for excellence and set an excellent example themselves. You will never want to go back once you have expanded your world: it is like leaving a tiny cave for the first time in 20 years and discovering the world out there - it is magnificent.
But it does take initial push against extreme discomfort. If you have always been told that all the people outside of your community are against you, then going out there alone will be very traumatizing. If there is any support other people should give to members of that community, it is welcoming them with open arms at this stage. Which takes a great deal of character.

PorfirioDiaz

Bogan said:

As the former Prime Minister of Japan Nusahiro Nakasone once remarked "The USA was once a great country, but now there are too many Africans, Hispanics, and Puerto Ricans dragging the country down."       While westerners try an fail to prove that races are equal, the smarter Asians do not want a bar of trouble prone and always dysfunctional minorities.

This is how ideas are tested.    Different people have different ideologies and this becomes a competition of ideas.    The cultures which win are thinking straight,     The cultures which persist in continuing to advocate for failing ideas go into decline.   Asia is advancing while the west is declining.  
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You mean asian countries like Japan where birthrate is low because males prefer rubbing one off or have a wife they can blow up and store in a closet or have tea with? Japan is a great country. All asian countries are. North Korea perhaps above all due to their unexplored eco systems and undiscovered species. But to say the west is in decline and asia is on the rise is an issue of its own.


Asia's only plan to catch up with US power is to amp up the economy in exchange for polluting their own cities in hopesthey might fund a way to revert the damage in the future. They have been succesful with manipulating the weather by launching rockets into the atmosphere to produce rain. They've also managed to dump radioactive material into our oceans. Produce copyright merchandise that is fake, the use of dangerous plastics in products flooding the United States (im sure on purpose). Asias wealth depends on the US economy. There is no way for any Asian country to rise while the US remains in power unless they can convince the world to switch to their currency.


The thing you said about U.S immigrants and US culture in decline because of race against asians and their cultural background are missing a piece of information. For one, people in China with a functioning economy are already ahead of immigrants by 3 or 4 generations. In the United States alone, most immigrants establishing here are mostly within the first and second generation. Meaning they have not yet established themselves fully as part of the solution in the country or reflecting in any way within government. The ones already established here have been slow to deliver but this is due to the lack of support from officials in charge to support these deficient gaps that slow progress. Today, these people in power are at their last days and will be replaced with younger Americans from more wealthier backgrounds who will be the future of America in the next 10 years. 

Americas only problem is the media. The second biggest issue in America is the lack of patriotism to law and country in elementary schools. These young Americans are not being institutionalized correctly in schools to love their country. There should be a salute to the flag and pledge of allegiance every morning before school and before school ends.


The other biggest problem our country has are lobbyists and the malignant interference of state and local governments from criminal government officials and foreign sabotage. How Arizona had a water crisis and a rich Saudi having access to as much water they wanted from a deal striked years ago gone unnoticed is only the beginning of the problem.

 

Openminded

@Bogan

85% of young blacks in the USA today can not read, write, or do simple sums.      

You are shameful and hateful. This is a blatant lie and you post it knowing that it´s a lie. THAT´S the biggest problem we have in America. Lying, gaslighting and doing whatever it takes to win.

Openminded

@Bogan

You post lies recklessly and without shame. What is wrong with you? Are you so miserable with yourself that you feel the need to spread your misery onto others. Be decent for a change.

MayCaesar

PorfirioDiaz said:

The second biggest issue in America is the lack of patriotism to law and country in elementary schools. These young Americans are not being institutionalized correctly in schools to love their country. There should be a salute to the flag and pledge of allegiance every morning before school and before school ends.

This is a very common criticism, and I strongly disagree with it. I do not think that conditioning people to love their country is reasonable - it is essentially brainwashing. People's love for the country should be a product of objective value of that country, and people should be taught to think about their and other countries critically - not critically as in "This country sucks", but as in "It is up to me to decide if I like this country or not".

I was born in a country that I despised (still do), and moved to the country that most aligned with my values at the time (still does). I am not sure I would say that I "love" the US, as I am not predisposed to "loving" inanimate objects - but I definitely am very happy here, and I cannot think of any other country I would rather live in at the moment. This country can benefit from me significantly because I am interested in bettering my life through contributing to the needs of the market here, and because I stand up for the values that, if protected, benefit everyone.
It does not benefit from people who love it because they have been taught to love it. Many of those people do not have values aligned with this country, yet conditioning tells them that they must stay here: this is, after all, "their" country.

Would it not be better if people who do not like it here were encouraged to move out and go to places they are more comfortable in, and people who do love it here were encouraged to come in? Why try to persuade the people who despise this country that they should love it, when there are over a billion people out there who want to live here because of what this country represents?

I do not think the US would lose much if all socialists, Christian fundamentalists and other people believing that this is a morally bankrupt country moved elsewhere, while foreign freedom-lovers came here. It will lose a lot, however, if brainwashing in schools becomes the norm.

Bogan

@Openminded ;  You post lies recklessly and without shame. What is wrong with you? Are you so miserable with yourself that you feel the need to spread your misery onto others. Be decent for a change. 

Yesterday in Brisbane, Australia, four imported African males, who you can bet were on Australia's generous social welfare system and living in government supplied homes,  stabbed to death a 70 year old Australian grandmother, in front of her 6 year old grandchild, in order to steal her car.

A few days ago, an Afghan national in Britain threw acid in the faces of a woman and two little girls, and he is now on the run.

In Ireland, A crazy Muslim bastard stabbed to death an Irish female teacher and also stabbed two little girls. 

I hold liberal specimens like you entirely responsible for these outrages.     People like yourself simply will not understand that races, religions, and cultures are not equal.  You can not create social cohesion by importing very violent people from very violent cultures and religions who's values and beliefs are diametrically opposed to our own.   Because of this, people like you are turning western civilisation into sheetholes     So, don't preach to me, moron.  

Openminded

Argument Topic: What’s our biggest problem as a country?

@raisin98

I believe EXTREMISM is our biggest problem.

Religious extremism, political extremism, ideological extremism.

Extreme rigid adherence to a strong belief: 1} an inability to compromise 2) lacking adaptability 3) intolerance to change 4) using immoral tactics, aggressive means and sometimes violent acts to pursue your cause.

just_sayin

Openminded said:

@Bogan

85% of young blacks in the USA today can not read, write, or do simple sums.      

You are shameful and hateful. This is a blatant lie and you post it knowing that it´s a lie. THAT´S the biggest problem we have in America. Lying, gaslighting and doing whatever it takes to win.

According to the National Center for Educational Statistics said that for 2019 (most recent posted stats).

Whites are doing better than Blacks, but both are behind Asian students.  The older the student, the less likely they are to be proficient in reading.  Students that are more likely to qualify for free or reduce lunches are more likely to not be proficient.

This is why denying kids educational freedom as Democrats do is so wrong.

Openminded

Argument Topic: 85% of young blacks in the USA today can not read, write, or do simple sums.

@just_sayin

Bogan stated 85% of young blacks in the USA today can not read, write, or do simple sums.
Not sure why you posted that chart?

Bogan

just_sayin

Bogan said:

The guy in your video is citing the statistics I posted.

just_sayin

Openminded said:

@just_sayin

Bogan stated 85% of young blacks in the USA today can not read, write, or do simple sums.
Not sure why you posted that chart?

I can't believe I'm saying this, @Bogan (Bogie) is right - when you look at math scores.  The chart I provided is for only reading.  The video he posted is actually very good.

Leftists have failed Black kids.  Most Black kids are located in urban school systems which have primarily been run by Democrats for 50+ years.  Either they can't fix the problem, or they don't want to fix the problem.  Either way, it is time for them to go.  Educational freedom is necessary for a poor Black kid trapped in a bad Democrat run public school.  Instead leftists want to yell racism, while ignoring that Asian students, who in urban areas like NYC, are actually poorer than Black students, are doing better than whites. Leftists want to point fingers, but not take any responsibility for their results.  It is time for them to go.

RickeyHoltsclaw

@raisin98 ;  The biggest problem in America is a society that worships at the throne of Political Correctness via Secular Humanism via Progressivism while having rejected Jesus as our Lord and His righteousness as our guiding Light concerning sustainable mores, norms, values, ethics.