<p>To avoid real life? Because we enjoy banging our heads against the wall?</p>
<p>Bunsen, you made me laugh!</p>
<p>mstee posted:
“So we go from black vs. white to purple vs. green . . .” </p>
<p>A refreshing change, wouldn’t you say? :)</p>
<p>littlegreenmom posted:
“I am just hoping she isn’t a purple people eater.” </p>
<p>When not being written up for disorderly conduct, I am relatively harmless. ;)</p>
<p>milkandsugar:
</p>
<p>Nope. 100% factual.</p>
<p>dross:
</p>
<p>I did spot some “hooey”, but it was intertwined with all of your illogical responses to the points I made.</p>
<p>Hey, BunsenBurner, aren’t you a chemist? If so, then I feel that I can trust your rationality. 
While I was amused by your post #1800, I am still posting here for several reasons:</p>
<p>1) There appear to be several posters who need some help to understand the significance of the Fourteenth Amendment, its guarantee of equal protection of the law, and the limitations that it places on states’ actions. I hope that some of the posters will be inspired to follow up, by reading the Supreme Court decisions in some of the landmark civil rights cases such as Brown v. Board of Education, to see the Court’s reasoning. The history of the elimination of poll taxes, the “grandfather clause,” and Jim Crow laws is well worth knowing.
2) The rights covered by the First and Fourteenth Amendment are among our most precious. I will defend them to my last breath.
3) To read this thread is to weep. Although I am of the majority race, I am old enough to have witnessed quite a lot of discrimination, some of it quite recent. It would not be right for me to stand by, leaving Drosselmeier and poetsheart (and earlier calmom, Northstarmom, and others) posting alone, in response to a group of the other opinions on this thread.</p>
<p>Ok. Now watch, yet again, how the Real American reduces his Constitution to a pure sham:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So far, so good. And this is all in accord with the Genuine Constitution, which means if the arrest should not have happened and yet did, then a damage has taken place and ought to be repaired, lest it remains to one day apply to others. But nooooo. The Real American will not understand this. He will completely overlook it because his aim is not to protect what should be sacred. His aim is to deny a specific sort of human his natural rights. Follow along, and you will see.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Here is a fairly sophisticated “BUT” that begins to modulate from the earlier outright admission that the Constitution was broken. It is in fact the beginning of the “BUT” which continues in the next part of the post. Let us read it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is the completion of the “BUT”. The poster dishonorably lists a number of harsh, necessarily inappropriate behaviors so that when he slyly inserts Gates’s alleged behavior amongst them (which behavior may have been quite appriopriate), the reader will be more apt to accept the sure to come denial of Gates’s Constitutional rights. Here he mixes in curses and mouthing off to his heart’s content, and “FALSE” accusations of racism, when in truth he has no idea if any of these things took place. He is assuming that the reader already believes Gates’s was to blame based on the Holy Report of Sweet Baby Jesus. </p>
<p>In essence, the poster here so far says “I think Gates ought not have been arrested, BUT there is this thing called reality, and Gates’s went so far outside of it that Crowley was justified in arresting him.” And here is where we see, yet again, that the Constitution of the United States is an utter sham of a document, not worth any more than the Charmin in my bathroom. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes. The poster, sure that the reader believes the bad black man is guilty, then continues to deny him his rights, though the bad black man is this small cripple who only had words to use in his own defense – words that are clearly protected by the Genuine Constitution. In Real America, words in the mouth of a black man are not protected but are tantamount to “FALSE” things that Real Americans automatically assume are FALSE. This is Real America.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And here is the last statement that attempts to make us all feel better about the utter travesty that has taken place. A man, hobbling on a cane, no less, was arrested for protesting to a cop and demanding that he see the cop’s ID. By the cop’s own Sweet Baby Jesus Report, there was no cursing, and yet the man was arrested and placed in cuffs, denying his rights with no repercussion, and yet the poster is such a Real American that he refuses to acknowledge the illegal behavior against the black man, choosing instead to equate the black man’s allegedly harsh, though perfectly legal behavior with an actual breach of the Constitution. It is a pure sham, and nothing more.</p>
<p>And yet again, here we will see how Real Americans reveal how worthless their Constitution really is.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>There it is. By now you should be able to see where the poster’s “BUT” is. The poster begins with this “No. I have always voiced objection to the arrest, and that can be verified in this thread.”</p>
<p>And then he substitutes the words “I do, though, feel that” for the single word “BUT”, following it with the perfect revelation of just how worthless the Constitution really is.</p>
<p>“Gates foolishly put himself at risk for arrest, regardless of whether or not the arrest was legal or justified.”</p>
<p>Here Gates’s arrest is perfectly overlooked, even if it breaks the Constitution, and the focus turns instantly to blame Gates’s perfectly legal behavior, and why? Real Americans just cannot possibly come to grips with the idea that black Gates was right and that the cop was dead wrong. That is how worthless the Constitution is in Real America.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It is a pickle. Oh, I know there are many here who dislike what I say, and who wish to reduce it simply to my “Racism” so that they think themselves justified in dismissing it. I get the angry private messages all the time. I even have one from the purpleflurp here, whining on and on about something. Can’t remember what it was, because it was too long and I just did not care about it enough to read it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>So sorry. I must have overlooked it. Give me a bit of time, and I will read it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And I will be right there doing exactly the same. The reason these rights are precious has nothing to do with a bunch of white guys getting together and saying “You know, I think it would be kinda nice to let our people mouth off and stuff. Hey, and why not just let us throw in some other things, just to mix it up a little”.</p>
<p>The reason they are precious is because they strike right at the heart of what makes sentient beings what they are. Nature has given us certain gifts of faculty that, should they be infringed IN ANY WAY AT ALL, reduces us to slaves and beasts. If we permit this, we degrade ourselves. We artificially lower ourselves beneath the potential that nature has placed within us. The Founders actually understood this. And we ought to marvel that they did.</p>
<p>Drosselmeier:</p>
<p>Nice try, but here’s the problem with your response:</p>
<p>Your convoluted, twisting, spinning, parsing of my posts reflects only YOUR (loony) thought process in replying and not my rational thoughts in creating them.</p>
<p>Let me try to put this simply for you with an analogy. If a person gets into a car and deliberately neglects to fasten his seatbelt, he is putting himself at greater risk for injury or death if an accident occurs. Now, I do not think an accident should occur or that the driver’s foolish act should result in something bad happening in order to teach him a lesson. I do not think he “has it coming.” But, if something did happen, I might later observe, “I wonder how this might have turned out if he had behaved differently and minimized his risk?”</p>
<p>That is exactly how I view Gates’s arrest by Crowley. I did (and still do) not think he should have been arrested (based on what I’ve read only. I wasn’t there.) I do not applaud his arrest or laud Crowley for making it. I did not think he “had it coming.” However, I am intelligent and rational enough to realize that he behaved in a way that increased his risk of an arrest occurring. And it did. Welcome to reality.</p>
<p>Now, sing with me, Dross: :)</p>
<p>"And Im proud to be a REAL American,
where at least I know Im free.
And I wont forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me. </p>
<p>And I gladly stand up,
next to you and defend her still today.
Cause there aint no doubt I love this land,
God bless the USA." </p>
<p>Ah…that feels great! Doesn’t it?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And now we see how futile the thinking is of Real Americans, who would actually equate Gates’s use of his Constitutional rights to the wrong behavior of forgetting to use a seatbelt! They do this because they are sooooo eager to deny the fact, the actual fact, that the man was right and that the cop was dead wrong. And in this denial, they reveal to us just how much a sham their Constitution really is.</p>
<p>And their songs about all this “freedom” they supposedly have are also nothing but utter shams (they are not even good either - pretty lame, if you ask me).</p>
<p>“And now we see how futile the thinking is of Real Americans, who would actually equate Gatess use of his Constitutional rights to the wrong behavior of forgetting to use a seatbelt!”</p>
<p>Actually, Gates’s behavior WAS “wrong.” It was deplorable and disgraceful, though perhaps not illegal. He is no hero, worthy of lauding for standing up for his constitutional rights. He set a poor example for every American, and particularly every young black American man, of how to respond appropriately to law enforcement, at least if you want to minimize your risk of a negative outcome.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Here we see how forcefully the Real American denounces Gates, having no knowledge at all of what Gates’s said, other than what Gates’s himself has admitted. And there was nothing deplorable about it. Even if we take the cop at his word, the very worst we might say is that Gates behavior was harsh, but completely within his Constitutional rights. The wrongness of it is subjective, based upon our individual morality. The constitutionality of it is the only thing that matters between us all, and Gates’s behavior, whosever report we read, was entirely within his rights.</p>
<p>But the Real American refuses to grasp this. He, instead, wishes to impose his sense of morality on the law, and then condemn Gates to jail merely on the fact he disagrees with Gates’s speech. Well, if our disagreement with a speech’s content is grounds to arrest a man and put him in jail, there would be no need for a Constitution. But in Real America hatred of a black man’s speech is grounds indeed for arrest, which proves that the Constitution in Real America is nothing more than a pure sham.</p>
<p>“But the Real American refuses to grasp this. He, instead, wishes to impose his sense of morality on the law, and then condemn Gates to jail merely on the fact he disagrees with Gatess speech.”</p>
<p>Nonsense!</p>
<p>Sham!</p>
<p>Utter nonsense!</p>
<p>Uttery false!</p>
<p>All intelligent people know that is not what I said. But the racist refuses to grasp this. The racist, in his desire to condemn all whites and continue to rage against the America that has afforded two of his children opportunities beyond the wildest dreams of most Real Americans skews every post that is in disagreement with him. </p>
<p>Your reading comprehension has been obliterated by your racist attitudes. Find one post in which I said that I thought it was appropriate that Gates was arrested. There is a difference between understanding why something happened and condoning its happening. </p>
<p>But that difference is beyond the comprehension of a racist.</p>
<p>Dross,</p>
<p>Instead of perseverating with the phrase “Real America”, why don’t you just use the pejorative “Amerikkka”? I think that term would more accurately reflect your view that every white skinned person in this country is a racist.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Ohhhhhhhhhh. I see. So you’re only understanding why Gates was arrested when you blame Gates’s “deplorable” behavior for an arrest that by law should never have happened. It is Gates’s fault in this instance, instead of the cop who broke the United States Constitution.</p>
<p>And here, yet again, we see how far the Real American will go to deny the black man his rights, even as far as insisting that the man is to blame for being arrested for something that by law was entirely legal. The Real American has no concept of the sanctity of law, that even speech that we might find awful is still protected, and in being protected it provides no grounds at all, none at all, for an arrest. Instead, the Real American sees only one thing, condemning the black guy at all cost, even at the cost of reducing the Constitution to an utter sham of a document.</p>
<p>“It is Gatess fault in this instance, instead of the cop who broke the United States Constitution.”</p>
<p>Yes! You finally understand. Gates bears some of the responsibility for his arrest. He took a risk in behaving like an ass, and unfortunately for him, he suffered the consequences. At least you get that now, so we’re getting somewhere.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And here is what I have been waiting to see all along, and outright admission that a black man is responsible for his arrest even though he behaves legally, and even though arrests should ONLY be applied to behaviors that are illegal.</p>
<p>I have just shown this string of posts to a true American here, and when he read them, he was shocked. For a long time he has rejected my contention that America is an essentially racist nation. He may not yet agree with me, but in shock he blurted out “These people are racists, and they do not even know it!” This is typically true of Real America.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>But of course it is not my view that every white-skinned person in this country is a racist. I know white folks, plenty of them, who are just not racist, certainly not against blacks. These people respect our species, and the highest values of our species, wherever they happen to exist. They would instantly understand how inappropriate it is to arrest a man merely because he was “rude” or “stupid” or any of the other terms the Real Americans have thrown around about Gates.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, compared to the numbers of Real Americans in the country, these sorts of whites seem too few. Because they are too few, Gates was arrested and to this day his arrest stands as something that Real American law refuses to condemn. It should be condemned in the strongest terms because it assaults humanity in a most fundamental way. But there are too few True Americans to make this happen-- so infested is the land with Real Americans.</p>