Robert Redford says republicans are racist

[spence]

Originally Posted by detbuch

Jim, you've made some good points here. As often is the case, the negative responses to your post avoid those points and deflect with moral equivalence, nitpicking about verbal faults or moving on to other arguments.

Or, a lack of reading comprehension.

To reflect on, and support, what you tried to point out as illogical and ignorant comments by Redford, maybe a closer analysis of his quoted text would help.

This is great. A celeb makes statements to the Hollywood Reporter and it's worthy of closer analysis.

First of all, what does he mean by "the system"? Does he mean the system that was given to us by the Constitution? If so, which body of congressional people intentionally paralyze and destroy that system? If he means to imply that it's the Tea Party Republicans, he's certainly picking on the wrong folks. They're the only congressional body which is trying to preserve what's left of that system. As for the rest of the congressional body, it seems to adhere to an insider system of scratch my back of legislative wants and I'll scratch yours. Of course, the Republicans who play that game always seem to lose, getting very little, if anything, and giving up the house to the Democrats. If you're a progressive, which Redford seems to be, that's a good system. I can see how he doesn't want it paralyzed.

The "system" is obviously the entire thing. Not an academic perspective but the real world. My take on the Hollywood Reporter coverage is that he's frustrated with the obstructionist Right's position on Obama and how it's hampering our government from operating to the point of shutdown and real economic damage. Some of this is racism (or do we let Kenyan sensibilities dictate the behavior of Americans?) and some is a resistance to any change.

Does Redford think that basic ideological differences aren't also at play? I don't know, the Hollywood Reporter doesn't appear to have asked that question.

-spence

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by spence

Or, a lack of reading comprehension.


This is great. A celeb makes statements to the Hollywood Reporter and it's worthy of closer analysis.


The "system" is obviously the entire thing. Not an academic perspective but the real world. My take on the Hollywood Reporter coverage is that he's frustrated with the obstructionist Right's position on Obama and how it's hampering our government from operating to the point of shutdown and real economic damage. Some of this is racism (or do we let Kenyan sensibilities dictate the behavior of Americans?) and some is a resistance to any change.

Does Redford think that basic ideological differences aren't also at play? I don't know, the Hollywood Reporter doesn't appear to have asked that question.

-spence

"This is great. A celeb makes statements to the Hollywood Reporter and it's worthy of closer analysis."

You analyzed it more closely, and quickly concluded that it was a benign statement. Now that you cannot defend it, it's not worth talking about.

"How about anyone in Congress who's uttered a Birther remark. I'd list them but it would take a while."

Birthers, like Redford, make kooky accusations with no evidence. How about the people who said the Gulf War was launched for oil, or for Haliburton profits. No evidence to support that. Are those people racist, anti-white, since they made baseless accusations against a white president? Using your 'logic', I'm not sure there's a difference.

"Some of this is racism "

again, zero evidence. Zip.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

"This is great. A celeb makes statements to the Hollywood Reporter and it's worthy of closer analysis."

You analyzed it more closely, and quickly concluded that it was a benign statement. Now that you cannot defend it, it's not worth talking about.

Priceless.

Makes you wonder why he bothered to engage in the conversation. What was it that Spence said in another thread--plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.

[justplugit]

Originally Posted by Jim in CT

"This is great. A celeb makes statements to the Hollywood Reporter and it's worthy of closer analysis."

.

Yes Jim, don't you realize that former members of their HS drama club had
a handle on reality then, and still do?
Whatever playing and pretending to be someone else has to do with reality
and makes them experts on what's going on in the real world is beyond me.
They live in a world of let's pretend.

[Fly Rod]

Senator Robert Byrd a democrat was the biggest racist a high ranking KKK member....Redford must not remember him.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by spence

Or, a lack of reading comprehension.


This is great. A celeb makes statements to the Hollywood Reporter and it's worthy of closer analysis.


The "system" is obviously the entire thing. Not an academic perspective but the real world. My take on the Hollywood Reporter coverage is that he's frustrated with the obstructionist Right's position on Obama and how it's hampering our government from operating to the point of shutdown and real economic damage. Some of this is racism (or do we let Kenyan sensibilities dictate the behavior of Americans?) and some is a resistance to any change.

Does Redford think that basic ideological differences aren't also at play? I don't know, the Hollywood Reporter doesn't appear to have asked that question.

-spence

"shutdown and real economic damage"

$17 trillion in debt (and at least another $50 trillion in entitlement liabilities) isn't potentially damaging. But a temporary shutdown is too damaging to allow. Got it, check...

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by spence

Or, a lack of reading comprehension.

Jim made some good points.

This is great. A celeb makes statements to the Hollywood Reporter and it's worthy of closer analysis.

Perhaps your suffering from a mild form of reading comprehension. I know you're very busy. Maybe it was just an oversight. But if you're going to bother to post stuff, maybe you should exert a little more effort out of respect to others who will read it. I did say "But to dwell on the simple-minded thoughts of a super-wealthy actor . .. is a bit of distraction from reality." No need to add superfluous comments to your necessarily brief offerings due to the little time you have to give them. As you like to say, pay attention.

The "system" is obviously the entire thing.

So the entire thing does not include the Constitution? Oh, that's right, for you it wouldn't. The "entire thing" would be wrapped up in a few folks up there in the heights of D.C. making deals which direct what us folks in the rest of the country must do for the good of the "entire thing" including what we must buy.

Not an academic perspective but the real world.

So the real world does not include academic perspectives? I thought you liked smart stuff, and I thought you were very partial to perspectives. Maybe just the smart stuff and perspectives you agree with?

My take on the Hollywood Reporter coverage is that he's frustrated with the obstructionist Right's position on Obama and how it's hampering our government from operating to the point of shutdown and real economic damage.

Ahh . . . that's right. To have a perspective other than that of the folks who comprise "the entire thing" would be obstructionist. It would hamper our "entire thing" from telling the rest of us what to do, from operating to the point of a fictitious shutdown, and it would hamper the entire thing from wracking up more debt on top of the already amassed debt which is unsustainable in the way the "entire thing" operates. We must not hamper or obstruct the "entire thing" from its mission to control our lives (for our own benefit) since we are not capable in this new, smart world of centrally planned fiscal obsolescence.

Some of this is racism (or do we let Kenyan sensibilities dictate the behavior of Americans?) and some is a resistance to any change.

Is there something wrong with being Kenyan? Is it racist to call someone a Kenyan? Is it some frightfully bad condition that a mention of such heritage is tantamount to racism? Is it worse than being Canadian?

And . . . uhhh . . . "any" change is a bit too expansive. How about resistance to bad change. Or is that also racist?

Does Redford think that basic ideological differences aren't also at play? I don't know, the Hollywood Reporter doesn't appear to have asked that question.

-spence

Does that preclude perspectives which see ideological differences? Or must we accept Redford's statements as some basic truth and pass it on without comment? That would be a bit tyrannical, wouldn't it? But what's the harm in a little tyranny among friends.

BTW, it was not necessary to point out that the reporter didn't ask that question (as well as many others). I already implied that the interview was very limited when I said " . . . a closer analysis of his [Redford's] QUOTED text. . ." Pay attention. You're too busy to waste words.

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by spence

Does Redford think that basic ideological differences aren't also at play? I don't know, the Hollywood Reporter doesn't appear to have asked that question.

-spence

Here you stumbled into the truth. Of course ideological differences are at play, and of course Redford wasn't going to talk about it.

Why?

Because it's easier for Redford (and for most liberals) to lob unsubstantiated charges of racism, than it is to try and explain why their ideology (spend with no regard to consequences, slaughter the unborn, paralyze the poor, no recognition of the notion of responsibility) is superior to an alternate ideology.

Redford calls the conservatives racist, and you clearly agreed with him. The ironic thing is that it's liberal economic principles that are destroying the black culture, and it is conservative principles (family, hard work, responsibility, love) that represents exactly what the black culture, any poor person really, needs to embrace to escape poverty.

Almost every big city votes Democratic. Almost every big city is far worse off today than it was 25 years ago. You don't need to be Steven Hawking to connect those dots.

[detbuch]

Originally Posted by spence

The "system" is obviously the entire thing. Not an academic perspective but the real world.

Those two sentences are such contradictions that it shouldn't be needed to point it out. But, beyond leaving "academic perspectives" out of the entire thing including the "real world," there is also the paradox of to whom belongs the academic perspective and for whom the real world is the model and cause for government.

Your assumption, I assume, is that the real world is the unhampered cooperation of rulers and their expert cohorts to mold society in light of their superior wisdom. Not by any guiding principles, but by newly concocted responses to old problems, the newer the better.

And that older, presumably defunct, prescriptions and restrictions such as the Constitution are no longer real, since not followed, but merely academic conversation pieces which obstruct the progress of the wise rulers by binding them to procedures that don't apply to the modern world.

The thing is . . . the Constitution was based on experience, on how the "real world" had historically operated, on the reality of human nature, and on the promotion and preservation of that common piece of human nature which history and experience taught was a yearning for freedom. It was, at the time of the Declaration, and is now, still the most advanced governing principle.

The Progressive idea of rule by smart intellectuals and technocrats unhampered by real world precedence, but guided by opinion based on untried, or tried and failed because of incompetence, efforts, is actually the more "academic perspective" And, ironically, it is not even newer than the American constitutional system, but as old as human tyranny.

My take on the Hollywood Reporter coverage is that he's frustrated with the obstructionist Right's position on Obama and how it's hampering our government from operating to the point of shutdown and real economic damage.

-spence

The "obstructionist Right's position" and the hampering of government by shutdown and the notion of "real economic damage" are obviously your perspectives. The Hollywood Reporter didn't mention any of that stuff. What bug he/it had up its butt is still mysteriously embedded there. Amazingly narrow of you to exclude the "Right's position" from the "entire thing" and to cast it out as part of some academic perspective. The constitutional basis for the Tea Party opposition, or "obstruction" as you put it, is far more intrinsic to American political "reality" than the phony whims and constructs of progressive top down ordering of people's lives. If the "entire thing" is what you vision, then the "vector" is toward economic collapse fueled by a debt not based on economic principles, but that is irresponsibly compounded by larger and larger impossible amounts. If their is no return to basic principles of American government, but continued rule by unprincipled power mongers who sap the spirit and responsibility from our people, and who spend the wealth of the nation into oblivion, if that continues, eventual collapse will be followed by despotic rule. And the "real world" will once again have to find its way back toward human dignity and freedom.

[scottw]

right....ignore the..... unsustainable spending levels and debt, growing and unfathomable unfunded obligations, unprecedented continuing actions by the FED....record levels of dependency and continuing stagnation, historic Federal tinkering and thouands and thousands of pages of new regulations...millions not working...and the fraud in and abuse of the system which is operating continuing resolution to continuing resolution with no formal budget for years now

ignore all of this and...

and blame the only guy in the room with his hand up calling for sanity...label him a racist causing real economic damage somehow...this is like an alcoholic or drug addict labeling the family member that's trying to help an "obstructionist"....they keep pestering you for more money and when you finally say no...they get belligerent and let fly with all sorts of insults and accusations...blame everyone else for the predicament that they've caused and will continue to prolong if left unabated or aided by enablers who are either weak, naïve or similarly addicted.... the real damage is right in front of their eyes every day but the addiction clouds reality... and so up is down, the inevitable will never materialize, they believe, as long as they remain medicated....the good guys are really the bad guys from the addicts perspective.....cult worship has a similar effect



stupid or evil....

[Jim in CT]

Originally Posted by scottw

the real damage is right in front of their eyes every day but the addiction clouds reality...

....

The damage is there to see, all right. Black illegitimacy rates over 70%. Big cities, that have voted Democrat for decades, on the verge of bankruptcy thanks to promises to labor unions. How many times, exactly, does liberal economics have to fail, before we conclude that it's ill-conceived?

That's why sometimes I wonder if liberal leaders are doing this intentionally. Because I'm not sure anyone could be that willfully ignorant of what is right in front of their faces. Maybe their goal is to keep Watch Hill and Nantucket and Beverly Hills, free of the riff-raff. I mean, I worked in downtoiwn Hartford for 10 years. How can anyone who lives there, conclude that the one-party rule that exists, has done them any good? It's an absoilute wasteland, yet every November, they vote unanimously for the same liberals.