Thread: 'Tis A Good Week To Be Black

Originally Posted by icedog

You flatter me. I haven't the skills to do anything other than speak my mind. I am trying to keep positive about a clearly positive event. I am a very simple man who wears his heart on his sleeve. I have not the guile of a turnip.

Now Brad! Tell us another story!

Alex and Brad, can you guys PLEASE TONE IT DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!! I DO NOT want to bring Mods officially in on here but will if I have to.

Thank you.

Originally Posted by Silver

Alex and Brad, can you guys PLEASE TONE IT DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!! I DO NOT want to bring Mods officially in on here but will if I have to.

Thank you.

And neither do I!
Oh...
wait a minute...

If the only point of a post is to complain about how you've been insulted, then don't post and simply ignore this thread or the argument you were having.

LET. IT. GO.

Life is too short to waste your time fighting in a forum that is -in the grand scheme of things- rather insignificant. If the discussion was about someting, anything, relevant, I'd understand. But bickering over who insulted whom, when, and why is not productive, and a waste of perfectly good electrons.

Silver, my dear, youre sounding more like a mother already!! You rock girl!! You too Bruno!

You people are all behind, me'n Brad have already worked things out through PM.

To whom it may concern, I ,and I think most others, voted for Barack Obama because I think that he is by far the best of the two choices we had. By far! Not because of his ethnicity. I have not felt as much hope for the results of an election in 40 years. My candidate then was Robert Kennedy. For me the two best presidents in my lifetime were FDR and LBJ. They weren't perfect but they represented all of the people. The fact that an African American could win the highest office in what was an apartheid society for much of it's history deserves some comment and some celebration. It is as simple as that.

Originally Posted by LX_Emergency

You people are all behind, me'n Brad have already worked things out through PM.

True enough. Though my "bull in a china shop" debating technique may leave a few smarting. I apologize and hope to make it clear that my goal is strictly to maintain the original intent of this thread. Anyone who disagrees with me can, er, uh nevermind.

I am now going to withdraw and go with Basil to the shop for some therapeutic productivity. I have a sticker on my refridgerator that says, "Dear God, Please help me to be the person my dog thinks I am".

I'm working on it.

Originally Posted by icedog

I have a sticker on my refridgerator that says, "Dear God, Please help me to be the person my dog thinks I am".

A pretty good moral compass.

(Since our dog left us last spring, I'd have to think of alternatives. "Please help me to be the person my parakeets think I am" ... hmmm ... no.)

Anyway--also recalling what I understood as the original spirit of the thread--as a white man I don't think I can fully feel what this election means to African-Americans. But I do feel--along with my conviction that the best candidate, race aside, won--a deep relief that we have crossed some kind of threshold. Not that our racial troubles, inequities, and divisions are behind us by any means. But we have at least journeyed away from that time, not so long ago, when for Barack Obama even to have been a serious candidate for the presidency would have been unthinkable. I heard someone on the radio yesterday say, "America's all grown up now." I wouldn't go so far; maybe no individual and no nation ever gets all grown up. But I do feel that we are growing up.

~Rich

Originally Posted by maplemaker

I can't wait to see what happens over the next 8 years. Since things are getting all ad hominem up in here, I wanna add my two cents in this thread as well. My wife was up until almost midnight crying on Tuesday, too. And then she woke up about every hour and fifteen minutes after that to cry some more. Yesterday, (I'm on the Army's Honor Guard out here) before I traveled to a funeral for a soldier, she called me on the phone to ask me to see if I can swing an early retirement in my skill set so we can leave the country. See, it's not about black or white. It's about she was born in Chile in 1962. In 1970, Chile held free elections (as has been their wont since the 1800's) and the first freely elected socialist president in the western hemisphere won. Three years later, due to the economic ruin and the vain ambitions of evil men (with U.S. backing, training and influence, of course...) that democratically elected government was violently overthrown and a 17-year reign of murder was introduced. She lived through all that, and I lived through some of it. Pinochet had his "civilian security force", just as Obama has mentioned. It was called the DINA. Feel free to check with Amnesty International to see just how civil they were. If any of you live in Sheffield, England, and know a Raul Contreras Lastra, please tell him his niece and nephew-in-law say hello, and she misses him. He was an officer in the Chilean Air Force. When he was ordered, on 11 SEP 73, to release his weapons to his troops for a final assault on the presidential palace, he refused. The military police arrested him on the spot. He was "disappeared" for two months and then, thank God, exiled to England instead of shot and buried in a mass grave. He won't return to Chile. My wife's family was, one fine Chilean sunny summer day, forced out of their house at gunpoint with nothing but the clothes on their backs by the army. See, my father-in-law had helped repair a tractor on a commune during Allende's socialist presidency, and when the dictatorship heard about it, they decided that he was too communist to have a house anymore. I remember the elections in 1990 when Pinochet was finally ousted. It was like a breath of fresh air after 17 years of being under water. The country went crazy after the new president was sworn in, and it was wonderful. Two days later, they started excavating the mass graves. I guess what I'm saying is twofold: If you think it can't happen here, you're wrong. It's already happened here before. AND, NO ONE has cornered the market on oppression or being downtrodden. These gentlemanly flame wars back and forth, coming from people who really haven't lived on either side of the line are beginning to look quite childish. Had I not been burying a guy yesterday and able to sit at the computer and see all of icedog's baiting and amushing, recognizing it for what it was, I would most likely have not replied at all to the thread that got shut down. FWIW, most of my friends aren't black. Most of my friends aren't white. Most of my friends aren't even in the U.S. But EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY FRIENDS AND MY ENEMIES ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

(vent vent vent. good LORD!)

I know we disagree but I really do find this is very sad, I'm serious, the fear that has been misplaced in people by the a campaign (either side). They say things and don't really understand the damage that these attacks can have on people. Then there are the ones that use fear to increase their ratings.

Please have your wife watch the video of McCain and Obama together at the dinner after the final debate. They got along very well, both were funny. Seriously do you think if Obama was so dangerous these sort of things would go on. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N-j0W6MW-U