vol.2 wrote:RE the article. I simply don't see quite what you're seeing. It looks to me more like a description of a volatile situation.
I think also there are things that are harped on too much, and there are other important things are not said at all. It's certainly not a "great" article, but I don't believe that the failing is one of malice, rather one of eloquence and subtlety.
Oh no, I don't think she's being wilfully malicious, either. I think her response is gravely mistaken, and potentially very dangerous - to her own community above all - but malicious, no. (what happens when one of these kids' disciplinary records gets brought up, denying them opportunities years down the line? and surely productive adulthood will force them to engage with other racial "presences" constantly? even in the most amoral, pragmatic terms, what she describes, sans any inkling of a solution, is a recipe for failure at best)
By total coincidence, I've been reading up on the Station Nightclub fire of 2003
(interesting breakdown). The matrix of failure behind that thing is staggering - it goes way beyond the
"dumbass rockers use pyro in a tiny club" I'd assumed. But you won't find one iota of malice, just people who thought they'd found easy solutions to wickedly unforgiving problems.
What should have been said plainly is that is it a description of a volatile situation. It also should have gone into the terrible real estate practices in the US that created the ghettos. They used maps that real estate brokers had to follow, forbidding them to sell houses to non-whites. This continued officially through the 90's in some places, and continues still in unofficial ways. It was especially bad in Baltimore where I live. Check this out:
https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/rat-film/
I think you'll like the movie either way, it follows rat hunting in baltimore (and rat fishing).
This link might be better out of the US
https://memory.is/rat-film
Also, it has a Dan Deacon soundtrack, which is killer.
Thanks, I'll give it a watch. It's a horrendous situation you have in the US, I'll never deny that. As I say, I'm sorry if I come off as absolutist here.
Well, you mentioned a few posts up being squeamish re: human horror.
Yeah, I'm not into it. My parents love to watch dark shit like that on TV, but it gives me nightmares. I can watch horror movies or anything that isn't real, but I get freaked out by the real stuff, especially when it's dramatized. I know lot's of people love that stuff though. I have friends who like the surgery channel.
I've never enjoyed the slasher/giallo/torture porn subgenres of horror, tbh. Phantasmagoria I dig, things that can't exist in reality. Pseudo-snuff just makes me want to read case reports, or history books, or medical treatises. At least their mundanity is useful.
(another total coincidence,
Berberian Sound Studio is an interesting film about this intersection. film about a film, the hellaciously cruel fictional giallo
THE EQUESTRIAN VORTEX - and yet not)
I can't tell though if you're just posting that to tease me, or you're just trying to make a point? I guess I get what you're saying, but I don't think you can say it's the same thing. I think everyone is capable of terrible shit given the right circumstances though. History is filled with examples.
Nope, no ulterior motives on my part. I grew up with stories of the Eastern Front, and reports on the Rwandan genocide and Yugoslav wars. Talk of "the abyss" and the ubiquitous "How could it have come to this" made me wonder how, indeed. Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men" is a good clinical breakdown I was pointed to early on. It always starts with target designation, and rationalisation - sometimes very oblique, even apologetic. Whatever the perpetrator's indiscretion, the victim cannot be blameless, because their kind did something to you and yours. This most definitely includes offending you with their "presence."
So I can't help seeing a glaring red flag in that response. History is exactly why. If it were arguing for a majority population, I'd call it unconscionable. Arguing for an outnumbered, impoverished, systemically disadvantaged one? Still unacceptable, but moreover, pitiably foolish and self-sabotaging.
Personally, I grew up with some real damage cases - broken homes, dirt poor, mad as hell
and navigating adolescence - who managed to turn themselves around by graduation, and it was by
rejecting such mindsets. I saw other, less disadvantaged kids buy into nihilism, and spiral off into
disaster. A decade ago I'd have been shocked to see this in a mainstream American publication, but at this point it seems to be some unfortunate zeitgeist. I hope not too many are falling for it. As bad as things are in US ghettos, this is how to keep it that way and worse.
Blinge wrote:fyi that English schoolteacher has been suspended or fired I think.
Suspended and under police guard, AFAIK. Going to give our government the benefit of the doubt, and assume it's to head off "anything silly" (as the lovely
"Should I slay or should I go" chap on TalkyBollocks referred to Patyfication), but I guess we'll see.
I swear to Jesus I didn't write "head off" deliberately, but I'm leaving it motherfucker. 3;
An RE teacher, right? Well... that whole experience has given any of his perceptive students the best lesson on religion one could hope to impart.
Yeah.
Certainly on blasphemy laws and why they're a shit idea. Render unto Caesar you muppets (■`W´■)