Monday 28 March 2016

This is my Europe!

Yes, this is my Europe not yours.The place where the bones of my ancestors lay. The place where I grew up. The place where my children will grow.This is our land, land that my people died for in the millions fending endless conquests.The way I am part of this land and it is part of me-you will never feel it.So don't talk to me like you understand. Because you don't. And you never will. Oh and by the way:
This is my sky, not yours. I can see you smiling, unable to comprehend my hick stubbornness.
But is this guy so stupid, doesn't he know the sky is for everybody-I can hear you ask.Like I said-you wouldn't even understand. But just as a warning-the bond that the land creates with it's people is stronger than you may think.




It is after all, us the people that make the land. Yes, it has been here for millions of years, but it didn't know what it was before we settled it. The people came and changed the land, they were sometimes cruel and sometimes caring but they are the ones that shaped this land, plowed the fields and cut the trees, we made it what it is. And it needs us to remind it what it is.Yes us, not you.Yes, I know things change and populations move, religions and politics shift, but it has never happened in one night, in one generation even.

And yes, my people paid the heaviest price for that land.Many times.Do you know what giaur means? It s the Turkish word for kufar-unbeliever, but it was basically an euphemism for sub-human while the Ottoman Empire ruled the Balkans. My people lived through that and kept telling the land what it was so it doesn't forget. So when a loony politician tells me islam and political islam have it s place in Europe, sorry but I take it you guys just declared war on your own people





Why populism produces clicks but doesn't win elections

Have you ever considered how strong our resolve to not admit our own faults is? If we uncritically check the patterns that lead us to believing one thing or another, how often will we notice we were following the path that explains and excuses best our falterings. Finding excuses for our acts and for those whom we sympathize with has always been a strong trend for our subconscious. I love that example that obviously made strong  impression to my 4 year self from the kindergarten. After a huge fight erupted and was subsequently calmed down by the teachers they naturally started to trace back to the roots of all evil-the kid that threw the first punch. After few fingers were firmly pointed the defendant had to produce the speech so he brought his view on the incident: "I punched him because he later kicked me". The absurd statement must have struck me deep as it is the earliest memory I keep. The kid was challenged on the moral axis of the problem-the teacher conceded it is ok to defend yourself so she questioned who resorted to violence first. Him trying to find an explanation for the moral side of his act in a rash produced the mistake. What is more important is as the higher authority(the teacher) has put the issue as black and white-hit without being hit equals you are a bad person, he was trying to find an excuse that will put him back on solid track as one of the good guys.

As we grow up our thoughts and concerns tend to get more complicated and so do our excuses. I didn't get PhD because the educational system is fucked up, my business didn't go as planned as there is a lot of corruption in the regulations surrounding it, that girl didn't date me because women like jerks who treat them bad. We search to expand such excuses and as internet of today stands we are bound to find opinions or even studies confirming them. And as we so often see in last couple of years many politicians and media figures try to ride that wave-it's the new wave. The job of both types of entities has always been to tell the masses what they want to hear(in the case of politicians-and do what they please meanwhile, but that s another story). And this is why we have identity politics and why they are so successful. Let's view the problem from the point of those "delivering" the news or promises or politics. You need to speak to a maximum amount of people that you can put under the same brand and give them excuse for their shortcomings. And this is how all of a sudden cultural marxism theories came into play in usually quite anti-communistic America and from there it flooded the World. You are black and not doing well? Systematic racism! You are a woman that couldn't make it in STEM? Sexism and misogyny! The message is simple and resounding-EVERY woman must not be held accountable if she is not faring that well in life or can't get a boyfriend there is an explanation. White men conspired to deprive women of any decent paying job and they have disgusting taste for women. You are black and can't get a job? Well, it s all in the privilege .
Now, quite obviously there are patterns that we, the people try to fight every day that cause exactly the behavior described above. Misogyny can often be explained with similar way of thinking tho expanded in both directions-thinking someone is less capable of you and thus when he performs equally he has to be handicapped or just reversing the ideas and saying that men have it harder. There is tribalism that could be a logical reason behind black population being poorer and having lot less opportunities than their white or asian counterparts-most black people are ancestors of economical migrants or freed slaves and if they stuck to their communities and richer whites stuck to theirs tending to hire or do business with folks that look like them that could be one sound explanation of racial disparity in the US. The thing is those are not things that make men or white people evil, they are part of natural behavior on subconscious level that we must fight through realizing they exist and correcting ourselves when possible. The thing that the hysterical tribunes of the new PC era omit is that we are long gone into that process. One of the uniting points that help us determine the Western civilization is that everywhere in this sphere you go you will see laws defending equality and even many focusing on specifically defending groups of people that have been marginalized in the past. The fight in our heads I referred to above we also undertook long ago. This had lead to a society thriving and tolerant more than any that has existed in human history. My childhood was in the 80s I grew happily without ever thinking any of my female classmates was any different than me. All the evidence shows that said classmates felt the same way and that all the boys in my class were no different than me. So when feminists wave finger at me telling me how in fact men despise and even hate women I m being left puzzled-it harshly contrasts 40 years of living experience.

The fact that we are doing just fine doesn't stop the fame and money hungry from promoting suspicions and often even hatred between groups in society, they are keen to put new artificial dividing lines and spread people on both sides. Donald Trump's rise to prominence is the most obvious moment when such talk backfires.
Trump remains widely indifferent to the race problems not mentioning them and not taking a stance on them. That combined with his nationalistic rhetoric made many to accuse him of racism. Now not sure how american voters view Trump, but weather he is neutral or white racist when his opponents throw statements like the cited above they quite obviously provide ammo for him.

P.S.
I'm sorry Bernie, but that's not how you do populism-minorities are called minorities for a reason.And if you thought Tumbler wins elections, for now you've been wrong. What I m afraid of is that the day when it does might not be that far in the future.






Tuesday 8 March 2016

Never Trump-think twice about it

Following the fierce debate around Donald Trump s campaign I couldn't help but notice how there is a huge front forming against him in the last 10 days. The GOP leadership takes almost a suicidal stance admitting next presidential s to be a loss-openly or with hints they admit they re going full Hillary if Trump is Republican s nominee . People with left ideas in the US took their stance long ago-"if Trump doesn't let immigrants in I m going out "(why were they saying they ll move to Canada when it is the least likely country from where immigrants will arrive is a mystery to me). What seems to unite those unlikely allies is their fear of the growing alt-right movement and the fact that it has openly embraced Trump s candidacy. It seems to be the focal point of their criticism, often moving some of the qualifications from his electorate to mr. Trump himself. To me it seems that Trump has seen the growing popularity of that movement and tried to emulate it s appeal.  


That movement while it maybe never had a defined leadership publishing some manifesto is still majorly anti-Semitic which in the past has always been a sure-fire way for a grassroots movement to fail. What was the difference, did people become more racist and xenophobic than before? Nope, they just didn't see the medium that usually governments and centrists and apolitical people were-somehow, somewhere in the 90 s it was gone.Most trends that wave around the World come from the USA, the radicalization of the Left made no exception and the new and shocking scent that Americans added to it was the racial tone. What it resulted in was a series of loony statements that we hear from most popular media outlets, left political movements leaders and that well of never-ending wisdom-Tumbler. If you are white going online will soon teach you that you are a bad person due to your genes. What is even worse is you don't have culture and well-you don't belong to any race since there is no such thing as white race. But in the same time you are still white and still guilty of enslaving black people in the US. The fact that you re say from Poland and have never seen a black person doesn't absolve you of blame.Normal people(non-tumblerits if i may call them) grow up with some firm and pretty solidly based beliefs of what is right and what is wrong tho. We know for example that what bunch of jews figured 3 thousand years ago holds true till today-a child is being born clear and we can not hold it accountable for the sins of it's parents. We know that hating people from other ethnicity is called racism.And we know that people calling a black spot pink should be locked in a safe space instead of writing for leading media outlets. So when a normal person, that silent majority of a-political people is being confronted with such propaganda they certainly begin to worry. Will it end at Tumbler?-they ask themselves.Next year the answer is obvious-tumblerism floods big media outlets, some of it's speak sneaks into serious political leader's speeches. You know-those mediums of power you always expect to take reasonable, very intelligent and maybe sometimes overly centrist position of balance, well those mediums remain silent instead of criticizing obvious cases of radicalization while some of them even take sides with the radicals. So let's imagine that hypothetical middle-class white man working too hard to have time to check how modern e-politics were unfolding. He decides to drop by and check what is going on and what he finds is that he either has to "admit his white guilt" "admit his privilege" and :"smash capitalism" or he can go in the camp of-"blacks have on average 10 pts lower IQ" lolol and claim that all his problems come from a mysterious order of jews that pulls every string of World's politics.

 So all that heat our imaginary folk gets for simply being the wrong skin colour can easily push him in the other camp-after all the enemy of my foe is my friend, right? Option B is he is being left stupefied , asking himself questions like-"how dumb am I if after all that privilege pouring on me I m still poor/middle class?" or "if all white people are racist, how and why should I try to change it?". Where did I lead you with this? We have now a popular figure, a figure with chances of becoming the head of the biggest country in the World who simply doesn't care.While he doesn't take a direct anti-PC stance nor did he ever drop an inflammatory, openly racist statement he clearly has become the leader of everyone that opposes left radicalism in the US. His first strongly stated point was against illegal immigration after which he continued by bashing radical islamism, both sacred cows for the same "white guilt" and " white privilege" folks. By doing so he gave hope to our imaginary ordinary person from the example above that there might be a chance the good times when racism was bad, no matter what the circumstances behind it are are going to be back. What many people tend to forget is that when he speaks of immigration key word is ILLEGAL. For me and everyone that has outgrown primitive left-right views and bias on politics a politician that does not oppose illegal immigration is highly controversial. I mean....illegal, does that ring a bell in you? But for Trump's outraged opponents taking stance against such immigration is somehow controversial or what most of them put it-fascist and racist(pretty sure people of all races try to immigrate to USA for economical reasons). So this is how Trump found his surprising for many popularity-he proved to be the medium, the bridge that eases the ugly racial tensions that the cancer which Tumbler is managed to wake. Alt-right people endorsing him is not the core of his popularity, these people are just the fringe of it. What people seeking to " destroy" Trump and his followers tend to forget or ignore is that "destroying" him won't magically delete the millions that showed with their vote how they feel and what they support. It will instead leave them without a popular figure offering them a middle way. And let's see what is left, who wins those elections in that case:
Sounds like a quote from Tumbler? Nah, it's a legit statement from the presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.I don't think those people that voted for Trump because they believed he ll become the PC crusher can be smashed and destroyed unless those 2 are being used literally.They will continue to ask their simple questions like-"are the children to be blamed for the sins of their fathers?" knowing that the answer has been given by sound and reasonable people thousands of years ago.