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29612. arkymalarky - 7/4/2015 3:27:55 PM

Again, I encourage anyone following to see Trillium's fount of racial hostility in the link I posted above.

Wrt Scalia and gay marriage, it wasn't the content of his dissent, though I think his and Thomas's lacked reason; it was his expressions against the ruling and their personal, frenetic, and unhinged tone.

29613. arkymalarky - 7/4/2015 3:30:17 PM

And to stay on the topic of the thread, you'll know hell is frozen over when Trillium actually defends a black person over a white person in one of these news items.

29614. arkymalarky - 7/4/2015 3:33:18 PM

A quote from Milton is also apt:

He made the worse appear the better cause.

29615. RickNelson - 7/4/2015 7:20:09 PM

Hmmmm...

They systemic disparity created by the quid pro quo for whites, and their long held institutional majority, created an absurd set of ad hominem drivel. Such as shocked people are not used to being contradicted, or lying shouldn't be someone's norm. How odd.

One does not necessarily follow the other. We know that causing confusion is distracting. So it's good to see notes to stay on topic.

I take it the topic is broadly looking at the privilege of whites vs the so called supports available to the poor, but focused upon the black community?

29616. arkymalarky - 7/4/2015 7:36:06 PM

an interesting assessment of trillium's link source that I posted above.

29617. judithathome - 7/4/2015 8:24:31 PM

"Expression, sure enough, is a freedom, but anyone in a long-lasting marriage will attest that that happy state constricts, rather than expands, what one can prudently say."

Are you married, Trill? I have found marriage to be just the opposite...what we share has expanded remarkably the longer we are married...not so w/my first marriage of 18 years but with this one...of over 30...it certainly has.

I don't think I could stay in a marriage where things weren't generously shared...thoughts, feelings, emotions, anger, remorse, the entire gamut of emotion. This is a joy, not a chore. This is choice, not a duty.

If one finds themselves biting their tongue in order to spare their mate, they're in the wrong relationship.

29618. judithathome - 7/4/2015 8:27:37 PM

Sorry to have drifted off the topic in my last post...but then again, I think Trillium might consider that Keoni and I are in a mixed-race marriage. ;-)

29619. judithathome - 7/4/2015 8:36:17 PM

#29616

You dig deeply enough, this is the sort of thing you usually find on-line. Agendas out the wahzoo and unsuspecting readers taking most of it at face value rather than as the agenda-driven pap it usually turns out to be.

29620. vonKreedon - 7/6/2015 8:09:30 PM

SCOTUS Marriage Opinions in Haiku

29621. arkymalarky - 7/6/2015 8:30:46 PM

Ha-ha! Those are great!

29622. RickNelson - 7/10/2015 1:37:05 PM

Kennedy's majority decision: 'Love' = RightON!

29623. Ms. No - 3/22/2016 9:24:29 PM

Wasn't sure exactly what thread to put this in, but philosophy seemed a bit more appropriate than politics.

So, I've got several ideas mixing around in my brain that will eventually be a unit tying dystopian fiction to WWII and the Holocaust and maybe looking at what kinds of global events bring about a rise in Dystopian literature --- hello The Giver, Hunger Games, Divergent etc.

And I was struck by how white all of it is. And then I was thinking about the elements of a dystopian society:

All-powerful and capricious government/rulers
Repression of individuality and humanity
Oppression of the workers
Eugenics
Daily existence ruled by fear, want, and hopelessness

And I realized why we don't have or really need black dystopian fiction. 300 years of slavery pretty much cured us of that.

I can't be the first person ever to notice this or point it out, but I'd never heard anyone make this connection, so I want credit for originality.

29624. arkymalarky - 3/22/2016 10:30:02 PM

I haven't read much of that type of fiction, but I just got finished teaching The Giver. It's interesting how popular that type of fiction has been with mostly junior high and high school in the last decade, when before it was mostly fantasies like Harry Potter the Percy Jackson series. I wonder why the shift, and whether it's simply attributable to the post 911 era, then I listen to panicky adults every time something happens like what happened today in Brussels, and makes a bit more sense. Sorta like the Devo song Freedom of Choice.

29625. Ms. No - 3/23/2016 3:46:20 AM

I read a lot of it my sophomore year of high school ---- A Clockwork Orange, The Trial...others were on the list but I can't remember all of them. I know 1984 and Brave New World were possibilities. I read Slaughterhouse Five and Stranger in a Strange Land.

I think Fahrenheit 451 was 7th grade. That may have been the year for Harrison Bergeron, too.

I'm a glutton for punishment and love my dystopian literature. I've got an anthology called Brave New Worlds that I'm getting ready to start working my way through. It's kind of a downer if you read them all at once.

Especially since I just picked up a copy of Susan Mayer's Dark Money.

I'm going to have to watch nothing but cartoons for a week once I get done with all of this. ;-)

29626. arkymalarky - 3/23/2016 4:28:10 AM

Dad just read that. I'm going to borrow it from him. Right now I'm on spring break I'm sick with a stupid sinus infection so I'm not reading Squat, and not doing squat. I'm just so pissed.

29627. arkymalarky - 3/23/2016 5:33:35 PM

Spook loaned me The Human Stain, and I thought I would start it, but I think my reading list will have to wait until summer. I think, wrt your original post, you're absolutely right: people who have are focused on keeping it (white), while people who don't are focused on getting it or at least gaining some ground (non-white).

29628. Ms. No - 3/23/2016 11:49:22 PM

moving response to Adventures in Teaching -- I probably should've started there to begin with. ;-)

29629. Trillium - 3/24/2016 2:44:55 PM

One local community college instructor teaches a class on "History of Cinema" (among others things). In one class, she mentioned that she tries to be mindful of suicide statistics when she assigns topics, because many young people are unstable. As a parent I am grateful for her mindfulness. When I read the education discussion about dystopian books aimed at teens, that particular teacher came to mind again.

29630. Trillium - 3/24/2016 2:48:00 PM

When teaching about dystopian themes, these make no sense without a discussion of utopian themes first. Utopian schemes are often rooted in religious movements. Thomas More (St. Thomas More for Catholics) wrote the first "Utopia" book (although there have been many earlier Christian utopian experiments, including religious monasteries)
Thomas More's Utopia

29631. Trillium - 3/24/2016 2:49:34 PM

The idea of engineering life for better living is not restricted to mechanical devices; "living the good life" underlies most religious, philosophical (and political) movements. The United States began essentially as a utopian experiment. The early U.S. hosted many smaller attempts at utopian communities.

Pleasant Hill Shaker Community

Robert Owen's "New Harmony"

"...although Owen provided New Harmony with everything he could imagine that it would need to succeed, it was missing the essential component that made other communities, like the Shakers, cohesive. Because Owen did not believe in God, their was no central covenant that committed the residents of New Harmony to their enterprise. Although they were united by their communal labor, and to the idea of utopian life, the very rational concepts upon which Owen had based the community were antithetical to communal life. Because they lacked the strong central belief which served to unite other utopian groups, the members of the community were lacking the commitment to carry out the mission that Owen envisioned. New Harmony dissolved in less than three years..."

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