The Un-US Politics Discussion Scenario

[chonies]

Which one was the excrement?

[Deleted]

^ I know the question relates to previous page but as top of page statements go this one is a winner...answer it could relate to every and any ongoing potilical situation😁

[180deg]

Yeah, it really could be any of them

In this case it's Peter Dutton. Some "highlights" of his career so far: he refused to join the apology for the Stolen Generations, he refused to let New Zealand take the asylum seekers from Nauru, he's super-pro-deportation unless you're a young female nanny here to work illegally on a tourist visa (which happened twice). Plus, you know that Trump tweet about white South African farmers? Almost word-for-word something that Dutton said a few months ago.

He's the Federal Member for Dickson; someone graffiti-ed one of his signs to read "Feral Dick" and I agree 100%.

[butterfly]

It's been a total WTF of a week in Australia!

[Deleted]

Vile ignorant and down right irresponsible little Tory shit Jacob Rees Mogg "border inspections* like in The Troubles acceptable as its not a border that people cross everyday!!!!!


Fucking brexshit.

*inspections at the border from memory were soldiers searching and emptying boot the car with rifles pointed at fightened us in it. Not fun. Don't want to experience it ever again.

[Carolina]

I still can't believe Jacob Rees-Mogg isn't actually some elaborate piece of performance art. He and Boris Johnson manage to make me feel a teensy bit better about Trump.

[biondetta]

Yeah, the first time I saw him was on Mock the Week. I really thought he was a performance artist at first. Sadly, no. As someone else pointed out, there's a reason they were called "The Troubles". Who wants to return to that?! He's such a twatwaffle.

[Martini Girl]

Hey- I'm at a loss here. I don't even know if this question goes in this thread or not. I've been having a discussion on social justice on FB, and it was brought to my attention that Gandhi was both a terrible racist and a rapist??!!

Has anyone heard this before, and I've just been willfully naive? On the one hand, I don't think a person should be held totally accountable by his/her thoughts as a 24 year old. I think most people evolve over time. However, I found the article disturbing.

Here's the article that was cited

[chonies]

Aug 30, 2018 23:06:12 GMT -4 Martini Girl said:

Hey- I'm at a loss here. I don't even know if this question goes in this thread or not. I've been having a discussion on social justice on FB, and it was brought to my attention that Gandhi was both a terrible racist and a rapist??!!

Has anyone heard this before, and I've just been willfully naive? On the one hand, I don't think a person should be held totally accountable by his/her thoughts as a 24 year old. I think most people evolve over time. However, I found the article disturbing.

Here's the article that was cited

I'm conflicted about that article for a few reasons. 1) She makes some good and accurate points, especially because Gandhi has been hugely and inaccurately mythologized in many ways, but 2) she really should cite her sources better. Pasting together quotes without attribution really doesn't help her case.

As for me, these claims were not new, although I'm kind of surprised she left out his comments that Jews should have submitted themselves to the butcher's knife. All I can really recommend is some bibliotherapy: look into some academic biographies of Gandhi (and Ambedkar, and Jinnah, and the other parties) and do a dive into the topic, and let your discomfort guide your research. It will hurt like hell, but it will a meaningful hurt as you sort out the truth (and I'm not an expert, and since Gandhi was a complicated human, the truth may be different from what is presented here, too). Gandhi's legacy lives for a reason, but maybe those reasons have changed, or maybe the truth will set you free (so to speak). I hate to sound like a bad librarian, especially after griping about the citations, but Wikipedia's Gandhi page has the green plus button of balance, and it's heavily sourced. It might be a good place to start.

This sort of thing really sucks, Martini Girl, and I hope you can find some solace.

[Martini Girl]

Aug 31, 2018 7:01:25 GMT -4 chonies said:

Aug 30, 2018 23:06:12 GMT -4 Martini Girl said:

Hey- I'm at a loss here. I don't even know if this question goes in this thread or not. I've been having a discussion on social justice on FB, and it was brought to my attention that Gandhi was both a terrible racist and a rapist??!!

Has anyone heard this before, and I've just been willfully naive? On the one hand, I don't think a person should be held totally accountable by his/her thoughts as a 24 year old. I think most people evolve over time. However, I found the article disturbing.

Here's the article that was cited

I'm conflicted about that article for a few reasons. 1) She makes some good and accurate points, especially because Gandhi has been hugely and inaccurately mythologized in many ways, but 2) she really should cite her sources better. Pasting together quotes without attribution really doesn't help her case.

As for me, these claims were not new, although I'm kind of surprised she left out his comments that Jews should have submitted themselves to the butcher's knife. All I can really recommend is some bibliotherapy: look into some academic biographies of Gandhi (and Ambedkar, and Jinnah, and the other parties) and do a dive into the topic, and let your discomfort guide your research. It will hurt like hell, but it will a meaningful hurt as you sort out the truth (and I'm not an expert, and since Gandhi was a complicated human, the truth may be different from what is presented here, too). Gandhi's legacy lives for a reason, but maybe those reasons have changed, or maybe the truth will set you free (so to speak). I hate to sound like a bad librarian, especially after griping about the citations, but Wikipedia's Gandhi page has the green plus button of balance, and it's heavily sourced. It might be a good place to start.

This sort of thing really sucks, Martini Girl, and I hope you can find some solace.

Thank you Chonies for your very thoughtful reply. I'm very appreciative.

I had a very long conversation with a friend last night. We met at Rev Lawson's workshop a year ago. Rev Lawson believes in Gandhi's work and used it as the basis to help our Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s-60s. He's talked at length about the mythology and romanticism of Gandhi, and why's it's so dangerous because it doesn't account for the complicated life Gandhi lived, but he's never delved into any of this. My friend Nick basically said he separates out the man's foibles from the incredible legacy of work he created. He said, as a black man, my life would be very different had it not been for King and Lawson. And I think that's true.

The women I talked to on FB, think everyone needs to just stop emulating Gandhi -- essentially throwing out the baby with the bathwater-- and I just think that's so shortsighted, but I appreciate them enlightening me on the subject. My jaw was on the floor as I continued reading. As a Catholic, my teachers avoided Asian history, and in college, I focused more on war history and strategy, so I never really delved into Gandhi's life beyond his work in non-violence.

Anyway, if nothing else, this thought that Gandhi should be ignored(??) doesn't allow for the formidable work Dr. Martin Luther King and Rev Lawson did in the 1950s/60s. Rev Lawson also taught Marshall Ganz (who taught Obama), and Ganz worked with Cesar Chavez and obviously did incredible work with the migrant farm workers here in California using the non-violence platform to overcome their oppression. Another incredible leader from California, Maria Elena Durazo, and been a beacon of light for unions in California for decades, and she too is a firm believer in Gandhi's non-violence work. So from where I'm standing, a lot of good has come out of the non-violence movement, and people I deeply admire for making a difference in our country's history have been inspired by Gandhi, so I can't just dismiss all of that.

We live in such a complicated time, don't we? I will continue to go down the rabbit hole.

Thanks again.