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penpusherI sorta like writing answers to questions on Quora. And I do mean "sorta" like. The answers I'm most compelled to write are often the ones that get the least amount of interest. That's because Quora is another space where a lot of right wing, GOP, MAGA and conservative minds go to gather and I'm talking to a brick wall most of the time when I try to give reasonable and rational responses to some of these wild questions.
Of course, AI is also there answering questions (they seem to have a dedicated bot for everything related to "Star Trek," so I find that both scary and amusing). And AI even generates questions for you to answer, based on your own expertise, which I suppose is good?
My most popular answers are all the pop culture comments I made on such wide ranging topics like "Bridget Loves Bernie," "Mister Ed" Serena Altschul and the death of John Ritter. And a lot of those I hadn't even put a lot of effort into writing.
That reminds me of my WTF Episode of "Mister Ed" and I was going to do a whole series of reports about some of my favorite classic TV shows and their WTF eps. I'll have to think more about that.
Since my material doesn't always play over there, I thought I'd bring just a few of the questions I answered here, just so they can get ignored, again!
Here Goes Nothing.
This first question has 43 views and was written over a year ago.
Jemele Hill said if black athletes speak their mind, they're considered troublemakers or ungrateful, do you agree?
//To answer this question, I want to invite you to take a step back and look at the full landscape of our nation.
But, before we give a glance at the sweeping vista that is, let’s understand a fundamental element of what conservatism is. This is important, so please don’t think I’m avoiding the question; this is a core element of the answer.
Conservatives, essentially, want things to stay exactly as they are, or, even better for their philosophy, want our society to become more restrictive, more controlled. The general idea is they like where we are at (for the most part) and do not want wholesale changes in how things work. Stick a pin in that thought.
Whenever someone, no matter their race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, country of origin or any other specifics of their life might be, speaks up about an issue they find problematic with our country, conservatives get annoyed. Why can’t everybody be happy with how things are right now? Why are they marching in the streets, making noise and causing trouble?
Obviously, if these opinions matched those of conservatives, they would have no issue, and, in fact, those “complainers” would be treated with respect and might even be celebrated. Look at conservative commentator Candace Owens. She has stated her opinions and the Republican party has raised her up, given her a platform and even allowed her to address Congress. That’s because she’s saying something that affirms the Status Quo, comments that they agree with, and they want to use that as a cudgel against other Black Americans, who are stating their truths.
The problem is that women, minority citizens, the LGBTQ+ community, people of differing religious backgrounds and immigrants within our society can see what’s going on, know that our system of government isn’t being fair to them and are trying to get some leverage so that they will be treated with the same care as the majority group, and honestly, why shouldn’t they be treated exactly the same?
Let’s face it. We ALL complain when there has been an unjust act against us. If an umpire or referee makes a bad call during a sporting event, the athlete and the fans that saw the play will react. It’s human nature. In these cases, however, this is not a sport; we’re talking about the lives of individuals, families and communities being negatively impacted by these actions, rules and laws.
But, getting back to that view of the nation I promised, many people in this country have their own way of considering what it represents, what history has happened and where we should be going. Part of the reason why we have thrived as a country, and really the only reason why the United States exists at all is due to a single word.
COMPROMISE.
What does “compromise” mean, in context with the existence of the United States?
Back when it was the United Colonies of America, and the work was being done for George III and the British Crown, the colonies were making and shipping raw materials back to the motherland. Products like Tobacco, Rice, and King Cotton were produced on plantations, mostly in the southern areas of the region. The Colonies were able to turn a nice profit on this because they used slave labor.
I’m not going to go into a discussion about THAT element, here. The point as it relates to compromise is that the Colonists noted that they were being taxed for nearly everything, as George III slapped tariffs on all goods, both imported and exported. Meanwhile the Colonies had no voice in Parliament. That wasn’t fair.
The Colonies wanted to be free of The Crown. And they made steps to do it. They raised money for an army. They got George Washington to command it. And they wrote a document stating their grievances with the Tyrant and goals for the future. It was known as The Declaration of Independence.
Here’s where the first compromise happened. The Northern states wanted to immediately end slavery before the country was founded. The agrarian Southerners wanted to retain it. So, when the passage that abolished slavery was in the Declaration, they refused to sign.
The Northern Colonies, knowing that they could not take on the largest and fiercest fighting force in the world at the time with only half of their group, made the terrible compromise of allowing slavery to continue to bring the south back.
In order to feel comfortable with yourself about kidnapping a human, holding them without any charge, feeding them whatever you decided was enough, forcing them to perform tasks that you choose, in the amount of time that you desired, and if they refused or failed, to punish them in any manner you saw fit, up to and including murder, there had to be an elaborate lie.
The lie, in this case, was that these Black slaves were not *quite* human. And this lie spread far and wide. If your slaves aren’t human, you don’t have to treat them humanely. This was then legislated into the Constitution by stating that any enslaved person was considered three-fifths of a free person.
And this carried on for decades.
Black Americans are still seen as less than, oftentimes on sight by the viewer, even now. And that goes all the way back to this compromise. It’s how racism, truly a 17th Century problem is still plaguing our society in the 21st Century.
Because of how racism works, people in the majority group have no knowledge of how the people in the oppressed group have to handle their lives. They don’t know or understand what extra elements those that are Black Americans have to deal with, on top of the problems and issues we ALL have to deal with, day to day. So, when there is a chance to allow the majority group to understand what those things are, we need to use that opportunity, to reach out, to share, to let the majority see what’s happening and to, hopefully, get them to demand changes for everyone, to the benefit of the entire country.
That’s where these Black Athletes come in.
There aren’t a lot of opportunities for high profile Black Americans to speak up about circumstances that need this kind of attention, but certainly Black Athletes have that chance. Not all have been vocal. But just by being on the scene and on the team, they have had a kind of say.
Then others have become outspoken. Muhammad Ali. Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the Olympians who raised their fists on the podium at the 1968 games, Colin Kaepernick, who took a knee during the National Anthem. And many, many others.
The majority group doesn’t care about a problem that doesn’t directly affect themselves. So they are more than willing to criticize and/or ignore the message that is being sent by these athletes, preferring to see them as “troublemakers” or “ungrateful.” After all, these people are, in many cases, millionaires in their chosen sports, and how dare they “complain” about how “bad” the nation is when they are doing better than they, as the viewer, might be?
You see how difficult this is, and why this is taking so long to answer, properly.
But this is a function of racism. Ignorance of the problem lets the majority group ignore the problem.
At the end of the day, we should all be considered Americans, first. We should all have the same respect and treatment, both under the law, and with our fellow Americans. And having that would make our nation even stronger, more resilient, and more able to rise to any challenge, because no other country on Earth is as diverse as the United States, and that is one of our most incredible strengths. It’s just that the majority group wants to diminish all of the minority groups and that hurts all of us in ways you would never consider, unless you ever thought about it.
Now, more than ever, we need to support all minority groups in this country, because that supports EVERYONE in this country.//
This next answer has 41 views.
What are the reasons for reparations? What are the reasons against reparations? Please, I am asking for reasons: facts not emotions.
//What are the facts? The British colonists who were sent by King George III originally, to exploit and essentially steal the natural resources of this continent did so with the help of slaves: black chattel slaves from Africa.
Could the colonies have hired people to do these jobs? Of course they could have. But if they did, they wouldn’t have made enough of a profit to break away from their Mother Country - Great Britain, when the Crown started to abuse the colonies with extra taxes. They couldn’t have enticed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to help support their revolution, and they never would have succeeded in creating a new country.
So, let’s just start with that single fact: there wouldn’t have even been a United States as a country (or certainly wouldn’t have been one until much later in history) except for slavery.
What do you suppose that is worth?
But here’s the thing about reparations. You have to look at the circumstances from both directions. The United States, as an entity, many of the wealthiest people of the country and many businesses, earned great profits at that time. None of that money was shared with the people who did the work to create those profits. So the people who were getting the benefit of that success had a tremendous advantage, while the slaves (who weren’t even considered human, by law), received none of that.
If the slaves received the proper pay for their work, they would have been in a better position to have some power and to do some of the things that their white counterparts of the day were doing - starting their lives, being able to provide for their families, having some leisure time, which could have been used to create, to invent, to do any number of things to improve their lives. There really is no way to quantify that.
But slavery isn’t the only reason why reparations might be considered. After the Civil War ended, and the Union wanted to reintroduce the Confederate States to create one nation again, The south would have balked at the concept of “free Black Americans” as part of their world. So Jim Crow Laws were instituted.
This travesty of justice continued to abuse Black Americans, who still did not have their full rights, by law, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 were signed into law, all by President Lyndon Baines Johnson. That had nothing to do with slavery, yet it was denial of human rights, which is the point of reparations.
Additionally, racism is still working to marginalize Black and Brown citizens, so this is an ongoing problem that has still not been addressed.
The bottom line is that reparations are similar to a civil case. We would have to have the two sides to discuss all of these points, and many more, in order to properly consider this as a topic. But that means that we actually do consider this - not dismiss it as “extortion” on someone’s part or “taking money from someone who never owned slaves and giving it to someone who was never a slave.” That is an immature, simplistic and frankly, un-American way of looking at this problem. It suggests that the very issues that are a reason for considering reparations: those being that one group of Americans is unworthy of being treated with the same respect as another, are still just as strong now as they were in every prior generation.
That should tell you that reparations are worthy of at least a proper discussion.//
And one more, for now... this one has a whole 50 views!
Why is it that Republicans are so susceptible to conspiracy theories?
//Let’s start with this. A “Conspiracy Theory” is, at its root, a way of explaining something bad or illegal that you don’t understand, using little to no facts, that accuses someone, be it a person, group, organization, company, political party, government, foreign country or some other body, of being the cause of the wrongdoing and being in need of investigation, being charged criminally and being fined and/or jailed for their actions.
When put in that context, it’s easy to see why Republicans are continually using conspiracy theories to explain everything they find wrong with the United States. They are desperate to accuse particular people to blame them for the problems they perceive because they want them off the scene. However they have no facts, so they must use a “theory.”
But these Republicans continually trot out their conspiracies as if they were proven true, and are so demanding and convincing in their insistence, their base is compelled to believe them. And then it becomes an “upward spiral,’ as they insist these theories are facts, more of their base start to believe and share that info, and that causes a bigger number of people to begin repeating these theories, all, again, without a speck of proof. Before you know it, tens of thousands of people are starting to call for an explanation of how this could have happened, and when will the “guilty” be “held accountable.”
This could all be cleared up if anyone bothered to share the truth. But, as we all should know by now, Republicans never share truth when lies are getting them what they want.//
To put the think into this thinkpost, I have to say that Quora has handed the lion's share of power on their site to the masses that want to control it, and anyone who wants to "downvote" an entry can do so, and reduce the number of people who will see any post. So the propaganda can be supported by everyone who upvotes an entry and truth and facts can be buried by those that don't want to hear it.
That's part of the reason I had to come back to DW. There's only so much writing you can do when people are trying to silence what you're saying and I need my place to state what needs to be said. I know that I get political, maybe too much, but I can't help it. I have to say what I'm saying, I have to share these thoughts and I hope to get some sort of feedback, which is another issue with Quora. People can downvote your respnses, and then never say a word about it, avoiding any discussion or debate over the concepts and preventing any more thought to develop. I know most of my political and social issue posts are not popular here. I'm either preaching to the choir or maybe someone just doesn't want to know about it. Unfortunately it doesn't change anything, save one thing... I probably need to start syndicating my posts to places where people who need or want to see them can find them.
Time to start thinking about the future...
Of course, AI is also there answering questions (they seem to have a dedicated bot for everything related to "Star Trek," so I find that both scary and amusing). And AI even generates questions for you to answer, based on your own expertise, which I suppose is good?
My most popular answers are all the pop culture comments I made on such wide ranging topics like "Bridget Loves Bernie," "Mister Ed" Serena Altschul and the death of John Ritter. And a lot of those I hadn't even put a lot of effort into writing.
That reminds me of my WTF Episode of "Mister Ed" and I was going to do a whole series of reports about some of my favorite classic TV shows and their WTF eps. I'll have to think more about that.
Since my material doesn't always play over there, I thought I'd bring just a few of the questions I answered here, just so they can get ignored, again!
Here Goes Nothing.
This first question has 43 views and was written over a year ago.
Jemele Hill said if black athletes speak their mind, they're considered troublemakers or ungrateful, do you agree?
//To answer this question, I want to invite you to take a step back and look at the full landscape of our nation.
But, before we give a glance at the sweeping vista that is, let’s understand a fundamental element of what conservatism is. This is important, so please don’t think I’m avoiding the question; this is a core element of the answer.
Conservatives, essentially, want things to stay exactly as they are, or, even better for their philosophy, want our society to become more restrictive, more controlled. The general idea is they like where we are at (for the most part) and do not want wholesale changes in how things work. Stick a pin in that thought.
Whenever someone, no matter their race, gender, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, country of origin or any other specifics of their life might be, speaks up about an issue they find problematic with our country, conservatives get annoyed. Why can’t everybody be happy with how things are right now? Why are they marching in the streets, making noise and causing trouble?
Obviously, if these opinions matched those of conservatives, they would have no issue, and, in fact, those “complainers” would be treated with respect and might even be celebrated. Look at conservative commentator Candace Owens. She has stated her opinions and the Republican party has raised her up, given her a platform and even allowed her to address Congress. That’s because she’s saying something that affirms the Status Quo, comments that they agree with, and they want to use that as a cudgel against other Black Americans, who are stating their truths.
The problem is that women, minority citizens, the LGBTQ+ community, people of differing religious backgrounds and immigrants within our society can see what’s going on, know that our system of government isn’t being fair to them and are trying to get some leverage so that they will be treated with the same care as the majority group, and honestly, why shouldn’t they be treated exactly the same?
Let’s face it. We ALL complain when there has been an unjust act against us. If an umpire or referee makes a bad call during a sporting event, the athlete and the fans that saw the play will react. It’s human nature. In these cases, however, this is not a sport; we’re talking about the lives of individuals, families and communities being negatively impacted by these actions, rules and laws.
But, getting back to that view of the nation I promised, many people in this country have their own way of considering what it represents, what history has happened and where we should be going. Part of the reason why we have thrived as a country, and really the only reason why the United States exists at all is due to a single word.
COMPROMISE.
What does “compromise” mean, in context with the existence of the United States?
Back when it was the United Colonies of America, and the work was being done for George III and the British Crown, the colonies were making and shipping raw materials back to the motherland. Products like Tobacco, Rice, and King Cotton were produced on plantations, mostly in the southern areas of the region. The Colonies were able to turn a nice profit on this because they used slave labor.
I’m not going to go into a discussion about THAT element, here. The point as it relates to compromise is that the Colonists noted that they were being taxed for nearly everything, as George III slapped tariffs on all goods, both imported and exported. Meanwhile the Colonies had no voice in Parliament. That wasn’t fair.
The Colonies wanted to be free of The Crown. And they made steps to do it. They raised money for an army. They got George Washington to command it. And they wrote a document stating their grievances with the Tyrant and goals for the future. It was known as The Declaration of Independence.
Here’s where the first compromise happened. The Northern states wanted to immediately end slavery before the country was founded. The agrarian Southerners wanted to retain it. So, when the passage that abolished slavery was in the Declaration, they refused to sign.
The Northern Colonies, knowing that they could not take on the largest and fiercest fighting force in the world at the time with only half of their group, made the terrible compromise of allowing slavery to continue to bring the south back.
In order to feel comfortable with yourself about kidnapping a human, holding them without any charge, feeding them whatever you decided was enough, forcing them to perform tasks that you choose, in the amount of time that you desired, and if they refused or failed, to punish them in any manner you saw fit, up to and including murder, there had to be an elaborate lie.
The lie, in this case, was that these Black slaves were not *quite* human. And this lie spread far and wide. If your slaves aren’t human, you don’t have to treat them humanely. This was then legislated into the Constitution by stating that any enslaved person was considered three-fifths of a free person.
And this carried on for decades.
Black Americans are still seen as less than, oftentimes on sight by the viewer, even now. And that goes all the way back to this compromise. It’s how racism, truly a 17th Century problem is still plaguing our society in the 21st Century.
Because of how racism works, people in the majority group have no knowledge of how the people in the oppressed group have to handle their lives. They don’t know or understand what extra elements those that are Black Americans have to deal with, on top of the problems and issues we ALL have to deal with, day to day. So, when there is a chance to allow the majority group to understand what those things are, we need to use that opportunity, to reach out, to share, to let the majority see what’s happening and to, hopefully, get them to demand changes for everyone, to the benefit of the entire country.
That’s where these Black Athletes come in.
There aren’t a lot of opportunities for high profile Black Americans to speak up about circumstances that need this kind of attention, but certainly Black Athletes have that chance. Not all have been vocal. But just by being on the scene and on the team, they have had a kind of say.
Then others have become outspoken. Muhammad Ali. Tommie Smith and John Carlos, the Olympians who raised their fists on the podium at the 1968 games, Colin Kaepernick, who took a knee during the National Anthem. And many, many others.
The majority group doesn’t care about a problem that doesn’t directly affect themselves. So they are more than willing to criticize and/or ignore the message that is being sent by these athletes, preferring to see them as “troublemakers” or “ungrateful.” After all, these people are, in many cases, millionaires in their chosen sports, and how dare they “complain” about how “bad” the nation is when they are doing better than they, as the viewer, might be?
You see how difficult this is, and why this is taking so long to answer, properly.
But this is a function of racism. Ignorance of the problem lets the majority group ignore the problem.
At the end of the day, we should all be considered Americans, first. We should all have the same respect and treatment, both under the law, and with our fellow Americans. And having that would make our nation even stronger, more resilient, and more able to rise to any challenge, because no other country on Earth is as diverse as the United States, and that is one of our most incredible strengths. It’s just that the majority group wants to diminish all of the minority groups and that hurts all of us in ways you would never consider, unless you ever thought about it.
Now, more than ever, we need to support all minority groups in this country, because that supports EVERYONE in this country.//
This next answer has 41 views.
What are the reasons for reparations? What are the reasons against reparations? Please, I am asking for reasons: facts not emotions.
//What are the facts? The British colonists who were sent by King George III originally, to exploit and essentially steal the natural resources of this continent did so with the help of slaves: black chattel slaves from Africa.
Could the colonies have hired people to do these jobs? Of course they could have. But if they did, they wouldn’t have made enough of a profit to break away from their Mother Country - Great Britain, when the Crown started to abuse the colonies with extra taxes. They couldn’t have enticed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette to help support their revolution, and they never would have succeeded in creating a new country.
So, let’s just start with that single fact: there wouldn’t have even been a United States as a country (or certainly wouldn’t have been one until much later in history) except for slavery.
What do you suppose that is worth?
But here’s the thing about reparations. You have to look at the circumstances from both directions. The United States, as an entity, many of the wealthiest people of the country and many businesses, earned great profits at that time. None of that money was shared with the people who did the work to create those profits. So the people who were getting the benefit of that success had a tremendous advantage, while the slaves (who weren’t even considered human, by law), received none of that.
If the slaves received the proper pay for their work, they would have been in a better position to have some power and to do some of the things that their white counterparts of the day were doing - starting their lives, being able to provide for their families, having some leisure time, which could have been used to create, to invent, to do any number of things to improve their lives. There really is no way to quantify that.
But slavery isn’t the only reason why reparations might be considered. After the Civil War ended, and the Union wanted to reintroduce the Confederate States to create one nation again, The south would have balked at the concept of “free Black Americans” as part of their world. So Jim Crow Laws were instituted.
This travesty of justice continued to abuse Black Americans, who still did not have their full rights, by law, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 were signed into law, all by President Lyndon Baines Johnson. That had nothing to do with slavery, yet it was denial of human rights, which is the point of reparations.
Additionally, racism is still working to marginalize Black and Brown citizens, so this is an ongoing problem that has still not been addressed.
The bottom line is that reparations are similar to a civil case. We would have to have the two sides to discuss all of these points, and many more, in order to properly consider this as a topic. But that means that we actually do consider this - not dismiss it as “extortion” on someone’s part or “taking money from someone who never owned slaves and giving it to someone who was never a slave.” That is an immature, simplistic and frankly, un-American way of looking at this problem. It suggests that the very issues that are a reason for considering reparations: those being that one group of Americans is unworthy of being treated with the same respect as another, are still just as strong now as they were in every prior generation.
That should tell you that reparations are worthy of at least a proper discussion.//
And one more, for now... this one has a whole 50 views!
Why is it that Republicans are so susceptible to conspiracy theories?
//Let’s start with this. A “Conspiracy Theory” is, at its root, a way of explaining something bad or illegal that you don’t understand, using little to no facts, that accuses someone, be it a person, group, organization, company, political party, government, foreign country or some other body, of being the cause of the wrongdoing and being in need of investigation, being charged criminally and being fined and/or jailed for their actions.
When put in that context, it’s easy to see why Republicans are continually using conspiracy theories to explain everything they find wrong with the United States. They are desperate to accuse particular people to blame them for the problems they perceive because they want them off the scene. However they have no facts, so they must use a “theory.”
But these Republicans continually trot out their conspiracies as if they were proven true, and are so demanding and convincing in their insistence, their base is compelled to believe them. And then it becomes an “upward spiral,’ as they insist these theories are facts, more of their base start to believe and share that info, and that causes a bigger number of people to begin repeating these theories, all, again, without a speck of proof. Before you know it, tens of thousands of people are starting to call for an explanation of how this could have happened, and when will the “guilty” be “held accountable.”
This could all be cleared up if anyone bothered to share the truth. But, as we all should know by now, Republicans never share truth when lies are getting them what they want.//
To put the think into this thinkpost, I have to say that Quora has handed the lion's share of power on their site to the masses that want to control it, and anyone who wants to "downvote" an entry can do so, and reduce the number of people who will see any post. So the propaganda can be supported by everyone who upvotes an entry and truth and facts can be buried by those that don't want to hear it.
That's part of the reason I had to come back to DW. There's only so much writing you can do when people are trying to silence what you're saying and I need my place to state what needs to be said. I know that I get political, maybe too much, but I can't help it. I have to say what I'm saying, I have to share these thoughts and I hope to get some sort of feedback, which is another issue with Quora. People can downvote your respnses, and then never say a word about it, avoiding any discussion or debate over the concepts and preventing any more thought to develop. I know most of my political and social issue posts are not popular here. I'm either preaching to the choir or maybe someone just doesn't want to know about it. Unfortunately it doesn't change anything, save one thing... I probably need to start syndicating my posts to places where people who need or want to see them can find them.
Time to start thinking about the future...