Food for thought.

MichaelaSJ wrote:...a thunderstorm happening so there is a bit of ozone in the air.

Well, we had a heat wave this last week in the Northern California, and then Sunday morning early we had a very rare Summer thunderstorm. Over three thousand lightning strikes with many hitting the ground.

Over 6,000 fires were started by two days of thunderstorms, with very little rain. One of the fires, currently growing in size and already estimated to be the seventh largest ever in California is barely 15 miles to the east and southeast of my home. My home is not in danger, but there have already been dozens of homes burned. I built two homes in the late 80s in the area of this fire but they aren't in serious jeopardy.

There is another massive fire to the west/southwest of my home north of Santa Cruz. It is growing in size and has already killed three people foolish enough to ignore evacuation orders. Many homes have been lost and more are in the path of the fire's movement to the northeast.

It was 94F/34C here today, no rain, fortunately little wind and the smoke is so thick I can taste it.

Hi Miki!

Wow, you can keep that heat, I think we were close to or matched that temperature for a couple of days, around two weeks ago. The fire thing must be terrible, we had a bad one on heathland near Chobham, probably much smaller but still an awful danger.

And I wish your firefighters well, I think they are very brave. Why do people not evacuate when told, that is so silly! The smoke cannot be too nice and I feel for people with respiratory problems. I hope they are extinguished soon.

Celia xx

Celia Eriksson wrote:Why do people not evacuate when told, that is so silly!

Every society has people who think their freedom is being taken away if they are told to do something, even if it is meant to keep them safe. Here, in the States, most of these fools are also the ones who vote for the Trumps/Qnon/alt-right type of politico because they think they will support their foolishness.

Celia Eriksson wrote:The smoke cannot be too nice and I feel for people with respiratory problems.

The winds shifted overnight and while the wind is not great it has blown the smoke from the coastal fire(s) in my direction. I have difficulty seeing the foothills less than a mile from my home.

Celia Eriksson wrote:I hope they are extinguished soon

Me too!

MichaelaSJ wrote:

Celia Eriksson wrote:Why do people not evacuate when told, that is so silly!

Every society has people who think their freedom is being taken away if they are told to do something, even if it is meant to keep them safe. Here, in the States, most of these fools are also the ones who vote for the Trumps/Qnon/alt-right type of politico because they think they will support their foolishness.

Far More to it than that, I have lived though a number of Natural disasters myself, It is less about a feeling of freedom being taken away than it is about problems with insurance coverage and the high potential for loosing everything.

Every Natural Disaster I have been through when people do evacuate and come back to total destruction of their home & belongings, 9 times out of 10 the Insurance company's go as far as bankruptcy to avoid paying out on claims, leaving the person who was insured completely destitute, that happened to me personally more than once, fighting it in court is a literal waste of effort and finances.

Additionally in Rural areas people also often have additional "Living" concerns, those being their pets and livestock which to the majority of them are almost like children to them, most country people develop "very" strong attachments to their animals and will rather risk death defending and caring for them than abandon them.

MichaelaSJ wrote:

Celia Eriksson wrote:The smoke cannot be too nice and I feel for people with respiratory problems.

The winds shifted overnight and while the wind is not great it has blown the smoke from the coastal fire(s) in my direction. I have difficulty seeing the foothills less than a mile from my home.

the smoke is blowing all of the way up here to North Idaho also, quite a lot of it.

MichaelaSJ wrote:

Celia Eriksson wrote:I hope they are extinguished soon

Me too!

[/quote]

No Argument from me on that, but I will also add that I wish for the safety of all fighting the fires, that is very brutal, and dangerous work.

The thing to remember here is that you have two forms of BLM. The first one is BLM the sentiment. That's Black Lives Matter. Personally I'm of the opinion that if you need to put red, yellow, black, or white in front of "lives matter" you're a racist, but you can't really argue with the BLM sentiment as long as they don't take exception to the "lives matter" sentiment.

The second one is BLM the movement. That BLM actually stands for "belligerent lying Marxists." Now I'm not going to say it's not about racial equality for the followers, because that's what they used to draw them in. It's not about racial equality for the higher-ups, though. It's just something they co-opted as part of their policy of never letting a crisis go to waste.

What we're seeing here mirrors the early stages of the Bolshevik uprising, they just needed a different rallying cry. In early 20th century Russia your parents' occupations or your first job determined your career path. If your mother was a seamstress and your father was a farmer you would either be a seamstress/tailor or a farmer. If you left the farm for the city and your first job was at a factory you were there until you died, were fired, or left for a different factory. Lateral mobility was difficult, let alone upward mobility.

It was easy to convince the populace that the royal family and the business owners were getting rich off of their work while only barely keeping them alive to earn them more money. That was all you needed to work the people into a frenzy and, in their fight for freedom, bring about a system where your career path was determined by your parents or whatever job the government gave you where lateral mobility was difficult and upward mobility was impossible.

But what do you do in a nation where a blacksmith can save up for woodworking tools and become a carpenter? Or a factory worker can invent something in his free time, sell it, and reach a point where he needs to become a factory owner himself? Or a former slave can become a pioneer in heart surgery? How do you turn a population against business owners in a nation where it's remarkably easy to become a business owner yourself? How do you turn them against leaders who were hired by them, paid by them, and until about 50 years ago, accountable to them?

You can't. Class warfare doesn't work in a society where you can work your way into a higher class or blunder your way into a lower class. The answer to that is to change the definition of class and equate it to something unrelated, such as race.

Teach a generation who has never coexisted with former slaves that they're still in bondage. Teach children born at a time when "separate but equal" was a memory that James Crow is alive and well, still running the nation. Teach them that because they attended school in the wrong part of the city they will never amount to anything. Drill it into them until they believe that knowledge that a teacher doesn't give them will never be obtained, that filling in the gaps through independent study is a fool's errand, teach them not to try to improve their lives but to place the blame on people with no control over their ancestors for what was done to a generation that lived and died before their parents were born.

Teach them that they're not accountable for their actions, that nothing they do is wrong and any punishment for their actions is because of the color of their skin. Most importantly, teach them to ignore their elders. "Kid, you don't know racism. I lived at a time when the color of my skin limited my opportunities. Today, if a person doesn't live the life they want, they only have themselves to blame." That advice my friend's grandfather, who lived through Jim Crow, gave him wasn't the wisdom of an elder who experienced the hard times, worked his butt off when the barrier was torn down, and lived a life he previously thought would only be a dream. It was just the ramblings of a senile old Uncle Tom according to the narrative.

BLM the movement is just the mantle that the modern Bolsheviks have adopted. The classes were so fluid that they couldn't be used to sow discord so they redefined it. Black and white aren't races to them, they're classes. All white people are wealthy (I type this from my ramshackle 40 year old trailer while calculating how long it will take to save up for a $200 water heater), all black people are poor, the ones who aren't either advanced because a white overlord allowed them to or they turned their back on their race (nope, Fred didn't get where he is by taking his grandpa's advice to heart and working his butt off. He only has a nice house and a 40 hour per week job that pays enough for fancy toys on the weekends because a white man allowed it or he gave up his heritage).

The Bolsheviks were able to vilify the Czar and the factory owners. The neo-Bosheviks had to vilify a race. The movement is not about race, it's about overthrowing the nation's institutions as they did in Russia.

This very well could be a false flag attack from white supremacists, but it's equally likely, maybe more likely, that it's yet another ploy by the Marxists to sow the discord they need to slip in and take control.

One of the problems is that people are manipulated by actual and demonstrable right wing elements into almost believable conspiracies.

It's blatant. It doesn't help that the left is mostly clueless and disorganized. Mostly the left is idealistic and usually fighting each other.

I honestly don't know why the right worries about them.

Bigots always win

tiffany_elizabeth wrote:The thing to remember here is that you have two forms of BLM. The first one is BLM the sentiment. That's Black Lives Matter. Personally I'm of the opinion that if you need to put red, yellow, black, or white in front of "lives matter" you're a racist, but you can't really argue with the BLM sentiment as long as they don't take exception to the "lives matter" sentiment.

The second one is BLM the movement. That BLM actually stands for "belligerent lying Marxists." Now I'm not going to say it's not about racial equality for the followers, because that's what they used to draw them in. It's not about racial equality for the higher-ups, though. It's just something they co-opted as part of their policy of never letting a crisis go to waste.

What we're seeing here mirrors the early stages of the Bolshevik uprising, they just needed a different rallying cry. In early 20th century Russia your parents' occupations or your first job determined your career path. If your mother was a seamstress and your father was a farmer you would either be a seamstress/tailor or a farmer. If you left the farm for the city and your first job was at a factory you were there until you died, were fired, or left for a different factory. Lateral mobility was difficult, let alone upward mobility.

It was easy to convince the populace that the royal family and the business owners were getting rich off of their work while only barely keeping them alive to earn them more money. That was all you needed to work the people into a frenzy and, in their fight for freedom, bring about a system where your career path was determined by your parents or whatever job the government gave you where lateral mobility was difficult and upward mobility was impossible.

But what do you do in a nation where a blacksmith can save up for woodworking tools and become a carpenter? Or a factory worker can invent something in his free time, sell it, and reach a point where he needs to become a factory owner himself? Or a former slave can become a pioneer in heart surgery? How do you turn a population against business owners in a nation where it's remarkably easy to become a business owner yourself? How do you turn them against leaders who were hired by them, paid by them, and until about 50 years ago, accountable to them?

You can't. Class warfare doesn't work in a society where you can work your way into a higher class or blunder your way into a lower class. The answer to that is to change the definition of class and equate it to something unrelated, such as race.

Teach a generation who has never coexisted with former slaves that they're still in bondage. Teach children born at a time when "separate but equal" was a memory that James Crow is alive and well, still running the nation. Teach them that because they attended school in the wrong part of the city they will never amount to anything. Drill it into them until they believe that knowledge that a teacher doesn't give them will never be obtained, that filling in the gaps through independent study is a fool's errand, teach them not to try to improve their lives but to place the blame on people with no control over their ancestors for what was done to a generation that lived and died before their parents were born.

Teach them that they're not accountable for their actions, that nothing they do is wrong and any punishment for their actions is because of the color of their skin. Most importantly, teach them to ignore their elders. "Kid, you don't know racism. I lived at a time when the color of my skin limited my opportunities. Today, if a person doesn't live the life they want, they only have themselves to blame." That advice my friend's grandfather, who lived through Jim Crow, gave him wasn't the wisdom of an elder who experienced the hard times, worked his butt off when the barrier was torn down, and lived a life he previously thought would only be a dream. It was just the ramblings of a senile old Uncle Tom according to the narrative.

BLM the movement is just the mantle that the modern Bolsheviks have adopted. The classes were so fluid that they couldn't be used to sow discord so they redefined it. Black and white aren't races to them, they're classes. All white people are wealthy (I type this from my ramshackle 40 year old trailer while calculating how long it will take to save up for a $200 water heater), all black people are poor, the ones who aren't either advanced because a white overlord allowed them to or they turned their back on their race (nope, Fred didn't get where he is by taking his grandpa's advice to heart and working his butt off. He only has a nice house and a 40 hour per week job that pays enough for fancy toys on the weekends because a white man allowed it or he gave up his heritage).

The Bolsheviks were able to vilify the Czar and the factory owners. The neo-Bosheviks had to vilify a race. The movement is not about race, it's about overthrowing the nation's institutions as they did in Russia.

This very well could be a false flag attack from white supremacists, but it's equally likely, maybe more likely, that it's yet another ploy by the Marxists to sow the discord they need to slip in and take control.

then why don't they at lease disavow the ones rioting and acting out violently?
it is a simple thing to do to show that "We arent with those violent criminals".

mariehart1 wrote:One of the  problems is that people  are manipulated by actual  and demonstrable right wing elements into almost  believable  conspiracies.

It's  blatant. It doesn't  help  that the left is mostly  clueless and  disorganized. Mostly the  left is idealistic and usually fighting each  other.

I honestly don't know why the right worries about  them.

Bigots always win

No, Bigots only win when the response to their bigotry is poorly thought out and poorly executed.

new one.

https://i.servimg.com/u/f12/19/98/76/22/blm_ex10.jpg

I started to take this thread in a direction that has seemingly gotten out of control.

So, I am putting the brakes on the thread.