Kestrelraptorial

I never mentioned slavery once in my argument. I said "Sad to say, that (meaning, America could sink/fall apart) is still possible." I was talking about the exhausting uncontrolled debt, failing wars being waged, racebaiting from the left, and gaping holes in our borders. I said I think we have a chance to regain some control of these issues addressing America, but it will be difficult. That's what my post was about. I also said nothing about 'not being able to imagine a world without America', and I think I did explain myself in my post.

So, you think that America is going to sink no matter what? Sad to say, that is still possible. I hope his business leadership will be enough to begin to turn us away from the dark hole of debt and war we were spiraling into, but we may have already crossed the event horizon. It's hard to tell right now. These rioters and protestors against Donald Trump's victory, they're still just screaming about how hateful he is, how racist and sexist and they don't have a leg of a real argument to stand on. Last night, my own mother and sisters came to family dinner saying they had been literally shaking, sobbing, and couldn't sleep because they think the country is falling into a kind of hatred that isn't there, and I ask them why they think that. They only focus on the video of Trump's comment from eleven years ago, and the claim that he hates Mexicans because he claims that they are allowing rapists to cross the border. Well, that is happening. They are so intolerant of one comment from long ago and so blind to real issues, and this ignoring of real border security, real national safety, and although this topic didn't come up in our talk, of real debt is exactly why so many of us voted for Trump and why he won. I even have my own video called "The Truth About Trump's Victory" on YouTube explaining this and I don't think there is any motivation of hatred in it. I even offered to explain to them why the situation isn't as bad as they fear, and they snapped back at me with, "There is NOTHING you (I) can say that will help me now". I mean, really, I try to use reason and calm explanations to reassure them, and I'm treated like the scum of the Earth for it . . . and this is exactly what the left and media have been doing to their own people. They pushed their own hate on us too far, and that is why we elected Trump. I can't say, of course, that the road will be easy for America now. It won't, and I think we were ready to accept and face that, and we wanted to pull America back from the brink before it was too late. I hope it's still not too late.

"We are all immigrants" No, we are not. The children of immigrants born in their parents' new country are not immigrants themselves. Therefore, those of us whose families and ancestors have lived in the United States for generations are not immigrants. We/they are native-born citizens. Also, very few Americans have any problem with legal immigrants who want to work and contribute and pose no threat to the rest of us. If one wanted to go far back enough, you could argue that even Native Americans are immigrants because there was a time when there were no humans in North America (estimation of the time when the first arrived is debated, but often ranges from 18,000 - 12,000 years ago). They came from across Beringia (and I've heard hypothesis of some may have come across the Atlantic from Europe, but it's been a while since I've updated myself on that evidence, I'm more of a dinosaur enthusiast than a mammal/human ancestor one). Anyway, you could also say that every single human population across the world, barring the most ancient bush-tribes in Africa, are immigrants/children of immigrants because modern humans (a 200,000 year-old species) evolved in Africa before spreading across the globe. So, where, in the "we are all immigrants" argument, do you place the distinction between immigrant and native-born? At what generation?

Okay. After reading through the article a couple of times, here is what I think: This study has a strangely large number of factors to it, and it is really three different studies. The first, as the article describes, is simply a survey (it doesn't say whether it was oral or written) of questions of how college students felt about various racial and interracial matchups. It reports a high proportion of tolerance . . . unsurprising, as most people believe that they are. The second involves a different, much smaller sample of college students being shown wedding photographs - and here, I'd say the exact same group should have been tested to examine belief in tolerance versus visual response among the same population sample. Now, the authors believe that the insula activation in their brains infers a lower level of tolerance than initially believed, but the problem is that, admittedly, the insula can respond to emotions other than disgust (and 'disgust' is a strange choice of emotion to be looking for anyway, why not just 'discomfort'?), and again, the first and second surveys are not directly comparable because a different sample of people (19 college students in visual response versus 152 in oral/written were tested). Now, for the third test, before it even begins, the two samples of people, taken from 200 participants, had already gone through pre-test response conditioning: disgusting images versus pleasant images. Then, people of each group were asked to categorize couples of various race mixtures as either: (mixed-race or animal-like) or (human or same-race). This is going to immediately mean that same-race couples will be easily more selected to be 'human' and not 'animal-like' because the participants, I'm guessing, are going to more often push the same-race button when they see a same-race couple and vice-versa. Then the buttons were switched, meaning that same-race couples were more easily associated with animals. The test showed that participants were quicker to push the same-race button when it was attached with the 'human' button than with the 'animal' button. While I cannot disprove that this reveals a bias against mixed-race couples, I have no idea how the disgusting images versus pleasant images shown at the beginning may have affected the participants because its that distribution of the images among the people and those who responded quicker versus slower is never explored. In my opinion, these pre-test images were unnecessary to the experiment, only the responses and response times to the couples images should have been explored, because that's all that was in question. Also, why add in the human versus animal associations? Again, why not simply look for responses of 'comfort' or 'discomfort' again? Physical responses in addition to the already examined oral(or written, still not sure which from Test 1) and mental? So, yeah, the study looks conclusive at first glance, but upon closer examination, has a few too many factors and possible factors to really be. Also, is it unconscious bias that this study was supposed to reveal, because that is difficult to directly associate with actively expressed behavior towards people. It is also known that it is, while certainly possible, still difficult to maintain a stable relationship with someone from a different culture and background, and different races do have, of varying degrees, different cultures and subcultures. So I don't know how or if that was taken into account.

Any answer would really depend on the age of the child(ren). A lot of people supported Trump, but there are huge protests and even riots against him, saying that he is an unforgivable racist/sexist/bigot/rapist etc. with no grounded evidence or proof, and one thing I might be very worried about is children who are Trump supporters, or children of Trump supporters, being bullied or threatened with the those accusations of him thrown at them, and I highly doubt that the teachers/school would do much about it. Again, the extent of how far this might go would depend on the child(ren)s' ages, so it's difficult, without that information, to offer advice. I don't know how involved/aggressive children younger than 10 would be. With children older than 10, I think (and anyone feel free to dispute me), you can begin to talk in some detail about why the election was so intense and go through some of the details of the issues that were talked about, and do admit that there is a lot of accusation, both justified and not, in politics, and that the news/media isn't exactly trustworthy. With teenagers you can definitely go into more detail. Introduce children who can talk with some complexity (and this is the parents' call) about forming their perspective on the issues and Trump's victory through examining his arguments, through logic and evidence, against what Hillary's were, and talk about your, and their, values.

I find it astounding how many Americans don't realize how very close we came to war against Russia. Those of us who did, however, all came together desperate to avert it, and we did, for a very long time I hope.