It would be weird for the guy who only speaks in metaphor to not use a metaphor this one time.
Really this is just a modern reinterpretation of this verse that lets people drive their Mercedes from their gated community once a week to church and not feel bad about it
Miss me with the generational infighting. Its not your parents refusing to pay you appropriately, it's capitalists
They greet us as liberators
One of the major reasons the Civil Rights Acts were passed is because moderates saw how heinous and violent southern police and governments were to black Americans living there. The thing that galvanized the country to finally end Jim Crow and start repairing the damage done from slavery and the failure of Reconstruction was to get cameras on it and show "normal" people how bad it really was.
If I had to estimate it might be about three-fifths of a democracy on a good day
Yes I fully agree, and thank you for the conversation. However I am deeply cynical American society will excise their fascist tumor since they have such a long history of refusing to punish criminals, enforce laws, and enact meaningful reform.
It certainly wouldn't have gone perfectly but I think the best evidence that it would have eventually worked out for the better is how much political power former slaves had shortly after the Civil War ended while Reconstruction, in whatever diluted form, was actually being attempted. This is the period we get the first black senator, Hiram Revels from Mississippi. Further, In 1868 black Americans made up a majority of the South Carolina's state legislature and opened the South's first public school system. Former slaves started taking up tons of local political offices as well. They wielded true local political power and although there were still racists opposed to their inclusion in society, it was much harder to extract former slaves from that society and subjugate them again. Once federal troops withdrew from the South all of these reforms were taken away, violently and illegally, by the people who weren't punished under Johnson, the violence and subjugation became much easier. This is how we get Jim Crow etc.
I mean, if this period had gone on for long enough for white Southerners to benefit from it, maybe a generation or so, we wouldn't even have the modern Republican party since it only exists today as an extension of white Southern racism that was enabled by Johnson. Instead, we get generation after generation of white Southern children being indoctrinated into racist beliefs because the leaders of the Confederacy were allowed to spread their hateful ideals throughout their society after they lost the war. We'd live in a much more egalitarian society as a whole if that hadn't happened. Again, not without its problems, but we would have solved the major problem. It's most of my issue with people today jumping to Trump being the worst president, not only is it recency bias but he's just the obvious result of decisions made by Johnson et. al. during Reconstruction.
If Reconstruction had proceeded properly, the United States would have hung all of the Confederate officers and government officials and at least pulled up the root of the problems in the South. Johnson allowed them to fester and re-emerge, and we have been living with those problems since.
Not punishing heinous crimes like chattel slavery and violent insurrection is how we get precedent for not punishing even more crimes. Like Ford pardoning Nixon so "the country can heal" and then Reagan using that precedent for Iran-Contra and then Bush using that precedent to steal the 2000 election and commit the US illegally in Iraq etc etc. And now Trump realizing that laws don't matter at all and doing whatever he wants with impunity. Most of the Supreme Court justices are direct descendants of politics Johnson enabled. Roberts clerked for Rehnquist ffs, an avowed segregationist who wouldn't have been politically viable if Reconstruction had succeeded.
Andrew Johnson was by far the worst of all time for sabotaging Reconstruction. Basically every problem we have now including Trump/fascism is a direct result of Johnson's actions.
No, deductions for business expenses happen "above the line" so they reduce your taxable income. The standard deduction happens "below the line" and is applied to your taxable income after business expenses etc
Pro tip: if you are actually making side income like this and reporting it to the IRS then in many situations you can deduct the costs of the things you needed to buy in the course of generating that income.
This does not work on W2 income, though, as much as it would be nice to deduct the costs of driving to an office etc
Perhaps some people are out of touch, regardless of whatever arbitrary date they were born. But the response to that shouldn't be infighting among other working class people, it should be conversation that addresses root cause.