How many more?

[CathyA]

I know I sound like a broken record, but I have to wonder if all cultures are not supposed to meld. Some cultures have behavior that other cultures find inappropriate/offensive. But in our country especially, we're supposed to deny all those feelings.
It really irks me that all I'm hearing on the news is "We have to come together!" Well, some people don't want to come together......which is a problem. Of course there are many in each culture who CAN come together. But some cannot. And it can only lead to these types of unrest all the time. But we keep insisting that we all have to be alike, or accepting of most all behaviors. Some behaviors can't ever be accepted. We all have had different pasts and experiences, so we can't really tell each other to believe what we believe, because reality may have led us to a different place.

How would this go over: If we had group discussion with blacks and whites, where people actually said what they really felt? And I'm not talking just about educated people. I fear it would turn into violence.........
Some people just don't want to get along or "conform".

[bae]

I know I sound like a broken record ...
...
Some people ....

No, you don't sound like a broken record. You sound like something else entirely...

[Ultralight]

No, you don't sound like a broken record. You sound like something else entirely...

Go on...

[Ultralight]

I wonder if there are any black people on this forum...

[ApatheticNoMore]

So what is the solution if all cultures can't meld? In my fantasy sometimes it's for white people to leave the country, GO BACK HOME, go back to Europe already (white Sander's supports may not have a problem with this ). It's the native american's country of course, but what to do with people brought over here in chains. Yea I know there are lot of other much more voluntary immigrant groups (not to mention people of mixed race, should have told them cultures "don't meld" before the parents got in bed I guess).

[catherine]

Since Bernie began spinning his tales of the magical Nordic kingdoms, some (including the Danish Prime Minister) have taken exception to his Utopian claims. I'm sure we will always have something to learn from Finland or Singapore, but I have to assume their value as benchmarks require a good measure of qualification.

I think other people are more likely to brand Bernie as a socialist (oh horrors!! A Socialist! Where's McCarthy when you need him??) than Bernie is--he describes himself as a Democratic socialist and there is a big difference--democratic socialists support capitalism, for one thing. So there is no disconnect between Democratic socialism and what the prime minister calls his own country: a market economy.

And we know there is NO utopia, but Bernie has to point out to people who lack imagination that these crazy ideas just might work. And even Michael Booth says the in the Washington Post article:

Interviewer: You emphasize, in the end, that there is a lot that we can learn from the Nordic countries. What is one of the best lessons?

MB: At least aim for economic and gender equality. Everyone benefits, so it’s worth a shot, no?

Yes, one of Bernie's chief issues: rising economic inequality. So let's start there. [And to keep on topic: how about racial inequality?]

According to Scientific American:

We may not want to believe it, but the United States is now the most unequal of all Western nations. To make matters worse, America has considerably less social mobility than Canada and Europe.

As the sociologists Stephen McNamee and Robert Miller Jr. point out in their book, “The Meritocracy Myth,” Americans widely believe that success is due to individual talent and effort. Ironically, when the term "meritocracy” was first used by Michael Young (in his 1958 book “The Rise of the Meritocracy”) it was meant to criticize a society ruled by the talent elite. “It is good sense to appoint individual people to jobs on their merit,” wrote Young in a 2001 essay for the Guardian. “It is the opposite when those who are judged to have merit of a particular kind harden into a new social class without room in it for others.” The creator of the phrase wishes we would stop using it because it underwrites the myth that those who have money and power must deserve it (and the more sinister belief that the less fortunate don’t deserve better).

[Ultralight]

We may not want to believe it, but the United States is now the most unequal of all Western nations. To make matters worse, America has considerably less social mobility than Canada and Europe.

Catherine... I am not sure you got the memo. This is a sign of success to the GOP. This inequality of wealth and lack of social mobility is what they wanted and they want it to go even further.

[bae]

So what is the solution if all cultures can't meld? In my fantasy sometimes it's for white people to leave the country, GO BACK HOME, go back to Europe already ...

My Hopi friends want the Navajo to go back home.

My Navajo friends want the Spanish out of their hair.

My Spanish friends want the Anglos to leave.

Me, I live on land that wasn't ever used significantly by any predecessor culture, so my side of the canoe is dry....

[Ultralight]

I am like 2 or 3 percent Portuguese. Can I go back to Portugal?

[ApatheticNoMore]

I think other people are more likely to brand Bernie as a socialist (oh horrors!! A Socialist! Where's McCarthy when you need him??) than Bernie is--he describes himself as a Democratic socialist and there is a big difference--democratic socialists support capitalism, for one thing. So there is no disconnect between Democratic socialism and what the prime minister calls his own country: a market economy.

He likes to call himself a socialist, why, who knows, he does have a somewhat activist past so maybe he likes identifying with radicalism. Maybe it's pre-emptive, oh well they're just going to call me a pinko anyway (no matter how politically illiterate this may be and when a guy is going off blabbing about national socialism being socialism like in that article you know they are utterly political illterate). But I think he just likes the label. He's a social Democrat, he's also much like an FDR Democrat. Does anyone anywhere use "Democratic socialist" that way as opposed to "social Democrat?". "Democratic socialist" isn't a term in common use I don't think, but I'd tend to think it means something like worker co-ops, which are socialist, and democratic (or aim to be).