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April 11th 2016, 12:29 PM
peasantm.gif
shevek
Peasant They/Them Netherlands
Never be afraid to ask, but don't demand an answer 
Those various groups and their representatives have immense power in the USA and elsewhere.
So if they have all this power, how come they are the poorest people in the country? Why wouldn't they use all this power for getting some money so they can get a better life?

House Bill 2 passed in North Carolina
So their massive power is shown by the fact that laws are passed which make it illegal for them to even exist? Or in this case, to go to a bathroom, and that forces public organizations to discriminate against them? And that there is some push back to those laws? You call that power? Really?

Brendan Eich was forced to step down
I haven't heard that story, but yes, things like that happen sometimes. It shows that their power is growing. But it's not growing into a super-power, it's growing from zero to still very much below the power of "normal" people (the norm being white male cis (non-trans) straight christian).

Would a CEO who is outspoken against straight people be forced to resign? Someone who openly hates white people? Are you kidding me? Such a person wouldn't become CEO in the first place. How many large American companies have a black CEO? How many have a female CEO? Trans? Muslim? The sum of all of the above is near zero. How is that possible, if those groups have so much power?

people are scared of Muslims and therefore simply do not criticise Islam on television ever.
Ha Ha Ha

The TV is practically a non-stop stream of Muslim bashing. But I guess you're saying that they are so powerful, because some people complain about it as well?

At a "draw Mohammed" competition
Why does that even happen, if the Muslims have so much power?

two guys turned up to kill everyone
At a black church in South Carolina, a white christian racist turned up and shot and killed nine people. In Newtown, two non-Muslim insane kids killed a lot of elementary school kids. And I can go on.

This country has a gun problem. There are mass shootings everywhere, all the time. All of them are done by crazy people. Some of those crazy people are Muslim. Why do you blame all of Islam for that subgroup of crazy people, but you don't blame all white people, or all christians, or all men, or all gun owners, for the majority of the shootings?

were thankfully shot dead
I think police here is too eager to kill. They should have tried to arrest them without killing them. In this specific case I think killing them was justified, but in general I am not thankful when people are shot dead.

nobody will ever call them out on it
So what are you doing right now? Aren't you calling them out on it?

All the power that you attribute to the minorities comes from regular people on the internet. But when you do the same thing, it doesn't count?

Every time one of these attacks occurs, nobody ever dares blame Islam or the contents of the Koran
Yes, lots of people actually do just that, and it makes things worse. Because sure, there is violent text in the Koran. There's also violent text in the bible. There is also lots of peaceful language in the bible. And in the Koran. All those books are very self contradicting. If you believe in them, you have to pick and choose which parts you believe. The crusaders chose the wrong parts of the bible. ISIS chose the wrong parts of the Koran. That doesn't mean all other Christians, or all other Muslims, are violent and dangerous.

I would love it if all religions would be treated by everyone as stories without any truth behind them. But that's not going to happen anytime soon. When the great majority of a group chooses to believe the peaceful parts of a religion, and that is true for both Christianity and Islam, it is not only wrong to blame all of them for a few radicals; it is counterproductive.

If you aren't sure about the numbers: the KKK (which was doing its terrorism on a Christian basis) was a larger percentage of all Christianity than ISIS is now of all Muslims. You're not claiming that the KKK was a good reason for extra surveillance on European Christians, I hope? Then why is ISIS a reason for doing the same thing to all Muslims?

"It's t-t-the religion of peace!"
I haven't heard that a lot. Sure, some say it, but they are idiots. The truth is that any major religion can be the religion of peace, and it can be the religion of violence. It just depends which part of the text you believe. I like Muslims who choose the peaceful texts better than the ones who choose the violent texts, but that doesn't mean either of them is right.

This power through public sympathy alone is huge.
Yet the only result of this huge power is that they are slightly less aggressively discriminated against. If they had real power, they would have money. They would have politicians on their side and laws that would help them would be passed. Or at the very least, laws that discriminate them would not be passed. But the fact is those laws are passed, including HB2 in North Carolina (which mostly targets transgenders, but also hurts other minorities). Because of this power you speak of, in South Carolina they won't pass a similar law. Isn't that great power, the ability to make people discriminate slightly less than they otherwise would?

I believe the black lobby has a fair bit of power as well through Al Sharpton and the NAACP and college affirmative action but I don't know enough about it.
Sure they do. They are organizing in an effort to achieve equality. And they have some succes, meaning they have more power than 0. But it doesn't mean they have as much power as other people. Because they are massively discriminated against. In St. Louis and other places, the police department deals out random fines to black people because they want more money. Blacks do marijuana at the same rates as whites, but get arrested four times as much. Unarmed black people get mistreated, sometimes shot and killed, by police all over the country.

If the result of "huge power" is that your people don't get killed for no reason just as often as before, you deserve a lot more power.

What is actual huge power? The power that we should fight against? Political donors. The pharmaceutical industry, the banks, the oil companies, the military industrial complex. They bribe politicians and get massive tax breaks or subsidies in return. They break the law and crash the economy, hurting everyone in the country except the super-rich, and they don't get prosecuted. You want to know why salaries don't go up? They say it's because all those minorities are... I'm not even sure what they are supposed to do, but you should be angry at them. That's a lie. The minorities don't even have enough power to make sure they are treated fairly in life. The reason is that while productivity has continued to rise, incomes of workers have not risen. Almost all new wealth goes to the richest people in the country.

Although, how much power these groups you've listed wield is debatable, it is simply absurd to assert that they are powerless.
They are at a massive disadvantage in society. They use all their power in an effort to survive (and in many cases, that is quite literal; the suicide rate among transgenders is huge, that's not because they have such great lives). I agree that strictly speaking they aren't "powerless". But "the world" is so much against them, that even with all the power they can get, they are still in a much worse position than people who aren't part of that group.

Estonian donkey wranglers may seem powerless, but they have the superpower of being able to walk down the street without being stopped (or killed) by the police. They have the power of being taken seriously when talking to a public official. They have the power to be able to live a normal life, and they don't even have to do anything for it. That's called privilege. Some people complain about being called privileged without having done anything to deserve it. That's exactly what privilege means. You're not to blame for it (neither do you deserve credit). But it is a great power, even if it feels completely normal. A much greater power than being able to fight back against massive discrimination so it becomes slightly less bad.