RE: Why Oprah 2020 Should Scare You, Crazy Henry Kissinger Comments
First of all, much respect to you for listening to the entire speech and not just the sound bite, and trying to determine her meaning from context. Too often, a few words are separated from their context and take on an entire new meaning. I applaud you for investigating instead of reacting on knee-jerk impulses.
Now having said that, I too have analyzed it, and I don't agree with your analysis. Even in context, when I read "they just have to die," I don't take that as "we need to wait for them to pass on." I am left with the impression that it means exactly what it's being presented as in this article: a call to expedite their death. If she'd said "we need to wait for them to die," or even if she'd included the word "off" at the end of the quote, then I could see where you're coming from. But the way she said it, it sounds to me like an Ingsoc devotee grumbling "Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc," calling for the death of the "Oldthinkers."
Am I inside Oprah Winfrey's head? Thank God above, no. Ergo, I could be wrong. She may have meant it as you are suggesting.
But That's honestly not the impression I was left with, especially in light of the fact that this "white people need to die" rhetoric is being shouted with no veils or innuendos whatsoever by a massive swath of the very voter base she would be appealing to.
First, I want to clarify, I couldn’t find the whole interview from the bbc I was quoting, I had to work, so I couldn’t keep hunting for it.
I am curious to know why you imagine the intent is in hastening their death (who else would watch any of her content lol) instead of minced words in an unscripted interview.
Maybe I just lived a very sheltered life, but I had never really met any of the “honkies need to die” folks that didn’t come to that opinion because of the overall attitude and treatment that was reflected to them, I also never met a white racist that didn’t have some justifications for why they dislike other ethnicities. We need to all realize life isn’t some team sport we need to pick sides on, and it isn’t a free for all either. We are all on the boat, it doesn’t matter if you paid to be there or if you are paid to be there, if the ship is taking on water, we should all be proactive.
Taking a 20 second clip that sounds minced, is that putting people together or against one another?
It's a valid complaint because what Oprah said, what if Trump had said the same thing? Now come on, people would be all over him. But what Oprah said, and I think the clip alone adequately shows it, is that "A WHOLE GENERATION NEEDS TO DIE."
Well, Hello Oprah...part of that Generation. I guess you just need to crawl off and die.
Fair's fair, right? lol...
If you use quotes, it's best to quote it accurately at least, please look at my comment where I directly transcribed the 20 second excerpt.
Also, Trump said during his campaign (note: Oprah hasn't even confirmed or denied a bid to run, this has all been other people saying she should) that he could shoot someone in the middle of the street and he wouldn't lose votes. Much less ambiguous wouldn't you say? I wasn't there saying "TRUMP WANTS TO GO ON A STREET WIDE SHOOTING SPREE!", in fact, I can't find a trace that anyone even took it that way.
Also, if you check out the transcription, I wouldn't be saying I'm a member of the generation Oprah was talking about, She's talking about South African apartheid supporters and Old South segregationists, but if you insist the shoe fits, why not scream it to the block chain to be immutable?
Well, that was food for thought. I'll give you that.
But after such thought, I still have to make the statement that I can't agree.
To your question of "why," I'd need more psychology training than I have (I've taken plenty of Ed Psych for my current career and plenty of criminology for my former one, but not a lot of general psych) to know, much less explain.
Innuendos and implications are always subtle, and they're perceived through the lens of the listener more than the mouth of the speaker sometimes. All I can say is "when I listen to what she said and compare it to what I'm hearing all around me, this is what it sounded like."
As to the possibility that you've lived a sheltered life, the reverse may be true. I may be seeing through an abnormally harsh lens. My experience may not exactly be mainstream. I grew up a member of the token white family in a neighborhood where being found guilty of being white basically carried a summary death sentence if you were on the wrong street, while all the while the media was telling me "you're white and you have it easy. You don't know what these poor unfortunate minorities go through." I didn't particularly care if this person or that one was black, but I did grow up acutely aware that the reciprocal was not always true, and I had precious little sympathy for anyone who tried to tell me I was some kind of cultural elite who owed something to the people who were shooting at me for the hardships they had suffered. My question was always "what hardships? I'm the one who has to watch every step he takes or word that he says."
The mentality which you summed up as the "honkies need to die" attitude was simply the way of the world, and it didn't matter who did what to cause it; all that mattered was I was the one who was going to die for it if I walked down the wrong street.
When I became a Corrections Officer later, and then a Patrolman, I encountered the same mentality over and over. More than half the homicides I was called to were cases of someone being shot on the grounds of "shoulda kept yo' white @** outta our hood." Executed after being found guilty of being white. I have a tough time buying the "the shooters must have had some kind of reason; it must have been retaliation for some kind of racial discrimination they experienced" line, especially given how many of the victims were children. What racially discriminatory act has a five year old girl committed that gives a 22 year old man legitimate grounds to shoot her? I don't see it, and no one else on the Force I served on (most of whom were black, by the way; the demographics of a Police Force tend to reflect the demographics of their jurisdiction) did either. We had families who lived in that neighborhood, and our job was to round up the ones who were making life dangerous for those families and lock them up, as my Chief always said, " 'til they get a prescription strength dose o' Get-Right in their system." To use your analogy, the boat was taking on water by gallons per second, and everyone with a badge was trying desperately to plug the holes, and far too many of us ended up being full of holes ourselves as a result.
With all that having been said, is it possible that I'm seeing a mentality (the rampant desire to kill anyone found, as I keep phrasing it, "guilty of being white") lurking in every nook and cranny that is actually rare? Possible, yes; but it doesn't look that "rare" to me. It seems to be all over the place. Is it possible that I'm reading into her ill-chosen words and seeing a message that wasn't intended? Possible, yes.
But from my experience with the world, what she said, sounds like what it sounds like. And at the end of the day, that's really all I have that I can go off of.
I can respect your story and life experience, when I wound up homeless at 16 I was in some rough places too and it’s never fun doing what you have to do, but you are assuming a billionaire philanthropist shares a common sentiment with literal thugs. She didn’t even specify white in there, but sure, she literally wants to kill all the old white people.
I just wonder why people had no problem with trumps I could shoot someone and not lose votes, but Oprah just wants octogenarian genocide. It smells like team mentality to me.
Trump's "I could shoot someone" was moronic. No lies. I facepalmed when that came out because I was fairly certain he had just handed the presidency to Hillary Clinton on a silver platter, and that was the point after which most of his supporters (myself included) couldn't make much of a case for him beyond "look dude, it's him or the other Clinton." I could point out that Trump said "someone," key word one, while Oprah is talking about an entire generation (with what I still assert is ethnocidal implications), but even I'll admit that's splitting some really fine semantic hairs, so I won't go there.
As for assuming Oprah Winfrey shares the mentality of those whom you accurately called "literal thugs," try an analogy for a moment.
Let's imagine you see some guy in a suit. Looks respectable enough. Nothing out of place. Even seems to have some class. Then you find out he's got a history of charity donations. Great guy!
And then he starts giving speeches about the kind of people he thinks are the source of problems in the world. He doesn't use the word Jew, but you can tell he's tapdancing around it, with phrases like "they all sit in their synagogues and plot this stuff" or "and they don't care because they'll be safe in Israel." Then he caps it off with "we had a chance to get rid of them back in the '30's and '40's."
Pretty obvious he's a Nazi, right?
Oh, but he never specifically said "Jews" tough.
Look. I can't prove someone's intention when they speak. All I have, all anyone has, is "I've heard this kind of talk from X person, Y person, and Z person. Ergo, this person talking is probably of mindset XYZ."
And here's Oprah making a speech that sounds an awful lot like Black Panther Party rhetoric. I'm seeing feathers and a bill and hearing a quack, so you can point out that there are no visible webbed feet, but I'm still saying "duck."
I’m impressed by the amount of assumptions you made from 5 seconds of audio. I’ll put a bounty out, whoever finds the whole BBC interview, I will pay you some SBD for it. I’m interested to know what all was actually said. It won’t change your assumptions, of that I can be sure, but this is like a guy in a big bird suit quacking, you can think it’s a duck all you want, it’s just a man someone dressed up in a big bird costume trying to convince you it’s a duck.
Nice post