"The Butler"

[jwoodie]

I recently watched this movie and was struck by the observation that the segregated towns of the US were like Nazi concentration camps. Aside from the validity of this observation, I was wondering how anyone who holds this view could not continue to hate the US. After all, the Nazi's were defeated and replaced by an entirely new form of government, whereas the US has continued with the same form of government it had when slavery was legal.

My questions are:

1. Why would someone who holds these views not hate the US?

2. For those citizens who do hate the US, what is their desired outcome for this country?

 

[oldfart]

I recently watched this movie and was struck by the observation that the segregated towns of the US were like Nazi concentration camps. Aside from the validity of this observation, I was wondering how anyone who holds this view could not continue to hate the US. After all, the Nazi's were defeated and replaced by an entirely new form of government, whereas the US has continued with the same form of government it had when slavery was legal.

My questions are:

1. Why would someone who holds these views not hate the US?

2. For those citizens who do hate the US, what is their desired outcome for this country?

In large parts of the South blacks lived in either separate communities or separate sections of town and were not allowed in the white sections of town after dark. They were called "Sundown towns" and were pretty common. It's a largely forgotten part of our history. Somewhere around WWI segregation transitioned from live-in maids and servants to hiring servants who had to travel from home to work. This is what made the bus boycotts such a big deal. Also prior to 1968 virtually every race riot was mobs of white people storming black neighborhoods or towns, burning homes, businesses, and churches to the ground, and killing and lynching as many black people as they could catch. They were referred to occasionally in southern papers as "****** hunts".

In the grand scheme of things I believe that Nazi concentration camps were a more efficient way of exterminating people, but Sundown towns were a better way of organizing and terrorizing slave labor.

As to the first question, First Nations and black and Asian people have been exploited and subject to discrimination in America, but have been loyal Americans. There is no incidence of espionage or sabotage by Japanese Americans in WWII, although that was ostensibly the danger that required confiscating their homes and businesses and placing them in internment camps. Why people are so loyal to a country that treats them so shamefully is a good question which I leave to psychologists.

As to the second question, dissident groups from the Pilgrims to Quakers to Catholics who founded this country, the First Nations, the black nationalists, Texan nationalists, and unreconstructed rednecks; they all want to carve a home for themselves out of the land we now call America. Some like Quakers, Catholics, and the First Nations were welcoming to others but most wanted to expel those who were "different". For four hundred years that has been the "American way".

 

[jwoodie]

Interesting points. Perhaps the "sundown towns" were more similar to Jewish ghettos in Eastern Europe and Russia prior to industrialization? The continued loyalty of disaffected minorities in this country is a tribute to them as well as our unique American ideals.

Aside from political bickering about government spending and taxes, I haven't heard much about setting up another country within our country. It would seem to be a logical, albeit disastrous, goal for those who believe the US is beyond redemption.

 

[Alfalfa]

I recently watched this movie and was struck by the observation that the segregated towns of the US were like Nazi concentration camps. Aside from the validity of this observation, I was wondering how anyone who holds this view could not continue to hate the US. After all, the Nazi's were defeated and replaced by an entirely new form of government, whereas the US has continued with the same form of government it had when slavery was legal.

My questions are:

1. Why would someone who holds these views not hate the US?

2. For those citizens who do hate the US, what is their desired outcome for this country?

A. Towns were segregated, they were not like "nazi concentration camps".

B. Except that slavery is not legal anymore. The face and fabric of the nation was changed by a constitutional amendment. That's how we "change" our country, not by coups and new governments.

1. What view?

2. Huh?

 

[Alfalfa]

BTW - You do know that about 80% of The Butler was made up Hollywood bullshit?

 

[Katzndogz]

I recently watched this movie and was struck by the observation that the segregated towns of the US were like Nazi concentration camps. Aside from the validity of this observation, I was wondering how anyone who holds this view could not continue to hate the US. After all, the Nazi's were defeated and replaced by an entirely new form of government, whereas the US has continued with the same form of government it had when slavery was legal.

My questions are:

1. Why would someone who holds these views not hate the US?

2. For those citizens who do hate the US, what is their desired outcome for this country?

This is just so much bs, it smells all the way to California.

 

[jwoodie]

I recently watched this movie and was struck by the observation that the segregated towns of the US were like Nazi concentration camps. Aside from the validity of this observation, I was wondering how anyone who holds this view could not continue to hate the US. After all, the Nazi's were defeated and replaced by an entirely new form of government, whereas the US has continued with the same form of government it had when slavery was legal.

My questions are:

1. Why would someone who holds these views not hate the US?

2. For those citizens who do hate the US, what is their desired outcome for this country?

A. Towns were segregated, they were not like "nazi concentration camps".

"Aside from the validity of this observation..."

B. Except that slavery is not legal anymore. The face and fabric of the nation was changed by a constitutional amendment. That's how we "change" our country, not by coups and new governments.

Constitutional amendment did not end "legal" segregation and discrimination.

1. What view?

"...that the segregated towns of the US were like Nazi concentration camps."

2. Huh?

Not sure where this derision/hostility is coming from.

 

[Katzndogz]

This isn't forgotten history. It's never happened history.

Such an alternative hisorical record needs to be manufactured to make palatable the fact that blacks kill more blacks every year than were killed during the entire jim crow period.

While black people did live in their own communities, they do now too. But, they live with bars on their windows and sometimes put their children to bed in bathtubs as protection against the gunfire from other black people.

The Butler is a hollywood version of what it should have been. Like Django Unchained and Roots before it and the next installment of brilliant black people done wrong, the upcoming Twelve Years a Slave.

 

[jwoodie]

Did any of you actually read my OP?

 

[Katzndogz]

Did any of you actually read my OP?

You stsrted out with having seen The Butler, which isn't true, and extrapolated from that a version of history as fake as the movie.

Movie makers are fashioning a version of fake history that justifies almost any level of black violence. In fact, black people today are experiencing a level of violence really unprecedented in all of American history. It is just coming from other black people.

Movie makers have taken it upon themselves to specifically make movies reinventing history so the black people will have a skewed view of themselves as innocent victims always persecuted and overly cruel white people persecuting them. It is to justify upping the level of violence.

 

[Alfalfa]

Did any of you actually read my OP?

It was incomprehensible.

 

[Lumpy 1]

I recently watched this movie and was struck by the observation that the segregated towns of the US were like Nazi concentration camps. Aside from the validity of this observation, I was wondering how anyone who holds this view could not continue to hate the US. After all, the Nazi's were defeated and replaced by an entirely new form of government, whereas the US has continued with the same form of government it had when slavery was legal.

My questions are:

1. Why would someone who holds these views not hate the US?

2. For those citizens who do hate the US, what is their desired outcome for this country?

A. Towns were segregated, they were not like "nazi concentration camps".

"Aside from the validity of this observation..."

B. Except that slavery is not legal anymore. The face and fabric of the nation was changed by a constitutional amendment. That's how we "change" our country, not by coups and new governments.

Constitutional amendment did not end "legal" segregation and discrimination.

1. What view?

"...that the segregated towns of the US were like Nazi concentration camps."

2. Huh?

Not sure where this derision/hostility is coming from.

I think alcohol and lack of sex is involved...

 

[Alfalfa]

Here are some facts about "The Butler"...

The principal character didn't have 2 sons, he had one. That son was never affiliated with the black panthers, never part of the freedom train, never ran for office, he did go to vietnam but returned safely. His wife was not a drunk nor ever had an affair.

The story wasn't based on a book, but an article in a magazine talking about how this black WH employee through so many administrations was now watching the inauguration of the nations first half black president. In fact, it wasn't based on anything other than a writer and his imagination coupled with an agenda.

Now that you take all that BS out of the movie, what do you have left? You based your questions upon observations of the movie and make this statement, "I recently watched this movie and was struck by the observation that the segregated towns of the US were like Nazi concentration camps. Aside from the validity of this observation..."

At this point your questions have no more validity then saying "I just watched Star Wars, for people who believe it and were affected by it can you tell us why you hate the Empire?"

That being said, Forest Whitaker was quite good (he always is...did you see him as Idi Amin in "The King of Scotland"?), as was Oprah and the son. I enjoyed the movie although it's depictions of Nixon and Reagan were purposely hard. But it was strictly a fantasy and that's the way I treated it.

I'll also say this, and I'm sure I will get flack from the winger cons, after all the hype I thought Jane Fonda did a pretty good Nancy. I didn't like how they tried to make her out to be opportunistic...racially, but it was somewhat muted and I doubt many viewers got the subtext. The movie did go out of it's way to show that it was Reagan who finally ordered equal pay for the non white WH employees...and fired the fucker who kept it from happening. It was a theme woven throughout the fabric of the movie and finally resolved by the Old Man himself.

 

[Lumpy 1]

I recently watched this movie and was struck by the observation that the segregated towns of the US were like Nazi concentration camps. Aside from the validity of this observation, I was wondering how anyone who holds this view could not continue to hate the US. After all, the Nazi's were defeated and replaced by an entirely new form of government, whereas the US has continued with the same form of government it had when slavery was legal.

My questions are:

1. Why would someone who holds these views not hate the US?

2. For those citizens who do hate the US, what is their desired outcome for this country?

Why do you say "Nazi concentration camps" were the African Americans starving to death, being gassed, incinerated, and buried barely alive?

Obviously I didn't see the movie, I just figured it was another liberal Hollywood, "You should be guilty for something you had nothing to do with.. movie"

btw. there are approx. 20 million slaves around the world..right now.

 

[Peterf]

Did any of you actually read my OP?

You stsrted out with having seen The Butler, which isn't true, and extrapolated from that a version of history as fake as the movie.

Movie makers are fashioning a version of fake history that justifies almost any level of black violence. In fact, black people today are experiencing a level of violence really unprecedented in all of American history. It is just coming from other black people.

Movie makers have taken it upon themselves to specifically make movies reinventing history so the black people will have a skewed view of themselves as innocent victims always persecuted and overly cruel white people persecuting them. It is to justify upping the level of violence.

From afar it sometimes seems that for most American people their knowledge of history depends entirely on what they have gleaned from Holywood. Even if this is only partly true it is a sad state of affairs.

 

[Katzndogz]

Unfortunately American historical knowledge does come almost entirely from the fictions of Hollywood. Movies today are so realistic it's easy to convince yourself that what you see on the screen really happened. How intelligent is the most intellugent among us ? A reporter asked Alfonso Curacon the director of Gravity to talk about the difficulties of filming in space.

I have been in towns or sections of towns where black people lived prior to 1950. Calling them concentration camps is laughable and completely ignorant. We have sections of cities today that are all or predominently black. Are they in nazi type concentration camps? These black areas today are horrible compared to what they were like 60-70 years ago. Has the proper application of white guilt purified them?

The Hollywood nonsense will get much worse as they shoehorn life into imitating their art.

 

[Alfalfa]

Unfortunately American historical knowledge does come almost entirely from the fictions of Hollywood. Movies today are so realistic it's easy to convince yourself that what you see on the screen really happened. How intelligent is the most intellugent among us ? A reporter asked Alfonso Curacon the director of Gravity to talk about the difficulties of filming in space.

I have been in towns or sections of towns where black people lived prior to 1950. Calling them concentration camps is laughable and completely ignorant. We have sections of cities today that are all or predominently black. Are they in nazi type concentration camps? These black areas today are horrible compared to what they were like 60-70 years ago. Has the proper application of white guilt purified them?

The Hollywood nonsense will get much worse as they shoehorn life into imitating their art.

It was a joke from a joke reporter from a comedy show.

In a press conference in Mexico City, director Alfonso Cuaron was fielding questions about his new blockbuster space thriller when he got an unusual question from one of the reports.

Carlos "El Capi" Perez, a field reporter for the comedy talk show "Deberian Estar Trabajando (You Should be Working)" asked the director what it was like to film in outer space.

"I think that all of us who love cinema, film professional, those of us who perhaps make movies have the same doubt," Perez started, according to the Huffington Post. "What were the technical and physical difficulties of filming in space?"

"Perhaps we all have the same question, isn't that right colleagues?" he continued. "Was it very difficult? Was it complicated to shoot in space? Did the cameramen get dizzy? I don't know."

Read more: Reporter asks 'Gravity' director Alfonso Cuaron what it was like shooting film in space - NY Daily News

For god's sake...

 

[Katzndogz]

Oh please people think the Daily Show is real news and Jon Stewart is a reporter.

 

[jwoodie]

Did any of you actually read my OP?

You stsrted out with having seen The Butler, which isn't true, and extrapolated from that a version of history as fake as the movie.

Movie makers are fashioning a version of fake history that justifies almost any level of black violence. In fact, black people today are experiencing a level of violence really unprecedented in all of American history. It is just coming from other black people.

Movie makers have taken it upon themselves to specifically make movies reinventing history so the black people will have a skewed view of themselves as innocent victims always persecuted and overly cruel white people persecuting them. It is to justify upping the level of violence.

First of all, I did see the movie. Secondly, the observation about Nazi concentration camps was made by the main character, the validity of which I questioned. Third, the issue of what America haters really want is apparently too lofty an intellectual subject for this forum.

 

[Pogo]

Did any of you actually read my OP?

You stsrted out with having seen The Butler, which isn't true, and extrapolated from that a version of history as fake as the movie.

Movie makers are fashioning a version of fake history that justifies almost any level of black violence. In fact, black people today are experiencing a level of violence really unprecedented in all of American history. It is just coming from other black people.

Movie makers have taken it upon themselves to specifically make movies reinventing history so the black people will have a skewed view of themselves as innocent victims always persecuted and overly cruel white people persecuting them. It is to justify upping the level of violence.

First of all, I did see the movie. Secondly, the observation about Nazi concentration camps was made by the main character, the validity of which I questioned. Third, the issue of what America haters really want is apparently too lofty an intellectual subject for this forum.

Don't give up on it just because a couple of intellectual slugs have nothing in their quiver but lame blanket statement and poisoning-the-well fallacies. They don't represent the thoughtful reader, just the underbelly of the board.

Ponder on.