Why is there so much hate, and why is the country (US) so divided?

Redlining really tore those families and neighborhoods apart.

 

No, paying women to have babies out of wedlock sure did. Government became the man of the house on the government plantation.

 

Are you female and speaking from experience?

 

You have your opinion, and then redlining has the facts.

 

Your idea of what the definition is to the left is totally wrong

 

Sure it did. That is why the black ownership rate rose nearly 10% when redlining was active. Redlining has been banned for 50 years and the black home ownership rate is now the same as it was when redlining ended. If you want to make assertions, please back them up with data like I just did for you.

 

No, I read the sociological studies.

Unless you are a science denier, you have to acknowledge that women were happier before woman's lib.

 

I don't know that redlining caused any poverty.

 

It is and those that want to destroy us cannot do so without destroying themselves so instead they're doing it with stealth and manipulation. It starts with creating something contentious out of something where disagreements are small and agitators suggest that one side is maligning the other and out of this a narrative grows. Before long the original argument is forgotten but the animosity it created still exists and is fueled by more lies and agitation. The very things that made America the greatest nation in the history of the world, unfettered freedom and economic opportunity are being stripped away. Free speech, religion, capitalism are all under attack and those who are critical of those things have absolutely no idea what it would mean if they were prohibited. The fairytale that is Socialism appeals to them as some magical, messianic, form of governance where all our problems are solved, magic isn't real and neither are fairytales. The vision of our founders and the Constitution are the most staid, reliable and consistent consensus the world has ever known. We have, in over 244 years never been under the rule of a foreign conqueror and have risen to become the champion of many countries who have been, such that it's intolerable to other world powers that wish us ill. Compounding and complicating all of this is the endemic corruption that feeds on all of this within parts of our government, never has this been more true than now with the mess that's been made with the election. Right on cue the opinion machine is cranking out more division than ever only this time the stakes are for all the marbles, we are on the brink of losing America, does anybody remember what the original argument was? This is happening to us all, not just Republicans or not just to Democrats and I fear we're a day late and a dollar short. The the time to cut the **** and be unanimously American has come and gone.

 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. No hearts, no flowers, no rainbows, same ****, different day. Good Luck with that.

 

50 Years of Failure – The Black Home Ownership Rate and U.S. Affordable Housing Programs

Black Homeownership Paradox
That means, despite widespread, legal housing discrimination in the 1950s and at least part of the 1960s, the number of black families that owned their own houses increased 20% from 1950 to 1970 but, somehow, 50 years after housing discrimination was outlawed, the black homeownership rate is essentially the same today as it was the day the 1968 Fair Housing Act became law.
...
https://realestatedecoded.com/2-sur...-black-homeownership-rate-from-1950-to-today/

This is your article you forgot to include the link.

 

By all means, link to them.

 

he History of Redlining
The term “redlining” was coined by sociologist John McKnight in the 1960s and derives from how the federal government and lenders would literally draw a red line on a map around the neighborhoods they would not invest in based on demographics alone. Black inner-city neighborhoods were most likely to be redlined.1 Investigations found that lenders would make loans to lower-income Whites but not to middle- or upper-income African Americans.2
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/redlining.asp

If you are interested.

 

Indeed, in the 1930s the federal government began redlining real estate, marking “risky” neighborhoods for federal mortgage loans on the basis of race.3 The result of this redlining in real estate could still be felt decades later. In 1996 homes in redlined neighborhoods were worth less than half that of the homes in what the government had deemed as “best” for mortgage lending, and that disparity has only grown greater in the last two decades.4
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/redlining.asp

Well, one can read up on it. It certainly didn't help.

 

I live a nice liberal lifestyle and I am quite happy.

 

Affirmative Action only negatively effects low end White men, the bottom of the barrel. When space is made in a medical school for an affirmative action student, the potential students that have been replaced have been the least qualified students. In the workplace and in professions, it is the poor performers who have been pushed aside.

Quality White men have nothing to fear from affirmative action as it is has long been the thinking of quality White men that has brought us to modernity and modern thought.

 

AA is not a system gamed against whites. Many white women can get help from AA. As well as any other white in a minority class.

 

Welfare in America began in the nineteenthirties, in the aftermath of the Great Depression. Originally it mostly only helped White widows and their minor children. Included in the Social Security Act was the provision to care for those with physical and mental handicaps which is a type of welfare. Welfare was increased to care for the families of fallen soldiers after WWII. It was only after the civil rights legislation during Johnson’s presidency that Blacks have been able to gain access to welfare, in the way Whites have been doing for much longer.

Nixon’s and later Reagan’s War on Drugs was formulated primarily to do harm to Blacks and “hippies”. Prior to the 1970’s the prison population in the US was comparable to the rest of the first world countries.

During the civil unrest of the sixties it came to light that those doing the protesting tended to also be smoking marihuana, dropping LSD, and snorting cocaine. It wasn’t entirely true, but that was the perception. From this the War on Drugs was created to do harm to Nixon’s perceived enemies.

When one plots incarcerations over time, one sees a steady rise of incarcerations beginning with the signing of anti drug legislation. Now the US has more people in prison or jail than any other country on earth. The US is only 5% of the world’s population but houses 20% of all imprisoned people - a disproportionate number of them being Black men.

This allows certain individuals to say. See I am not a racist, Blacks commit more crimes. All the while ignoring that the laws that are being violating were purposely created to harass Blacks and others. Laws that are only randomly enforced, and only on certain populations.

 

You watch "Establishment News" which in reality is fake news.

I am absolutely thrilled you got married. Enjoy your life. It's great!

 

That is a real nice attempt at revisionism.

 

The post by @dadoalex got me interested in the origins of SOCIAL SECURITY & I found this VERY interesting article, on a government website. I left out the beginning & end, for anyone interested in more.
https://www.ssa.gov/history/briefhistory3.html

The Rise of Formal Systems of Economic Security

As societies grew in economic and social complexity, and as isolated farms gave way to cities and villages, Europe witnessed the development of formal organizations of various types that sought to protect the economic security of their members. Probably the earliest of these organizations were guilds formed during the Middle Ages by merchants or craftsmen. Individuals who had a common trade or business banded together into mutual aid societies, or guilds. These guilds regulated production and employment and they also provided a range of benefits to their members including financial help in times of poverty or illness and contributions to help defray the expenses when a member died.

Out of the tradition of the guilds emerged the friendly societies. These organizations began appearing in England in the 16th century. Again organized around a common trade or business, the friendly societies would evolve into what we now call fraternal organizations and were the forerunners of modern trade unions.

In addition to the types of economic security provided by the guilds, the fraternal organizations and some trade unions would begin the practice of providing actuarially-based life insurance to their members. The friendly societies and the fraternal organizations would grow dramatically following the Industrial Revolution. By the beginning of the 19th century one of out every nine Englishmen belonged to one of these organizations.

Among early U.S. fraternal organizations that we are familiar with even into the present day were: the Freemasons (which came to America in 1730); the Odd Fellows (1819); Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks (186; Loyal Order of Moose (188; and the Fraternal Order of Eagles (189.


The English "Poor Laws"

As the state began to assume responsibility for economic security, the English began the development of a series of "Poor Laws" adopted to provide help to the poor, as the problem of economic security was seen primarily as a problem afflicting the poor.

The English Poor Law of 1601 was the first systematic codification of English ideas about the responsibility of the state to provide for the welfare of its citizens. It provided for taxation to fund relief activities; it distinguished between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor; relief was local and community controlled; and almshouses were eventually established to house those on relief. The law was at once both generous and harsh. Generous in that it acknowledged the government's duty to provide for the welfare of the poor, but harsh in that it viewed the poor as highly undesirable characters and treated them accordingly.

There were a series of changes and "reforms" of the "Poor Laws" over the years, but this essential structure was the tradition the pilgrims brought with them when they journeyed to the New World.


Economic Security in America

When the English-speaking colonists arrived in the New World they brought with them the ideas and customs they knew in England, including the "Poor Laws." The first colonial poor laws were fashioned after those of the Poor Law of 1601. They featured local taxation to support the destitute; they discriminated between the "worthy" and the "unworthy" poor; and all relief was a local responsibility. No public institutions for the poor or standardized eligibility criteria would exist for nearly a century. It was up to local town elders to decide who was worthy of support and how that support would be provided.

As colonial America grew more complex, diverse and mobile, the localized systems of poor relief were strained. The result was some limited movement to state financing and the creation of almshouses and poorhouses to "contain" the problem. For much of the 18th and 19th centuries most poverty relief was provided in the almshouses and poorhouses. Relief was made as unpleasant as possible in order to "discourage" dependency. Those receiving relief could lose their personal property, the right to vote, the right to move, and in some cases were required to wear a large "P" on their clothing to announce their status.

Support outside the institutions was called "outdoor relief" and was looked upon with distrust by most citizens. It was felt that "outdoor relief" made things too easy on the poor who should be discouraged from the habit of poverty in every way possible. Nevertheless, since it was expensive to build and operate the poorhouses, and since it was relatively easy to dispense cash or in-kind support, some outdoor relief did emerge. Even so, prevailing American attitudes toward poverty relief were always skeptical and the role of government was kept to the minimum. So much so that by as late as 1915 at most only 25% of the money spent on outdoor relief was from public funds.


Old Age in Colonial America

Although the need for economic security affects all ages and classes of society, one particularly acute aspect of this need is the problem of old age and the possibility of retirement after a long life of labor. Retirement, a feature of life we now take so much for granted, was not always readily available, and it was a struggle to develop adequate systems of retirement.

One of the first people to propose a scheme for retirement security that is recognizable as a forerunner of modern social insurance was Revolutionary War figure THOMAS PAINE. His last great pamphlet, published in the winter of 1795, was a controversial call for the establishment of a public system of economic security for the new nation. Entitled, Agrarian Justice, it called for the creation of a system whereby those inheriting property would pay a 10% INHERITANCE TAX to create a special fund out of which a one-time stipend of 15 pounds sterling would be paid to each citizen upon attaining age 21, to give them a start in life, and annual benefits of 10 pounds sterling to be paid to every person age 50 and older, to guard against poverty in old-age.


Civil War Pensions: America's First "Social Security" Program

Although Social Security did not really arrive in America until 1935, there was one important precursor, that offered something we could recognize as a social security program, to one special segment of the American population. Following the Civil War, there were hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans, and hundreds of thousands of disabled veterans. In fact, immediately following the Civil War a much higher proportion of the population was disabled or survivors of deceased breadwinners than at any time in America's history. This led to the development of a generous pension program, with interesting similarities to later developments in Social Security. (The first national pension program for soldiers was actually passed in early 1776, prior even to the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Throughout America's ante-bellum period pensions of limited types were paid to veterans of America's various wars. But it was with the creation of Civil War pensions that a full-fledged pension system developed in America for the first time.)

The Civil War Pension program began shortly after the start of the War, with the first legislation in 1862 providing for benefits linked to disabilities "incurred as a direct consequence of . . .military duty." Widows and orphans could receive pensions equal in amount to that which would have been payable to their deceased solider if he had been disabled. In 1890 the link with service-connected disability was broken, and any disabled Civil War veteran qualified for benefits. In 1906, old-age was made a sufficient qualification for benefits. So that by 1910, Civil War veterans and their survivors enjoyed a program of disability, survivors and old-age benefits similar in some ways to the later Social Security programs. By 1910, over 90% of the remaining Civil War veterans were receiving benefits under this program, although they constituted barely .6% of the total U.S. population of that era. Civil War pensions were also an asset that attracted young wives to elderly veterans whose pensions they could inherit as the widow of a war veteran. Indeed, there were still surviving widows of Civil War veterans receiving Civil War pensions as late as 1999!

In the aggregate, military pensions were an important source of economic security in the early years of the nation. In 1893, for example, the $165 million spent on military pensions was the largest single expenditure ever made by the federal government. In 1894 military pensions accounted for 37% of the entire federal budget. (The Civil War pension system was not without its critics.)

But these figures based on the federal budget exaggerate the role of military pensions in providing overall economic security since the federal government's share of the economy was much smaller in earlier times. Also, there were features of the system which meant that many veterans did not receive any benefits. For example, former Confederate soldiers and their families were barred from receiving Civil War pensions. So in 1910 the per capita average military pension expenditure for residents of Ohio was $3.36 and for Indiana it was $3.90. By contrast, the per capita average for the Southern states was less than 50 cents (it was 17 cents in South Carolina).

Despite the fact that America had a "social security" program in the form of Civil War pensions since 1862, this precedent did not extend itself to the general society. The expansion of these types of benefit programs to the general population, under Social Security, would have to await additional social and historical developments.


The Company Pension

Prior to the rise of company pension plans, paternalistic companies sometimes "graduated" older workers to token jobs at reduced pay. A few paid some form of retirement stipend—but only if the company was so inclined, since there were no rights to any kind of retirement benefit. Most older workers were simply dismissed when their productive years were behind them.

One of the first formal company pension plans for industrial workers was introduced in 1882 by the Alfred Dolge Company, a builder of pianos and organs. Dolge withheld 1% of each workers’ pay and placed it into a pension fund, to which the company added 6% interest each year. Dolge viewed providing for older workers as being a business cost like any other, arguing that just as his company had to provide for the depreciation of its machinery, he should also "provide for the depreciation of his employees." Despite Mr. Dolge’s progressive ideas and his best intentions, the plan proved largely unsuccessful since it required a worker to spend many years in continuous employment with the company, and labor mobility, then as now, meant that relatively few workers spend their whole working career with one company. Not only was the Dolge Plan one of the first formal company pension systems in industrial America, it was also one of the first to disappear when the company went out of business a few years later.

The biggest problem with company-provided pensions was that the percentage of workers anticipating an employment-related pension from their company or their union was tiny. Indeed, in 1900 there were a total of five companies in the United States (including Dolge) offering their industrial workers company-sponsored pensions. As late as 1932, only about 15% of the laborforce had any kind of potential employment-related pension. And because the pensions were often granted or withheld at the option of the employer, most of these workers would never see a retirement pension. Indeed, only about 5% of the elderly were in fact receiving retirement pensions in 1932.

So the company pension was an option not available to most Americans during the time prior to the advent of Social Security.


The March of Coxey's Army

The Great Depression of the 1930s was not the only one in America's history. In fact, it was the third depression of the modern era, following previous economic collapses in the 1840s and again in the 1890s. During the depression of the 1890s unemployment was widespread and many Americans came to the realization that in an industrialized society the threat to economic security represented by unemployment could strike anyone--even those able and willing to work. Protest movements arose--the most quixotic and notable being that of "Coxey's Army."

Jacob Coxey was an unsuccessful Ohio politician and industrialist who, in 1894, called on the unemployed from all over the country to join him in an "army" marching on Washington. Ten of thousands of unemployed workers started marches, but by the time Coxey and his group finally made it to Washington only about 500 hard-core believers remained. Coxey himself was promptly arrested for walking on the grass of the Capitol Building and the protest fizzled out. Coxey later became an advocate of public works as a remedy for unemployment and ran for president as the Farmer-Labor party candidate in 1932 and 1936. (Coxey was also an ardent proponent of the free-silver monetary policy and an opponent of the gold standard. Perhaps to demonstrate his earnestness on monetary issues he even named his son Legal Tender Coxey!)

 

Why is the US so divided? What is there to UNITED around?

 

Agreed

So if the problem is democratic socialism, why is it that other nations that are much more ‘socialist’ than many on the right can even fathom in less debt (by GDP) and have much more national harmony? Also, what industry are Democrats proposing be taken over by the people, besides healthcare?

You speak of suppressing people but yet we see most extreme gerrymandering and voter disengagement being done by the right.
Also, wouldn’t you think you were the only person that could manage if every time your opponent entered office they left with a recession, lower growth, a worse preforming stock market, more debt and less cooperation? Would that not be a valid thought?

Lots of emotionally charged buzz words to sit there and accuse the other side of “fear” as a control tactic.

 

There is a book I'm currently reading that answers your question. It's titled "Day of Reckoning" by Patrick J Buchanan. This book explains the "Browning" of America in a very clear, concise way. The changing demographic of this country is causing the political friction---and it is only going to get worse, I think.
Please ask for this book at your library; it is worth reading.

 

Your 'Victim Ideology' is showing.

https://www.researchgate.net/public...ts_and_White_Separatists_in_the_United_States