Reparations Is Going To Destroy This Country

[Mike]

I think I've said it before, but I'll say it again.

All of this talk of reparations is going to cause a race war. I won't call it a civil war because that term is overused and worn out, kind of like the term "Hitler", overused and worn out. But call it what you want, it has incited Black people to act on hopes and fantastical promises of a huge payday any day now.

What do you think they are going to do when they find out that they are not going to be paid millions of dollars for wrongs to their ancestors? They are going to protest in the streets, which will lead to riots in the streets the like of which we have never seen or imagined. After that starts, it will be all-out racial warfare in our front yards.

I can't see any way around it now that the genie has been let out of the bottle by foolish Democrat politicians.

‘We have to put White people on notice’

[Kevin]

A historical example of what you are speaking of:

In Russia, by the 1600s, peasants had become serfs. Serfs were essentially tied to the land and the land could not be sold without the serf going along with it. Serfs were legally obligated to stay on the land where they were and running off to free areas was punished by death. Sidenote - many of the Cossack groups were mostly runaway serfs. By the 19th century, that land bond was no longer in effect and serfs were for all intents and purposes slaves. Various reforms were tried but that was the situation until the mid1800s. At that point, serfs were technically freed but it was hard to actually own land.

One of the things that kept hope alive was the idea of a "black repartition", in the sense of a general repartitioning of the land, from the nobility to the peasants. Rumors of this supposedly coming event circulated widely throughout the countryside. Land would finally be seized from the nobles and redistributed to the peasants. Who would do this? The "Good Tsar", the Gosudar, who in their minds really loved the peasants like a father but was kept from implementing the redistribution by the nobles surrounding him. The Good Tsar would come to their rescue and give them the land. Freeing the serfs and a population boom, coupled with industrialization, led to the creation of an urban working poor population. Conditions in the early Russian industrial age were horrific. Maxim Gorky recounts that as a child, he was chained to the machine he served for 18 hours a day. This led to urban unrest and agitation by various groups.

On January 22, 1905, Bloody Sunday destroyed the myth of the Good Tsar and began the First Russian Revolution. On that day, unarmed protesters led by Father Gapon, a populist priest, were fired upon by the Imperial Guard as the crowd made its way to the Winter Palace to present a petition directly to the Tsar. The outrage of the massacre led to massive strikes and a bloody revolution in the countryside. The peasants, seeing their chance and now knowing that the Good Tsar was not coming to give them what they thought he had promised them, started killing nobles and gentry and taking the land. Eventually, order was reestablished but only after the Tsar was forced to accept a Duma, a legislative body, something that the absolutists of the Romanov dynasty found unbearable. Absolute rule, to the Romanovs, was instituted by God and they ruled in God's stead in Russia. The point, though, is that once the population thought they had been promised something, then found out they were not getting it, and reacted violently.

A similar situation occurred during the Second Russian Revolution of 1917. Here, the Bolsheviks learned the lesson of how important land was to the Russian peasant and promised to give that to them. During both Revolutions, peasants reacted with extreme violence against those that had stood in the way of what they believed had been promised to them for hundreds of years - the land.

I personally do not believe that there is going to be a race war. There will be episodes of violence during demonstrations, perhaps, but our system of government is a lot more flexible and responsive than that of Tsarist Russia. Russia has always been governed by a strong but brittle Oriental-style monarch and still is today under Putin. We have a lot of built-in ways to vent steam.

But I think Mike makes an excellent point. Democrats are playing with fire here. The consequences of not following through with reparations will not be pretty. We are looking at a period of great turmoil in the next 50 years. People who believe they have been promised something do not respond well when it is not forthcoming. I don't see a race war but I see the late 1960s coming back around again.

[Mike]

Good post, Kevin. I think what happened in Russia could easily happen here. The outcry for reparations is spreading fast, there is hardly a day that goes by without a news of another demand being made in a new location. I don't think it is either Biden or Trump that will destroy the country, but this reparations crap will unless we find a way to deal with it that doesn't trigger our Black citizens.

[Honda]

Then after that, we will have the LBG K2 whatever crowd come along in demanding reparations. They're already being violent.

[Mike]

These news items just keep popping up. It's like a plague spreading across the country.

San Francisco's proposed reparation payments to eligible Black residents could cost the city over $100 billion dollars, the New York Times reported Friday.

San Francisco's African American Reparations Advisory Committee unveiled its recommendation in January, arguing that the city owed millions of dollars in compensation to Black residents for decades of discrimination.

"The $5 million payments could top $100 billion — many times the $14 billion annual budget in San Francisco — and London Breed, the city’s mayor, has not committed to cash reparations," the Times said.

PAY YOUR SHARE HERE

[Dave Grubb]

I don't see this happening. I do hear it being discussed in CA but just from an economics sense this is a nonstarter. Demanding reparations at that level will only bankrupt the "payer". What good is that?
A token payment might happen in CA---but then---that is CA

As for possible precedence the US did pay reparations after the Civil War----to slave holders in Washington DC the sum of $300/ freed slave. The common belief that freed slaves were given 40 acres and a mule died with Lincoln.

[Mike]

I don't see this happening. I do hear it being discussed in CA but just from an economics sense this is a nonstarter. Demanding reparations at that level will only bankrupt the "payer". What good is that?
A token payment might happen in CA---but then---that is CA ..........

Look closer, Dave. It's not just Ca anymore, it's other states and cities in Mass, Ill, Minn, NY, SC and more. Every day I see something new in the media about reparations. Its spreading like wildfire. Congress is supposed to take up the idea this summer, and you know what happens when Congress touches something bad. Even the President is asking for studies on reparations.

Everyone needs to pay close attention before this explodes.

[Dave Grubb]

I will admit I have been mostly ignoring it when see it in the papers. That said I expect noise from places like Massachusetts----they just might be more quietly liberal than CA. As for NY---I fully expect it from the left reverend al sharpton----who is nothing but a parasite on the black community.

As for biden----he is working hard to keep the liberal left in the party fold---and that could present an issue but there are limits on the number of warrens and sanders that could vote for it.

I don't think I will live long enough to see it!

It would be a be a redistribution of wealth---and moving that wealth, which currently is broadly distributed, to a concentration in a much lower demographic. I'd like to hear a discussion of that impact by the economists that look at such things.

So---now I have to ask---would blacks with an income of----say $100,000/year be givers or getters?

[Dave Grubb]

Looks like I have been ignoring too much!

That will cause a "redistribution of origin"

[UTAH]

“We must recognize the risks of opening a Pandora’s box of grievances that may never be fully addressed, sowing discord and dissatisfaction. Instead of getting mired in the quagmire of reparations, the focus should be on forward-looking policies that foster equal opportunity and justice for all.”
- Armstrong Williams

I'm with Williams on this one. In addition, I think it's foolish for our people, particularly those in government, to atone for our past actions. I'm not turning a blind eye to racial discrimination. For, it hurt and killed oppressed minorities. We can't change any of that by affixing a price to it.

Hunter

[Sandman]

If any reparations are awarded to any group the award should be a “win - win” for both groups..

Example.. free tuition .. college tuition, even GED.. each awardee gets a semester/quarter paid for and if they acquire a grade of C or above, the get the next semester.. a D or F ends the award, forever, period.

This plan will shut up the snivelers and award the true scholars..

Just my opinion, I could be wrong..

[Dave Grubb]

That would never work---it would fail to award the most needy and least motivated But---would have the best return for the buck