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Author Topic: The Great Mexican Wall  (Read 26962 times)

LesPalenik

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #20 on: July 06, 2018, 09:42:46 pm »

Wall here, barriers there, and Trump everywhere.


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enduser

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #21 on: July 07, 2018, 12:05:56 am »

It seems to me that it's not so much what a government does, it's HOW it does it.
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Alan Klein

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #22 on: July 07, 2018, 01:28:49 am »

That's precisely the situation with Europe, except that the racial mix has been greater in the States for a lot longer; it's looking at the social troubles you have there because of it that is partly the experience Europeans want to prevent in their own back yard. Throw on the added weight of a religion that is driven to convert or, sometimes, kill those who don't accept it and the fear is even stronger.
But America is an immigrant nation. The nations in Europe have been French, or German, or whatever for centuries.  The nations there are each homogenous to a large degree.  So immigrants are looked on as outsiders more than in America.  America is made up of many different peoples who agree to be American.  The commonality among French-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Black-American, Italians-Americans, Polish-Americans, Mexican-Americans, even British-Americans, and all the other hyphenated Americans is we're all American.  As a New Yorker I'm familiar with all the parades there are there.  Every week it's another parade.  St. Paddy's Day, Puerto Rican Day Parade, Steuben Parade (Germans), Israel Parade, Chinese New Year's,  etc. Everyone enjoys the parades and no one really seems threatened. So while each group may practice their cultural and religious and social heritage, at the end of the day we're Patriotic to America.  We all speak English.  Well mainly.  At least in the public square.  There's an understanding that if you accept America as your nation, you can be as American as any other American.  I don't think that's true in Europe. 

So being absorbed as an immigrant in America is easier than most other places.  Especially with the children that are born here.   

Rob C

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #23 on: July 07, 2018, 04:41:07 am »

1.  One obvious question that comes to mind is that once you (white people?) are a minority, then would it still be your land? What does that even mean? 2.  You live in Spain, I believe. Do Spaniards consider you an invader?

3.  There's an interesting discussion in Quebec where many Francophones there use emotional language about how the land there is theirs. Well, they've only been there 400-500 years, what makes it theirs, especially considering that the indigenous people had been there for 5000 years prior to that. I'm a little wary of "groups" declaring land to be "theirs". I have a title deed to the house I own, so that makes it mine, so long as I pay property taxes. That's about as far as it goes imo.

1.  Once the indigenous, white people become a minority in their own land - the place they have lived in as an almost absolute majority for generations upon generations, hardly a difficult concept - they do lose the democratic control of their living space. That means that the "new" people become the numerical rulers of that area. Having the numbers, they then win the political power. Guess who loses.

2.  Yes, I do live in Spain. The situation is mixed: on the one hand, we, the incoming people, have brought a lot of capìtal, created jobs largely in construction, and the tourist trade (different animal to expats living here) has given more work in the hospitality trades. That is far from a balanced equation, though, as the incoming numbers have distorted the natural, pre-tourism balance and equilibrium of the land, what its natural resources can support. Water is regularly a problem, and the demand on the sewerage systems is massive. Farms have been abandoned and sold to rich foreigners who turn them into personal pleasure domes; right across the hedge from me, what used to be a beautiful field of ripening wheat, rippling in the breeze like some golden ocean, is now abandoned and turning back into an extension of the pine forest on the hill beside me... very nice idea, but in a few years there will be a view limited to fifty feet, and an immediate fire hazzard.

What do the locals make of us interlopers? In general, they appear to have come to accept us as a source of wealth that trickles across to them via plumbers, joiners, builders, restaurants etc. but, importantly, the new people are making home purchases ever more difficult for the natives. Even those, like myself, who came over forty years or so ago, are being left behind regarding prices, and many of us could never have bought into the market at today's prices. The result is a crisis where the locals often have to live at home too long. So, I would assume that their opionions of us are mixed, to say the least!

And don't forget: we came over as relatively rich, money-spending and wealth-spreading people, not as job-stealing, wage-undercutting or state handout-dependant migrants. Big difference.

3.  Five hundred years is a helluva long time! Importantly, you must not forget that the people to whom you refer came over with superior weaponry. As with all of the Americas, from Spanish times, it was about conquest and the establishing of the Catholic religion often, itself, no more than a ruse for the amassing of wealth for the so-called religious kings and queens. Exploitation, theft.

What's happening today in Europe is pretty much the same thing: the attempted replacing of one set of power structures by another. In place of armadas we get migrants bringing with them their faith and birthrates. Unfortunately, unlike the ones that settled in Spain centuries ago, bringing education, art and sciences, the new ones bring the seeds of death and religious intollerance. Their own religion has been usurped and taken over by people so akin to the Christian fundamentalists as to be two sides of the same snake. I am not guessing: I was at a boarding school run by such people; I know the mindset and its perversions.

If the West got one thing right, it was freedom for religion and freedom from it. As usual, the French have a word for it, and separation of state from religion: laïcité.
« Last Edit: July 07, 2018, 06:05:24 am by Rob C »
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Rob C

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #24 on: July 07, 2018, 04:56:20 am »

But America is an immigrant nation. The nations in Europe have been French, or German, or whatever for centuries.  The nations there are each homogenous to a large degree.  So immigrants are looked on as outsiders more than in America.  America is made up of many different peoples who agree to be American.  The commonality among French-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Black-American, Italians-Americans, Polish-Americans, Mexican-Americans, even British-Americans, and all the other hyphenated Americans is we're all American.  As a New Yorker I'm familiar with all the parades there are there.  Every week it's another parade.  St. Paddy's Day, Puerto Rican Day Parade, Steuben Parade (Germans), Israel Parade, Chinese New Year's,  etc. Everyone enjoys the parades and no one really seems threatened. So while each group may practice their cultural and religious and social heritage, at the end of the day we're Patriotic to America.  We all speak English.  Well mainly.  At least in the public square. There's an understanding that if you accept America as your nation, you can be as American as any other American.  I don't think that's true in Europe. 

So being absorbed as an immigrant in America is easier than most other places.  Especially with the children that are born here.   

I find it interesting that there is ever the need for being a hyphenated American, that it's actually celebrated... and you think that equates with nationhood? How very strange.

To me, it signifies permanent division, just as on the island of Ireland and, now, Cyprus. Perhaps denial of this truth is attempted in the visual statement of flags hanging or flying - depending on the ammusement of nature - in private homes, something I have only seen in Spain with Catalan and Mallorcan separist extremists who use the flag to show anything but solidarity with neighbouring peoples.

And no, you are quite right: it most certainly does not hold water in any part of Europe with which I am familiar. Solidarity requires much more than recent political geography. I think Slobodan could lecture us all very informatively, and far better than can I, on what that has meant in parts of Europe.

Rob

Robert Roaldi

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #25 on: July 07, 2018, 08:37:29 am »

1.  Once the indigenous, white people become a minority in their own land - the place they have lived in as an almost absolute majority for generations upon generations, hardly a difficult concept - they do lose the democratic control of their living space. That means that the "new" people become the numerical rulers of that area. Having the numbers, they then win the political power. Guess who loses.

I don't know what you mean by "Guess who loses."

Sounds like you don't approve of democracy. If they're living there and voting, it's their land too. End of story. Who and what their/your ancestors were and where they lived is beside the point. I don't expect to inherit the sins of my father, so I shouldn't expect to inherit his power either.

And yes, if there aren't enough of "you" left, your culture might die. So what else is new.

I hope it hasn't escaped your sense of irony, but a lot of what you're expressing is pretty much what was deplorable about colonial invasions.
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Robert Roaldi

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #26 on: July 07, 2018, 08:42:24 am »

If the West got one thing right, it was freedom for religion and freedom from it. As usual, the French have a word for it, and separation of state from religion: laïcité.

Tell that to the women in the USA who are increasingly seeing their access to abortion diminished because there are lots of Americans who don't separate state from the church, or who at the very least believe their own specific interpretation of Christian beliefs should take precedence over other people's. As if they actually think they have the right to tell others how to live. Explain how that's so different from the Taliban, albeit slightly less savage. (Unless you go back less than 100 years and look at lynchings, which were pretty savage.)
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Alan Klein

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #27 on: July 07, 2018, 09:28:30 am »

I find it interesting that there is ever the need for being a hyphenated American, that it's actually celebrated... and you think that equates with nationhood? How very strange.

To me, it signifies permanent division, just as on the island of Ireland and, now, Cyprus. Perhaps denial of this truth is attempted in the visual statement of flags hanging or flying - depending on the ammusement of nature - in private homes, something I have only seen in Spain with Catalan and Mallorcan separist extremists who use the flag to show anything but solidarity with neighbouring peoples.

And no, you are quite right: it most certainly does not hold water in any part of Europe with which I am familiar. Solidarity requires much more than recent political geography. I think Slobodan could lecture us all very informatively, and far better than can I, on what that has meant in parts of Europe.

Rob
Well NYC population currently is 40% foreign born.  It's always been a magnet for different cultures, religions, and nationalities.  Many neighborhoods, like Chinatown, have a distinctive flavor where pride of who your descendants are can be on display.  But when it comes down to it, everyone thinks they're New Yorkers, whatever that means even when the celebrate their heritage. 

Other parts of the country are somewhat like that.  But in the end, maybe because no one group is very large compared to the overall population, most people see themselves as American, when push comes to shove.  Sure we're had Japanese internment of Japanese-Americans citizens during WWII, a disgraceful situation, and blacks had been single out for minority treatment, but so have the Irish, Italians, Jews and other groups. All have advanced to become part of the fabric that is America. The joke now is that WASPs  (White Anglo Saxon Protestants) who traditionally "ran" America are now a minority.

What I always find interesting is when I see a person speaking perfect American English on TV who is Chinese or whatever.  Yet the parents barely speak English.  First born generation of most groups do that.  They absorb Americanism, smoke pot as kids, play American baseball and become part of the American milieu because we're an immigrant nation.   

jeremyrh

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #28 on: July 07, 2018, 09:35:29 am »

But America is an immigrant nation. The nations in Europe have been French, or German, or whatever for centuries.  The nations there are each homogenous to a large degree.  So immigrants are looked on as outsiders more than in America.  America is made up of many different peoples who agree to be American.  The commonality among French-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Black-American, Italians-Americans, Polish-Americans, Mexican-Americans, even British-Americans, and all the other hyphenated Americans is we're all American.

So being absorbed as an immigrant in America is easier than most other places.  Especially with the children that are born here.   

You may like to ask a Palestinian-American if he agrees with you.
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Chris Kern

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #29 on: July 07, 2018, 09:56:43 am »

So being absorbed as an immigrant in America is easier than most other places.  Especially with the children that are born here.   

You may like to ask a Palestinian-American if he agrees with you.

Actually, I used to work with some Palestinian immigrants, and non-immigrants who were here as international exchange visitors—as well as many other colleagues from Arab countries—and I suspect few if any of them would take issue with Alan's point.

Of course, in personal conversations most of them disagreed — usually quite vehemently — with U.S. government policy toward Israel.  (And they were employees of the federal government, by the way: broadcast journalists working for the Voice of America.)

Rob C

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #30 on: July 07, 2018, 09:57:38 am »

1.  I don't know what you mean by "Guess who loses."

2.  Sounds like you don't approve of democracy. If they're living there and voting, it's their land too. End of story. Who and what their/your ancestors were and where they lived is beside the point. I don't expect to inherit the sins of my father, so I shouldn't expect to inherit his power either.

3.  And yes, if there aren't enough of "you" left, your culture might die. So what else is new.

4.  I hope it hasn't escaped your sense of irony, but a lot of what you're expressing is pretty much what was deplorable about colonial invasions.

1.  Don't be disingenuous; of course you know to whom I refer: to the people who inhabited the place over the last few centuries, the long-established nation.

2.  Democracy. It has value in some cases, but falls on its face when the vote of the uneducated mind counts the same as that of the educated mind. How can that possibly make sense? Especially when brilliant is way outnumbered by dumb, the result is a spectacular victory for whichever political party offers the most shiny beads. Which is why there is so very little genuine difference between them all: they chase the same high-number electorate.

Insofar as the new arrival having claim to co-ownership of the land he has entered of his own volition, then no, I do not think he is a valid co-owner/citizen at all. Proof of that is in my own position: I have the right to vote in local elections but not the national: I vote in neither, because I do not believe that I understand local politics well enough, and because I am grateful just to be accepted and allowed to live here, without expecting to change the way the local folks run their area. How presumptuous would that be?

Colonial invasions were of an epoch before my time. Insofar as India goes, I lived there prior to, and for a few years post August, 1947. (Independence.)

I never felt any sense of ancestral guilt, and neither did I run into hatred directed my way (same here in Spain) but I clearly remember the mutual tears of family and staff as we left what had been home for the trip back to Britain whence we'd come. Far from good riddance, it represented an immediate loss of employment for the folks left behind. You know, it's been my experience that those who protest most about colonial days are those who have never spent years within those affected countries, whose terms of reference are today's politicians and the writers looking for the easy buck from promotion of faux guilt amongst those who know nothing about the reality.

Should anyone think that Britain introduced some sort of slavery or subjugation to India, they clearly know nothing about the system already entrenched by the local power structures when the first Brits landed. Of course there were abuses, as there always have been, at home as abroad, yesterday as today and all the tomorrows lined up there on the horizon. But don't forget the institutions that the Brits left behind them, that still function and upon which models the present ones run. The balance is not negative.

3.  I have no wish for my culture to die, and believe that it has every right to defend itself from invaders that would substitute their own. If keeping them out is the only way, then so be it. That is a far cry from the original status of the EEC, which was either nominally Christian, agnostic or atheist. That's why Turkey will probably never get its membership key, though the fact that so many people have been getting in anyway, renders it a bit pointless as far as calming religious fears go.

4.  Colonial invasions were part of a historic time far removed from the world of today. The slavery that made America flourish did not come alone, but brought in its wake the problems that bedevil it today which, as I pointed out before, is something Europe does not want to emulate. There are sufficient examples already of the price of colonial adventure being paid in Britain as in France, without opening the gates to the rest of an Africa in transit and flight, both from itself as much as because of the hope of personal betterment elsewhere. In Britain we invited in peoples from the Caribbean as well as the Indian continent to help reconstruct post-war Britain. Or so we are today informed. Quite how those people were going to do that isn't so clear; did they all have building trades qualifications? Or was it perhaps a very early harbinger of today, where many Brits prefer idleness to low-paid work? Germany imported lots of Turks and Spaniards to work in its industries; many of the latter returned home well enough off to be able to start businesses of their own. I don't know anything about what Turks may have done. One thing is for sure: the Spanish had a beautiful country to which to return.

Rob C

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #31 on: July 07, 2018, 10:03:02 am »

Tell that to the women in the USA who are increasingly seeing their access to abortion diminished because there are lots of Americans who don't separate state from the church, or who at the very least believe their own specific interpretation of Christian beliefs should take precedence over other people's. As if they actually think they have the right to tell others how to live. Explain how that's so different from the Taliban, albeit slightly less savage. (Unless you go back less than 100 years and look at lynchings, which were pretty savage.)

Robert, I have always equated religious fundamentalism as equal evil, from wherever it arises. But, Ireland has overturned that, and the irony of ironies is that it remains the largely Protestant Northern Ireland that still labours (NPI) under the same problem!

Rob C

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #32 on: July 07, 2018, 10:04:50 am »

You may like to ask a Palestinian-American if he agrees with you.

Good challenge!

Rob C

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #33 on: July 07, 2018, 10:07:32 am »

Actually, I used to work with some Palestinian immigrants, and non-immigrants who were here as international exchange visitors—as well as many other colleagues from Arab countries—and I suspect few if any of them would take issue with Alan's point.

Of course, in personal conversations most of them disagreed — usually quite vehemently — with U.S. government policy toward Israel.  (And they were employees of the federal government, by the way: broadcast journalists working for the Voice of America.)

Well, when you think about the power structures in the US it comes as little surprise that Israel gets the free tickets. Only natural.

jeremyrh

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #34 on: July 07, 2018, 10:09:23 am »

Actually, I used to work with some Palestinian immigrants, and non-immigrants who were here as international exchange visitors—as well as many other colleagues from Arab countries—and I suspect few if any of them would take issue with Alan's point.

Of course, in personal conversations most of them disagreed — usually quite vehemently — with U.S. government policy toward Israel.  (And they were employees of the federal government, by the way: broadcast journalists working for the Voice of America.)

My P-A friend who was asked by a judge if he was a terrorist would probably beg to differ. Likewise the friends and relatives of Alex Odeh.
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Rob C

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #35 on: July 07, 2018, 10:20:03 am »

I think Robert Frank's experiences with the law during his continental drives illustrates things quite well. Cameras, accent...

Then there is the Rolling Stones' experience of driving the rural roadtrip.

;-)

PeterAit

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #36 on: July 07, 2018, 11:35:28 am »

Don't you know the wall has already been built? When they took Trump down to see it, they told him it was made of special bricks that are invisible to everyone except "smart stable geniuses."
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Rob C

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #37 on: July 07, 2018, 05:03:45 pm »

Don't you know the wall has already been built? When they took Trump down to see it, they told him it was made of special bricks that are invisible to everyone except "smart stable geniuses."


That was one smart cartel wot built it!

:-)

Robert Roaldi

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #38 on: July 08, 2018, 08:41:21 am »

1.  Don't be disingenuous; of course you know to whom I refer: to the people who inhabited the place over the last few centuries, the long-established nation.

2.  Democracy. It has value in some cases, but falls on its face when the vote of the uneducated mind counts the same as that of the educated mind. How can that possibly make sense? Especially when brilliant is way outnumbered by dumb, the result is a spectacular victory for whichever political party offers the most shiny beads. Which is why there is so very little genuine difference between them all: they chase the same high-number electorate.

Insofar as the new arrival having claim to co-ownership of the land he has entered of his own volition, then no, I do not think he is a valid co-owner/citizen at all. Proof of that is in my own position: I have the right to vote in local elections but not the national: I vote in neither, because I do not believe that I understand local politics well enough, and because I am grateful just to be accepted and allowed to live here, without expecting to change the way the local folks run their area. How presumptuous would that be?

Colonial invasions were of an epoch before my time. Insofar as India goes, I lived there prior to, and for a few years post August, 1947. (Independence.)

I never felt any sense of ancestral guilt, and neither did I run into hatred directed my way (same here in Spain) but I clearly remember the mutual tears of family and staff as we left what had been home for the trip back to Britain whence we'd come. Far from good riddance, it represented an immediate loss of employment for the folks left behind. You know, it's been my experience that those who protest most about colonial days are those who have never spent years within those affected countries, whose terms of reference are today's politicians and the writers looking for the easy buck from promotion of faux guilt amongst those who know nothing about the reality.

Should anyone think that Britain introduced some sort of slavery or subjugation to India, they clearly know nothing about the system already entrenched by the local power structures when the first Brits landed. Of course there were abuses, as there always have been, at home as abroad, yesterday as today and all the tomorrows lined up there on the horizon. But don't forget the institutions that the Brits left behind them, that still function and upon which models the present ones run. The balance is not negative.

3.  I have no wish for my culture to die, and believe that it has every right to defend itself from invaders that would substitute their own. If keeping them out is the only way, then so be it. That is a far cry from the original status of the EEC, which was either nominally Christian, agnostic or atheist. That's why Turkey will probably never get its membership key, though the fact that so many people have been getting in anyway, renders it a bit pointless as far as calming religious fears go.

4.  Colonial invasions were part of a historic time far removed from the world of today. The slavery that made America flourish did not come alone, but brought in its wake the problems that bedevil it today which, as I pointed out before, is something Europe does not want to emulate. There are sufficient examples already of the price of colonial adventure being paid in Britain as in France, without opening the gates to the rest of an Africa in transit and flight, both from itself as much as because of the hope of personal betterment elsewhere. In Britain we invited in peoples from the Caribbean as well as the Indian continent to help reconstruct post-war Britain. Or so we are today informed. Quite how those people were going to do that isn't so clear; did they all have building trades qualifications? Or was it perhaps a very early harbinger of today, where many Brits prefer idleness to low-paid work? Germany imported lots of Turks and Spaniards to work in its industries; many of the latter returned home well enough off to be able to start businesses of their own. I don't know anything about what Turks may have done. One thing is for sure: the Spanish had a beautiful country to which to return.

I won't respond point by point, am running out of time here today. Just some thoughts.

The concept is that everyone is equal, every person gets an equal vote. That's because the government represents all their interests and they all pay taxes.

Being highly educated is but one aspect, and it is not correlated with being honest, decent, fair, etc. You place too much emphasis on it.

Colonial powers of course see colonialism through rose-coloured glasses. As for it being a thing of the past, all but forgotten now, I hardly think so.

What may be happening in Europe is that the old boy network doesn't like being disrupted. Several countries let in foreigners to work the farms and auto plants and now everyone is surprised that all those people want to be part of the community at large and want to participate in it. Well, duh.

In the US and I'd say Canada, foreign-born immigrants tend to more rapidly enter the political fray. Both countries have various members of (former) minorities in political office, Cubans, Asians, Indians, elsewhere. Some people don't like this, naturally, "They're taking over our country" may be the refrain. My point is that it's NOT your country. The country belongs to whoever is living in it at the time.

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Re: The Great Mexican Wall
« Reply #39 on: July 08, 2018, 08:45:10 am »

Being highly educated is but one aspect, and it is not correlated with being honest, decent, fair, etc.

Nor is it correlated with an ability to think.
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