Grrrrrobert
Aug 9, 2017 · 3 min read

Umair, you mention narcissism. These essays are also narcissistic.

America never worked. It went straight from segregation to stagnation in precisely the same year, 1971, and that tells us in no uncertain that it never built a social contract that functioned in genuine terms, only always relied on a pool of cheap, pliable labour, from which to extract human potential.

When you first made this point about 1971 here it was suggested repeatedly that using that as a foundation for further arguments might not be sound, because it’s not actually factual. It’s a correlation causation assertion without a shred of argumentation to back it up.

There is no historical link between desegregation and the end of the US economy. The great migration of Black Americans out of the south, began in 1916 and continued until the 1970s. There were already millions of black Americans in the workforce in Urban areas before 1940. Detroit as an example was doing poorly before 1971, as were most cities since the later 1960's. Segregation didn’t hurt the US economy. Especially as a global competitor. This article makes a false connection. Desegregation didn’t open up or sink the economy. By the time desegregation came the Great Migration was almost completed. Black people were already in the industrialised areas before and during the boom, and the crash was already demonstrably underway before 1971. Therefore your argument that desegregation is why the US economy began it’s collapse is not and cannot be valid.

Your oversimplification on economic stagnation ignores a few important details. Starting with the industrial revolution, the closing of the frontier, the agrarian collapse of the 20th century couple with the rise of factory farming, overseas competition itself recovering from 2 world wars, global trade recovering from 2 world wars, the investment class’ drive to outsource to take advantage of the world’s recovery, increased production efficiency and production automation. And especially the American Neo-liberal experiment with more and more free trade which also began just prior to the stagnation of the American median wage.

American stagnation didn’t arise because of the end of segregation as segregation was not in itself an actual economic good. Slavery created wealth. It was certainly filthier than normal capitalist wealth. It was still agricultural wealth. But Segregation? It had no economic benefit to the United States as a global industrial competitor. Daingerfield Steel in Texas was exploiting and oppressing their white and black workers throughout the 1950’s and beyond.

These are the facts as part of an argument. They show the shallowness of the unproved assertion on which your argument rests. You won’t address it, your ego won’t allow it. As a narcissist you must ignore all critique and reinforce your rightness and that’s the same narcissism that you are blanketing your critics with.

This doesn’t mean that the US is extremely bad at self critique. It doesn’t mean that Americans are very self righteous and blind to the nation’s faults which are a threat to its future. Those things are very sadly true. People like the cave. It’s dark and comfortable. We have known this for about 2500 years.

What it means vis a vis you, is that you proclaiming your airtight logic, while refusing to engage historical and economic facts that show your premise is incorrect, while you are continuing to promulgate a demonstrably false narrative, that you feel will have you mentioned in the media and textbooks and so on by the end of our lifetimes, suggests quite strongly that you are in fact, a narcissist yourself. One who has been shown to be incorrect in the most elementary way.

I do not expect a reply.

Grrrrrobert

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