Reflections From a Murky Pond

The Cola Wars have been raging since the 1980s, with Coca-Cola and Pepsi targeting each other in advertisement after advertisement. Given that there were billions of dollars on the line it wasn’t too surprising how vicious the Cola War became for a while. Even so, some of us were surprised and a little concerned about the war over cold drinks “going hot” when, in 1989, PepsiCo purchased: 17 submarines, a cruiser, a frigate, and a destroyer from the Soviets.

NOTE: The fleet’s purchase, along with PepsiCo being the US distributor for Stolichnaya was part of a countertrade arrangement that allowed Pepsi to be sold in the Soviet Union.

The fleet was nearly immediately sold for scrap. Interestingly, however, for a short period of time PepsiCo had the 7th largest submarine fleet in the world. 😯

Shortly after that the Cola Wars calmed down a bit. Now, however, Coca-Cola has changed the war by politicizing it and bringing America as whole into the conflict. They did this with their 2014 Super Bowl commercial, “It’s Beautiful.”

Some love it, others loath it. Few have no opinion about it. Coca-Cola’s “It’s Beautiful” almost seems more battle anthem than marketing. Perhaps never before has a simple television commercial so divided a population.

Americans v. Liberals

Whether they intended to do or not, Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl commercial directly pit Americans and Liberals against each other. Americans have, at least, some discomfort with- and qualms about the message “It’s Beautiful” promulgates and/or reinforces and normalizes, while Liberals absolute love that message.

It boils down to whether the viewer loves America and her culture or loathes it in favor of foreign cultures. If the viewer believes that immigrants should strive to become Americans, bringing with them those parts of their birth culture that will add to America, they will likely find fault with the commercial’s underlying message. If, however, the viewer desires for immigrants to keep all or most of their birth culture after relocating to America. they will likely love it.

This is simply because Americans love their country, their culture and language, and convergence. Liberals, contrariwise, loath American culture but love diversity and plurality.

Godless Passive-Aggression

Naturally, the Atheists had to chime in because the song, “America The Beautiful” contains the refrain, “America! America! | God shed His grace on thee,” and any mention of the God(s) anywhere outside of the home or a church that isn’t a denial of the Divinity’s existence sets their teeth on edge. What was interesting about their interjections into the conversations were their acrobatic apologetics.

Reading the various displays of the Godless’ passive-aggression was actually amusing since they had to contort their comments to show support for the various oikophobes that fetishize diversity while still maintaining their Atheist “cred” by bemoaning the Godly reference.

~*~

Tags: America | Americana | Coca-Cola | Cola Wars | Conservatives | Culture | Culture War | Diversity | History | Immigration | Language & Idiom | Liberals | Marketing | Multiculturism | Music | Nostalgia | Oikophobia | Pepsi | Super Bowl | Viral Marketing | YouTube

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 4th, 2014 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Food & Drink, Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Cultural Relativism is a term coined by philosopher and social theorist Alain Locke. It became popular – indeed, axiomatic among certain Liberal intelligentsia – due to the extended works of anthropologist-cum-activist Franz Boas and the large number of students who followed the doctrine of Boasian anthropology and its call for them to use their studies in the cause of social activism rather than maintaining the detachment, objectivity, abstraction, and quantifiability in their work that is the touchstone of true scientific endeavor.

Cultural Relativism

Function: noun

Date: 1924

Definition(s):

1. the belief that the importance of a particular cultural idea varies from one society or societal subgroup to another, the view that ethical and moral standards are relative to what a particular society or culture believes to be good/bad, right/wrong

On the plus side, Boaz was correct in maintaining that groups’ behaviors are based upon their culture as opposed the their race. This, however, is more than counterbalanced by his postulate that Right and Wrong only exist within respective cultures and societies and that it is wrong to judge individuals’ actions by any higher and/or more universal standard.

Cultural Relativism – Keeping One’s Head Buried In The Sand

Of course, cultural relativism requires that individuals and societies keep their heads firmly buried in the sand to avoid noticing any of the behaviors of others that might find objectionable or horrific.

Cultural relativists cling to the belief and, following the tenets of Boasian activism, try to force others to accept that all cultures are worthy in their own right and are of equal value and that diversity of cultures, even those with inherently conflicting moral beliefs, is not to be considered in terms of right and wrong or good and bad.

Tags: Alain Locke | Cultural Relativism | Culture | Ethics & Morality | Ethnocentrism | Franz Boas | Guiltism | Hypocrisy | Liberals | Multiculturism | Oikophobia | Politics | Progressives | Society

This entry was posted on Monday, September 30th, 2013 at 10:37 am and is filed under Ethics & Morality, Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Damn! This is a racist cafe. It must be own by a Klansman or soldier in the Aryan Nation because that’s one nasty, racist sign in the window. 😯

That’s Going To Have A Disproportionate Impact Upon Blacks!

The owner has to know that his prohibition on “sagging” will have a disproportionate impact upon Blacks and is, hence, racist despite the facially neutral nature of the stricture.

Federal courts have long held that motive and purpose were and are irrelevant and that even de facto and de jure nomenclature are meaningless as a defense against charges of racism. Only the end result, unburdened by circumstance or context, matters.

Since “sagging” is based upon prison behavior and Blacks are disproportionately prone to criminality, and because they have a culture based upon glorifying criminal behavior, they are the ones most likely to be wearing their pants belted well below their butts. Hence, Blacks – especially young Black males – will be the ones most likely negatively impacted by this cafe’s dresscode.

See…It’s a racist cafe because it’s racist to compel Blacks to comport themselves with the same manner and level of decorum as Whites. 😉

Tags: Blacks | Courts | Crime | Culture | Fashion | Humor | Law | Multiculturism | Race Baiting | Racism | Sarcasm | Society

This entry was posted on Friday, April 27th, 2012 at 1:20 pm and is filed under Humor, Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

You here a lot about “inclusivity” from the various stripes of Liberal and Progressive elements living withing our borders. To some extent this is the Left’s professed mantra insofar as social practices are concerned.

It’s, however, nothing but a well-told lie. The inclusivity myth is false and is nothing but a rationalization of the Left’s oikophobia.

The Left does not seek inclusivity; they seek to shift societal mores to a more libertine model and espouse even less tolerance for those with normative ethical, moral, an societal practices than those that they seek to displace and destroy.

All it that the Left’s “inclusivity” really is is an attempt to exclude and marginalize people who might otherwise be included in favor of those who society has previously, rightly or wrongly, censured.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: America | Ethics & Morality | Exclusivity | Inclusivity | Leftists | Liberals | Lies | Multiculturism | Oikophobia | Progressives | Social Engineering

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 7th, 2012 at 1:12 pm and is filed under Ethics & Morality, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Despite how much and how stridently the Liberals and Progressives claim that Americans want to revise history, it they who are not only forgetting history but demanding that it be forgotten.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

— George Santayana
The Life Of Reason. Vol. I, Reason in Common Sense

To put it simply, those who cannot learn from past mistakes are more than likely going to make them again.

Americans need only look into the past to when we were the invaders who refused to assimilate into the native language, culture, sociopolitical tapestry of America and accept and retain those lessens.

Is It Too Late To Build A Fence?

The Native American tribes could have done things differently and stood a better chance of retaining their nations, cultures, languages…and lives. They, however, failed to recognize the dangers and act accordingly in the early days of the European colonization of America.

…All 300 Million Of Them!

This ended up leaving the debased remnants of the Amerindian peoples in an untenable situation. No amount of Ghost Dances are going to return the land to their tribes now or bring back their languages and cultures.

• Of the 300+ native tribal languages in the US, only 175 remain many without native speakers. This is expected to drop to 20 by 2050
• In the 17th Century Native Americans in the US numbered between 12 – 18 million. By the beginning of the 20th Century they had been reduced to 250 thousand

Now we, as Americans, are on the other side of the equation and we can remember this history or we can forget and face the consequences.

Tags: America | History | Humor | Immigration | Insanity | Liberals | Multiculturism | Native Americans | Oikophobia | Pilgrims | Progressives | Santayana | Sarcasm

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 28th, 2012 at 9:57 am and is filed under Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.