My gf seems to be bothered that I am 'white and privileged'.

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Don’t miss my point. “How would it exactly?” is the wrong question. HOW it’s oppressive is irrelevant. The point is that it IS racist.

Refer back to the syllogism I gave. And let me simplify even further:

1. All white people are racist in all things.
2. A white person does a thing.
3. Therefore, that thing is racist.

Now, suppose a minority person does the same exact thing. That thing cannot possibly be racist. Why? Because the person doing that thing is not white and thus lacks racist motives. Now, before you say that, say, Jews can be racist, too, with few exceptions Jews do not constitute a hegemony anywhere. Only someone within the predominant power structure can oppress others outside the hegemony, hence why Jews, blacks, Hispanics, etc. cannot be racist. If a Jew calls a black person the N-word, there are two possibilities: First, he uses racist language out of frustration for his own state of oppression, i.e. he can’t help it. Second, it’s a symbol of identifying with another oppressed group, a way of calling black people “brothers” (both groups have a shared history of being slaves).

White truckers, though? To answer your question directly, no, there’s nothing oppressive about it. Keep in mind it doesn’t need to be oppressive in any direct way. What counts is the motivation behind it, which is racist any time the person protesting is white.

One last thing: I hope you can see that my argument, while logical in and of itself, is the product of flawed premises. The logic is solid, the conclusion follows the premises. The problem is that the conclusion can’t be reliable, no matter how logically constructed, if it follows from wrong premises. First, one can be called upon to prove all white people are racist, which we’re not. Or if you want to replace “racist” with “privileged,” there’s no evidence to that end. There IS evidence to the contrary. Second, a thing is a thing. A=A. So breathing is no more/less racist regardless of whether the person breathing is white or not. If a white person’s breathing is racist, that means a black person’s breathing is also racist. That means either everyone is racist for breathing or no one is. Once you understand asking ANY race to stop being racist means asking them to just stop breathing, it’s easy to see how absurd the whole thing is. And since we aren’t dealing with reasonable people, using logic to get them to change their minds listen t isn’t going to work.

You aren’t going to convince your gf that you’re not racist or privileged. I don’t think you should accept that premise or apologize for anything. What you CAN do, though, is invite her to talk about her concerns and then just listen to what she has to say.

Oh I see what you mean, and that helps explain it more. She is more troubled by theoretical motivations than the actual actions being committed. But also, in the trucker protest there are non white truckers in the convoy, in the media interviews, but she just writes it off as a minority and that is not significant.

However, if she has a problem with white people, I keep wondering what she sees in me then...

If she has a problem with white people, she has a problem with at least half of herself.

Yes.

To be honest, if you don't like someone, just put them in the figurative bin. See how fast they change to retrieve you.

If they make no effort to change - they never really loved you anyway.

meh...I don't know why anyone should change for someone else. A lot of what makes romantic relationships so great is accepting others for who/what they are and loving them for that.

If someone is a manipulative narcissist, as an example, and you fall in love with that person, you accept responsibility for their narcissism (assuming you want that person in your life). If, as often happens, the person you thought you loved was all an act to manipulate you, expecting that person to change is doing a disservice to yourself because it was the narcissist you fell in love with. If that person were to just not be a narcissist anymore to please YOU, then the good person you think you love is not the person you fell in love with in the first place (the narcissist). If that person were to make an authentic change for you, you'd end up rejecting him anyway.

Once in a relationship, it's unreasonable to expect someone to change to suit you. They have to change for themselves. And if they change for themselves, to be a better person, you assume responsibility for that change if you truly love them--you don't get to say, "well, he was more fun as an alcoholic. But now that he's sober, I'm just not feeling it." If you love HIM, you accept that he's no longer an alcoholic and support him in his decision. What often happens is people fall in love with the alcoholic and end up unhappy when he's in recovery. This all goes back to the classic argument about women only dating "bad boys" and crying about how men mistreat them. Why not just date nice guys who treat you well? Because it's boring. Everyone knows that. But then you end up with a bad boy and expect to tame him? And then dump him because he's "not the guy you fell in love with"?

That's where ironpony is kinda stuck. The relationship is fine. He's struggling to understand in logical terms a point of view that defies logic. He cannot magically make himself less white. And if she wishes to become reasonable in her thinking, that's a choice she has to make on her own. But she cannot change for him; he cannot change for her. If they love each other--his whiteness doesn't matter, her sense of victimhood doesn't matter--then none of that is going to matter. Doesn't make it less perplexing or mystifying, just means that authentically loving the other person renders all the other "stuff" irrelevant. I personally would prefer NOT to date someone with her views. I think a lot of us feel the same way. But this is far from a dealbreaker. Unless she is abusive towards him mentally, physically, or emotionally, he has no logical reason to leave her for as long as she is valuable to him.

The ironic thing----is that, through her hard work, she became a supervisor. She certainly wasn't victimized by any "white privilege."

"White privilege" is statistically and historically present----but on an individual level, it frequently isn't.

I would say human adaptibility and the ability of the human race to learn in new situations & environments is its greatest strength and what has made humans the apex of the planet, thus far.

Refusing to kick bad habits is why humans are terrorising the planet and a lack of adaptibility to kick bad habits, means that we cannot react quickly enough to fix ourselves from the damage we are creating.

Putin wants a "Great Russia" so bad-----that he's going to destroy his own country in the process.

Putin wanted Greater Russia but by the time he's done he'll just have Lesser Russia.

Yep!

He's a fanatic. It's respectable to be enthusiastic about anything, but when you are sacrificing human lives on a mass scale....?!

I think you have answered your own question ironpony. There is some element of this thread which I suspect you are overthinking what is going on in her mind. She may barely spend barely a few minutes a day contemplating this stuff, Whereas you apparently have spent hundreds of hours obsessing over a comment she made after watching TV and an opinion she holds about truck protest.

I am beginning to suspect you are trying to talk yourself out of what is an amazing relationship over something trivial.

Theirs is NOT a great relationship. She's a brainwashed "woke" liberal, and he's one of the few remaining rational thinkers. He needs to dump her like a rotting garbage bag on trash pickup day!

There's a fine line between patience and foolishness, and the OP is on the wrong side of it! For the love of everything good and pure, PLEASE dump her already! You won't miss her, I just know it. Once you dump her, you'll forget she even existed in a matter of hours.

OP, you're not thinking rationally! It's the Stockholm Syndrome talking! STOP IT!

Sure, I bet you think you can control everyone else to please your selfish views and think it's okay to try to.

Changing someone and taking away their security is never something that a psychologist would suggest, because it's all kinds of playing with fire and messes up the emotional security of a person. How can you deal with yourself after doing that to someone you're supposed to be thoughtful of and build with. People can be so destructive.

You're suggesting love means changing of opinion for your sake but you fail to understand opinion is not by choice and love doesn't prove like that. The old 'if you love me you will...' based on control and conditioning. There are better ways to feel loved. People don't believe they're gonna take a leap and land on the right stone because they want to, they will because it makes sense the distance is enough for their leap. Equally, if they choose to believe that they're not going to fall, and they know they will, they're gonna always be aware of it. How selfish of you to think you should dictate someone's thoughts. That would mean you're always right and that obviously isn't the case even for Einstein. Not to mention the absurdity of it happening.

Your tactic is abusive and lacking grounds. You're saying people do bad things because bad habits but you're trying to change them with your own bad habit, or rather, choice. It's not going to work. Because your theory just isn't how the world works. It's pitiful, wrecking havoc around you when unnecessary, there's always a good way that gets things done, but that's just how much you care about hurting others to get your way and how gullible you are to think it would work.

You can choose to be single until someone treats their alcoholism, but that doesn't involve putting threats and mind control, playing games with their head, only of your own self control for your own good. And that's alcoholism, not their belief system or their mental conditions and emotions. People didn't evolve to please your design.

Also you cannot force and shouldn't aim to force the whole planet to be vegan, like you say kicking habits detrimental to the world. In new situations like war, that doesn't happen. Perhaps it gets worse for the world. I can name some oblivious people who think war is great and solves things for them, but in actuality makes things worse and damages innocent people. That's what happens when someone loses sight of the bigger picture and is warped in delusion.

Fear isn't the same as respect, like nobody should aim to make out of people slaves and threaten and kill them like Arabs. Why would someone do that, well, they thought they own the person. They are terrorists. When people apply that to their close ones it's even worse.

Why would you think you should be made to change your opinions through such a detrimental tactic by your loved ones? If everyone did that nobody would change anything for good, it would be changed again and again. What's the purpose of that, altering each other's opinions back and forth because theirs is different? And for what, politics, when it doesn't even affect their life together? Not to mention it breaks trust.

Introducing ideas and discussing is different. But what you're proposing makes zero sense, you're fooling yourself.

Perhaps it was intended as a joke.

Last edited by Rexi on 08 Mar 2022, 9:59 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I am beginning to think the OPs obsessions over these "differences" of opinion are important to him in this relationship whereas I have seen no evidence they are important to her.

The girl unconditionally likes the OP, It seems to be the OP who is being picky.

If what you're saying is true, then I have a little test the OP can run on his girlfriend. It's equivalent to how a woman tests a man: overtly triggering him, watching his reaction, then acting according to her evolutionary instincts as a counter-reaction.

Have the OP ask her what she thinks of George Soros. That's it; just George Soros. If she thinks anything remotely positive of him, then a prompt, ruthless breakup is in order. Otherwise, there's a slim chance of saving the relationship.