Death at 50? No, no. I didn't really get going until 25, and the years between 40 and 50 were pretty good, in terms of youthful vigor and health. Looking back, the early 40s were peak years for energy and enthusiasm. The last 10 years, 65 to 75, have also been good, emotionally and intellectually. True, aged bodies do tend to start failing in the 60s and 70s, but it's not an "all-at-once" collapse. And a 75 year old educated brain, free of Alzheimers and other dementias, emotionally stable and curious, is a better brain than I ever had in the past. (I could REALLY have used this brain early on. Alas. No chance of that.

I'm ashamed to admit I thought, for a very brief but delightful moment, you were referring to "Doris Day." — Ciceronianus

Dorothy enters the shabby dining room of the Catholic Worker House of Hospitality in a full-skirted pastel dress with cuffed short sleeves singing Que Sera Sera.

That's because the New Testament was written in Koine Greek and then translated into Latin. Didn't Jesus speak Aramaic? He might have known Koine Greek, but probably not. The oldest version of the OT is in Greek too (a more formal dialect).

I'm not an atheist — Noble Dust

I need a term that means less than "atheist" and more than "not a believer". "Agnostic" isn't it. "Atheism" is too loaded. "Agnostic" is too wishy-washy. "Not a believer" could mean 'not yet', 'not now', or 'not interested'. I am interested, and I was a believer, but I am not now. I have not achieved closure, which is a frequent annoyance. I don't like "spiritual", which sounds lame. (It's lame the way some people use the term, announcing that "we are not into church, we are spiritual". "Spiritual", unlike 'atheism' which is too loaded, isn't loaded enough.

"Church people" are all over the place, one finds. (Surveys have found this too.). Some active church members are devout creedal believers. Some active church members don't check all of the boxes as they say the creed. Some check only a few--maybe "God the Father". Some, a few, don't check any of the boxes--and are still active church members--just not creedal believers. Decreeded? Creedless Believers?

God. Android spouses -- as if keeping the batteries in the mouse, bicycle lights, iPod, iPad, iPhone, smoke alarm, vibrating dildo, pacemaker, the car, and everything else wasn't trouble enough!

Great post.

In the long run (2000 years) and in the short run (last 15 minutes) tradition is both brick and mortar, and the Bible, the writings of the saints, of reformers, hymns, liturgy and so on are more bricks in the edifice of Christianity. God is a piece of that tradition, older than Jesus.

There are days when beyond question I am not a believer. Other days my atheism wavers. I was too deeply immersed in Protestant Christendom (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church) to be anything but an ambivalent, wavering atheist.

Still, I am not a pissed-off-church-hating-atheist. From certain angles, religion is just plain weird and freakish. From another angle, it is a balm; maybe glorious. Another angle shows us its holy real estate function. It's a club--mostly they are easy to get into, though personally, I'd avoid joining hard boiled Baptists in so much as a wiener roast.

What you say here is absolutely true. It is also true that various entities and 'forces' put poor blacks where they ended up as much as that was possible, and structured housing and other policies on the "No Exit" principle.

So, a lot of white people ended up at the bottom too, as per your description, When groups that could be identified (like Asians, Mexicans, effeminate swishy gays, blacks, etc.) they also were subjected to policy limitations, plus the processes you describe.

I don't have fond memories of the Jesus Freaks of the 1960s and 1970s. — Ciceronianus

I don't either; I don't have fond memories of current Jesus Freaks either, though "freak" has fallen into disuse.

Jesus, I say as a profound heresy, has always been a construction of "the Church" wherever, whenever and whoever the church was at the moment to satisfy whatever need. "My Jesus" has become more and more obscure, verging on non-existence. The "Jesus" I like is similar to Dorothy Day, the founder of the Catholic Workers. Day herself was a devout Catholic.

As saints and near saints go, Dorothy Day was likely much more tolerable than Mother Teresa. I'm very glad I didn't have to spend any time with Her Albanian Saintliness. Day didn't want to be referred for sainthood because, she said, "I don't to be dismissed that easily."

Somebody named Joshua existed (Joshua = Jesus). "Some one person" was the germ plasm of the Jesus the Church planted and grew. Who how when where why... big mystery.

"You mean symbolically." — T Clark

One of my favorite southern Catholic writers is Flannery O'Connor, “Someone once told the Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor that it is more open-minded to think that the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar is a great, wonderful, powerful symbol. Her response was, “If it's only a symbol, to hell with it.”

Not well known fact: Lutherans also believe that the bread and wine is literally the body and blood of Christ, during the acts of the Eurcharist. At the end of the Eucharistic service, the bread and wine remaining are no longer flesh and blood.

Catholics believe that the body and blood remains body and blood, so... the priest consumes the remainder of the wine, and the remaining bread is kept in a monstrance, to be venerated. (Monstrance derives from Latin monstrare to show.)

The quasi-conspiracy theory I'm going to lay on you is that gangs are part of a situation that was intentionally fostered: they built projects for black people to live in, allowed those communities to be inundated by drugs (there's more credibility to that than I would have thought : the FBI looked into it.). And refusing to do gun control not only reduces the population of black men, but makes sure a lot of them end up behind bars. For real, black men have the highest mortality rate in the US demographically. — frank

It is a quasi-conspiracy.

Yes, they did build projects for black people to live in, and the initial experience of the residents was good. There was a flaw, however: too many families, too many children. Little children don't join gangs. When they get to be teen-agers, they do. The housing projects didn't spawn gangs, but they were infiltrated by nearby gangs who sold drugs, fought turf battles, and gradually turned the projects into a social disaster for the residents.

Was this inevitable?

No, but preventing this unfortunate outcome (which some cities, like New York, managed to prevent) required good advance planning and proactive policing and maintenance. Cities like Chicago failed.

The gangs proceeded the housing.

Gun manufacture is, of course, a perfectly legitimate capitalist activity. Gang members might buy some guns brand-new at gun shops, but are much more likely to acquire guns from a shadowy secondary market. Gang members are usually not gun nuts; quite often they use cheap hand guns, not the items that gun nuts desire. (I'm extrapolating here, sort of guessing.).

Adolescent male gang members behave like your typical adolescent male whose emotional control is not well developed. They are a touchy lot, kind of tetchy at times. Upset them and a spray of bullts is the result. Then too, gangs have a habit of more cooly settling scores with guns. But, as bad luck would have it, they aren't marksmen so there is quite often collateral damage.

The conspiracy isn't public housing, drugs, or guns. The "conspiracy" -- if you can call it that -- is 155 years worth of post-slavery economic, political, and social suppression of blacks. The substructure and superstructure of racial suppression has been reduced, but it hasn't been torn down the way the old housing projects have been. Groups subjected to ongoing suppression and marginalization tend not to do well. Some individuals escape, do OK, maybe flourish and excel, but a most don't.

All that is not critical race theory, that's just conventional history. If the Brooklyn Bridge was a conspiracy, most Brooklynites and New Yorkers played no part in it, even if they benefitted from its construction. Same thing with racial suppression. Most whites were not part of the conspiracy, even if they were OK with the results.

Very apt observations. There are "random shootings" but more often than not, the shooter and the target know each other. Gangs have taken territory seriously for a long time. Whether it's just the status of claiming 3 blocks as "theirs".

1957 Broadway Lyrics West Side Story. 1957 was nothing special in the history of gangs, of course. The 5 Points gangs in 19th century New York were bad news. Then there are the clans of Scotland, who were bloodthirsty gangs, designer plaids notwithstanding. Then the IRA, Sinn Féin, Royal Ulster Constabulary, the whole slug of Windsors, the KKK, KGB, CIA, etc.etc . etc.

RIFF
When you're a Jet,
You're a Jet all the way
From your first cigarette
To your last dyin' day.

When you're a Jet,
If the spit hits the fan,
You got brothers around,
You're a family man.

You're never alone,
You're never disconnected.
You're home with your own—
When company's expected,
You're well protected!

The Jets and Sharks didn't seem to be engaged in anything illegal, just brotherhood and turf-holding. And that produced reason enough to fight with knives and chains. Guns hadn't become de rigueur yet.

Haven't seen that cartoon in decades. It was very influential in my development of sarcasm. Thanks for posting it.

If the CIA wants to create public opinion then it ought to be active on TikTok and TPF. — magritte

Who says they are not? We could have a contest guessing which TPF participants are CIA agents. I'll start with @Streetlightx. "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

As it stands now, I fail to see your reason for denying this is racist. — Pinprick

You are not being racist. You are being obtuse.

Obtuse:
"annoyingly insensitive or slow to understand."
"he wondered if the doctor was being deliberately obtuse"
Similar:
stupid
dull
slow-witted
slow
dull-witted
unintelligent
witless
(and more)

The synonyms are too harsh to be applied to you on this particular instance, but they are tempting.

Your blunt, literalist interpretation of the word 'racist' makes it impossible for you to see any effort to ameliorate past racial discrimination as anything but more racism.

How do you plead?

Apathy is the product of alienation rather than the product of financial security. — sime

And what it creates is apathy. — ssu

@Sime, you and ssu are in agreement.

The problem with the welfare state is that the money doled out is clearly not enough to pay for food and rent — god must be atheist

Absolutely. I am no longer up-to-date on Minnesota benefits, but 'welfare' for single adults with no children is less than $300 a month. Being on welfare entitles one to Medicaid, which is worth quite a lot--IF one is sick or injured, which is not a good thing. A single disabled adult with a poor work history (or young) is entitled to around $700 a month, plus Medicaid. IF one is well organized, and one applied for public housing years in advance, one has a good chance of getting into public housing. They charge 33% of whatever income one has.

If you are not well organized and at least somewhat confused, you are screwed, unless you happen to fall into some category for which there is a program with an opening. Even if you are program-qualified, there might not be an opening and you are still screwed.

If you are organized, not too confused, and lucky, you are not home free. All programs have hurdles and loopholes that must be observed. Every 6 months, Welfare requires that you confirm your employment status and other information. If you forget to send the form in, you are dropped and must reapply. Hassles. If you are mentally unstable and violate some rule (like not ranting and raving or acting out in your housing) you might be expelled. If you lash out at the wrong person, (and various other scenarios) you are out and screwed again.

Periodicaly, Disability reviews its clients. If you are unfortunate, not well organized, confused, etc. you can be disqualified. Screwed.

Unemployment Insurance is no help for the long-term unemployed. Why does one see individuals begging in public, in all kinds of weather - heat and cold both? My guess is that they are emotionally/mentally unable to work in a 'normal, social' setting. Begging involves little interaction; no supervision; no rules and regulations; no co-workers. It isn't an easy way to earn money. I've had some crappy jobs that paid poorly, and they were still better than standing outside all day asking for handouts.

Space exploration, to put it bluntly. — L'éléphant

So far, humans have traveled 250,000 miles from earth to the moon. Mars is about 34,000,000 miles away. The galaxy is 107,000 LIGHT YEARS in diameter. Successfully traveling to our nearby moon does not make us a space-faring civilization, as depicted in science fiction.

IF and when something we want or need is found on a moon planet, or asteroid, someone will try to go get it, space treaties or not. Common heritage? We have dumped shit on heritage sights that are a lot closer than the moon.

All of our problems have to be solved under the sky that is overhead. The solutions are to be found here, not there, or they won't be found.

BTW, I like science fiction, and I like reading about humankind traveling to other solar systems. Of course, in some books, we run into beings more powerful than us who end up eating our lunch. Or, we turn out to be more powerful and we eat somebody else's lunch.

Or, another theme in science fiction: we travel for a very long time in space and never find anyone else.

I get that about Baker. Of course, on the Internet nobody knows for sure how much of what somebody says reflects their actual life and how much of it is public relations copy. You wouldn't know for instance, that I am actually a cloistered monk with an overheated imagination in an isolated monastery and lots of time on my hands.

I have found great pleasure in music written by people who have been dead for hundreds of years, whether that was sitting in a plush orchestra hall seat or listening to it through earphones on a bus. I can say the same for listening to music performed in the flesh by the guys who wrote it. And I've danced to music in discos.

BTW, you can rest, assured that people who have paid a hundred bucks to listen to a stage full of professionals play Beethoven are engaged with the music. They own comfortable chairs to sit in, and have many ways of being amused. They don't have to go to to Orchestra Hall for a good time.

Some music was intended to be the basis of group movement (dance) and some music was intended to be heard by people sitting still -- and this goes back centuries. Gregorio Allegri's Miserere Mei, written in (written in the early 1600s) is still a killer piece of music. The Vatican knew it had a platinum hit, and it didn't want to lose control of the piece. They were successful until a young Amadeus Mozart heard the music in one Good Friday in Rome, and went back to his motel and wrote it out from memory.

Some orchestral music calls for movement -- thinking of some pieces by the German Michael Praetorius' Terpsichore, for example, 1610.

Did Stone Age people always move to whatever music they produced? (Some ancient bone flutes have been found, about 66,000 years old. "Ok, shut up everybody, Glug is going to play something now."

Not necessarily. It isn’t like a male can’t be sympathetic to the plights faced by females. There were also white activists during the Civil Rights weren’t there? This type of thinking implies that there are qualities that can only be possessed by people of a specific gender/race, which is just another form of race (or sex) essentialism, correct? — Pinprick

I was specifically asking why, if there were available Asian trans-women as viable options, why a black woman is the best person as someone that is sensitive to the issues inherent in cases concerning race or gender. You made it sound as if black women hold some special vantage point on the matter. But if you're saying that blacks are the only minority that we a viable pool to choose from then that makes more sense. — Harry Hindu

Sex, race, ethnicity, religion, class, education, etc. are not reliable indicators of political or judicial views. Those factors, plus social and professional experiences, are more reliable indicators of how someone will behave in the future. Nothing guarantees a specific opinion or behavior.

The American colonies and later the union of 13 colonies cum states, was never an egalitarian society. It still isn't. From before our beginning (in England) propertied men and of course white males were the beneficiaries of systems of education, social experience, privilege and power.

From the first justices down to the present, the largest group of qualified and (very important) well-connected individuals have been white males. Only recently (measured in decades) have any women, white, black, or asian, attained sufficient education, judicial experience, and connections to be considered for the court. That is not to say that there were never women who could have served on the court, but nominating them would have been a huge deviation from standard practice. The political system, after all, was composed exclusively or (lately) mostly white males.

In the last 30 or 40 years, that has begun to change.

In an earlier post I pointed out how much conservatives hated the court under Chief Justice Earl Warren (1950s and 1960s). Those hated liberal judges were all white males.

There are very conservative blacks and women who no political liberal or even moderate would think of appointing to the court. There may be, given time, asian transgender justices who no liberal or even moderate would think of appointing to the Supreme Court. Being asian and transgendered does not, as far as I know, also make one a justice interested in extending civil liberties, lessening corporate privilege, and so on.

What does make someone a liberal, if anything does, is class, education, and (most important) social experience.

Conversely, there were a few Jews able to hide in plain sight because they were tall, blond, blue eyed, and very Aryan in appearance -- more so than many of the top Nazis. Early after the Nazis took over, a diplomat saw Goebbles and asked "Who's the little Jew sitting next to Hitler?"

Yes, I know about the very large numbers of people killed by Stalin, and during the famine of the Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward. There are some differences between the Nazi plan for Jews and Slavs, and the actions directed by Stalin. The same comparing Hitler or Stalin with Mao: the differences make little difference. There are millions of dead, whether caused by efficient planning, paranoia, or colossal, malignant incompetence.

I am not in favor of censoring speech. Whatever the consequence of censorship is, it won't be good.

Most Americans work under the legal idea of "Employment at will", meaning one can just quit a job if one so wishes without any penalty (supposedly). The other side of that coin is that one can be fired without any justification -- unless one is working under an agreement, like a union contract. (You probably already know this.).

Employment at will is one of the features of the workplace that contributes to worker precarity. If one quits, one is ineligible for unemployment insurance. Same thing if one is fired "for cause" -- like maybe one was engaging in 5-fingered discounts, or just outright theft.

Unemployment benefits vary a lot from state to state, and the harshness with which the program is administered also varies.

Work sucks. That's why they have to pay people to do it.

Saying that the Holocaust was not about racism, but man's inhumanity to man, is a relatively 'weak' statement, but not false. The Nazis were racist, but they used the term in a somewhat different way than it is used contemporarily. Up to the earlier part of the 20th century, some people still used race the way we use 'ethnicity', so the race of Frenchmen, the race of jews, the race of Englishmen, the race of Slavs. The term 'race' also distinguished between Africans, Asians, Europeans, and Indigenous Americans, which is its primary meaning now.

The holocaust is the example par excellence of inhumanity, and goes downhill from there.

What makes Whoopi Goldberg's statement relatively weak, is that 'man's inhumanity to man' is used to describe everything from really, really rude behavior to acts which are an abomination (like the holocaust was).

I regret their interest in PoMo. I want our intelligence services to be clear-eyed and rational, science based, and politically reliable. NoPoMo is better than moPoMo.

There is a lot of text there. Right now I am too hungry and tired to read it.

You have used many words in your posts which are not bitter and are not cranky. I would like to see you change your 'handle' but perhaps you like the 'ironic' element too much and I fully accept your choice of 'handle' is just that, your choice. — universeness

It is an ironic choice, the irony more visible to me than anyone else. I don't want to change horses mid stream, and this handle goes back to the first incarnation of Philosophy Forum, so a few years worth. Plus it would take too much CPU time to think of another handle.

Why not an Asian trans-gender woman — Harry Hindu

We could have an Asian trans-gender person; we could have an indigenous gay person, we could have a pissed off incel of whatever extraction. One barrier to having these types is that the supremes are usually selected from the cohort of experienced federal judges. There are not many Asian trans-gender, gay indigenous, pissed off Incel judges to start with, even fewer who are experienced. Maybe n=zero in that category.

Hence, have patience.

But were I appointing judges, I would not start with a transgendered person. The status of "transgender" is too unsettled at this point.

It turns it's constituents into hypocrites. — Harry Hindu

Hypocrisy is our collective default state.

@Jill: Mexicans, Mafia, Muslims...

So, what actually is that? It looks like it could be a galaxy. — T Clark

It purports to be an image of electrical activity in the central galactic region. Or it's art. It's art on a galactic scale.

I took your recommendation and am watching the first episode of Ozark.

Riveting, as you said.

I am declaring that this is abstract expression art, the title of which is "What did the galaxy ever do for you, anyway?"

The atoms of which you are composed will survive your death and go on to have all sorts of interesting adventures FAR FAR FAR into the future. And just think, your drab wretched life may be the fantastic adventures of a few atoms that maybe passed through Julius Caesar and Jesus Christ. Or Atilla the Hun, or Vlad the Impaler, or the guy that invented the wheel, or the champion flint knapper of the mid-stone age. You could contain atoms from the first flowering plant, the first animal to venture onto dry land, the first bird, the last passenger pigeon. It is certain that you are composed of matter created in the Big Bang.

So what more do you want?

what if these citizens are actually being effectively abducted into group home or low income neighborhood situations while commonly drugged by a predatory medical establishment and forced to assert that they have an incurable ailment, in essence ostracized to various degrees by their communities? — Enrique

That would be bad. But the picture you paint is inverted, unlike the actual reality.

The predatory parts of the medical establishment are the various insurance companies, some worse than others, and the for-profit medical system. There are guilty parties here, but the medical staff are not the culprits.

I am old enough to remember when it really was possible to commit people against their will to the very large state run mental hospitals; those practices were made illegal starting in the early 1970s. However, the old state mental hospitals served a very real need that existed prior to the introduction of drugs that made it possible to greatly lessen the symptoms of psychosis, mania, and depression.

The treatment available in these hospitals was not great -- and couldn't be great, because the means were not at hand. Since the 1970s, most of these facilities have been closed.

Today, in every large city, there are homeless people who are mentally ill who would benefit from care on an involuntary basis. They can't receive care under those terms, so the end up immiserated.

Why not an Asian — Harry Hindu

All I good time. Have patience.

how many are actually learning your ABC's and practicing them every day — universeness

A lot of people perform A and B. C, less so. C takes time, ability, and effort. More people who are capable, though, could do more study, and should.

all good but the current state of the planet would suggest, it's just not enough — universeness

Well, universeness, our problems may be beyond our capacity to solve. I don't like that, but it may be true.

It would be nice if we could flip a switch and suddenly have zero carbon output, zero methane output, and so on. No such switch. Too bad. We are DEEPLY dependent on fossil fuels and there is no handy substitute at hand. Wind and solar, nuclear and hydro are alternatives, but we are a long way from deploying them fully. We don't have enough time before things get much worse.

Yes, we could suddenly shut down carbon emitting plants and processes all over the world, then watch the world's economy collapse. World-wide economic collapse and worsening global warming are both bad. Which one shall we have?

We are between a rock and a hard place.

The justice system is about finding "a" guilty person — god must be atheist

That is one of the tasks of the courts. The Supreme Court doesn't do trials. Their main concern is to review cases from the POV of procedure and constitutional questions and to resolve conflicting rulings by lower courts.

The best person should get the job regardless of race, sex, etc. — Pinprick

That's true in some situations; in others, it isn't. Race and gender do not matter when you are hiring a hundred teachers; just got the best you can. The best person to be Pope, however, will be a Catholic male.

The Supremes are a special group. They generally will not answer in advance how they would rule on potential cases, so some other criteria has to be used for selection. If you want anti-abortion anti-gay justices, pick a conservative Catholic male. If you want more moderate views, pick a liberal Protestant or a Jew. If you want someone sensitive to the issues inherent in cases concerning race and gender, a black woman would be the best person.

What do you think outlawing guns (like the UK does) would do to the US murder rate? — Down The Rabbit Hole

The likelihood of the US Congress and 38 states approving a constitutional amendment repealing the Second Amendment and banning gun possession is zero, or close to it. Even if this were done, there are so many guns already in possession (by about 1/3 of the adult population) gun violence would remain a problem.

If gun and ammunition manufacture and sale were ended, it would take time for the existing supplies of ammunition to be used up. Some of those bullets would be used to kill people intentionally. Eventually, gun violence would decline; it might take quite a while.

Now, let me point out again -- as anti-hand gun and anti-assault weapons as I am -- a very small percent of gun owners shoot people. Those who do shoot other people almost always use hand guns. [Of course, mass murders with rifles or assault weapons are an egregious exception.] A large share of hand gun deaths are among young minority males, generally in urban areas, who often are at least relatively poor, may be involved in the drug trade, and may be involved in gangs.

So, the problem of gratuitous violence also requires changes in the urban environment (economically, socially, educationally, medically, and so on).

One can kill other people with devices besides guns. A large rock will work if nothing else is available. A highly motivated individual can do it with his bare hands.

Your opening post is a bit diffuse, but you do ask the perennial good questions.

Where does the 'responsibility for the way things are lie' and what personal responsibility (if any) do each of us have as a consequence? — universeness

"The way things are", both the good and the bad, are a consequence of mostly insignificant individuals acting within very large, deterministic systems.

You and I can can choose to ride bikes to work and the grocery store instead of buying big gas-guzzling SUVs, but neither of us are in a position to do anything about the 1 billion cars on the world's roads, or the giant auto, oil, steel, and rubber businesses committed to continuing business as usual, or even changing gears and replacing 1 billion gas guzzling vehicles with 1 billion electricity guzzling vehicles.

You and I can bicycle across the country to help out in the next big disaster, but fortunately there are large organizations like the Red Cross, FEMA, Catholic Charities, Lutheran World Relief, and so on that are prepared to get there first and to start major relief efforts.

You and I can try to replace the major system behind a lot of the world's problems, like global capitalism, but we are 2 sardines up against a big herd of sharks.

What options are left? The same options that have always been open:

A) Behave generously, fairly, and kindly to those in your immediate community, for whom your behavior makes a difference.
B) Find a larger system and make a contribution of time and talent.
C) Read widely and gain knowledge about how the world works.

"A" is a clear and present opportunity. It yields good for others and good for you.

"B" offers many options. It doesn't have to be as big as the Red Cross. There are ay small NGOs trying to ameliorate the world's problems. Yes, some are more effective than others, but better to be involved in a so-so effort to heal the world than fecklessly dithering over the sad state of the world all by yourself.

"C" is very important--you probably already do this. One has to make an effort to make sense of what is going on -- the puzzle won't put itself together by itself. Personally, I find history to be my best source understanding -- not so much ancient history or medieval history, though those are interesting, as 'modern history' the last 200 years or so.

One of the pleasures of reading history (provided it is accurate) is the "ah ha! So THAT IS WHY things worked out the way they did" moments. Not every history will yield a lot of "ah ha!" moments, but eventually they pile up.

Here's an example of a really good recent history: The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein (2017) is a history of how the Federal Government, banking, and real estate interests undertook a major housing segregation and home construction program starting before the 1930s, but really getting under way then. This history explains how much of the present segregation of black and white people was brought about, particularly in the new suburbs built after WWII. It wasn't an accident: racial segregation was explicit in the enabling legislation of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). Legislation and court decisions have since undone the laws and regulations, but the consequences remain.

You're sure, however, that occupation = oppression. Certainly it can, but equally certainly not necessarily. — tim wood

Tim, even though lots of people are anti-Israeli, it's OK to be on the side of the Israel. What isn't necessary is to bend over backwards to make a positive of everything they are doing. Occupation does pretty much = oppression. What else would it be? European Jews, with the help of Great Britain et al, claimed, occupied, liberated, moved into, invaded, or otherwise came to possess much of the area of Palestine, called Israel and Judea a long time ago.

Of course the residents of that area, who had been living there for hundreds of years, would resent it.

And you appear to represent that the Palestinians are the aggrieved party. I submit the Israelis are the aggrieved party and I will merely gesture at the last 75 years of their history as proof. — tim wood

True enough, the new state of Israel had to fight for its existence from the getgo. It was attacked from within it's newly claimed territory and from without. Just guessing, but the Israelis probably expected this to happen. That's why they built up a powerful military (homemade and bought abroad). Is that how they are "aggrieved?

A man beats his wife: a terrible and horrible thing. But when you grow up you eventually figure out that, terrible as it is, it also may not be as simple as it seems. — tim wood

Oh dear. Tim, when did you stop beating your wife?

I guess I'm asking is if kind of artificially adding diversity is a thing we do — TiredThinker

There is absolutely nothing 'natural' about the SCOTUS; it's an appointed office, so everything about it is "artificial" by definition.

The ethnicity, race, sex, and age matter some. What is REALLY important is whether the court is "conservative' (tending toward limiting the role of government, protecting corporations, limiting individual rights, etc.) or 'liberal' (tending toward accepting changes and enlargement of government's role, limiting corporations, expanding individual rights, etc.)

Liberal Americans are experiencing some of the great angst that conservative Americans experienced under the liberal Warren Court, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, 1953-1969.

The Warren Court expanded civil rights, civil liberties, judicial power, and the federal power in dramatic ways.[1] It has been widely recognized that the court, led by the liberal bloc, has created a major "Constitutional Revolution" in the history of United States.

The Warren Court brought "one man, one vote" to the United States through a series of rulings, and created the Miranda warning. In addition, the court was both applauded and criticized for bringing an end to de jure racial segregation in the United States, incorporating the Bill of Rights (i.e. including it in the 14th Amendment Due Process clause), and ending officially sanctioned voluntary prayer in public schools. The period is recognized as the highest point in judicial power that has receded ever since, but with a substantial continuing impact.

Conservatives absolutely hated Earl Warren -- paying for "IMPEACH EARL WARREN" billboards along highways. It should also be noted that the Warren Court was all-white and all-male until Thurgood Marshall was confirmed in 1967.