“I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.”
- Angela Davis, for those who didn’t know the reference
I love Angela Davis. I really need to learn more about her. I saw this video posted somewhere during 2020, and for folks who can resist the urge to impatiently skip past what she’s setting up in the beginning, the payoff at the end of her response to the banal question of whether she supports violence for her cause is (IMO) exceptionally powerful.
Did she use an AK to effect her change?
At least once, yes.
In 1970, guns belonging to Davis were used in an armed takeover of a courtroom in Marin County, California, in which four people were killed. Prosecuted for three capital felonies—including conspiracy to murder—she was held in jail for over a year before being acquitted of all charges in 1972.
Yikes
So what is that supposed to mean?
Changing everything you can’t change?
What does “not accepting those things you cannot change”, means? It feels somehow like very self centered gibberish.
Please enlighten me.
You’re being downvoted because people people think you’re being obtuse, but, as a person that overuses logical thinking to a diagnosable degree, my suspicion is that you’re doing that. Also because your tone is kind of…not good.
The whole point of the Serenity Prayer (“accept the things I cannot change”) is that it includes “change the things I can” – so the things Davis is changing are things she CAN change, by definition.
But her point is that she is reframing what she believes she can and cannot change. Recategorizing, if you will.
She’s invoking the third part of the Serenity Prayer: the wisdom to know the difference. As we grow and learn, our wisdom increases, so the things that belong in the first two categories will shift.
Things that used to be things that can’t be changed are becoming things that she can.
To understand the quote, you just have to give it some space to breathe, and not be so logical about it.
Correct analysis 😁 too much logic made it non understandable (I’m not familiar with the prayer so that didn’t help either).
Thanks for the rundown!
Yeah, the Serenity Prayer context might help.
Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference
It’s never been about left and right. It’s always been a war with the owner class and everyone else.
We occasionally forget; until everything falls apart and greed ruins everything. That’s when the fight starts again.
…everyone you dislike?
Gorgeous. Where can I get one?
A girlfriend or a gun?
It’s a package deal.
A gun that is your girlfriend? Or a girlfriend that is your gun?
SIR THE RIFLE’S NAME IS CHARLENE SIR!
I found mine at a women’s college in Massachusetts. We’re putting a lifted rally suspension on her Subaru today.
Cringe
Whatever suits you, she’s the girl of my dreams and we’ve been married more than 10 years now.
Yes.
An armed left is like base level marxism, how are people still surprised by that at this point?
Because American media keeps pushing the idea that the Democrats are “the left” and because Democrats oppose guns because the Republicans promote them, they equate owning a gun with being a part of “the right”.
Republicans “support” guns up until black people start marching with them.
Democrats “oppose” guns except for the police who shoot black people.
Yeah - in non US places gun ownership only means one thing: you own a gun. It says nothing about your politics. And yes, US democrats being referred to as “left” is ridiculous. The Democrat party wouldn’t even be a centrist party in most (western) democracies.
Shit in Amerika the kind of soda you drink can get you called a commie libruhl
Pepsi - the choice of a new generation… of woke, pronoun-shifting libtards. As an aside I like your spelling. It’s reminded me to listen to Ice Cube’s Amerikkka’s Most Wanted again.
the ussr worked with pepsi and almost gave them a naval force
I remember that now you mention it. Bartering with a super power seemed crazy to me back then. It’s amazing how little seems to have genuinely improved for Russians (specifically) since the fall of the USSR - we had high hopes of a new age but… gestures broadly at the current state of Europe and shakes head.
Some day you’ll have an original thought and it is going to scare you.
Are you familiar with sarcasm / irony / satire? I’m quoting and subsequently mangling a slogan from 1985. (c. Forty years ago) Surely you haven’t taken that comment at face value?
Believe it or not, there are plenty of Democrat and Republican gun owners alike who view gun ownership the same as you do, and don’t make it their entire identity, political or otherwise. We just don’t get constantly exposed to that reality, because it doesn’t make for interesting headlines, or divisive online debate.
Good. I’m glad. I had my suspicions that was the case but it’s nice to have it confirmed by an insider. I always struggled to believe that an entire nation of so many millions of people would have a one size fits all pro/anti stance on any one topic; it’d be absurd.
Also far right conservative men are given all the permission in the world to threaten violence whereas many groups of people on the left, and leftism in general are defined by conservatives as inherently dangerous which both makes it practically much more dangerous to own guns and carry them (because you will just got shot by a cop and the cop won’t even get in trouble they can just say “they looked dangerous”) and also makes a culture of responsible gun ownership way harder to grow because the societal conditions around it are aggressively hostile to leftwing people owning guns.
Listen to the way centrists talk about the threat of violence from the far left and far right in the US, of course there are shitty, dangerous people on the left, but to compare the two as if there were similar amounts of violence coming from both is a ridiculous misstatement of reality.
Democrats don’t oppose guns. Democrats are for base-level gun control. Republicans are insane, NRA-supporting fools who would rather 5 year old children get massacred weekly instead of have any potential gun controls.
The impression is that the left is the only side calling for gun control.
Despite the most sweeping gun control implemented by Reagan, and Trumpty dumpty literally floated illegal search and seizure for firearms.
perhaps at the federal level, but California and Washington liberals have passed sweeping gun control laws that severely impinge on law abiding citizens, and the AFT under Biden criminalized brace pistols, turning millions of law abiding citizens into criminals overnight. Only a SC ruling kept them from pursuing arrest for people who legally purchased their firearms, including a full background check for their purchases.
Liberals aren’t leftists
An armed left is like base level marxism
And then what?
Suppose you get falsely charged by the state because of your politics, what are you going to do? Get into armed conflict against the police officers coming to arrest you?
Is that what Steven Donziger should have done?
It’s not like armed insurgencies don’t happen in modern countries. Look up the IRA. Even if you are not keen on blowing up billionaires, you can still shoot meal team six as they try to bring back lynching and the KKK.
That said, disarming the country including the police, especially the police, would be more conductive to a peaceful life. So would actual democratic representation.
So then the government just sends the military in to quell rebellions by unarmed/poorly-armed citizens.
Yeah, and they kill them and also some others, and some guy’s wife. The guy takes up arms in revenge and the cycle continues.
It’s not an open armed rebellion, it’s constant terror attacks. How do you send in the military to quell a car bombing or an assassination?
Then you get your single shot rifle and storm the the king’s palace with it, against a bunch of people with single shot rifles, kill them all, kill a king, all his family, and thus establish a military goverment. Because it’s apparently it’s 19th century now.
Then you get your single shot rifle and storm the the king’s palace with it, against a bunch of people with single shot rifles, kill them all, kill a king, all his family
Sounds good
thus establish a military goverment.
Nah, I just defeated the military. I would prefer a less authoritarian system
When you killed everyone in a coup, you are by definition a new military. You might prefer less authoritarian system now, but all your friends who are running around with rifles trying to do a coup are in it for power, it’s just how the selection process goes, for everyone bright eyed idealist who will immediately relinquish his absolute authority that he just won by fighting a civil war, there will be 10 people who fought in civil war to get this absolute authority.
We know that, because actually I deceived you earlier, it’s not 19th century now, and we already saw how that happened. And also, both technologies and situations are different nowWhen you killed everyone in a coup
I didn‘t kill „everybody“. I killed the king, his family and his guards and maybe his ministers or generals
you are by definition a new military
No, I am a member of one of many militias
all your friends who are running around with rifles trying to do a coup are in it for power
Not all of them, but I understand what you mean
for everyone bright eyed idealist who will immediately relinquish his absolute authority that he just won by fighting a civil war, there will be 10 people who fought in civil war to get this absolute authority.
Yes. Thats how war works.
both technologies and situations are different now
Exactly
I didn‘t kill „everybody“. I killed the king, his family and his guards and maybe his ministers or generals
Not how civil wars work unfortunately
No, I am a member of one of many militias
Which makes you a part of the military power of the new rule. So yeah.
Yes. Thats how war works.
Yes. That’s my point actually.
Exactly
Ok, but that’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?
True story for Americans: You should exercise your 2nd Amendment right unless you want only the Right to have guns.
If you actually listened to the Right’s leaders, they’re openly telling you that you should be picking out your favorite at the shop now.
Yeah I’m becoming increasingly nervous with the blue states systematically trying to disarm everyone and the red states are trying to whip everyone into a traitorous frenzy over the dumbest shit while arming everyone with a pulse.
Otoh, and this probably sounds absolutely fucking nuts, I’ve found republicans tend to understand “strength” and they are strangely respectful of liberal and leftist gun owners because that’s a dynamic they can comprehend. It’s not a good state of affairs but it’s better than them believing they can just run things because they’re the only ones with “strength”
A militia made of a bunch of greasy brainwashed boomers would be put down in a couple days at most, even if it consisted of the entire population of republicans.
They won’t be a regular army doing regular army stuff like taking land and stuff. They would be like the Taliban. How did that go again for the US? The Troubles were no picnic, look it up.
Spoiler: it’s an Israeli settler on her way to the West Bank
I don’t like this twist
She cute tho 😨😨😨
Lovely, everyone in this thread is exactly the same as a trump supporter but a left version of it. You guys are a wet dream for the NRA
Yeah, nobody but people like you make these false comparisons
Ah, the classic “U” argument, that the fringes of the right and left are the same. It’s a cute but damaging myth.
The horseshoe theory is a bullshit idea cooked up by politically deficient liberals to cope with everyone thinking they’re a joke
This is explicitly not horse shoe theory.
Look at those nails. I can guarantee she has not fired a gun in her life.
You’re firing guns wrong
WTF is with her nails? Is painting each hand a different color a thing with the kids now? Also those are claws but I’ve seen that before IRL.
Painting nails different colors has always been a thing lol
Those whippersnappers and their differently colored nails, unbelievable! That’s what’s wrong with society!
Her left hand is red and her right is blue. Perhaps to demonstrate how politics works for the unknowing?
It’s uh, not that big a deal.
