Jspur
Jspur's JournalDuring the Cold War did the US trade with the Soviet Union?
A friend and I were talking about the current situation with Russia and how China have manipulated the US economically through trade. I jokingly told my friend imagine if the Soviet Union had the same strategy economically with the US that China does through trade. My friend then asked did we trade with the Soviet Union back in the day. So that's the genesis of where this question came from. Can any of the older DUERs who were alive around that time answer the question?
I was an 18 year old Indian American when 9/11 happened
and was in college at the time.
A little background about me is that I was born and raised in the US but my parents are from India. Growing up in NC I experienced a lot of intense racism. Kids would always shout to me to go back to India and other racial insults. I also endured physical fights with racist peers who were white and black. With that being said I had hoped that once I left for college that things would change and for once and I could just enjoy life and not have to deal with that type of bs anymore.
My first few weeks of college went well in the sense that there was no drama. The only painful event that happened was there was this Indian girl I had a huge crush on. I had hoped she would be my girlfriend. Unfortunately the night before 9/11 she rejected me and told me she had zero interest in me. I was crushed and heartbroken like many guys are when they get rejected by their crush at a young age. Little did I know things were going to go from bad to worse within several hours.
I wake up feeling hurt and like garbage but I have no classes in the morning so I go to the library to catch up on some studying. I walked in there and saw a bunch people gather in front of a 27 inch TV. I see the images of the first tower on fire and think this has to be some movie. I then ask a few kids what movie is this and then they said this is real it's not a movie. I was shocked at first and then quickly said out loud "This has to be a terrorist attack." Everybody was shocked by proclamation and said no way the pilot just made a mistake. Then suddenly the second plane crashes and everybody just stares at me and some crazy people think that I must somehow be involved because in their eyes how could I as an 18 year old figure it out so quickly that it was a terrorist attack. The reason I had a strong a feeling it was a terrorist attack is that a year early during my senior year of highschool I had taken an international relations class and had studied terrorism.
Just like that my college experience changed drastically and I was again put in the spotlight having to deal with intense racism. I'm not a Muslim but because I'm Indian and my ethnicity of being Punjabi I'm always getting mistaken for being middle eastern more so than being Indian. Punajbi's tend to look middle eastern compared to the rest of the other ethnicities from India. I did make a few good friends from college but it wasn't as fun as it should have been. I had to endure people coming at me with stares, insults, and actually being in some fights out of self defense. I was dealing with racism from both white and black students. I still remember one black kid coming up to me and laughing at me and saying "You are the nigger now."
I missed out on some dating experiences. I remember there was this one attractive white girl whose friends tried to set me up with because they told me she had a crush on me. She came up to me and we exchanged numbers. I then call her a day later and she gets cold feet simply because she feared what people would think of her being with me because I looked middle eastern. This is the experience I had with a lot women back then in college which is they would tell me they would me attractive but didn't want to deal with the social backlash of dating me because I looked middle eastern. So 9/11 screwed that up for me.
My final thought about 9/11 was I really hated Bush. He reminded me a lot of upper middle class to rich kids I had gone to a private highschool with which was spoiled and entitled. I didn't think he deserved to be president simply because I felt he was stupid and underqualified back when I was a senior in highschool. So when everybody pledged their allegiance Bush on campus I didn't. I told my peers that I'm all for America and getting revenge on Bin Laden but I will never support Bush. I was against the Patriot Act and didn't believe Bush's crap about him keeping us safe because I felt he failed in that regard due to 9/11 happening. This lead to me being ostracize by a lot of peers. One thing I learned at a young age was when you speak out against the popular narrative in this country you get cancelled.
9/11 to me is not a day that should be memorialize since a lot of tragic things followed due to it such as Bush getting re-elected along with starting a pointless war in Iraq that got thousands of innocent people killed. My heart goes out to the victims and the families that suffered but there is nothing positive you can get out of this day. It's not like pearl harbor where we as a country bounced back better. Unfortunately the last 20 years has had a strong increase in economic inequality, along with deterioration of the social fabric and unity of this country due to bad leadership, radical groups, etc.
How the once NC discriminatory trans law shows how to defeat the Texas Abortion
law. As a North Carolinian I remember the outrage all over the country several years ago when our former republican nutcase Governor McCrory passed the bathroom law which prevented Trans from going to a public bathroom of their new gender. This outrage pressured companies such as Paypal not to set up bases in NC like they had originally planned to and it also scared off Apple from setting up a corporate base down here. The final straw I felt was when the NCAA banned college basketball tournament games from happening in the state of NC until that law was repealed. For those of you who don't know college basketball is huge in NC and people always look forward to NCAA tournament games being played down here every year. The combination of scaring off businesses from coming to NC along with losing sporting events caused people to vote out McCrory and lead to the repeal of this horrible law.
This strategy has to be applied to Texas. People need to put a lot of pressure on corporations not to go down to Texas. Also have the NCAA prevent any College Football bowl games from being played down there until the abortion law is repealed. It may not have quick results in Texas like it did in NC since Texas is red while NC is purple but eventually over the next several years Texas will cave in. I don't think over the long run they would be strong enough to stomach not having Bowl games along with top notch corporation not coming to their state.
The reactions of Biden pulling out is just a reflection of how divided
this country is. I say this as a Bernie Sander's supporter that this was the best move of Biden's presidency so far. He did the right thing and I think deep down everybody on both sides knows it was the right move.
I'm pretty sure the majority of Republicans support getting out of Afghanistan but they disagree with leaving now simply because it wasn't a republican president that was in charge of the exit. If this was Trump they would be screaming about how he did a great job of leading the country out of Afghanistan.
What a really comes down to is that even if you make the universally popular move it is still unpopular in this country politically due to not being on the same team as the other party.
If this holds up as a North Carolinian I'm embarrassed
but happy the Democrats will be able to take the majority. I'm embarrassed because I took pride in NC being the most democratic southern state outside of Virginia. I thought we were more blue than Georgia especially after we elected Obama in '08 and Georgia didn't. Oh well I hope we can join GA in '24 in the next presidential election.
What's wrong with withdrawing troops from Afghanistan?
Obviously I'm anti-Trump but I don't see anything wrong about getting out of Afghanistan. Afghanistan to me is a lost cause and we shouldn't have been in there in the first place. It was fine to bomb them after 9/11 but it was a waste to go to war with them. We will never be able to fix the problems in Afghanistan.
Can Trump fire Nuclear Missiles?
I guess I want to know if he can decide to push the button to fire them or does he need to have the approval of few other people before he can launch them? From what I have been reading about nuclear football it seems like no one could stop him if he really wanted to launch them.
List something Trump does that you are glad you won't have to deal with anymore?
I will start with no longer having to deal with his stupid rants being televised by all news stations 24/7. It's going to feel good being able to ignore this dipshit starting January 21, 2021.
DU voting experience check in here if you voted today
like me. I live in Cary, NC and voted today. For those you who don't know Cary is a suburb of Raleigh and is located in the biggest county in NC. I showed up at 6:30 am to vote. The line was very small and it only took me 6 minutes to get in and vote.
You can say Chris Wallace sucks but the problem
really is that Trump is interrupting non stop and not following the rules. I know this is not shocking but the problem really is how can any moderator shut him up? They can't since he's just going to scream and interrupt on every occasion. The only solution to this is to give moderators the power in the future to cut off his mic when he interrupts. That's the only way to stop it because it will be the same even if we have a progressive moderator.
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Member since: Fri Dec 1, 2017, 10:28 PMNumber of posts: 578
