Jordan Peterson

[Timsup2nothin]

@Traitorfish this is the issue: "all the progressive energy in America."

All the progressive energy in America might be enough to cause meaningful change somewhere, but it ain't here. There isn't enough progressive energy in America to affect America, period. Conservatism plays really well in the country that's on top, and even people who aren't stuck in how wonderful the 1950s were aren't wildly optimistic about change. That's reality. If the progressives are given power proportional to their actual number they would find that they have NONE...like they had throughout the second half of the 20th century. So they get to either support the Democrats, who at least don't outright hate them, or not. Just like US Nazis get to support the GOP, not because the GOP really embraces their positions, but because the GOP isn't going to run them out of the country the way the Democrats want to.

 

[stinkubus]

The left wing needs to form their own version of the Tea Party. If the Schumers, Pelosis, and Feinsteins of the world start getting primaried from the left things will change faster than you think.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The left wing needs to form their own version of the Tea Party. If the Schumers, Pelosis, and Feinsteins of the world start getting primaried from the left things will change faster than you think.

Extremists on the right, extremists on the left...if they pull both parties into the weeds the center right, which in the US is a substantial plurality, has no choice but to choose between the opposing parties of weeds. Which way do you think they will go? History, and my money, says the weeds on the right.

 

[stinkubus]

The left doesn't need to run extremists. They just need passionate and sincere candidates running on issues that people care about. Stop the culture war BS and start running on single payer, free/less expensive college, etc.

 

[Traitorfish]

@Traitorfish this is the issue: "all the progressive energy in America."

All the progressive energy in America might be enough to cause meaningful change somewhere, but it ain't here. There isn't enough progressive energy in America to affect America, period. Conservatism plays really well in the country that's on top, and even people who aren't stuck in how wonderful the 1950s were aren't wildly optimistic about change. That's reality. If the progressives are given power proportional to their actual number they would find that they have NONE...like they had throughout the second half of the 20th century. So they get to either support the Democrats, who at least don't outright hate them, or not. Just like US Nazis get to support the GOP, not because the GOP really embraces their positions, but because the GOP isn't going to run them out of the country the way the Democrats want to.

Sanders won 13.2 million votes in the Democratic primaries. Clinton won 16.9 million. Trump won 14 million. That isn't a chasm. It's actually a very similar proportion of American that voted for he-Clinton in the 1992 primary: 10.5 million out of 256.5 million, or 1 in 24.4, against 13.2 million out of 323.4 million, or 1 in 24.5. It's actually better than Gore and Kerry, at 10.9 million out of 282.2 million, or 1 in 25.9, and 9.9 million out of 292.8 million, or 1 in 29.6. Doubtless the figures would be less equal if we accounted for an aging population, but none the less, Sanders ran on unapologetic ally progressive platform and made one of the better showings of any Democratic aspirants in recent decades. Do we imagine that if Sanders had gone to the election, he would have scraped only those 13.2 million and watched the rest stay home?

Well, maybe. But if I took that dim of a view of American electoral democracy, you'd have a hard time convince me to take even twenty more minutes out of my day to helping the powerful secure their power, on top of the nine-plus hours I already devote to that noble cause. If we're going to be pessimists, let's commit. The Tsar can charge at his own damn machine guns.

 

[stinkubus]

Sanders also started his campaign very late in the cycle and relied mostly on small donations from regular citizens. With some more organization and a commitment to starting at the beginning of the cycle a strong, progressive candidate will ROLL in the primary if the establishment choice is a hack like Hillary.

 

[Esperr]

Didn't really read most of the thread because I didn't have time.

This guy often gets lumped in with Ben Shapiro, and while I don't particularly like either of them, I can understand the points he is trying to make even if it might be based on a lot of strawmen. He does have some good psycological videos that are interesting, but I tend to disagree with him a lot when he strays away from those kinds of topics. He also has that conservative "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" vibe which ive never been a fan of. Im not saying you don't need to work and try hard, you do, but him and guys like Shapiro seem to largely ignore that life isn't a perfect meritocracy and a lot of your early life is decided by arbitrary circumstances which I think can be a destructive mentality to hold.

 

[Atilla-My-Hun]

The left doesn't need to run extremists. They just need passionate and sincere candidates running on issues that people care about. Stop the culture war BS and start running on single payer, free/less expensive college, etc.

Many would argue that the left is running extremists now... The left (especially on this board) by and large seldom agrees with moderates. If you examine the left's current platform they are mostly all about changing the way things have always been done and at times to the point of demanding what language people can and can't use, case in point - this thread. I also don't see how they left has any hope of stopping the "culture war" when the majority of their platform is aimed at changing the way things have always been done, which is an attempt to force cultural change.

I think a lot of the left's problem is that their representatives and constituents simply do not understand and do not care to understand roughly half of the population. How could they ever know what voters care about when they immediately dismiss the concerns of half of the population? Instead of developing an understanding and having open discourse they prefer to sit in their echo chambers strategizing about how they're going to reverse their decline by continuing to do exactly what they are already doing. Doesn't make much sense to me, but hey - at this point I really couldn't care less. The writings on the wall as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Kyriakos]

Didn't really read most of the thread because I didn't have time.

This guy often gets lumped in with Ben Shapiro, and while I don't particularly like either of them, I can understand the points he is trying to make even if it might be based on a lot of strawmen. He does have some good psycological videos that are interesting, but I tend to disagree with him a lot when he strays away from those kinds of topics. He also has that conservative "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" vibe which ive never been a fan of. Im not saying you don't need to work and try hard, you do, but him and guys like Shapiro seem to largely ignore that life isn't a perfect meritocracy and a lot of your early life is decided by arbitrary circumstances which I think can be a destructive mentality to hold.

Shapiro is more of an open troll*, i think. What he has in common with Peterson is that neither produced any work of note, and neither rose to relative fame due to merit either, but as part of the trolling wars.

*he is also a zionist loon. Seems to happen to (thankfully) a small minority of jewish people.

 

[Esperr]

Shapiro is more of an open troll*, i think. What he has in common with Peterson is that neither produced any work of note, and neither rose to relative fame due to merit either, but as part of the trolling wars.

*he is also a zionist loon. Seems to happen to (thankfully) a small minority of jewish people.

I think Shapiro got famous from his fast talking "burn" videos on youtube and stuff. Its why I have never thought the debate format was very good for actual arguments. He is a really good speaker, even if he is not a very correct one.

 

[stinkubus]

Many would argue that the left is running extremists now... The left (especially on this board) by and large seldom agrees with moderates. If you examine the left's current platform they are mostly all about changing the way things have always been done and at times to the point of demanding what language people can and can't use, case in point - this thread. I also don't see how they left has any hope of stopping the "culture war" when the majority of their platform is aimed at changing the way things have always been done, which is an attempt to force cultural change.

I think a lot of the left's problem is that their representatives and constituents simply do not understand and do not care to understand roughly half of the population. How could they ever know what voters care about when they immediately dismiss the concerns of half of the population? Instead of developing an understanding and having open discourse they prefer to sit in their echo chambers strategizing about how they're going to reverse their decline by continuing to do exactly what they are already doing. Doesn't make much sense to me, but hey - at this point I really couldn't care less. The writings on the wall as far as I'm concerned.

Open discourse is impossible with those who argue in bad faith. Take your post as an example. I challenge you to name one left wing extremist who has won an election for a federal office in the United States in the past 40 years. The posters in this forum are not a representative sample of the public, the electorate, nor those who represent us, so referencing them in response to my post is nothing but a red herring. The left also has plenty of ideas on how to reform the American economy to make it start working for a larger share of the populace, so your claim that a "majority" of the platform is dedicated to culture war issues is dubious at best.

I advocated for moving away from the "culture war" topics, so you can assume I'm not interested in flaming anyone who makes a pronoun error when addressing or referring to a trans-gendered person. The one thing you are correct about is that I do not understand people who do so in a desire to be mean spirited, but these matters are trivialities compared to what else is at stake. The left will only make progress in America once they stop walking into traps set by the right wing which drag them into unwinnable arguments.

As an example, when Trump unveiled his latest effort to bar trans-gendered persons from military service the optimal Democratic response, imo, would be as follows:

"The President campaigned on a promise to reform health care and provide coverage for all Americans. Instead he has chosen to waste his time crafting a policy which affects only a fraction of a percent of the members of our armed services, SAD!"

There is no sense is debating the merits of such a policy with a bigot because there is no limit to the amount of mental gymnastics they will do to justify their position. You literally cannot win. The better play is to mock him for wasting his time on such a minor issue.

The real problem is that the donor class LOVES wedge issues. They prevent the formation of voting blocs which might threaten their power. This is why professional trolls like Peterson, Shapiro, Samantha Bee, Stephen Colbert, etc. will always be in demand. "Divide and conquer" is one of the oldest tricks in the book.

 

[Atilla-My-Hun]

Open discourse is impossible with those who argue in bad faith.

???

Jordan Peterson isn't someone who argues in bad faith yet he is regularly shouted down, called a far-right extremist and a Nazi...

Take your post as an example. I challenge you to name one left wing extremist who has won an election for a federal office in the United States in the past 40 years. The posters in this forum are not a representative sample of the public, the electorate, nor those who represent us, so referencing them in response to my post is nothing but a red herring. The left also has plenty of ideas on how to reform the American economy to make it start working for a larger share of the populace, so your claim that a "majority" of the platform is dedicated to culture war issues is dubious at best.

There's clearly not going to be any agreement on that and naming specific people when I'm taking about the Democratic platform really doesn't add anything to the conversation when we all already know what the Democratic platform is, so I see no point in such a pointless exercise. The simple fact that the left is unable to even agree with moderates says enough.

The bottom line is that attempting to force large cultural changes is going to be viewed as extreme. Things such as amending the constitution of a country (2A), or having an open borders policy which is not only illegal at the moment, but it is totally contrary to how society has functioned for hundreds of years. It's extreme and even if people are able to get past the extremist aspects of these kinds of desires there are still many legitimate issues that people will have on both of those topics, which Democrats completely ignore and disregard.

I advocated for moving away from the "culture war" topics, so you can assume I'm not interested in flaming anyone who makes a pronoun error when addressing or referring to a trans-gendered person. The one thing you are correct about is that I do not understand people who do so in a desire to be mean spirited, but these matters are trivialities compared to what else is at stake.

This is what you fail to understand - If someone does not buy into the left's whole gender spectrum theory then referring to a man as a man isn't mean spirited, which isn't even the case with Peterson. Peterson simply objects to this gender ideology and the use of language being legally imposed.

You're assuming that this person already buys into your ideology and has chosen not to follow it simply to be mean spirited when in actuality you were unable to make a proper argument in support of this new gender theory.

The left will only make progress in America once they stop walking into traps set by the right wing which drag them into unwinnable arguments.

If your arguments are unwinnable then they're bad arguments, therefore you clearly can't be marching toward "progress," so either your idea is incorrect, your implementation of that idea poor, or both.

 

[Traitorfish]

[nope, nope, nope, not worth it.]

 

[Atilla-My-Hun]

"Many" is not a first-person pronoun, my dude.

People on this board can't even handle a difference of opinion without making snide remarks, so what hope do any of you have of convincing the general population of anything? You absolutely repulse anyone who tries to talk to you. It's really no wonder the left has no idea what voters want.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

There's clearly not going to be any agreement on that ...

Guess again. I completely agree that it is crystal clear you have no intention to argue in anything BUT bad faith.

 

[Atilla-My-Hun]

Guess again. I completely agree that it is crystal clear you have no intention to argue in anything BUT bad faith.

Interestingly this is spoken by someone who has no intention but to argue in bad faith, which I can only assume it's because you're unable to form a proper argument.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Interestingly this is spoken by someone who has no intention but to argue in bad faith, which I can only assume it's because you're unable to form a proper argument.

Oh, I'd say I've demonstrated often enough that I'm capable and willing. You, on the other hand, have no track record other than this handful of attack posts...unless of course you've been here before?

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Moderator Action: I see where this is going. Take a moment to reflect before you post before this turns into a flame war, please. In other words, cease the personal attacks.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I'm confused; what arguments have I made against you, in good faith or otherwise? The only thing I've said to you is that I think your use of "many would argue" is an evasive way of saying "I would argue". It's very clearly a comment on the style of your post, not the content.

That flame was aimed at me. You got the one where she called you repulsive.

 

[Atilla-My-Hun]

You both really couldn't have done more to prove the point I was trying to make in my OP - That the left is in the situation is it in because many of your representatives and constituents fail to understand the other half of the population and refuse to engage in civil discourse.