Timsup2nothin
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No doubt. I'm certainly willing to risk it in order to break the right wing stranglehold we have suffered under for decades, but just being real there is certainly that risk.
There are more of us than there are of them
- Thread starter Hygro
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No doubt. I'm certainly willing to risk it in order to break the right wing stranglehold we have suffered under for decades, but just being real there is certainly that risk.
Well, this is a thread created in opposition to that. At least saying those of us who can afford it should be nicer to political opponents to help sway them. However, I think many here know full well that there is a problem to some extent. One way of stating it is: "the false positive rate" or "epistemic" problem - that is, people who are not at all fascists being called fascists or crypto-fascists or crypto-conservatives and whatever else. I see this expression of the problem as connecting to well-known ideas from psychology, which for decades has proved we're an irrational, tribal, ape-brained species with minds deeply prone to self-righteousness, fear, mistakes, and cognitive biases. I have also seen acknowledgment from people across the spectrum hereabouts that there is an "authority problem" regarding how we decide who should be de-platformed, denounced, trolled out of this community, or punched on the street. Hygro made this point in this thread just yesterday and it's been made many times before, and often met with at least begrudging agreement by those who value a free society. It is basically the same problem as the first one, but more philosophically stated. I interpret it as gesturing more to the tensions between morality, authority, and freedom than to our inherent cognitive limitations. But very similar idea anyway. Furthermore, I have seen posters from across the spectrum here concede that elements of contemporary activism take on a distinctly religious, evangelical nature. This is the "purity problem." In this view, the phrase "Great Awokening" is more than a clever allusion; it's a claim about an underlying evangelical-like nature that can exist to some extent in these kinds of movements. This critique gestures to the idea we're not just reliving the Civil Rights Movement; we're also reliving various mass-religious antecedents from American history, where evangelism and purity are demanded.
At the end of the day, you can make claims like these. I am transparently doing so with this very post. You can critique aggressive wokeness, purity, and callout culture. But you need to offer gestures of goodwill. We have people airing very real and significant grievances about their marginalization, discrimination, assaults, harassment, and many of kinds of suffering. If they see some big-brain I-am-very-smart guy blowing in and criticizing them while seeming to defend (or actually defending) fascists, of course they get pissed! A lot of people have skin in the game! And the context is super important: we have a widely hated racist president running the country into the ground and a number of other major issues in the US. Most people want to push the country in a better direction. So if you don't meet people where they are, demonstrate you want to learn from them and understand where they're coming from, they will get pissed and assume the worst. People also need to lower their expectations. Call me jaded, but I just don't see internet culture war debates as the place to expect anyone to be dispassionate analysts of societal ills.
But maybe at the end of the day, none of this matters much because internet idpol debates seem to be giving way to capitalism vs anticapitalism instead. A very informative quote from a blog post I recently read:
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Lexicus
Deity
Anyone who thinks we'll ever have a functioning republic with 60 million people who voted for Trump running around loose is kidding themselves.
Berzerker
Deity
Vote for warmongers to save the Republic
Timsup2nothin
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Agreed. They aren't going away though, so containing them until they die off seems the only alternative.
Berzerker
Deity
Clinton gave us Trump
Timsup2nothin
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Well, this was rocketed from deep right field unexpectedly. I'm not even trying to be the cutoff man here, but I'm wondering what the play at the plate is supposed to look like.
Berzerker
Deity
You're blaming people who voted for Trump as if a corporate warmonger was a moral alternative, Sanders had flaws but he could compete with Trump on the reasons many people rejected Clinton.
Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Trump was the “the republicans have been contained” candidate. The Bush/Reagan/Crazies Republicans at their evangelical peak in the 2000s imploded with the scandal that their entire anti gay bench was getting busy in the dugout. But it’s funny how they are playing to win and reinvented themselves from their Jeb! Dead end.
It will happen again so I vote for a total and multipronged approach including chilling a few of them out.
Akka
Moody old mage.
On their own discourse ?
"we should kill all nazis" + "nazi-enablers are just as bad as nazis" + "moderates are just enabling nazis" seems a pretty convincing argument that the only reasons they haven't started to enforce their own brand of authoritarism is simply that they haven't had the power to do so yet ?
And yeah it's a reasonable assumption. History is littered with bloody autocratic regimes that started by people claiming they would enforce the greater good on everyone.
Is elite negligence the core problem? Or something else?
Senethro
Overlord
Well I suppose its a good thing that the moderate strategy for containment of dangerous elements is so successful. Those extremists won't know they're being hit!
Lexicus
Deity
I don't know, and I'm not sure it really matters. My preferred interpretation is that the business classes, frightened by the democratic experiments of the 60s, started a fire that they can no longer control, but that's only an interpretation.
Akka
Moody old mage.
Containing extremists is more about preventing them to hit others than the other way around.
Cloud_Strife
Deity
Right-wing Extremists don't exactly keep themselves to themselves, just ask any of their victims, nor are they passive, but you already know that.
Zardnaar
Deity
I suspect what will happen.
1. Trump crashes and burns possibly losing the Senate.
2. Without presidential pardons being available a lot of new dirt turns up.
3. With no pardons or political cover available deals start getting cut. Trump's probably guilty if something even if it's tax evasion.
4. SJW types run out of gas without Trump to react off. Hard to be oppressed when youem. have president, house maybe Senate.
5. Get woke go broke seems to be true so Hollywood stops making sjw crap and pandering to them.
6. Trump goes bye bye, the far left annoys everyone and kind if fades away or relegated to ranting in Twitter/forums.
7. Things settle down business as usual.
1. Trump crashes and burns possibly losing the Senate.
2. Without presidential pardons being available a lot of new dirt turns up.
3. With no pardons or political cover available deals start getting cut. Trump's probably guilty if something even if it's tax evasion.
4. SJW types run out of gas without Trump to react off. Hard to be oppressed when youem. have president, house maybe Senate.
5. Get woke go broke seems to be true so Hollywood stops making sjw crap and pandering to them.
6. Trump goes bye bye, the far left annoys everyone and kind if fades away or relegated to ranting in Twitter/forums.
7. Things settle down business as usual.
Farm Boy
I hope you dance
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I refer you back to Tim's first post on the page.
Lexicus
Deity
So, by all means, explain to us your plan for preventing them from hitting others.
I don't see anyone saying "kill all fascists", we're talking about not tolerating their activities, and taking action to bring awareness to what they're trying to do with taking over our government. I don't condone violence, but I'm also not going to act like a scared person getting frustrated at a society that's getting more and more oppressive is somehow worse (or even equal) to what she or he is fighting against.
Honestly, I feel like this whole thing is like saying "Luke Skywalker's a monster for destroying the Death Star and killing all those people. Condemn the Rebellion, because you know they're obviously going to be worse than the Empire they're trying to overthrow."
Honestly, I feel like this whole thing is like saying "Luke Skywalker's a monster for destroying the Death Star and killing all those people. Condemn the Rebellion, because you know they're obviously going to be worse than the Empire they're trying to overthrow."
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