There are more of us than there are of them

I know many of the younger people are really not cognizant. There's been a lot of progress. Pushback on that progress, absolutely. But progress.

What people are ignoring about Hygro's request is that it's one tool in the toolkit, and the problem is strong enough that all tools need to be utilized. Cloud_Strife is unwilling to dialogue, but is absolutely willing to be a lookout for the trouble. And we need people both raising the alarm AND people dealing with the problem. All the tools are necessary. After that, it's a question of capacity and utility.

 

Honestly it would be really nice if you lived up to this sentiment on here. But even in this thread the minute someone fairly politely disagreed with you, the gloves came off. I'm not singling you out for that sort of behaviour as I'm seeing it more and more from loads of people on here, but as far as I'm aware none of the other culprits try to paint themselves as angels.

 

Information warfare amplifies extremes to absurdity.

Sometimes, when the principles don't seem to matter but the buzzwords and antagonism seem to, you have to assume linking the buzzwords to the antagonism, not the principles, might be the point.

The next part then is to realize the principles are still good.

 

Having patience works. Also, don't be weak. Also, you barely need to talk to them about these issues for them to come around. You just have to have short ways of saying what you stand for if they're the type to get carried away. Not everyone is a good friend for everyone else. If you can't hear someone without getting triggered into wanting to fight your favorite strawman, you can't get to know a lot of people before you start showing off your mental practice-routine while aiming your ire at the person you wish had those views to fight. That's not really your problem, though, but maybe someone here will recognize themself.

We just need to move the relationship equivalent of the overtone window. Just be a link in the chain and someone will get tugged.

Literally exactly this. It is going to be the easiest, most effective way to get back power, respect, healthy fear, and regain familiarity and civility.

Republicans even more than Democrats care what you do not what you say. So what the lib-cops in this thread are doing is saying why we should regard them as enemies and using shame-words (and are wrong) like "naive" to stop this kind of thinking. It is too threatening to the constructed identity they protect. But it's an identity of weakness, no wonder it doesn't work. Republicans don't fear us because we're all talk. They don't respect because we're hostile, calling them extremists when actually most aren't. Certainly enough have been triggered to want to "own the libs" which is bad and mutually destructive, so uhh, stopped getting owned, libs.

@Gorbles had the decency to say his aversion to speech patterns used by the other side is an unfair prejudice. I think that's a really really good first step. We need to be strong, and strong people get along.

And finally, why the guns one is the best/easiest way: ALL OF YOU ENJOY SHOOTING TARGETS. It's a bet I'm willing to make to each of you individually. Last time I went shooting it was me (left of EVERYONE IN THIS THREAD, one day you'll understand), my very NPR-demo army veteran friend hosting us, and his super liberal super duper anti-gun disgusted by guns French (!!!!) girlfriend. We all had tons of fun of course. We made friendly with the people working there who were almost uncomfortable when they found out where I was from. But they just needed more exposure.

 

Not what I said, @Hygro. I'm a straight white guy. I can talk about gay rights without people attacking me, verbally or physically (for being gay).

You don't seem to understand that talking to people who can hold violent views about LGBTQ folk and / or minorities, might turn out dangerous for those people. It's not up to you to judge them, because you don't seem to understand the risk (or worse, assume that you can fix that on the spot).

You keep saying "coherent" but you're the only one using it. You don't define it, you just treat it as a truth that other people either live up to or don't.

You keep arguing along very partisan lines, in topics in lockstep with other posters with very partisan views, and yet you don't seem to consider yourself partisan.

You keep raising points with no source, no citations, no evidence. It's your word against mine, and you obviously have no intention at taking my word with any kind of seriousness. Why would you? You retreat to calling it incoherent because it means you don't have to consider it further. It's failed the basic test you apply to warrant taking things seriously, but you also have to explicitly state this without even explaining your criteria for such. It's magic logic. There is no proof for any application of coherence you provide. It simply seems to be a phrase for "things that make sense to you personally".

Furthermore, you keep recommending "advice" that in the same breath you can't help but reveal you already have a counter for. It's not serious advice. It's not a subject you don't consider an open question - you already believe yourself to have the answer.

And yet you're incapable of realising the inherent bias in your degradation of desk jobs compared to engineering or physical labour. You call that enough to call a wage gap a fabrication, when you make no written effort to actually relate it to gender. Which makes sense, because you're rationalising along your preconceived biases.

To finish, again, defending Trump from allegations purely because there isn't evidence that convinces you are the clincher. It's when we can go (unusually, for you) from debating from principle to actual bad faith. Your question was never "what rapists do the GOP support". That was never a question you were prepared to hear / read the answer to. You literally had a line ready in defense of someone who literally talked about grabbing women, in a sexual manner, without their consent. That's not enough for you. Likewise, the number of public allegations aren't enough for you. The two combined (admittance of Trump's own nature combined with the allegations) aren't enough. You don't believe literally any of the victims, because if you believed even one that'd define the man as a rapist. In your eyes, in the context of this argument. On a personal - not legal - level. You don't even say "I believe he is but it hasn't definitively been settled in court". You flat-out reject it, as you do the notion of a wage gap. You have no intention of believing it.

Being polite is not the same thing as being nice. Someone can politely describe any matter of racist or inhumane acts. Their manner being polite has no bearing, or rather should have no bearing, on what they're actually saying.

But who am I kidding? You're tone policing mere hours after calling this place a cesspool. I guess, as seems to be the norm, that being uncivil only seems to matter when it's other people being so.

 

If you want to be really credible I would suggest limiting yourself to sexual abuser or molester since there is ample evidence to support those but not actual evidence supporting rape. HE's still scum regardless.

 

Only an old person would write such a quaint post and I could not disagree with it more. Two, even three, spaces after the period? Did you learn to type during the Civil War? Just because CFC truncates the extra ones doesn't mean we don’t know what you’re doing

I had one of these. Why did I never think to take her to a gun range? It would have been so much fun

 

It is true when I zoom at and see what constitutes a change agent and what constitutes a don't-change agent the "left" is more and more conservative, this thread is a good example. The conservative analysis of "the political" axis of thought, actual Nazi Carl Schmitt, states that real politics is based on the friend enemy distinction. Nothing is more conservative than those who want to police and reinforce who your enemies are.

Duh and thank you. I agree, Cloud is one of our trusted coalmine canaries. This tunnel vision is a problem. This "hold the line" mentality is making us rigid and fragile. It scores a lot of social reinforcement from the inside but it's making us lose when we have, again as @Ironsided put it, no business losing right.


@rah basically won the thread already. Anyone ignoring his contribution might want to work on their self confidence because he's saying it all works. Because it does. We don't need to convert them all just shift things a bit an we have legislative power again. It's not like people were more leftwing personally in the days of passing and upholding civil rights and worker protections.

 

There's plenty of actual evidence if you extend the barest of humanity to his multiple accusers. You can only claim there's not enough evidence if you simultaneously believe the worst of his accusers and the best of him (i.e. that they're all lying and he isn't about any of them).

 

Yeah, I'm old and I learned on a MANUAL typewriter when the custom was two spaces after a period. Sometimes my thumb lingers on the space bar since it doesn't have the resistance of that which I learned on. Happy Get off my lawn. Yeah, it does truncate the extra ones, well I'll be damned.

 

Do you hold the people who supported Clinton to the same standard?

 

Aaaahahaha I totally notice this too.

Well, if you're ever so unfortunate to date another European (I kid I kid!) now you know.

 

If Clinton was still President, or even running for President, this argument would make sense. He isn't, and isn't, so it doesn't. You're basically saying "why isn't there as much pressure on someone who isn't POTUS", and the clue's kinda in the question. The more power a role, the more accountable you should be. The less screwups people should tolerate of you.

 

Here's my challenge to you. Imagine you think I do understand that, and then continue the conversation from there. Also, how dangerous is someone when you go 2 on 1?

Look not everyone has to befriend everyone. Most conservatives are not derranged psychos trying to hurt people. Certainly not directly. The ones that are, don't put yourself in harm's way. We don't need to affect them all to effect change.


And did you not say you have an aversion of terms coined or championed by rightwingers was one of your prejudices? I thought that was super honorable to bring up.

 

Least you don't sand the screen anymore.

 

Now that that's out of the way... yeah solid post. In fact, I wrote almost the same thing (with a youthful, singular space after each period of course) but deleted it because I thought it was too obvious. I guess it wasn't.

 

So then you should be the first person to want to own an armalite, bring it to the range, and show off how goddamn confident you are that they can't and won't stop you.

 

If you understand that people have to put themselves in dangerous suggestions to even have a chance of making this work, I'd say that's even more worrying. People are meant to have compassion for each other, we're meant to be a society. Sending marginalised people at people most likely to hurt said marginalised people is irresponsible at best.

As your post didn't have the edit when I quoted it, I really think you shouldn't generalise. Violent behaviour is an incredibly complicated topic to the extent that there are mass murderers in popular culture who have people who defend them - their family, even. Because they saw nothing wrong.

Or, if I'm going to run with this and see the best faith version of this proposal possible, at the very least, I'd expect an concerted and equal defend of left-wing folks. Unfortunately, in threads where left-wing activists are raised as a topic, I literally never see it. So forgive me for assuming that you might not have all the answers here. You're telling left-leaning folks they have to kiss and make up with right-leaning folks, but you don't ever (nor do you even in this thread) propose the opposite. Which is all the more revealing of some other posters in here who from their written posts prize equality and fairness, because there's been literally no comment on that discrepancy.

PS

Ganging up on someone a) never rules out any party getting hurt and besides, b) guns (or even knives) made that naive supposition irrelevant a long time ago.

 

But he was President and people supported him in spite of a rape accusation

 

His first digital screen was an etch-a-sketch.

Deleting posts on his iPad still sometimes gets done the old fashioned way.