There are more of us than there are of them

[Patine]

This man did everything I'm saying but times a zillion. If only we were all blessed with such courage and charisma.


Link to video.

Does this mean I, as a White man, should attend a Louis Farrakhan/NOI rally?

 

[Hygro]

Does this mean I, as a White man, should attend a Louis Farrakhan/NOI rally?

That would be a tunnel-vision interpretation, but maybe?

 

[Patine]

That would be a tunnel-vision interpretation, but maybe?

Tunnel vision? Are you saying Louis Farrakhan and the NOI are NOT effectively - all the details and window-dressing aside - effectively analogous to David Duke and the KKK, just switching the biggest racial target they go after, or is there another you made I had missed?

 

[Hygro]

@Gorbles your reply comes later but I appreciate your stated values.

I really hate to burst your bubble, but the Neo-Manichaean, binary, simplistic, us-and-them, right vs. left as solid, unified, lockstep blocs myth - which this theory so heavily depends on, like many other socio-political theories promoted so very often - is just that - a myth. Just because a nation has a broken, anachronistic, distorting, and corrupt - even somewhat rigged - electoral system that force all power, artificially, into two political parties, that aren't REALLY even true political parties by others nations' standards, but are awkwardly forced coalitions that are made up of a bunch of ideological camps that are dysfunctional in their attempt to productively cooperate and are tearing these contrived coalitions apart at the seams - as can be seen in every contested primary cycle - does not even remotely make this myth close to true.

So, how does this burst, rupture, sunder, pop, break open, unleash the air from within, my "bubble"? How could what I'm saying actually work in the mythologized binary you accuse of me? Wouldn't what I'm saying make even more sense in a context of a diversity of viewpoints? And wouldn't a charitable reading lead you to realize that your thesis of diversity is implicit in (if not necessary for) my own?

If you immerse yourself in it, you come to believe it.
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/dont-believe-lies-just-people-repeat/
Want to Make a Lie Seem True? Say It Again. And Again. And Again

There's a big difference between repeating a lie and rejecting/surrendering the originally-biological/academic term "virtue signaling" because the Republicans like to say it more than we do. Also, we won the revolutionary war while singing Yankee Doodle. There's wisdom to this.

You is what people say you is, and that's all there is to it.

Tho, I gotta wonder @Hygro, what's up with "snakes and stones never broke my bones?" Sounds like some people have been kept pretty safe, largely by people they don't like? I don't know what to make of it, but I finally tracked down where it bothers me. It sounds, just, so, cliche faux European? Dunno if that's it.

103,000 voting Democrats turn Montana blue, to cover a 20%(!!!!) gap.

 

[Patine]

@GorblesSo, how does this burst, rupture, sunder, pop, break open, unleash the air from within, my "bubble"? How could what I'm saying actually work in the mythologized binary you accuse of me? Wouldn't what I'm saying make even more sense in a context of a diversity of viewpoints? And wouldn't a charitable reading lead you to realize that your thesis of diversity is implicit in (if not necessary for) my own?

Your flaw there was you assumed what I was with a "straight face." Of course, that's understandable to a degree - you can't see my face. But why you initially thought what I was saying must be dead, stone-faced serious, with absolutely misguided sincerity - given what I actually SAID - is beyond me.

 

[Hygro]

Tunnel vision? Are you saying Louis Farrakhan and the NOI are NOT effectively - all the details and window-dressing aside - effectively analogous to David Duke and the KKK, just switching the biggest racial target they go after, or is there another you made I had missed?

I am saying that, yes. I think the oppressed fighting fire with fire is definitely less of a problem than oppressors lighting fires.

But I brought up Daryl David as an example of someone whose patient and courageous friendships with many someones very unlike him (and even literally dangerous to him, something I'm not asking of anyone, only lauding) had positive outcomes, the kind of outcomes I think we can ourselves do individually on a smaller and chiller scale to positive aggregate effect.

Your flaw there was you assumed what I was with a "straight face." Of course, that's understandable to a degree - you can't see my face. But why you initially thought what I was saying must be dead, stone-faced serious, with absolutely misguided sincerity - given what I actually SAID - is beyond me.

So that was the satire of someone who would be agreeing with me while mischaracterizing me for the sake of argument? Because if so, I can't promise to be hip to that, and if not, don't know what you mean.

 

[Patine]

I am saying that, yes. I think the oppressed fighting fire with fire is definitely less of a problem than oppressors lighting fires.

But I brought up Daryl David as an example of someone whose patient and courageous friendships with many someones very unlike him (and even literally dangerous to him, something I'm not asking of anyone, only lauding) had positive outcomes, the kind of outcomes I think we can ourselves do individually on a smaller and chiller scale to positive aggregate effect.

"Fighting fire with fire," has always been one of the classical English-language idioms I've always thought was one of the very stupidest and most ridiculous, when you actually think about it rationally.

 

[Berzerker]

create a fire break by setting a small fire so the bigger one runs out of fuel

https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/fight-fire-with-fire.html

which gave rise to the term backfire for a foiled plan

 

[Patine]

@Hygro And another note - just because one incendiary, fire-spitting, vitriolic bigot may have come from a more "oppressed" background then another, does NOT make the former's bigotry more justified, valid, or morally right than the other. The notion of such a distinction in higher ground there is a complete and utter fallacy.

 

[Akka]

This man did everything I'm saying but times a zillion. If only we were all blessed with such courage and charisma.


Link to video.

The thing is, this whole thread is based on this idea, but it works also in reverse.
Familiarity can help seeing "others" as just regular fellow humans.
But it can also antagonize by rubbing the points of friction constantly.

It's kind of a double-edged sword.

 

[Lexicus]

Could the Jews have prevented the Holocaust if all of them tried to make friends with at least one Nazi?

edit: I guess in that case there were a lot more Nazis than Jews rather than the other way round

 

[Farm Boy]

103,000 voting Democrats turn Montana blue, to cover a 20%(!!!!) gap.

Sounds better for the prima donna race than it does for the workhorse ones.

I don't understand the appeal of the young hot New York lady Trump, but then again I don't really forgive people for liking old man faux-not-New York Trump Trump, so it's probably a lost cause. Should probably just reconcile myself to despising the Age of Ass Clown in general.

 

[El_Machinae]

I can't shake the feeling that a lot of minority issues are deliberately fanned up to distract attention from the fact that a handful of people own like half of the world.
Yes, I know, white hetero male privilege speaking. But still...

It's true. We even have documented journalism showing how and why.

There are subsets of the divide that insist that it's either not happening or that they are immune. The second cohort is worrisome, in that they're not trying to inoculate others against the attempts.

It's mechanism is to create memes that cause the in group to attack their allies, or memes that repel their opponents instead of convincing.

Consider the 2A
Guns don't kill people, people kill people

It's used to create solidarity, but also is utterly stupid from the outside. It mischaracterizes the underlying concern, even if the statement is true. And for the in-group, anyone that doesn't 'get it' can be ridiculed by repeating it.

Whereas
When seconds count, the police are mere minutes away

It's still true. But better, it resonates. It resonates because it's expressing a concern that people acknowledge, and is something that could be worked on. Unlike the first, it's much harder for a reasonable person to not 'get it'.

There are hosts of memes being consumed that are merely designed to create social damage.

I know people here don't believe me, but some issues are getting better over time. Not fast enough, and we still need beneficial advocacy. But other issues ARE getting worse. We need much better advocacy there.

 

[Farm Boy]

Those aren't new memes. Those aren't even memes, you've rebranded them such. The new thing is re-re's running around doing 3 gun drills becoming normal because they overcompensate for being constantly overexposed to grabby grabby memes in the rage porn AoAC.

 

[El_Machinae]

I'm using them as examples of divisive vs useful memes. People recognize them

 

[Farm Boy]

"Memes" are useful when they're divisive, because they're repetitive and simple. If a statement is both useful and unifying it will rate both a better definition and a less broad application.

 

[Yeekim]

Could the Jews have prevented the Holocaust if all of them tried to make friends with at least one Nazi?

edit: I guess in that case there were a lot more Nazis than Jews rather than the other way round

If more people had had Jewish friends, fewer of them might have bought into anti-semitic nonsense of the Nazis...

 

[Gorbles]

If more people had Jewish friends, fewer of them might have bought into anti-semitic nonsense of the Nazis...

I don't have any response here that you're going to take as the polite criticism, I don't think.

I understand that not everybody needs to know everything on a subject to talk about it, but this is just an amazingly poor take. Maybe the (hypothetical) people who for some reason didn't support the Jewish folk being literally tortured and killed should've stepped up more? Maybe it's on them for their inaction (regardless of pressure from the Nazi police state) more than it is the Jewish victims?

What can I say but yikes.

 

[Yeekim]

@Gorbles
Do you think there might be a way to read my previous post in a way that does not take it as an attempt at victim-blaming?

 

[Gorbles]

@Gorbles
Do you think there might be a way to read my previous post in a way that does not take it as an attempt at victim-blaming?

No, because friendship is something people share. A possible suggestion would be to say "maybe people should've done more regardless of any personal friendship for people involved", but there's no phrasing of what you said that could read that way.

I mean, we're also ignoring the historical fact that both of these happened (friendships saving lives, and people being saved even though they weren't friends). It still didn't stop the Holocaust from happening. It didn't even stop friends from turning on each other.

I really, really urge you to consider that maybe instead of I'm reading your post incorrectly, it's your post that could be the problem.