Why Don't Progressives Do This?

[Patine]

Nobody is obligated to agree with you, and disagreeing with you doesn't make anyone blind.

Thank-you, @Gorbles. A statement that can easily be levied at you, I, or any other poster here. A sobering thought. Many of us, here (myself and yourself included) really do carried away with the moment and think too highly of our opinions compared to others, often even just inherently. Such self-reflection with this kind of quote (even though I know you meant it purely situationally and contextually when you typed it) can bring a lot of MANY of our haughtiness on this forum into perspective for a moment.

 

[Zardnaar]

I also come from stock that used to be thought of as not white, so can actually trace the history of when my ancestors started to be treated differently as the definition expanded



Depends. I have literally seen someone have their employer contacted by someone who was overly zealous in their wokescolding*

*I'd not seen this word before this thread. I can't wait to watch it mutate over time

Edit: I should clarify, I don't object that sometimes this tactic will be necessary. I just recognize that sometimes they will be collateral damage if it's applied too zealously

Heh I'll have to remember wokescolding.

If you say someone's white most people will think light skin of European descent in appearance. They're not going to care about the academic version or what it meant 100 years ago.

Most people don't go to university and the ones that do only a minority study gender studies or whatever.

So if you like using nice big words the average person doesn't understand it's going to come across as somewhere between condescending or out of touch.

If you can't communicate your ideas to someone so they can understand it that's on you. That's not political it can apply to instruction manuals, health and safety instructions etc.

 

[sophie]

It's dependent upon its delivery. There's a différance between disagreeing with the person and leaving them alone and aggressively chastise and berating because the person did not change their profile picture to a black square. Case in point where BLM protesters surrounded a restaurant patron minding her own business and being demanded to raise her fist. You can laugh all you want about that incident, it paints a bad picture to people outside progressive camps.


I presume you're referring to social conservatives and you only see those people who call for those sorts of things (death, support your discrimination or turn a blind eye to your community's suffering) from the far-right and the fringe right. I don't see any of the rhetoric coming from conservatives who sit on the center-right spectrum. I know MobBoss would say things that would boil your blood (And likely browbeat you do death has he did to many liberal posters in the past), but he wouldn't call for rounding minorities up in concentration camps.

Do you see the irony here?

 

[GenMarshall]

If you say someone's white most people will think light skin of European descent in appearance. They're not going to care about the academic version or what it meant 100 years ago.

That’s the point that I’m trying to get across when someone brings up whiteness and such. When anti-white comes to mind, I think of being against people who are of European decent with fair skin.

Most people don't go to university and the ones that do only a minority study gender studies or whatever.

So if you like using nice big words the average person doesn't understand it's going to come across as somewhere between condescending or out of touch.

Exactly. It’s why I’ve taken such issue with term “white privilege” cause in my mind; it presumes that I’m affluent and rich, the top 1%, when in reality, I’m not rich and all that well off. Instead of calling it “white privilege”, they should call it something else that the average lay person. who haven’t gone to college or did not take “critical race theory” courses, can understand that doesn’t come across as condescending and/or out of touch.

 

[Zardnaar]

That’s the point that I’m trying to get across when someone brings up whiteness and such. When anti-white comes to mind, I think of being against people who are of European decent with fair skin.


Exactly. It’s why I’ve taken such issue with term “white privilege” cause in my mind; it presumes that I’m affluent and rich, the top 1%, when in reality, I’m not rich and all that well off. Instead of calling it “white privilege”, they should call it something else that the average lay person. who haven’t gone to college or did not take “critical race theory” courses, can understand that doesn’t come across as condescending and/or out of touch.

Yeah white privilege tends to rub people up the wrong way espicially if they come from lower socio economic background and it's being said by someone of whatever colour from a more affluent background.

I get what they're trying to day but it's not applicable across the board or other countries.

 

[Patine]

Heh I'll have to remember wokescolding.

It's another one of those hollow, vapid, counter-productive, stupid buzzwords I've been complaining about. Several of which have posters here going to bat to defend them, which is really a sign of pitiful times.

 

[Ajidica]

Yet I recognize that it' fodder for the Anti-SJW community for their thousands of "SJW cringe" compilations that over saturates YouTube.

You ask "why should I let them determine my political beliefs?" I respond with, so others behind me don't fall into the rabbit hole of the Alt-Right pipeline. Does it determine my political beliefs at present? No, but I still call out toxic behavior when I see it. Because I see it as doing more harm to progressive causes and the Anti-SJW community and Alt-Right circles exploits that toxic behavior for their own means and as materials for their recruitment.

That is quite a different take than "These internet loudmouths might drive away otherwise reasonable people, like myself". For someone who knocks performative liberalism, your beliefs seem driven by how well people perform according your [insert metric]. That you would otherwise support anti-discrimination legislation; but someone said something mean to someone else on the internet so you got so triggered you now oppose that legislation.

 

[GenMarshall]

That is quite a different take than "These internet loudmouths might drive away otherwise reasonable people, like myself". For someone who knocks performative liberalism, your beliefs seem driven by how well people perform according your [insert metric]. That you would otherwise support anti-discrimination legislation; but someone said something mean to someone else on the internet so you got so triggered you now oppose that legislation.

You're not getting my point. If someone came up to me and demanded I raise my fist in the name of BLM or be told "check my privilege", I'd tell the person to screw off and leave me the F alone. If you lecture people over and over and over again, bashing them upside the head with a social justice 2x4, demanding that you bend the knee to their cause. They will not be receptive to future ideas of any progressive ideas. In fact, they will reject it wholesale because of the pushy nature of progressive activists, not even wishing to engage in it. Why do you think people hate the pushy salesperson?

It's simple Sales 101 and human behavior, nothing to do with getting "triggered" or "muh feelings getting hurt on da internet". If you're suggesting that my beliefs are driven by well how they perform on my standards. That's completely false. I don't abandon The Golden Rule just because I encounter a few asshats on the streets or online.

I don't knock performative liberal activism, I'm calling out the overzealous and toxic nature shown by a select few in which I feel only hinders their cause and is counterproductive. When I see asshats acting like asshats, I call it out as it is. Which is another point that you missed that Anti-SJW communities exploit the overzealous and toxic behavior shown by progressives. You claim to take a stake of the high road of "again, the internet is full of loudmouths and idiots". That may be all well in good if people don't judge people by their first impressions and/or smarter than that. The fact of the matter is, that does not hold true for most people and the fact of the matter is that we still judge people based on their first impressions. If the person's first impression with a progressive is through "SJW Cringe Compilation #253" or an overzealous progressive activist demanding a passive person to raise their fist, it's going to leave them with a negative perception of progressivism. I do hate to break your bubble, but I'm not alone in calling out the overzealous and toxic nature shown by progressives. Even left leaning independent news commentators have called them out.

Is David Pakman "triggered" when he's calling out the overzelioutry shown by progressives? No, like me, he's showing genuine concern of the overzeliousness shown by progressives. Like my point with the Anti-SJW community exploiting the overzealiousness and toxic behavior of progressive. Pakman backs up my point that the toxic nature displayed by progressives gives Trump, The Alt-Right, and Anti-SJWs a free gift on a silver platter.

Again, this goes all the way back to Sales 101.

 

[innonimatu]

@GenMarshall It is not just a strategy thing. There's another very good reason to oppose these toxic people: they cannot be trusted. They're very industrious at what they want to do, but dumb. They keep pushing contradictory things. They say "privilege is bad", so they... demand privilege for some identity group! wht?
That, industrious and dumb, is the most dangerous sort of people. If they come to have any power the damage they'll do will be immense.

When you find someone pushing an incoherent political program, do not trust them do not support them. They're either dishonest or dumd. Possibly both. Strategy cannot be an excuse for contradictions.

 

[Senethro]

Reminder that it is best to keep your strawmen generalized and ill-defined so that they can be widely applicable to any targets of your ire.

 

[H4run]

Depends on what you mean by "translated". We certainly do desire to live in group because we evolved as tribal animals. Snakes don't care about groups because they didn't.

Human are social being, it's a fact that we are totally depended on other human. Back-then tribes do support and fulfilled our needs, with the emergence of technology and the evolvement of human population and our wants/needs, the small tribe expanded to Kingdom, to Nation then to Global community. Now you wear a clothe that made from a factory in Thailand, your watch might made in Taiwan while you are eating a Japanese instant noodle, and your neighbor don't know crap about French, this is the new evolution of our community/group (the one that you named it as "tribe"), it's expanding through the expansion of communication/transportation technology. So it's not human is a "tribal animal" (depending on solely tribe), but human are both social (depended on a group) and asocial (individualistic) being at the same time. Here we might have the same idea but you make tribe to be synonymous with group, which I think is not true.

A quick stroll on the OT section of this forum you can see a few examples. Most noteabally between Patine, Zard, and Cloud. It’s just a small inkling, hop over to the political sections of Reddit and Twitter and you’ll see more toxic behavior. Another example, if you want to go outside the net, there is a case where BLM protesters surrounding a restaurant patron, who’s minding her own business, demanding that she raise her fist or a girl gets wokescoled just because she wore a dress to the prom.

There are even people on other boards (you’re only gonna see this on places on Twitter or Reddit) where the left accuses a person for being sexist or racist if they don’t like a certain film, when the reality the person hates the film due to bad writing.

If you can’t see it, then I cannot help you.

That evidences are anecdotal, and cannot picture the general view regarding the left movement/personalities. There are always idiots who would bother the crap out of you for having a different thought or world-view than them, yes they are bigot in a way but at the long run those people would not compatible with the basic value that the leftist try to achieve which is: Union in diversity. The inclusion of the left are the reason I believe they are the right allies for humanity.

So far the left are struggling for the right things which are: equality, accepting diversity, humanism, tolerance, are surely offer better platform for our global community especially if we compare that with the right wing: exclusivism, (direct/indirect) racism, nationalism, intolerance and patriotism.

Ask an average Caucasian person on the street, what white is. Most people do not ascribe to the social justice definition of white and use the commonly held definition that white is a person that has fair or light skin with features typical of Europeans. Your typical anthropologist and census definition. Most are unaware on whiteness studies nor the concept of white privilege. Though most will take offense when being told they they have white privilege because most people define privilege as a synonym for luxury, the rich elite (eg. Privileged circumstances related to wealth).

Here’s the thing, many on the Alt-right sees, what you’ve described as Intersectionality, as a mix of oppression olympics and a totem pole/hierarchical pyramid. To them if you have more oppressed characteristics, the higher on the totem pole you are (eg. The higher you go on the hierarchical pyramid). When they talk about standing up for minorities and diversity, they see it as anti-white. Because according to their framework, whites are at the bottom of the intersectionalist pyramid. Thus they see diversity as a way to push whites out of the way and create a tyranny of the minority.

Remember, not everyone has gone to colleges and universities and not everyone who went to college has taken critical race theory courses. So the concept that race is constructed or whiteness studies is completely foreign to the majority of people.

Again this pyramid is not a reality, but a twisted perspective from the uninform, as you yourselves admitted. How can this perspective is used to describe the progressive movement are either the poster himself is un-educated or an extremist.

 

[Farm Boy]

That you would otherwise support anti-discrimination legislation

Anti-discrimination, now that's interesting. The workplace stance is that racial discrimination is not only positive, it's mandatory to be anti-racist. It's being "racially discriminating." For these purposes, white is considered the lack of any race. They pre-emptively qualify poverty as beside the point and hand waive it, then selectively reemploy it to add moral gravitas. People really are, sometimes, asinine pieces of fecal matter. If the poverty and disadvantage itself isn't the point, then it's all a vanity project of the upper middle class and nothing more. Which isn't surprising when it comes to a bunch of self-righteous... fine people? Fine people.

I don't think this is normal, but it's not terribly surprising or unusual to run into either. Must not be alone either, since I keep hearing about the "F" and the "L" dropping from organizations like Michigan's DFL Party. It's a realignment. How the US left manages to lose ground with unions, of all things. Ungh. Well, I guess they're more necessary moving forward if we're going to be growing new breeds of wolves.

 

[Ajidica]

Must not be alone either, since I keep hearing about the "F" and the "L" dropping from organizations like Michigan's DFL Party.

It's the Minnesota DFL, how about you not generalize us flyover country?

Regardless, apart from the Iron Range (which is its own ****show), labor is still heavily DFL. Farmers not so much, but that is due to national trends prompting "farmers" to vote culture war issues over a party that, while flawed, is still the most open to supporting rural healthcare and industry.

With regards to the Iron Range, a lot of it is coming down to environmentalism. While the taconite mines helped revive the Iron Range in the 70s, a lot of the taconite mines had environmental impact and remediation plans that held together about as well as institutional toilet paper. As a result, the state is on the hook for keeping industrial waste and heavy metal toxins from running into the prime hunting and fishing territory in the Boundary Waters. The DFL made it very clear they don't want mining companies to come in, create a handful of jobs for a couple years, then ditch - leaving the state on the hook for environmental remediation. The issue over PolyMet doing nickel mining in the Iron Range caused a massive breakdown in relations with the Iron Range; with the DFL making it clear to PolyMet they needed a better environmental impact and remediation program. The GOP seized on that and swung the range on basically a 'Real America vs out of touch elitists who are coming for your guns'. (Never mind that the DFL played a massive role in preserving the Iron Range and northern Minnesota wilderness.......

 

[Farm Boy]

I was driving and it was on the radio. My bad. Winona isn't a flight, it's about a six hour drive.

Same problem with the blue wall there, tho, so with the correction, I'll stand by the point.

 

[Ajidica]

I honestly have no idea what your point is, and I don't have the herculean patience of someone like Sommerswerd to translate your posts.

 

[Farm Boy]

Re the extra stuff, every one of my farming friends that voted Trump cited the 1930s farm program payment that was necessary due to damage from a labor supported trade war. Inept, I would say, yes. But the Democratic criticism I've read casts it as a naked bribe.

... You old enough to remember Reagan? Yeah, it's an economic realignment.

Jeez you are being mean. Fine. It is my bad I called the party the wrong state. I was driving. Minnesota is not flyover country for me.

 

[amadeus]

@Ajidica, you know the DFL always wins St. Louis county because they’re all old Finnish communists like Gus Hall.

It’s partially true.

 

[Ajidica]

Re the extra stuff, every one of my farming friends that voted Trump cited the 1930s farm program payment that was necessary due to damage from a labor supported trade war. Inept, I would say, yes. But the Democratic criticism I've read casts it as a naked bribe.

I mean, it was.
Intentionally inflict damage on an economic sector, pay them billions to cover up the damage. $30 billion - more than the auto industry bailout - was disbursed without a single authorizing vote from Congress.
If in 2008 Obama announced he would be shelling out $30 billion to farmers without congressional authorization in order to make them like him, that would be ridiculed as a scarcely concealed bribe.

... You old enough to remember Reagan? Yeah, it's an economic realignment.

Born '93, so no.
I'm skeptical of it being an economic realignment. I am somewhat clued into the farm industry through my job, and whenever a farmer is quoted about the Trump bribes, the recurring refrain is they hare happy for the assistance but wish it wasn't needed. In Minnesota, we see rural areas constantly lament how they are suffering from a lack of investment, that rural medical care is disappearing and there isn't enough funding for local higher education. What do these areas do? They certainly don't vote for the party most open to government spending! Nor is there any coherent attempt to pressure their congresscritter into supporting those policies. Instead, these rural areas vote for congresscritters who are hostile to both raising taxes (on the wealthy and large corporations) and government spending. They vote for congresscritters whose health plan is some combination of 'what does not kill you makes you stronger' and 'own the libs.
It is a culture war realignment, not an economic one.

 

[Farm Boy]

Welfare queens, per the Reagan era, was always naked economic warfare with cultural window dressing and vanity projects. Has that old familiar smell to it. The more things change, they say. The actors are slightly jumbled about, but not that much that much.

 

[Ajidica]

Welfare queens, per the Reagan era, was always naked economic warfare with cultural window dressing and vanity projects. Has that old familiar smell to it. The more things change, they say. The actors are slightly jumbled about, but not that much that much.

So what are you saying? That me calling the $30+ billion Trump used to bribe farmers (which neither it nor the 'trade war' were subject to congressional authorization) is the modern day version of calling people welfare queens?