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@Greyparrot
I strongly recommend you take 5 minutes out of your free time to watch this.
Question; is this the biggest or at least one of the biggest reasons why you vote republican?
I’m also curious to know your general thoughts on AOC.
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You're inability to respond in more than the bare minimum might have blinded you from the fact that Sam isn't all good, but I'm not gonna let you try to smoothly slide by with your assertions.
By the “bare minimum” I presume you are referring to the fact that I am not engaging with you point by point, and I’m not doing that for a reason... because it is completely irrelevant to this discussion.
You have evidence that you’re right. So what? You’ve done nothing to get from “he’s wrong” to “he’s racist”. You claim he’s intentionally misconstruing the evidence, but that claim presumes not only that you’re right and he’s wrong, which is already problematic, but also that there are no misunderstandings in what he’s saying and that he is fully aware of all of this. And your evidence for all of it is that you’re right.
People look the same statistics and come to different conclusions all the time. Have you never gotten into a gun rights debate? For every statistic you have proving your point I’ll show you one proving mine. I think people who believe more guns equates to less gun violence are wrong, and sometimes dumb. I’ll rarely of ever claim they are being dishonest. That takes on a whole new burden.
You also completely misconstrue where he’s coming from. When he pointed out that we’re in the least racist moment in our history he’s not making a case that no further progress is needed, this point is a response to woke culture consistently arguing that nothing has changed. Again, it’s a response. Context matters.
This conversation is a perfect example of what is wrong with woke culture. No one can express a different view of the world from you without themselves being labeled a racist. To even criticize woke culture for going too far makes you a racist. It’s this knee jerk, I know better than you and if you don’t agree with me you’re the problem attitude that has caused this racist reaction on the right and is exactly why Trump got elected. That, is a problem for anyone who cares about racial progress. And that is the point and the context that all of Sam Harris’s arguments on this subject are actually being made in.
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@Greyparrot
Washington DC has uncontested monopoly power.
I don’t think you understand what a monopoly is. The entire point is to ensure competition. Please explain who is supposed to compete with the US government.
The Best way to fix the country at this point is to vote for the most incompetent crony politician possible so that the fall of DC will be fast enough to recover from.
What an asinine statement. What does this “fall of DC” you are envisioning actually look like, and I’d love to know what you think will magically rise up in its place.
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@Theweakeredge
Sam does in fact talk about Racism and Systemc Racsm, but its MORE obvous that he says that police violence isn't caused by racism,
Just one snippet of your argument but makes the same basic point, Sam is racist because he disagrees with you. If someone accepts that there are factors other than racism at play in police violence, they must be a racist. If someone believes that white people are more likely to be shot by police, then despite the abundance of statistics out there that can actually be used to support that narrative, they must be racist.
Not one thing you’ve said amounts to anything else. You don’t seem to think it’s possible for anyone to see the world differently than you in this regard without being a racist. Case and point...
As for if you are racist? I'd say its likely, more so that you are implicitely than explicitely racist yes
So moving on... What is a racist, and what about me has so far qualified me as most likely a racist?
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@ILikePie5
Do you seriously think Biden calling Harris “president” three times instead of two changes a single thing about the comparison between Biden and Trump?
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@Theweakeredge
He is not racist because he disagrees - he is racist because he IGNORES the fact that the oppression is systemic
He literally gave examples of systemic racism in the interview. You’re ignoring every point he made that refutes your narrative.
he tries to redefine racism in a way that puts individualism as a "responsibility" thing instead of actually acknowledging the system that put them there
He’s using the same definition that the majority of society has been using for decades and the same definition you’ll get if you google “racism definition”.
It’s this woke culture that’s redefining the term. And that’s fine, society needs to be more aware of how the system works against the black community and other minority communities so it’s a productive conversation to have, until you start calling someone a racist because they don’t see the same thing you do.
he presents these two analogous ways of discrimination and never even acknowledges that they are the SAME thing. Despite the fact that people have explained this principle to Sam. the fact that this is most likely to DELIBERATE obfuscation is what leads me to draw my conclusion
But he doesn’t see them as the same thing. That’s the point and he has gone on at length to explain why, yet you seem to disregard it and just leap to calling him a racist because you don’t accept that someone else could not see things the way you do without being a racist.
Tell you what, instead of talking about Sam let’s talk about myself because I mostly agree with the things I have heard him say. When you say he presents “these two” I take that to mean what I’ll call personal racism and systemic racism. I say these are two very different things, despite hearing from some why they are not. So tell me, am I racist? If I mostly agree with Sam who is a racist then I must be one, so let me know why.
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@ILikePie5
After everything she just said, that’s your response? Why bother?
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@fauxlaw
So what? Are you bothered by a president who actually governs?
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@Theweakeredge
I never used the word “ostracized” so I have no idea why you put it in quotes. I simply said it is not ok, and it isn’t. I assume you’ve heard the term microaggressions... that’s exactly the kind of thing people are talking about, but I don’t find this worth debating.
Essentially, you’re arguing that Harris is racist because he doesn’t agree with you. He’s literally explaining his position and you just dismiss it as philosophizing it away. Again, that right there is the very essence of the thing he is talking about.
I recognize that this is in fact a tactic a lot of racists use, but unlike say a Tucker Carlson, Harris doesn’t give us any indication that he’s using this for some other purpose. To the extent he speaks out on this issue it’s only to combat the extremes of the far left and talk about how that is strengthening the opposition. I don’t agree with him on everything here, but I certainly agree on that. If we actually care about getting to a post racism society, this is the opposite of how we accomplish it.
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@TheUnderdog
Democrats: We want big government.Me: Then why are you pro choice and want less immigration restrictions?
The Democrats goal is not big government. Democrats believe government is how we come together to solve our problems, and in many cases it’s the only institution that has that ability. If say everyone stops spending on the heels of an economic collapse, government is the only institution with the means and motivation to spend so we can mitigate the damage. When this is your view of government, naturally your policies will amount to a big government. But that is the effect, not the point.
Pro choice is simply a belief that a women ultimately have the right over her their own bodies. Nothing about believing in government contradicts this.
Immigration is a complex issue, but most democrats don’t want less restrictions, we want humane ones.
Democrats: We want choice. We are pro choice.Me: Then why do you want to ban certain choices of firearms, like the AK47 and the AR15?
Democrats believe in personal freedom, but the freedom to swing your arms ends at someone else’s nose. Owning a firearm puts the safety of everyone around you subject to your ability to carry it responsibly, therefore everyone should have a chance to weigh in on your right to own one.
Democrats: We wish to minimize pain. Non consensual pregnency is painful and welfare minimizes pain.Me: Then why are you guys applying cancel culture on many people? That causes a lot of pain for people, and them getting cancelled causes more overall pain than people's feelings being hurt. People's feelings last a few seconds, getting cancelled lasts much longer.
These things are not comparable. But beyond that, cancel culture is about holding people accountable for the pain that they’ve caused others. I personally think it’s gone way to far, but there is no inconsistency here.
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@TheUnderdog
Even as a liberal, I’m not crazy about the wealth tax idea either. I think we should be taxing money people make, not the presumptive value of what someone owns. If I own a two million dollar painting as part of my estate, a wealth tax is essentially saying I have to pay an annual fee to hold onto this possession. I don’t think that is how it should work.
I say create a millionaires tax bracket, and seriously increase the estate tax.
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@Theweakeredge
His disbelief in systemic racism
This is the exact thing Sam was criticizing. We have become so obsessed with rooting out racism that we now qualify anything that doesn’t tow the line as racist.
Denying systemic racism doesn’t make one a racist. Ignorant perhaps, but that is an entirely different thing.
I agree with the interviewer in that Sam comes off as unempathetic and uncaring regarding the issues the black community faces, but that wasn’t the conversation he was engaged in. He was asked to elaborate on his criticisms of the woke left, so he did.
I think the problem is that we’ve fought so hard to get society to empathize with the plight of black people that we don’t know when to quit and have now overshoot our target. We’ve gotten to the point where it’s no longer ok to even point out that the perpetrator of a crime is black, but if the perp is white it’s ok for that to be a national conversation. This has created a tremendous backlash on the right, which does nothing to help the cause. You’re never going to convert someone into a race sympathizer by calling them a racist.
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@Danielle
So that when Republicans control government next, they have carte blanche to do whatever they want?
I say yes. For the longest my position has been that the filibuster should be reformed to something like the way it used to be, and I’m still satisfied with that, but one day I realized... this country just too divided for it have any meaningful application. In today’s political climate the filibuster is nothing more than a tool for the minority to regain power by convincing voters that the majority party is dysfunctional and worthless, and it works because people don’t know or even care to know anything about process and why it matters.
I say fine, let the parties compete for the electorate with actual ideas. If republicans gain full control that would be horrible in my view, but let the American people see what they have to offer. I think after 4 years of having nothing but tax cuts for the rich and complaints about Dr. Seuss it’ll become real clear which party actually cares about working families.
Of course none of this matters unless one party gains control of all three legislative branches, which is relatively rare.
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@n8nrgmi
theists, christians in particular, are always showing things that are impossible, becoming possible.
If you are observing something happening, then by definition, it is not impossible. And if you are observing it regularly, then it is not even remarkable.
I’m sure I’m not the first in this thread to point out that even if something “impossible” happens, that does not tell us anything about the cause. To argue that there must be a link between a miraculous recovery and the prayer that proceeded it is meaningless because theists always pray in tough situations in need of recovery, so of course every time such a recovery occurs the patient was prayed for.
So your argument is apparently that those who are prayed for do better than those who aren’t. But we already know this is false as multiple studies have been done on this. I’ll just leave this here as a start...
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@ILikePie5
Wait this is the Democratic Party we’re talking about right
Yes. Have you ever heard a democrat call another democrat a DINO? That’s a republicans thing.
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I think of the term “necessary evil” as referring to any action chosen out of a moral dilemma. The first one that comes to mind is abortion. Between pro life and pro choice, both positions result in what many would think of as evil, but necessarily, one has to take hold.
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@ILikePie5
DINOs suck don’t they
Unlike on the right, democrats actually believe that pursuit of the best ideas and not fealty to one man or one party is how government is supposed to work.
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@thett3
Your position is that yes, things that are offensive should be banned, and also that the left doesn't produce offensive works on par with that of the right. I said well, here's an example of a leftist book that offends me. You said, that's not offensive! I replied, who gets to decide? You reply: logical people. Well who gets to decide that
First of all, I’m not arguing on whether anything should be banned. This conversation is about the free market, not my opinion regarding various content.
Second, we keep using the word “banned” which is a very unclear way to go about this conversation. Again, we’re talking about the free market. Nothing can be banned by the free market unless it is outlawed (in which case we have a real first amendment issue) or unless it is rejected by the entirety of society. What I’m arguing is that of the entirety of society rejects an idea, then tough shit. No one else is obligated to sell or allow your ideas in their spaces.
When I commented on reasoned deliberation, that was in the context of the individual organizations making their own choices and was a response to the absurdity of claiming that two things are equal just because you feel offended by one of them. We don’t respect someone else’s emotional reactions merely because they proclaim them. We see what they are offended by and apply common sense. You don’t need to convince me to feel just as offended, just show that you have some real world basis. If you take issue with that then I don’t know what to tell you, I’m not about to attempt a rational discussion with someone who does not accept reason as the arbiter of what is acceptable.
I believe that allowing people to speak their minds, and engage in reasoned debate, is a moral imperative and that shutting down on side pre-emptively is wrong no matter what you think of their ideas.
But this isn’t the conversation. This thread is about the free market. In a free market no one has the power to shut down any side, which is why no one has the responsibility to uphold them. That’s the whole point. You are acting like corporate America is a monolith, as if they’re all linked to the Borg hive mind and are all acting as one. That’s not how the world works. If they’re all deciding the same thing then once again... you should stop and think about what that says about your ideas.
BTW, people made these same kinds of arguments against civil rights. "Well it's private property, neighborhoods can have restricted covenant and restaurants can prohibit blacks, it's a free market."
Seriously? The essence of the civil rights movement is that businesses cannot tell someone they are not allowed in their space because of their ethnicity, gender, etc. That is not comparable to telling businesses they are not allowed to determine what kind of content is acceptable on their platforms, or what products they are allowed to pull off of their own shelves.
The point is that people DO want to hear what these people have to say, but corporations are doing their best to make that not happen.
Then book them on Fox News, OANN, or News Max. Sell the damn book on Etsy. Or create your own platforms. If there is a market for it then nothing is stopping it. And if you are really concerned about how powerful the rich have gotten in this country and wish for a more balanced society, then welcome to the left.
To speak of social media companies in particular, almost all interesting right wing content creators were banned from YouTube over the 2016-2020 period, twitter regularly purges right wing accounts, lots and lots of right-leaning subreddits have been banned, and now companies are beginning the process of banning
And yet again, you completely disregard any analysis of what type of content is being banned from these platforms. That’s the whole point and the only one that matters, not whether that content is left or right. Many of these “right wing” accounts you mentioned are unabashed white supremacists. Is that what you are equating to your conservatives views? Are you really arguing that you feel under attack because they got banned?
No, I'm talking about them getting people fired from their jobs for expressing (or increasingly just privately holding) views that were mainstream like three or four years ago. You yourself said I shouldn't be allowed to be a teacher
I never said you should not be allowed to be a teacher. I was pointing out how circumstances are not the same and how speech being unacceptable in one setting is not appropriate in another. Howard Stern’s show was fine for satellite radio, it would not have been fine from a school teacher.
But yes I agree with you on there absurdity of people losing their jobs. Just since your last reply to me Alexi Mccamond was fired for calling someone gay back in high school. There’s no words for the stupidity of this, and I would rhetorically attack the decision makers here all day. But what I won’t do is suggest that they somehow did not or should not have the right to do it. If our society really is this crazy then the problem is not the system, the problem is the people within it. No system can overcome that.
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@thett3
What you are saying in other words is that people who agree with you get to decide.
If by people who “agree with me” you are referring to people who believe that the way to sort through our differing viewpoints is via the use of reason... then yes that’s what I’m saying. If you’re in a group assigned to figure out an extremely complex math problem and one of your colleagues doesn’t accept that 2+2=4, I’m pretty sure you’re not going to give that person a seat at the table either.
Why not just take the honest approach and admit that you do want your political opponents censored, so we can talk about that.
I believe I made myself clear in my last comment. I do like seeing people I strongly disagree with “silenced”... when it’s in the context of the free market. I have no doubt you do as well, because that’s not nearly the same thing as it happening via the government. There’s no central authority in the free market. There’s no referee making the decisions for everyone. If no one wants to hear what you have to say I’m pretty sure you’re the problem.
With that said, can you explain to me who exactly is being silenced? The right lost his mind when Trump was banned by all the big tech companies but I could have sworn that was him on my TV screen at Cpac and then being talked about by all the news channels afterward, and I’m pretty sure that was him on Fox News talking to Maria Bartiromo the other night. Crazy how loud his platform is for a silenced person.
I would encourage you to pay more attention to what your political opponents are saying. Republicans have been talking about the tech monopolies for some time now, and the Trump administration filed anti-trust lawsuits against some of them.
I have been paying attention. The tech companies are only invoked and monopolies only talked about when they do something conservatives don’t like. And we all know Trump’s gripe is entirely based on the way he personally was treated by them. He doesn’t care about public policy, he just wants revenge.
Prove that it's in their best interests. I'm all ears. How much revenue did Amazon stand to lose if they didn't ban the sale of books that generated them revenue?
It’s not my job, nor is it Amazon’s. That’s why it’s called the free market.
But tbh even if it was in their best interests (which I absolutely do not admit) that just circles back to my point that leftists have been using intimidation tactics and economic coercion to shut down their opposition.
Intimidation tactics? I believe you mean people on the left have been using their freedom of speech.
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@thett3
That's the point though, right? I do find the book offensive and so do millions of others. Just because you don't have a problem with it doesn't mean that others don't...Who gets to decide???
Those of us who believe in reasoned deliberation. Being offended because someone called your wife a hoar is not the same thing as being offended because someone put ketchup on their steak. We are always going to have differing opinions on what is offensive. The solution is not to go nuclear and pretend there is no such thing as being legitimately offended.
There is a reason we can nearly all agree that swasticas are offensive. All it takes is empathy and some level of concern for your neighbor. If you don’t care about the people you offend then no one else has any obligation to care about your objections to stopping it, and that’s exactly what is happening on a national level.
Amazon has a near monopoly on online book sales, so it banning sales of books advocating certain viewpoints has a huge chilling effect on books that are yet to be written, and ensures that lots of people will never stumble upon the book. This IS the point.
And yet you haven’t been making it. I said earlier in our conversation that the size of these companies is a legitimate concern but that I also see likely to no evidence that this really is the point for the right wing. If it were we would have been spent the past few days talking about monopolies and what should be done about them, not about whether Amazon should be making political decisions.
But yeah I don't see it as a "free market" if mega-corporations unite to excise the opinions of half the country.
Once again, these are private companies acting in their own best interests. This isn’t some nationwide conspiracy to silence conservatives. To the extent that any of it is true they may have came together to stop promoting the rhetoric that the election was stolen which ultimately culminated in the attack on our US Capitol. That, aside from that being the right thing, is not nearly the same unless you are seriously equating that with conservatism.
I think without the virus he would've won re election despite being an extremely terrible politician
I think so too, but this is another example of the lack of self reflection. The problem wasn’t the virus. It’s still killing thousands of Americans by the day and millions are still out of work, yet Biden’s approval ratings are higher than Trump’s ever were. If Trump had just put on a mask and gotten out of the way of the actual experts he would have been fine. But instead he politicized not only the virus but the science itself. Look around at the rest of the world. Any world leader who did the basics coasted to reelection. It turns out that denying reality can only take you so far.
But instead of learning that lesson we’re passing over 250 new laws to stop people from voting, so here we are...
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@thett3
I don't think any books should be banned, but a leftist equivalent in terms of "offensiveness" would probably be something like White Fragility. Is your contention seriously that you can't imagine a leftist book that people would find offensive?
My contention is that if you are making the argument that Amazon’s choice was purely political, you should be able to show me an equivalent example that Amazon won’t ban.
White fragility is a book explaining to white people that conversations about race are not about them personally. There is nothing remotely equal here.
All I'm saying is that corporations shouldn't be trying their best to decide what I'm able to read. I'm advocating for what was the status quo up until 2020...just be a neutral platform.
And what if companies decide that it’s not in their best interest to be a neutral platform?
But this right here is the problem... you seem to think this is all about you. No one is trying to decide what you can read or control what you think. If you want this anti-transgender book you can get it somewhere else, and if no one else will carry it that’s not Amazon’s problem. It’s still a free market. That means anyone can decide to sell it, not that someone must.
You're the one saying that the left is fighting "misinformation" and the right just wants to complain about being their leaders being banned from social media, negative stories about their opponents being censored, and books advocating their ideas being prohibited...what should be done to combat "misinformation"?
I think this really is the problem of our era, and I don’t have an answer other than a concerted effort by our society to drown out misinformation with reality. I will say, I think it will slowly improve over the coming years now that the biggest purveyor of misinformation on earth no longer has the biggest microphone.
I'll take this as an admission that you do want conservatives to be censored and punished for their views.
It’s not about punishment, it’s about accountability. Trump’s Facebook and Twitter account played a massive and possibly decisive role in the Capitol attack. He should be banned from those sites, I think it would have been immoral for those companies not to.
But here’s the crazy thing... that has nothing to do with him being a conservative. Alleging that the election was stolen by some nationwide cabal of democrats conspiring to rig the election isn’t conservatism. Neither is claiming that all transgender people have a mental disorder. People aren’t being “censored” for their political leanings. They’re being censored because they are pushing toxic ideas that no one wants to be associated with.
I noticed you didn't dispute that misinformation also comes from the left, which does you credit, because of course it comes from both sides.
That it does. No one side ever has a monopoly on misinformation, but that doesn’t mean both sides are equal.
Do you think I deserve to be banned from this site or suffer some personal repercussion for arguing that gender dysphoria is a mental illness?
No. But this isn’t about what you deserve, it’s about what these companies decide is best for them. This is a debate site, the purpose is to be a platform for all kinds of ideas so they can be debated. If you were a teacher on the other hand, your views being put out in the open might be a problem. It all depends on what the institutions goals are and whether you or your ideas threaten them.
That same President was almost re-elected thanks to increasing minority support, and only lost because he couldn't hold onto a lot of the boring NPR listening white voters in the suburbs who love tax cuts and Mitt Romney. Trump obviously had a lot of flaws as a man, and was certainly among the most flawed politicians in generations (he absolutely refused to pluck the most low hanging fruit.) The fact that he won once and almost won again is a testament to the popularity of the policies he supported and implemented, which contradicted the autopsy
Thank you for proving my point. Zero self reflection.
And BTW, he didn’t come as close as he did because of his policies. Most voters and especially Trump voters don’t even know what policies their candidate supports and in this case, Trump was notorious for being especially vapid in that area. Trump only came as close as he did because the electoral college is skewed towards republicans, as it was in 2016. He lost by 7 million votes.
Let’s see how republicans do when Trump is not on the ballot, like in 2018. Maybe then, we’ll see some self reflection. Maybe.
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You haven't given me a single non-political reason for why they would be pulling conservative books, and only conservative books...
No, you will not consider a single non political reason for it. The leadership at the company is liberal and these are conservatives books so that’s all you need and any suggestion otherwise is ridiculous.
Tell you what, show me the equivalent left wing book that Amazon should be banning.
Of course it was. Why else would they do it?
As a way to reach out to a particular viewership, as a way of saying we see your pain... now watch our movies. Or if you’re white and want to learn more about the plight of black people... here we have some great selections for you. What is so difficult to believe about that? Do you really believe every white person you see on Instagram rocking a Black Lives Matter t-shirt is doing it to advance their politics and correct wrongthink? Obviously not. Many are doing it because they’ve made a calculation that their personal goals are better served being seen as sympathetic towards black people. What is so difficult about this?
The implications of allowing speech to be shut down on the basis of "misinformation" are scary to me since one mans opinion is another mans disinformation.
Getting back to the topic of this thread... what do you mean “allowing speech to be shut down”? What exactly is your solution here? Do you feel the free market should be free? Or rather to what extent?
Right, so Amazon is branding themselves as a company that takes a stand against conservatives/conservative thought
No, conservatives are branding Amazon that way. Amazon isn’t banning books on tax cuts and the second amendment. The content of the book is what matters, not whether it happens to be left wing or right wing.
You seem to accept the narrative that conservatives are being censored everywhere. If that’s the case, if no one is willing to publish the work of or work with individuals who subscribe to certain ideas, perhaps you’d be better served thinking about what that says about your ideas rather than always playing the victim.
But this trend is not surprising. In 2012 the Republican Party performed an autopsy on their defeat and came away with the conclusion that they lost largely because of their stances on immigration. So what did they do with this information? They elected the most anti immigrant president we’ve ever seen. In 2020 after losing the election they didn’t even bother to ask themselves what went wrong, they just claimed it was stolen. Self reflection isn’t prevalent on the right.
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@thett3
If the decisions aren't political, where are the leftist books that Amazon is refusing to sell?
This is an argument from ignorance. You are the one charging Amazon with making strictly political decisions. The fact that the book you point to happens to be considered a right wing book is not evidence that they made a decision to go after right wing books, and I’ve already given you a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they would have singled this book out.
But I'm glad that we reached the point I was trying to make, that based on your previous statements it would be immoral for a CEO to lose a company money by taking a political stance.
I never implied otherwise. I don’t know why you keep bringing up morality, this thread is about free market capitalism and whether the political right actually believes in it.
I mean do you really think that nobody should ever be allowed to discuss voter fraud just because it likely didn't occur in this election? What if it DOES occur in a future election?
What? No one ever said voter fraud cannot be discussed. The left has been fighting back against misinformation being peddled by public figures who clearly know better (or at least should) and the damage it has caused. How do you suggest we do that?
Banning speech is an incredibly slippery slope because historically a lot of ideas that were originally universally lambasted turned out to be true.
No one is talking about banning speech. We’re talking about the free market. How did we get here?
My assessment is that very few people were going to boycott Amazon if they didn't purge conservative books, so these books just represented marginal revenue, that Amazons leadership felt was less important than preventing wrongthink. do you have any reason to disagree?
I think you have no reason at all to presume that preventing wrongthink was ultimately Amazon’s goal, yet your entire ire here seems to be based on it.
Your assessment completely disregards the concept of branding. It’s not about people boycotting, the decisions we make as to where we spend our money are based on all kinds of factors. The company I work for turns down money all the time because it doesn’t fit our brand. I don’t get why you seem to think companies don’t take this into account.
Removing things that are offensive, simply because they are offensive, is a bad idea. Lots of things are offensive but still need to be said, in certain contexts.
It’s not Amazon’s concern what does or does not need to be said in the public sphere. There are plenty of other platforms out there, the only thing Amazon needs to worry about is its own bottom line.
In the wake of the George Floyd protests Netflix added a black movies category. Do you think this was a purely political decision? Why or why not?
If it's all a subjective human construct what's it to you what others think about it, anyway?
It’s nothing, I don’t care. I’m not advocating a position on it, only against those who think they know better when it comes to the well being of the people who are actually going through this. I don’t know what it’s like to believe I was born into the wrong body, but I know it would take a hell of a lot for me to think that the best thing for me was to chop my own penis off, and I can’t imagine it would help the situation for books to be sold on Amazon telling people that my difficult choices are the result of a mental disorder.
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@thett3
If it’s immoral to spend money supporting political candidates when the shareholders aren’t unanimous why is it not immoral to lose money for a political cause when the shareholders aren’t unanimous?
You missed the part where I explained that my issue regarding corporate donations to political campaigns has nothing to do with the company, my issue is with the system that allows it. Do you believe, as a matter of law, that publicly traded companies should be allowed to make these donations?
Regarding the second part, I never said it was moral for a CEO to lose his company money over a political stand. I argued that (A) these decisions are not as political as you make them sound, and (B) to the extent that they cost the company money we already have a system of accountability (shareholder elections) to deal with that.
No, I make a moral distinction between criminals profiting from tales of their crimes and people advocating a political position.
Do you regard the rhetoric that lead to the attack on the US Capitol as “advocating a political position”?
Except I can just as easily turn this around and say doesn’t it hurt Amazon to be seen as taking aggressively liberal stances? Conservatives have money too. It’s always safer to just be a neutral platform and sell everything outside of a few incredibly egregious cases
That’s just your assessment. These issues are complicated, and reasonable minds can see it either way. So on what basis do you deem this decision entirely political? It’s one thing to disagree with the calculation Amazon is making, it’s an entirely different thing to claim it’s not a calculation at all but rather based on purely political motives. How do you distinguish between the two?
With that question aside... on what basis can anyone reasonably claim that removing a book many people see as offensive to be an aggressively liberal stance? Is this what conservatism is now? How dare you try to avoid offending people?
And sorry if it’s offensive but transgenderism likely IS a mental disorder.
Mental disorders are a human construct. It’s a condition where the brain doesn’t work as it’s supposed to. Who are you to tell someone else that their chosen lifestyle (which hurts no one else) is grounds for them to be considered in need of medical treatment?
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@Greyparrot
Fauci is a politician.
Just because the political right decided to make medical science political, doesn’t mean medical scientists are politicians
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@Greyparrot
Why do you care?
Because it impacts all of us. Vaccines are not 100%, so they will still carry and pass the virus on to others. Plus the more the virus circulates the more it mutates, so a variant that the vaccines are ineffective against becomes more likely.
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@thett3
would it not also be immoral for a corporation to turn down profit for a purely political purpose?
Yes, but that’s not a political issue, it’s a performance issue which the shareholders have every right to hold them accountable for. I am in a position where I have decisions to make, if I ever took a stand on political grounds and the company lost money because of it I’d probably be fired. That’s how it works.
I don't actually think the majority of private citizens should use their economic and social power to silence those who disagree, or punish them for disagreeing, no.
Then you advocate against their right to free speech.
Curious... what would your attitude be towards Bill Cosby or Harvey Weinstein writing an autobiography about how they assaulted all those women? If publishers refused to publish their work and stores refused to sell it, would you denounce cancel culture for silencing them?
You are wrong. How much revenue do you think Amazon made from books that disputed the progressive line on transgenderism?
You’re making my point. Taking political principals completely out of the picture... Do you think a company as large as Amazon would want its brand associated with anti transgenderism for the measly few dollars it will make selling these books? You don’t think that would potentially have a massive impact on their bottom line?
Wouldn't the decision to support a particular candidate also be entirely the companies to make?
Yes, as long as the rules permit it, which is exactly my problem. I don’t blame the companies for acting within the law, I blame the fact that this is the law.
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@thett3
If Amazon had banned the sale of Obama merchandise in 2012 would you really have said "hmm well I suppose that's just the free market and people can get it elsewhere"
I would have been pissed at Amazon and made a point to spend my money elsewhere. And not even because I disagreed with their political views, but because banning Obama merchandise (assuming they targeted him specifically) is an overt political decision that’s nothing like what Amazon actually did. There is nothing about his merchandise that could be reasonably deemed offensive, and he’s done nothing warranting that kind of public accountability. It’s an apples to oranges.
What I would not have done is joined the train of demanding that my democratic representatives do something about this private company making their own decisions.
Now to be clear there is an argument to be made about the size and influence of these companies, but nothing I’ve seen suggests to me that that is the real focus here.
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@thett3
Is your objection that it's immoral to spend someone else's money on a candidate they may not support, or is your position just that you don't think doing so is profitable and that's why they shouldn't do it?
The former, but it’s not just about morality it’s about our political system. Money is power. It’s bad enough that someone worth a billion dollars gets to play an oversized role in influencing public policy, but it’s even worse when someone gets to influence policy with money that’s not even theirs.
Actually, that is my position because I'm a free speech absolutist.
But you’re talking about something else. Free speech ensures that you can’t be silenced by the government. When you advocate for private citizens within a society to be unable to collectively silence you then you are really advocating to stop their right to free speech, making your whole position incoherent.
Do you have evidence that a company would ONLY stop selling a product if it hurt their bottom line?
I believe in human nature. Specifically, people will always act in their own personal interests. And while there will always be an individual who pushes against the grain, one who decides that their political principals are more important than their financial benefit, that is the exception not the norm.
IDK man it just seems very obvious to me that companies can and do make political decisions
I never said they don’t, I just don’t believe they are as political as you make them sound. There’s a large overlap between a decision to protect your company from political ramifications, and a decision over principal. The main point of this thread is that of you believe in the free market then you believe those decisions are entirely the company’s to be made, at which point turning their decisions into a political issue makes you the opposite of what you profess.
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@thett3
If the corporation is owned by shareholders and it's immoral to make unwise monetary decisions with their property than why should a CEO get to decide not to sell a certain product even if it would be profitable? And what of the shareholders on the other side of the political divide?
My objection wasn’t about unwise monetary decisions, it was about donating money to a political campaign which the owner of that money doesn’t support.
Whether a CEO decides to sell a product is a completely different issue, company profits are not so black and white. There is a reason advertisers for example pull back from certain shows, it’s not because their leadership suddenly grew a conscious.
Hang on--what if the reason companies won't sell a certain book isn't because there isn't enough demand for it to be profitable, but because they fear pressure and intimidation from activists who want to keep people from reading these books? Is that really something you're willing to support? A hecklers veto over what I'm allowed to read?
Pressure from activists will not stop a company from selling a product unless that company believed it would be worse for their bottom line to keep selling it. But even if it were the case for one company, it’s absurd to suggest a few hecklers could make this the case with every company. By that point the hecklers you describe would have to make up the majority of society. I assume it’s not your position that society should have no control over what circulates within it.
It's totally fine to disagree with the right but you need to at least understand our positions.
That’s the point of posting a thread like this. It is not as you suggested, out of an obsession to paint the other side as hypocrites, it’s to give the other side a chance to change my mind or at least give me a perspective I hadn’t considered before.
Also it seems that some conservative states such as Florida and Texas have already moved on from the pandemic while states like California and New York remain very locked down despite little evidence that these restrictions did much to help
Not sure where this came from, but moving on from a pandemic doesn’t make it disappear. Look at the test positivity rates. The red states make up the majority of the highest rated states while blue states are mostly at the bottom. Total death counts are a horrible statistic because no one separates the early pandemic deaths from those after policy was implemented and had a chance to kick in, plus treatment has gotten much better with time making it even more misleading.
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@Conway
It's not clear if you literally think Mr. Potato Head and Doctor Seuss are a bad thing. Actually that's how the sentence structure reads, but I have a hard time believing people would take a trend like that seriously.
There’s context to this, but you can be forgiven if you haven’t been following right wing TV for the past few weeks.
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@thett3
Do you, as a progressive, have a problem with corporations exerting very heavy political influence? Would you have had a problem with this in, say, 2009?
I have a serious issue with corporations donating to political campaigns. Companies are owned by shareholders, and no CEO should get to decide what political campaign to spend someone else’s money on.
That’s not remotely the same thing as Amazon deciding not to sell certain books, even if it is purely for the cynical reasons you claim. If people want that book it can be sold elsewhere and if no one else will sell it then that is the free market we used to hear so much about.
Regarding hypocrisy, yes I take issue with it. When you’re a blatant hypocrite it means you really don’t care about any of the issues you espouse. It turns people off and leaves only the die hards engaged, which only snowballs from there. That’s how we got to this point where half the country is trying to move on from a pandemic while the other half is fighting against fake victimization over a few Twitter bans. This in my view, is worth pointing out.
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As if Mr. Potato Head and Dr. Seuss weren’t bad enough, yesterday Jim Jordan and Ken Buck sent a letter to Amazon demanding answers on why certain products were pulled off their website, claiming a pattern of anti conservative bias. Cancel culture has become a right wing obsession as of late, but it’s purely a product of the free market. Do conservatives still believe in it? If so, what exactly is supposed to be done about it and why do republican politicians seem to expect that you will vote for them over this?
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@TheUnderdog
I'd expect many of the senators to change their minds on the bill eventually if they are debating the bill for a long time in DC. If they can get a majority vote in one way or another, then the bill becomes law.
The problem is that the rules aren’t what they used to be. In the past if you wanted to filibuster a bill you had to stand on the senate floor and make your case. Most people are not willing to hang around for 20 straight hours so it was only done for really big and important things. Now all you have to do is send an email, so essentially any single senator can indefinitely halt legislation by hitting “send” unless there are 60 votes in favor of the bill, which is not realistic in today’s politics. 70% of the American people supported the relief bill yet all 50 republican senators still voted against it.
I think democrats should eliminate it, but there are at least two of them who have said they will not support that, so here we are.
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@fauxlaw
I love how peeved right wingers get when democratic presidents sign executive orders, even though Trump literally governed by them.
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@janesix
Evolution, in any form, has never been demonstrated. Some minor adaptation, which is itself unexplained especially by Darwinian evolution, has been observed. Usually much much quicker than expected by Darwinian evolution.
Exactly what part of evolution do you reject?
Also, what would it take to demonstrate evolution to you?
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@coal
Actually what I said was that if the "white privilege" or "institutional racism" conspiracy theory was true, then we'd have to assume that society got vastly more racist after the Johnson administration and the end of Jim Crow --- which is completely absurd.
Institutional racism is not a conspiracy theory. It doesn’t allege that society is conspiring against them, even if there are concrete examples of this. The charge is that the laws and policies themselves have played a large role in the black community being where they are. It’s just that simple. Whether it was done on purpose or not is a separate issue filled with varying answers. The idea that society got more racist, whoever might believe this, has nothing to do with it.
Do you believe that the disadvantages ingrained in government policy in this country throughout its history have directly lead to the phenomenon we see today; that black people are at or near the bottom in nearly every societal health indicator? Yes or No?Yes,...
Then it appears we believe largely the same thing but are calling it something different.
I also agree with your expansion, I was just trying to keep it simple. One step at a time.
I object to even use of the language of "systemic racism" because the problem of inequitable outcome cannot be solved at that same level of analysis that it's identified
That’s understandable, and I would say I mostly agree. I think the problem however is that we live in a society where solving problems require us to have a dialog. That can’t happen if we refuse to acknowledge the plight of others, especially while acting like the things they are pointing to aren’t real. We need to begin with a shared sense of reality, only then can we move on to discussing what to do about it.
It seems to me that you think I think that inequity isn't a problem.
I never thought that, I only responded because you appeared to be equating, at least in some level, belief in systemic racism with belief that the election was stolen. At least now it seems clear that whatever you were referring to doesn’t appear to be the same thing I heard.
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@coal
Having now had at least a second opportunity to review what I said, do you now still hold the position that "but don’t seem to care much about whether [outcome inequity] is even a real thing?
When I said you don’t seem to care much about whether it was real, I was referring to what you were insinuating with the following:
But to call these evidence of systemic racism is stupid and myopic. What it suggests is that whenever the government tries to implement policies like this, it makes things far worse than better.
Immediately after listing examples of black people being disproportionately affected by government policy you call it “stupid” to suggest it as evidence of systemic racism. That’s literally what systemic racism means.
You also question whether black white duality is the best way to look at this, I find that baffling. Black vs White is the easiest difference to spot amongst us, lead to the most overt targeting of an ethnic group in our country’s history, and took place far longer than any other example you could list. What alternative means of categorization could one possibly suggest?
But that aside, yes of course I understand the difference in arguing the meaning vs the existence of inequitable outcomes, and I never suggested that you don’t acknowledge the reality of inequitable outcomes. The question regarding systemic racism is whether those outcomes are a directly result of government policy. You sound like you acknowledge it is, but then go on to blame it on the democrats and government intervention, but neither of those are relevant to the question.
Because no matter how you shake the data, there is always at least one (and often three or more) groups that out-perform whites as a group (and have for decades)...What I am saying is that those data points do not establish "white privilege" or "institutional racism."
The question of systemic racism has nothing to do with who is at the top with respects to the beneficiaries of government policy, it’s about who is at the bottom.
Can we make this really simple?...
Do you believe that the disadvantages ingrained in government policy in this country throughout its history have directly lead to the phenomenon we see today; that black people are at or near the bottom in nearly every societal health indicator? Yes or No?
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@Greyparrot
How do you feel and how do you rationalize it when the ultra-rich lobbies support the same positions as you do assuming you acknowledge that ultra-rich lobbies do not have your interests in mind at all.
My positions are based on logic stemming from my core values. I couldn’t give a shit less who else supports those same positions.
If you’d like a more detailed answer you are welcome to provide an example.
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@Greyparrot
There was nobody "ripping kids out of the arms of parents" The shelters were for unaccompanied minors. The parents of a large majority of these kids made the choice to take the risks of illegal migration and sent their kids to the border unaccompanied.
This is not relevant to what we were discussing. Unaccompanied minors have been a problem for a long time. It’s serious and complicated, and it’s why Obama had many of the facilities built that conservatives would later use as a “gotcha” to pretend what Trump was doing was no different.
What was different, and what caused the outrage, was Trump’s zero tolerance policy where they put every parent who crossed the border in criminal detention forcing the child to be separated. This was a calculated decision that Trump, Jeff sessions, and John Kelly all admitted was done as a deterrent. So no, what Biden is doing now is not the same thing. Family separations happen and probably always will, but Biden is not using it as a political strategy.
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@Greyparrot
But you think this is a "Trump problem" only because you were told it was a Trump problem.(If only he REALLY cared about legal immigration but my trusted mindreaders told me what was in his head. His Nazi brain wants racial supremacy that's it. That's why we have a problem)This is why we can't discuss things.
You begin by telling me what I believe and why and then present a caricature of what I believe to make the point about why we can’t discuss things. Ok bro.
Would you like me to list in order the baseless hyperboles in that puff piece or are you willing to discuss actual underlying problems with immigration? You know, the same problems that are making Biden put thousands of kids in cages right now?
Trump wasn’t criticized because we ended up housing children at the border, he was criticized because he made it his literal policy to take the children away from their parents, creating an artificial need to house those children at the border. These two things are not the same.
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@Greyparrot
Your article you linked looks like it was drafted by a lobbyist group, probably big business looking to exploit illegal labor.Grats on being a useful sheep.
Did you even bother to read it, or at least skim through it? It went into great detail on everything I just talked about. I was not expecting you would, but you could at the least not pretend that some advertisement you must have seen was thing thing I was pointing to.
From someone who blindly supports crony Congress establishment and their lobbies...just...well whatever.
I find the “blindly” comment very telling. If you would actually focus on the things I’m arguing and the actual point of the sources I’m providing then maybe we could have a real conversation. Sadly, it appears all you have is projection.
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@fauxlaw
1. Do you believe the 1619 project and BLM claims that racism has a constitutional basis [i.e., that racism is found as an element within the language of the U.S Constitution in any one or several of its Articles, or Amendments]?
The constitution counts black people as 3/5ths of a person, so I’d call that a yes.
2. Do you believe "systemic racism" is defined as the existence of current federal, state, or municiple legal statutes, or any government agency policy, or any private industry policy that specifically documents acceptable racial discrimination?
No. Whether these statues are still in existence is irrelevant to whether their impacts are still ongoing.
We live in a society where wealth equals power, and power makes it easier to attain more wealth. So when you take a segment of the population, enslave them for 400 years, then unleash them into society with nothing while making it harder for them to get an education, own property, or start their own businesses and keep those policies in effect for another hundred years or so, then fix those laws but do little to nothing to fix the gap, the fact that this group ends up in the bottom of nearly every wealth and societal health indicator is not an accident.
Everyone faces challenges. A person of any skin color can be born into poverty with no access to a quality education or a role model in their life to teach them how to succeed into this world. The difference is that no white person can legitimately claim their disadvantage as a direct result of US policy targeted at their skin color.
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@Greyparrot
My response had nothing to do with supporting your baseless claim that Trump is against all legal immigrationwhich includes merit-based immigration.
My claim that his 4 years were an assault on all immigration pertains to real life, not some hypothetical system he concocted at the last minute. See here for a list of actual real world examples.
Thanks for furthering my point about the delusional hyperbolic expected attacks by critics.
It didn’t further your point, what he said was common sense. If you actually read your own article he was making a point about the vagueness being a breeding ground for attacks. That’s politics. Don’t even pretend republicans are any different.
Delusional people speak only in hyperboles
Coming from someone who supports Trump... just... wow.
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@Greyparrot
That said, I am still correct since you have no evidence.
No evidence for a claim I never made. Wow, you got me.
I claimed his 4 years were an assault on immigration, legal and non. Your response only furthers my point since the only thing you had to say to that was to point towards an entirely different system that isn’t what this country does and say “see, look at what he is for”. In other words, he’s against everything we’re currently doing and have been for decades at the least.
But as far as the proposal itself, here is the part of your article I found amusing...
“the vagueness of the proposal has allowed the president’s critics to paint it in the darkest possible light, which is, of course, to be expected”
In other words, he didn’t even unleash a full plan, just an idea. So after 4 years of a presidency whose biggest promise was in regards to immigration, this is what he’s got? And it took him till 6 months before Election Day to make his proposal? Gee, I wonder what that was about.
Actually, no I don’t. Trump doesn’t care about any of this. All he cared about was getting re-elected. It’s why he told us he was going to put this plan into action via an executive order back in July, just like he told us on numerous occasions he was going to be releasing a new healthcare plan “in two weeks”, just like the middle class tax cuts he promised days before the 2018 mid terms. What he says at a rally or press conference is meaningless. Do better.
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The question relates to the starting point: if you're black, and particularly if you're a black man, do you begin from the position of "I can't succeed in the society because of how racist the system is, therefore I'm not even going to try"?
I directly addressed that. I think we agree more than we disagree, but the issue that started this conversation was when you compared the insanity of the right to the left’s fixation with systemic racism. Not saying they are on the same level, but using it to say the left has its insanity as well.
What I gather from you is that you take issue with minorities and probably more so black people using systemic racism as an excuse, but don’t seem to care much about whether it is even a real thing.
I agree with the former, my issue is the latter. Diagnosing the cause of a national reality is not useful as a guide for any individual to make their own life choices, but is very useful for us as a nation to determine what to do about it. Unfortunately because so many people conflate them we end up right where we are, one side claiming it dominates their life while the other side claims it’s not real.
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@Greyparrot
Show me evidence that he actually did anything about it. You can’t because he waited till months before the election to announce his “plan” and used it for all he really cared about... an opportunity to talk about all those drugs and gang violence being brought into this country by the scary brown people.
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@coal
The broader question your comment here implicates is at what level each individual black man or woman's (or child's) identity is defined.
That wasn’t the point I was trying to make. I certainly understand and take issue with perceiving the world through identification of groups as some sort of collective. The world is made up of individuals all acting in their own personal interests, and it irritates me when someone suggests that the successes or hardships of any individual somehow carries over to the rest of their group.
But with that said, the world is an interconnected place. The decisions of one affects the circumstances of others, and the level of opportunity one has to succeed is dictated by the totality of those choices. So when you live in a country where success makes it easier to succeed and a country with a history of making it harder for anyone with your skin color to succeed, and then you look around and people with your skin color are doing worse than everyone else, all you have to do is put two and two together to understand why.
That doesn’t mean every black person can just sit back blaming the white man for their troubles, I’m just saying that systemic racism is a real thing, even if it’s not as bad as some over the top leftists make it seem. We can’t figure out what to do about it until we understand how we got here.
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@Greyparrot
Read that article and tell me how the Democrats are not the party of tax cuts for the rich again.
Seriously? Your article is about how NY and VA competed for a new Amazon headquarters by offering tax breaks that would bring jobs to their state. As much as I disagree with Amazon getting any tax breaks, how does this compare to republicans passing a $2T tax bill for which 83% of the benefits went to the top 1%?
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Republicans during pregnancy: “You don’t want to have that child? Sorry, we’re making that choice for you”
Republicans after pregnancy: “You can’t afford to take care of that child? Well, guess you should have made better choices”
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