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@Greyparrot
I have yet to see the progressive explanation of how there can be a gender gap when what counts as a "woman" is up to interpretation.
Progressive: "Blah blah blah! Gender gap!"
YYW: "Oh, and all of those women have vaginas, right?"
Progressive: "I can't define what a woman is, because I'm not a biologist."
YYW: "You only counted biological women to make your gender gap argument."
Progressive: "But . . . . but . . . . Trans rights!"
YYW: "So you say."
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@RationalMadman
I remain uninterested in anything you have to say on this or any subject, until you can conduct yourself properly like any other civilized adult.
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@RationalMadman
You are pretty blind or dumb . . . .
It was at that point that I stopped reading your post. This is not the way to speak to other people. On the internet or in life.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
Wylted must have been right, based on your conduct now.
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@Vader
I agree that the extravagant lies is a vague term in which can have many interpretations.
That is not even close to what I said. Either something is a lie, or it isn't. If you are a moderator, you cannot undertake this preposterously absurd game of calling into question the meaning of a word that simple. You claimed Wylted lied about ADOL, and even went so far as to say he did so "extravagantly." Both claims are false because Wylted did no such thing. The reasonable approach here is to reverse course, not to play these absurd language games.
This evidence provided was majorly weak
What conceivable "evidence" are you referring to? I read the thread. What Wylted said was obvious to anyone with eyes who undertook the effort to read it, and it bore no resemblance whatsoever to what was described in the moderation log.
I think call out threads are fine and in my newest MEEP I have
That entire process should be vitiated, but to the extent it remains in use, it should be used to get rid of stupid rules imposed by incompetent prior moderators, at least one of whom has since fled the sight amid shocking controversy.
Doxxing
You banned Wylted for doxxing, when he engaged in no such activity. You claimed he "encouraged" doxxing, when Wylted encouraged no such activity. You have now redefined the meaning of the term, to fit a single activity he engaged in, that has no relationship to doxxing whatsoever. That's like suspending a student for raising his hand and asking for information related to homework cheaters, based on having a zero-tolerance policy for fighting, because asking for information could lead to a fight.
Your understanding of what doxxing is, is wrong. And that's a problem, because you're purporting to enforce a policy it is clear you require training to understand.
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@ADreamOfLiberty
I have no interest in your incoherent rambling. You're defending banning Wylted, because he argued you use beastiality as a pretext to advocate for pedophilia.
- For some inexplicable reason, moderators confused the concept of "propensity" (i.e., not what Wylted argued) with "pretext" (i.e., what Wylted argued).
- More inexplicably, they confused an argument for why you appear to be so obsessed with engaging in sexual intercourse with animals, with a lie (i.e., a knowingly false statement of fact), and banned Wylted on that basis as well.
- Even more inexplicably, they have recrafted the definition of doxxing to fit Wylted's activity into that category.
And once more, here you are, typing lengthy and verbose arguments for why Wylted should be banned while you claim not to have supported the same?
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@ADreamOfLiberty
For someone who purportedly didn't support banning Wylted, you sure seem to have a lot of reasons you you think it should remain.
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@Reece101
Gender is the expression of biological sex and the two do not diverge. The concept of "gender identity" is an illusory creation of the identitarian left.
Gender isn't going away any time soon. It is biologically ingrained.
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I am gay and I support DeSantis's bill prohibiting teachers from discussing sexual/gender/identity/orientation-related subject matters with children under a certain age.
I am disgusted with the left's incoherent characterization of that bill as a so called "don't say gay" bill, when in truth and in fact it is no such thing. The implication of calling the bill a "don't say gay" bill is inherently homophobic, reinforces incredibly offensive stereotypes and is based on inherent prejudice against gay men in particular.
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>95 w/m. I can basically type as fast as most people talk.
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@ILikePie5
Who?
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I have seen no coherent opposition in this thread whatsoever to what I said about gender and sex.
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@thett3
I feel like you have something else on your mind.
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@ILikePie5
According to the mods, they have a right to ban you if they think your harassing someone, even if the individual being harassed doesn’t feel like they’re being harassed.Essentially mods can do whatever they want to because they think someone is harassing someone.Welcome to Nazi Germany folks.
Obviously this is about Wylted. I agree the latest incarnation of Wylted's presence should not have been banned.
The following needs to be clarified, however:
- The issue is not whether mods "have a right" to ban anyone based on their subjective determinations of harassment.
- Further, while presumably relevant to moderation decisions, whether the "individual" being allegedly "harassed" subjectively believes they are being harassed doesn't really matter.
- Additionally, and in beyond what I wrote above, all moderation decisions are subjective. People continue to consent to the same, to the extent they use the site.
None of that matters with respect to Wylted.
Fairness is what matters with Wylted. Let's consider why. According to the "mod log," Wylted was banned "principally for attempted doxxing" and related conclusions. I don't know what a "joint decision" is, or what other types of such "decisions" there may be.
- "Attempted doxxing." Doxxing is when you reveal the IRL identity of another person in an online context (read: on this site), typically for the purpose of causing harassment or blowback by shattering the wall between what people say anonymously and who people are in reality. For that to be attempted, there would have to be at least an IRL identity disclosed. Here, Wylted disclosed no information of the sort.
- Instead, all he did was call the user purportedly known as "ADreamOfLiberty" a "pedophile," in the context of a broader political discussion involving that user's activities and their relationship to potential illegality.
- Accusing someone of being a "pedophile" is not, and will never be, an "attempt" at doxxing. Nor is doxxing "attempted" by asking for information as Wylted did. Nor is doxxing "attempted" by certain encouraging statements on that subject Wylted communicated. What in fact happened is that Wylted "request[ed]" information related to potential criminal wrongdoing. That's it.
- Wylted did not disclose any IRL identity on this site. Wylted did not purport to disclose any offered IRL identity to users of this site. Even if Wylted in fact disclosed certain information he requested to law enforcement, that is not "doxxing," because the disclosure would be limited to police.
- For illustration, if doxxing is forbidden and disclosing information relating to alleged illegal conduct on this site amounted to "doxxing," then Ragnar could never tell law enforcement if he learned that SupaDudz was running a brothel out of his basement. Obviously that is unreasonable.
- "Creating threads to call out specific users." There is no question Wylted's thread related solely to the user purportedly known as "ADreamOfLiberty," but the question is whether what Wylted did was reasonable. Was it focused more on the impacts and significance of that user's conduct and behavior? Or was it meant as a direct personal attack (read: the prohibition of which was why the call out thread ban was put into effect in the first place)?
- On the one hand, the user purportedly known as "ADreamOfLiberty," is someone who has a repeated history of egregious conduct violations, including based on harassment, over many years and on multiple sites (DDO and DART), can continue to promulgate his "advocacy" for human sexual intercourse with animals --- a highly controversial political opinion.
- On the other hand, Wylted is someone who we know and who most tend to like, with a spotted history of certain weirdness but who on the other hand is hardly off the reservation, was banned for expressing an opinion about why someone expressed a highly controversial political opinion.
- While Wylted clearly "called out" ADOL, he did so in a way that would have likely been permitted absent a thread's unique creation. So, to ban him for conduct that is otherwise acceptable simply because it was contained within a thread is reaching.
- "Extravagant lies." This is the real sticking point for me. The Mod Log purports to have established that what Wylted said was affirmatively false. Yet, the mods have no such evidence. Instead, they simply assumed that Wylted's argument relating to why ADOL argues so emphatically for humans to engage in acts of sexual intercourse with non-human animals could be dismissed without consideration.
- Numerous aspects of this are deeply troubling. For example, for some reason I cannot understand, the mods unilaterally determined that "ma[king] some statement of sexual desire towards children" is a necessary prerequisite for someone to be accused of pedophilia. By that logic, all accusations against a priest who never vocalized his desire to molest alter boys to parishioners can be summarily dismissed.
- Beyond the above, I am deeply troubled by the extent to which Wylted's points were mischaracterized. According to the mod log, what Wylted said "[wa]s wholly unwarranted regardless of any other crimes [ADOL may] commit or state the desire to commit (yes, even cruelty toward animals).
- This statement implies significant, concerning error on the mods' part.
- First, Wylted made no argument whatsoever with respect to any increased propensity towards being a pedophile based on stated interest in or advocacy for beastiality.
- Second, in fact and reality, Wylted proposed a series of reasons why someone might argue for bestiality in lieu of pedophilia, given how much more acutely the latter is stigmatized as compared to beastiality.
- Third, the moderators appear to have missed this critical distinction, yet cite it as one of three reasons why Wylted was banned.
- Fourth, the moderators completely disregarded Wylted's argument which they did not even correctly describe in their offered reasons for banning him.
- Fifth, the moderators characterize Wylted's statements, which were clearly not understood as not only "lies" but "[e]xtravagant lies." The only alleged "lie" they identified was that the title said ADOL was a pedophile.
- Yet, the thread title was clearly intended as clickbait and not intended to be taken by any rational observer as a statement of proven fact --- as clearly and unequivocally indicated by the thread which followed the title.
- Even to the extent it was an accusation, the accusation has not been falsified and no evidence that what Wylted said was a lie has been presented.
- Nor have the mods endeavored to even suggest, mush less argue for, why Wylted's statements were made with reckless disregard for the truth (i.e., statements which approximates lies, but involve less culpability since the speaker does not know them to be false at the time they are spoken).
I find all of the above deeply troubling. I am sure the moderators intended to do right by the forum, but I would suggest this decision be reconsidered. I do not think the correct decision was reached here and even if so, that decision was not equitably implemented.
I am happy to discuss this in more detail if people so wish.
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Gender is the physical expression only of biological sex. There are two and only two genders. There are two and only two biological sexes.
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@Greyparrot
To understand Iraq, we need to start to consider vice presidents. Dick Cheney was probably the worst, ever.
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@Greyparrot
George H. W. Bush:
1. Did not make foreign policy mistakes, particularly with respect to (a) Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Bin Laden in and around 1994-1995 (unlike Bill Clinton); and (b) did not allow multiple genocides to unfold under his watch, throughout the developing world in general and Central/Eastern Europe in particular. I will never forgive Bill Clinton for what happened in Kosovo, Bosnia and throughout Yugoslavia, much less Rwanda. The cries of those children should haunt him every night he goes to sleep, and torment him for eternity.
2. Did not make domestic policy mistakes, like defunding the CIA, selling out the American working class, expanding the Community Reinvestment Act in 1995 (which was the direct and proximate cause of the 2007 real estate bubble) and repealing Glass-Steagall. And let's not forget his "reforms" to student loans.
I could go on and on with Bill Clinton's failures. He got a select few very important things right, which is the only reason he doesn't have an F. But 9/11 is more on Clinton than any other president.
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@thett3
Biden: F
Trump: B-
Obama: B+
Bush 43: B
Clinton: D-
Bush 41: A-
Reagan: C-
Carter:F
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@Incel-chud
So that's a pretty good point, actually, but not directly related to your broader point:
when policies are created and have had enough time to record results
I don't think we're disagreeing on this issue, but I can see how some might read what I wrote to mean "coal doesn't think we should ever pass new laws about anything." And truth be told, that is mostly true. In fact, I think we should make a conscious and deliberate effort to roll back laws, starting from the most recently passed ones and working our way back through the books.
The exception would be when new laws are created to expand freedom or promote free and open competition in the market.
- Congress should regulate social media companies at least to the extent they are subject to the same liabilities as publishers when they act as publishers; or otherwise treat them as utilities/common carriers. For example, social media companies who exercise editorial control over the content hosted on their platforms beyond removing content that would actually violate American law (e.g., copyright violations or illegal pornography), for example, should be liable in the same way that the New York Times would be liable for the content it curates.
- Congress should also explore providing statutory damages for contractual breaches arising out of a contracting party's conduct that does not materially impair performance. For example, it is absurd to terminate a business (or employment) relationship based on another party's political views. Doing so is bad faith by definition and this practice turns transactional relationships into moral minefields that frustrate business purposes. For illustration, when Harry's terminated its relationship with the Daily Wire over some idiotic tweet, the Daily Wire should be allowed to sue for statutory damages (or specific performance, depending on the type of contract). In the same sense, if the Daily Wire terminated its relationship with Harry's over its idiotic wokeness, Harry's should be able to do the same.
Also, another point of yours I agree with:
we should roll back the policies if they failed to accomplish what they set out to
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@TheUnderdog
I have edited your document. I agree with Ragnar that your second argument is not persuasive.
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@RationalMadman
Idk maybe this wasn't clear, but keep the following in mind.
I referred to the practice of "pushing abortions on minority women," not legalizing abortion in the first instance. Legalization had to come first, but legalization is just a precondition to pushing abortions on minority women. Pushing abortions on minority women is what I object to.
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@RationalMadman
I didn't say the aim of legalizing abortion was eugenics or that legalizing abortion had any aim. Why do you think I did? I didn't even use the word "legalizing."
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@RationalMadman
As to the story you tell, even if all of those things may be true, you realize it doesn't falsify what I said, right?
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@Greyparrot
Giving progressives the benefit of the doubt is a uniquely American thing. The phenomena traces its roots to New England puritanism and the ideal that America as founded should be a shining city on a hill, standing as a beckon forward that the world may follow. Progressives have gotten many things right, including equality of opportunity without regard to your race, sex or sexual orientation.
If they're caught being right, they take credit. But if they're caught being wrong, their faults fall down the memory hole. The history of what progressives have gotten wrong isn't so familiar. For example, the progressives' overt eugenics programs (such as lobotomizing the "feeble minded," forcibly and involuntarily sterilizing women deemed unfit to reproduce by technocrats in the 1910s-1970s).
In the same sense, what progressives continue to get wrong isn't always caught. In fact, some of their most egregious and ongoing moral filings are celebrated as a victory for civil rights. For example, the progressives' covert eugenics programs are often not what they're held out to be (such as pushing abortions on minority women while calling it "the right to choose," making birth control universally accessible and promoting law enforcement regimes which marginalize minority communities and institutions that relegate them to a position of de facto servitude).
Unlike the rest of the world, progressives believe --- yes, they actually believe --- that intent entails outcome.
Thomas Sowell explained perfectly in the 1980s why this is so stupid. He notes that progressives confuse "results that we are hoping for" with "processes that we are setting in motion." But progressives fail to ask whether "the processes they set in motion" in fact result in their desired outcome. Just because you set processes in motion, and do so with an intent (however noble), there is no way you can know whether you're going to improve the thing you're trying to solve. Yet, to even address those problems, you have to empower the government to categorize people which itself necessarily limits freedom. Letting the government ascribe status then becomes the problem in itself.
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@Greyparrot
What is so weird is that this isn't being shown on any news network, be it right wing or left wing media. It's like the truth is being censored across the board.
There are folks who have figured it out. But the problem is that any discussion over natural gas in Ukraine starts to open up uncomfortable questions related to Hunter Biden, which is why the American media do not discuss it.
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@zedvictor4
Yours is probably the stupidest comment I've read on this site in a while. Go chase your tail somewhere else.
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If people want to understand my politics, I am anti-authoritarian. And yes, support for COVID-countermeasures like lockdowns will make me vote against anyone.
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@RationalMadman
I do not support Vladimir Putin, nor am I sympathetic to his cause. That being said, a distinction must be made between what Putin is doing and what "Russia" as such is doing. Russians want nothing of this so called "military operation."
My sympathy is with the Ukrainian people, who are being subject to senseless violence over what is essentially a power-struggle between neoliberals in Washington and Putin over control of the European natural gas market.
My sympathy is also with the Russian people, whose sons are being sent to die in Ukraine based on a lie even more brightly shining than that which impelled the United States into Vietnam.
So it's complicated.
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@RationalMadman
what are you talking about
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@Lunatic
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@Greyparrot
Ron DeSantis is my guy, more likely than not. He is the one.
Though I'll vote for Trump if he's the nominee.
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@Greyparrot
I like Mike Rowe, but he isn't someone I'd vote into office.
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@Lunatic
You actually thought that was a serious response, too. Dude. I have no words.
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I also literally do not understand how this point was missed, either. Keeping discussion of fucking housepets off of DART is not a broader call to silence any such discussion on the broader internet at large. Especially when I went out of my way to make that point clear on no less than three individual occasions.
I also never said that bsh1 was a pedo. Nor do I think he is that. This is the fourth time I've reiterated that point, and if you don't comprehend what I wrote then dude I don't even know what to tell you. He directed suggestive language that fell squarely within the category of sexual harassment to a person he knew was a young teenager and did that on multiple occasions with multiple people. That makes him a creep, not a pedo.
This is the stupidest conversation I have had in years.
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@Lunatic
Sorry, I'm too busy engaging in cancel culture to read this.
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@ebuc
What is your point, exactly? None of that has anything to do with what I wrote. And your reference to the bill in Florida is absurd.
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@thett3
I agree with basically all of what you said in #69.
In 2020 in particular it was beyond obvious that many of these people were using Black Lives Matter and other forms of activism to fill the God and community shaped holes in their hearts. The mental relationship many white liberals seem to have with black people is.....extremely toxic.
Isn't it interesting how white liberals treat the quality of being black as some kind of unique, race-based original sin that only the Democratic party can provide salvation for? The messiah complex they all seem to have is really bizarre. It's tempting to write that off as just performative, but I think it's more than that for them.
. . . blocking puberty and permanently messing up the reproductive and endocrine systems of thousands of children (and surgically operating on the sex organs of some) is vastly worse than the disease of some people feeling uncomfortable about their bodies going through puberty.
True. But there's also more going on. A cohort of self-interested, but seemingly "enlightened" cohort of "experts," who primarily include psychiatrists, have invented this concept of "gender affirming" medical care. What they do is find emotionally vulnerable children and adolescents upon whom the expert's ideologically driven preconceptions can be projected.
It's a predictable pattern. Gay boys are especially vulnerable targets for this witchcraft, which is why it's personal for me. Don't like your life as a 7-14 year old? Well, you must have been born in the wrong body! As a therapeutic measure, let's give you the same drugs that the state of Texas uses to chemically castrate violent sex offenders, pump you full of opposite-sex hormones and praise you for overcoming your "struggle" with "gender dysphoria."
What people fail to realize is the fact that something is held out as "therapeutic" does not make it so. The approach with hormones and "reassignment surgery" is identical to that taken by psychiatrists who forced lobotomies and involuntary sterilization on the feeble minded, and castration on non-heterosexuals.
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@Lunatic
The instance I responded to ADOL about was Bsh1 leaving the website, not being banned, in regards to accusations of bsh1 saying something in the Utopia Crumbles thread. . . . The thing I mentioned is why bsh1 left.
You began this discussion. You claimed I said something. I said no such thing. Thereafter, I corrected you as to both what I have and have not said before, both in general and in the specific case you referenced. The specific case you referenced was behavior in keeping with prior behavior of his in other contexts, on which I have previously spoken and which formed the perspective of what I said right after bsh1 left DART.
. . . You are essentially part of cancel culture.
Cancel culture? Seriously? This argument doesn't even rise to the level of frivolity. DART is a tiny website, with a marginally active user base. The site's user base isn't even large enough that you could reasonably argue that it functions like a public square, as perhaps you might with Reddit (e.g., /r/thedonald), Twitter (e.g., Trump's twitter account), Facebook (e.g., Trump's Facebook account) or Amazon Web Hosting (e.g., Parler). The internet at large, not to mention the world itself outside of the electronic, remains available for users such as the individual currently identifying himself as "adreamofliberty" to have any discussion they like. By your logic, if anyone objects to anything in any specific case or context, they're engaging in "cancel culture." Which, I will note, is not what "cancel culture" is.
Cancel culture, it turns out, refers when someone is subject to ostracism, in which they're thrown out of some social group (whether online, on social media or in person) because they have ran afoul of what is acceptable according to the woke, in some banal or trivial way. For example, cancel culture is when a professor who wore a hula-girl shirt gets ratioed by a Twitter mob because his wearing that shirt maked him, a sexist, misogynist pig --- or so the mob would claim. And you missed my point about Nazis in a bar. The point had nothing to do with the quality of being a Nazi or your feelings about them being present or experience with how you argue. The point was about compartmentalization and its benefits; keeping some things out of some contexts, sometimes. Not excluding them from everywhere, always. The all-or-none argumentative strategy you took is a nonsensical strawman. We are only talking about DART, not the internet or the world at large.
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I should clarify something, though. The words "for example," should appear before "Bsh1 made those communications in the context of . . . " in my post above. The conduct I described was not limited to that specific instance, which is why the words "for example" should have appeared there. I decline, however, to state further details.
What's in the past is in the past. Best that it remain there.
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@Lunatic
- With respect to bsh1, I have stated precisely what he did in #312, above. You appear to be confusing one instance of potential misconduct with other circumstances, the details of which I decline to relitigate more than I already have. If you don't remember the events I described, that's for the best. Your opinions with respect to why I might be biased are unavailing and do not require my response.
- Your opinions related to the individual who posted on a prior site known as "adreamofliberty" are not persuasive and I see no reason why they require a response. You have not addressed the specific point I made and until you do, I will not engage on that issue. Even if you did, I might still not respond because doing so is futile and a complete waste of my time.
- As to your opinions about my intent in advising you to consider, among other things, the wisdom of dragging up ancient history, I invite you to refrain from such speculation. You have done nothing to correct any "narrative," but have stated numerous mischaracterizations of fact based on events to which you either (a) were never privy, or (b) even if you were privy to some, remained ignorant of the broader context. You know or should reasonably expect that I and Annie knew more about situations relating to bsh1, for reasons you have previously acknowledged. It is preposterous for you to think you are better informed than I am on any such matter, and even more so with respect to what I did or did not say related to that individual.
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I also make the following observations, generally with respect to topics addressed in this thread and not related to any specific post from any particular member:
- To the extent historical activity of any user of either this site or the prior site, DDO, is improperly described, characterized or otherwise referenced, the potential for substantial and unproductive controversy is foreseeable. I struggle to grasp the utility associated with any such discussions.
- The suggestion that this website is used for, or in any way causes "oppression" of any kind is facially absurd. Engaging in discussion of any proposed merits to that argument would be futile, when that argument is self-evidently merittless.
- The supposed characterizations by certain others relating to purported historical activities on this or the prior site are replete with inaccuracies, omissions and misrepresentations of fact. No reasonable person could view them as anything other than what they are: self-serving narratives, written for the purpose of supporting individual perspectives on what may or may not have occurred.
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@Lunatic
Several of your points expressed in this thread require my response.
- "bsh1." You have represented that I accused the individual known as "bsh1" as a "pedo." I have not accused the individual known as "bsh1" of being a "pedo," and to the extent you have claimed otherwise, that is incorrect. Bsh1 directed sexually suggestive communications, language and comments to an individual that bsh1 knew, at the time he made them, to be under the age of 18 and at most 14 years old. Bsh1 made those communications in the context of a "rap battle," which is a matter of record. I and others, including esocialbookworm ("annie") objected to this, among other things. Annie and I stated our objections in several contexts. A consensus among active members began to form, relating to the inappropriate nature of bsh1's communications. Bsh1 thereafter unilaterally decided to leave DDO. Further, I do not see what, if any, relevance that set of facts and circumstances has to any matter raised in this thread. As a general practice, it is best to let what is in the past remain there.
- "adreamofliberty." You have made certain representations about prior activity on another site relating to the individual known as "adreamofliberty," who may be currently active on this website under the same username. On DDO, as you will recall, I objected to that individual's use of DDO as a forum to advocate for sexually assaulting non-human animals, in response to gratuitous and repeated activities and communications posted by the individual known as "adreamofliberty" advocating for sexually assaulting non-human animals. My argument there was simple: DDO is not the place to advocate for sexually assaulting non-human animals. Various users, including yourself, disagreed and thought that advocating for sexually assaulting non-human animals should be allowed. Those views were unfortunate. Here, my position on that issue is similar: DebateArt should not be a forum to advocate for sexually assaulting non-human animals. You're free to think otherwise, but there is no world where my position on that issue changes. There are plenty of places on the internet for deviants of all types to congregate; no compelling reasons exist to support the proposition that this should be one of them. An appropriate analogy is to a Nazi in a bar. Nazi walks into a bar. The bar owner throws out the Nazi, even though the particular Nazi hasn't done anything especially egregious. Other patrons ask why. Bar owner says that if you let one Nazi in, others will follow and before you know it, he's running a Nazi bar. Bar owner doesn't want to run a Nazi bar. Simple as that. There are plenty of other places online where those discussions can take place, like 4chan or other shitholes of the internet. No one, including me, is arguing for "censorship," as such. Arguments which begin from the proposition that all censorship is wrong miss the point, accordingly. Even if you wanted to begin from the proposition that all censorship is wrong, however, I am certain you would readily agree that posting visual images depicting actual (as opposed to animated) human beings under the age of eighteen engaged in sexual activity would be inappropriate, right? Of course you do, and doing so would violate this site's terms of use. So, from this we have learned that there are at least some circumstances where certain restrictions as to the content posted on this website are appropriate. For the same reasons as that species of restriction is appropriate, limiting advocacy for sexually assaulting non-human animals (e.g., housepets) is similarly appropriate. You may disagree, but my position on that issue isn't going to change.
- Other comments. As a general practice moving forward, it would be better to abstain from reopening what, frankly, is ancient history. What's in the past is in the past. I and others, including individuals who may not be active on this site, have perspectives on them. Prudent consideration should be given to what happens next, once all those old skeletons are dug up out of the ground. Is anyone better off? Will anyone's position on those issues change? Are the foreseeable costs of re-opening those discussions worth it? Just something to think about, before continuing those discussions, particularly to the extent doing so is likely to involve characterizing disputed facts in objectionable ways.
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@thett3
For the past year or so, I have been investigating the causes of political ideology, and why it is that the left seems to have more will to power than the right. I think we can chalk yet another point to the idea that most ideological differences come from personality differences that lead to differences in worldview. One such difference is how groups react to problems in the world.
I think what we currently call "the right" and "the left" correlate to a divide that is grounded in on biological/psychosocial predisposition --- which are prior to any political ideology, or that ideology's embodiment at any particular point in time. The words we use to describe each such embodiment vary as do the meanings associated with those words (for example, "conservative" includes "populist" now whereas it did not before 2016). But the divide hasn't changed.
The prior divide is between order and chaos, which manifest at any number of levels. For example, the divide splits between authority and its rejection; the known and the unexplored; hierarchy and its subversion; preservation of the known and its destruction; tradition and progress, and the list goes on. According to Jordan Peterson, any person's particular predisposition along those dichotomies is predicted best by the degree of their trait conscientiousness.
This is more a commentary on human nature than it is an analysis of whatever we, now, or others, historically, have regarded as "the right" and "the left," but I think this is the right level of analysis to begin understanding that dichotomy from. The split is a historical constant, and is not unique to our specific moment in time even if it is more precisely visible with media in its current form. Also, when characterized as such, it's easier to view history from a Hegelian perspective (or from the perspectives of Fichte and Schelling).
Right wingers often mock the left for so easily going over to what ever narrative is popular in "the current year."
Yes, they do. And for good reason. Even if right wingers can't precisely articulate why they object to "progress for its own sake," that mockery seems to be grounded in a psychological, if not subconsciously existential, aversion to non-creative destruction. The left's proper role is advocacy on behalf of those dispossessed by extant hierarchies. There will always be a pareto-type distribution of goods and resources without regard to the political or economic structure (notably, this phenomena predates capitalism's existence). Consequently, there will always be cohorts on whose behalf the left should advocate --- even if they, themselves, are not so disaffected.
A person's predisposition towards empathy also probably plays a role. But that can be toxic or become toxic fast. Misplaced or misguided empathy seems to be a key factor animating most of the current, postmodern left's so called "advocacy." Particularly among millenials and gen-z, because they simultaneously (a) know nothing other than the here and now and (b) incurred no personal costs to creating the universe of good in the status quo, they take it for granted. So, when they experience something they don't like, they understand it as "oppression" and blame the system from which they came. Of course, their current struggle can't be the result of their own life choices. So, by taking on the purported "struggles" of others, they give their lives meaning and orient their ire against the status quo itself.
This is important, because of how existentially meaningless life in modernity actually is. If you're a chaotic disaster of a person, you don't have your life in order and you can't even make your bed in the morning, you also probably don't have a family, you likely never will, most likely won't even be able to maintain a committed relationship with another person, much less initiate one, which if you even did you'd probably screw it up and blame it on the other person. Without God, organized religion, community institutions or other meaningful social connections, what even is there? A job, that's probably unenjoyable and unfulfilling, pays a slave wage at best and entails no realistic opportunity for advancement, much less retirement? Why wouldn't you want to distract yourself with some nonsensical pursuit of "social justice" when that's the monster you're trying to make sure stays locked in the closet?
People need meaning to their lives. They need a purpose. Social justice and progress supply it. That's why rational conversations with people on the progressive left can't even be had; their advocacy for those objectives is too intertwined with their own sense of themselves for them to be able to consider the possibility that they might be wrong.
And while much of the advocacy is indeed worthy of criticism (like changing your Facebook profile picture to support whatever is on TV, as if that makes a difference) they mock this at their own peril. Because ultimately this kind of behavior comes from an ever present feeling among many liberals that they must DO SOMETHING!
I agree. But I'd add three ideas to that:
- First, it is irrational to think that by simply doing "something," the situation will improve. Doing nothing is often the better course of action. Careful consideration must be undertaken before acting, and the bigger the action proposed the more carefully it needs to be considered.
- Second, the world is full of problems. The fact that problems are identified does not mean that the system needs to be changed from the top down, or even if it does that progressives are the people to do it. History is replete with examples of catastrophe, brought on unnecessarily by the stupidity of precipitous, myopic action --- however well intended. The gender discussions we currently have as a society will fall into this category, in about twenty years. But it will take a generation to realize how stupid all of that is before it's corrected.
- Third, the right's challenge should be to figure out a way to get the postmodern progressives to have a stake in the system. Expanding opportunities for home ownership would probably be a good place to start. That, and promoting marriage between two people.
We can see quite clearly, in the United States at least, how much more impact leftists have on almost all important institutions. They have even captured the upper echelons of the military at this point.
Totally agree. That blithering idiot Mark Milley, as exhibit A.
Whereas the conservative when confronted with the negatively of the world turns inward, or attempts to address things locally. While this is personally beneficial--conservatives have far lower incident of mental illness than liberals do, have higher self reported levels of happiness, have more children, etc--this is a severe detriment in the marketplace of ideas.
The social goods that conservatives accrue, I think, tends to be the result of their trait conscientiousness. That's not to say all conservatives have those goods, but any average right-winger is more likely to probably have them than any average left-winger because the left-winger is a lot less likely to exhibit the same trait in how they live their life.
This brings me back to a point I made above, which is that right-wingers need to give left-wingers a chance to earn a stake in the status quo. That proposition reminds me of Edmund Burke's recommendation that conservatives "change, to conserve." For example, while Burke didn't advocate for gay marriage, David Cameron did based on the fact that if you deny marriage to an entire category of people for whatever reason, at least a cohort of those people are going to question not only the institution of marriage but the very proposition of a family based around it. The greater good is served by preserving the nature of marriage, but changing the form of its composition. In so doing, the institution survives; remaining as the foundational unit of society.
That conservatives have as much success as they do in the United States owes mostly to the truly insane ideas coming from the top 5% most progressive members of the left successfully used as rallying points such as cutting off mentally ill fifteen year olds breasts, forcing two year olds to wear masks for eight hours a day, or decrying all white people as evil. Conservatives own ideas about how the culture ought to be are scattered and were mostly defeated decades ago, and its difficult to imagine a less popular economic platform than cutting entitlements in such a fantastically wealthy (and unequal) country.
Fascism is the extension of the postmodern impulse driving each of those phenomena. We're well on our way there. We said "never again," after WWII but now find ourselves once more in the wake of a fourth turning (see generally, Strauss-Howe generational theory).
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Dude's been grinding this ax for years. I guess he hasn't come to terms with societal norms against fucking household pets yet.
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@Greyparrot
Yes, and Obama was correct. Joe Biden is a moron.
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@949havoc
"I was instructed"
That was a glitch in the matrix. It wasn't that Biden misspoke, it is that the reflective mirror into which we're supposed to look as outsiders to the American political process was inadvertently revealed in a moment of unanticipated desperation.
Bush was in this same position when he was told by Rumsfeld and Cheney that there were WMDs in Iraq, the pretext for Bush's invasion. The difference is that Bush didn't lay that card on the table because he understood that it didn't matter. In the eyes of the American people, responsibility stopped with him and it was he who paid the price for it.
A key difference between Bush and Biden, however, is that Bush was a lot smarter than people gave him credit for. He asked specific questions of his advisors and was personally invested in getting it right. He may not have been the most well-spoken of presidents, but he was capable of understanding information when it was presented to him. That is why it actually took real work to get Bush to invade Iraq. He did not do so lightly.
Biden, on the other hand, has never held a foreign policy (or other political) opinion that did not meet all of these criteria:
1. Consistent with the current, relevant polling;
2. Can be articulated and understood by someone with a middle-school level education;
3. Has all and only the level of nuance of a bumper sticker platitude.
That's his record. Biden doesn't have "thoughts" and he does not have "positions." He is told what to think and say by people who make those decisions for him, because he is incapable of doing them himself. He's great at playing along with "the plan," as he is informed but is far too stupid to come up with the plan in the first place.
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