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I tried really hard to read all of those words, I really did. But can I just point out that the whole "You're pushing people away from your argument by being mean!" thing is a load of poo poo when the argument is "Don't be terrible to fellow humans"? If mean words make you want to be terrible to fellow humans, you're possibly just an rear end in a top hat.
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Nov 20, 2018 06:08
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| # ? May 24, 2024 00:53 |
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Gynovore posted:Lefties think that everyone who doesn't agree with them is far right, and vice versa. I mean I'm approximately as far left as you can go without disappearing down the theory hole as an anarchocommunist and this is absolutely not true Most likely you're just an rear end in a top hat
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Nov 20, 2018 07:12
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quote:I know SA has this whole burning hate on for TRUTH IN THE MIDDLE or Centrism but things aren't entirely black and white ya know? It however might just be a monochrome canvas with a couple specks of dust in a corner. Yeah okay go gently caress yourself you centrist moron
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Nov 20, 2018 07:13
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Please note that you were referred to as a centrist, and not far-right.
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Nov 20, 2018 09:47
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Yeah you could argue leftists hate center people for their wish washy nature more than the far right but that doesn’t make them far right.
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Nov 20, 2018 15:38
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“We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. Sometimes we must interfere. When human lives are endangered, when human dignity is in jeopardy, national borders and sensitivities become irrelevant. Wherever men and women are persecuted because of their race, religion, or political views, that place must - at that moment - become the center of the universe.” Leftists hate centrists because being centrist is a privileged position that just helps the far right exist. Being a centrist doesn’t mean you’re a nazi, but it definitely means you’re ok with Nazis existing.
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Nov 20, 2018 16:22
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http://therealstanlee.com/open-letter-to-bill-maher.htmlquote:An Open Letter to Bill Maher from Stan Lee’s POW! Entertainment
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Nov 20, 2018 17:00
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I wish they had stuck with "Nuff said, Bill!"
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Nov 20, 2018 17:06
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I'm still really confused about the Bill Maher weed/milk thing. Does he think you can get high from milk?
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Nov 20, 2018 17:34
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CAPT. Rainbowbeard posted:I'm still really confused about the Bill Maher weed/milk thing. Does he think you can get high from milk? He thinks it's unnatural for humans to drink. But he loves weed.
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Nov 20, 2018 17:42
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Gynovore posted:Lefties think that everyone who doesn't agree with them is far right, and vice versa. This is nonsense. Captain Rufus posted:Some people can, will, and DO get pushed away by people trying too hard and others get disillusioned when their straight and narrow world views reinforced in tiny groups don't match reality. And I don't want to see overall GOOD messages ruined by that. I know SA has this whole burning hate on for TRUTH IN THE MIDDLE or Centrism but things aren't entirely black and white ya know? It however might just be a monochrome canvas with a couple specks of dust in a corner... You're still being tremendously unclear on what's "annoyingly hard left," and given what I know about RPGnet's editorial and moderating polices I suspect I'm not going to be all that sympathetic if you do decide to spell it out. What you seem to be agitating for is a version of politeness/civility that reduces to "being nice to you, not challenging you." You ask "What the hell do we DO about [systemic oppression in the US]" and suggest that "yelling at each other [...] or self congratulatory echo chambers isn't changing anyone's mind." Well, without a coherent position and at least the rudimentary building blocks of a praxis, the answer is "nothing," and if your investment in politics is sitting on the sidelines and having a laugh at atavistic conservative dinosaurs you aren't really helping, you're just rubbing balm on your own wounds, which is fine in moderation, but is not in the final accounting a politics. Not to toot my own horn, but to answer your rhetorical question, what I do is make sure that classes I teach are grounded to the extent that it makes sense in questions of social justice and liberation, I make sure that with each syllabus I get better at modeling representation, I reach out to colleagues from other subject positions for help not putting my foot in my mouth, and although this is somewhat risky in a large institution I commit myself to not passing myself as an apolitical educator, but foreground that a lot of these issues are profoundly personal to me. I don't believe that people are ineluctably good or bad (well, this is rhetorical filigree, I do think that people are fundamentally good, but that's not relevent here), and for sure I get many students who come straight from highschool fairly bright but largely educated by their own online meanderings, who in good faith have absorbed stuff like Jordan Peterson and some of the gently bobbing lures of the alt-right. Of course I don't just write them off as nazis, and of course it isn't my professional obligation, nor is it entirely ethically sound, for me to make it a personal mission to re-educate them. But I can't create a discursive space that's legitimatly conducive to changing anyone's minds unless I'm vocal and outspoken about my own convictions. If I have, say, on average 2-3 proto-Petersonite kids at the beginning of each class, I feel confident that at the end I have fewer, and it isn't because I coddle their misconceptions. Meeting someone where they are isn't the same as accepting that where they are is correct. You keep parroting that "the truth is somewhere in the middle" line but I don't think that that epistemological model is at all useful. I, like almost everyone else, know precisely where and what my truth is, and if the middle is a compromise between my own right to self-determination and safety and people who want to shove me onto the trolley tracks, then gently caress the middle. gently caress limited suffrage. gently caress 1840s and 1850s theorizing about an ethical, ameliorated slavery. gently caress phrenology, gently caress antebellum race theory and the white man's burden. gently caress "don't ask, don't tell." gently caress abstinence only education, and redlining, and every other attempt to mask the continued existence oppression and inequality as "baby steps." The truth is the truth and people can cavil all day and all night-- often productively!-- about what the truth is, but if centrism is asking me to shake hands "in the middle" with a neo-fascist with a knife in their other hand, I'm not going to. What else do I do that isn't just internet grandstanding, which I'm going to go into at the risk of self-lionizing because it annoys me immensely when centrists act like everyone who gives a poo poo about progressive issues online is de facto just a keyboard warrior--? I go to protests, I go to rallies, I coordinate between different groups who might be able to work together in solidarity (a few years ago we had a bunch of really fantastic joint actions between our city's Adjuncts Union and a group advocating for higher wages and safer working conditions for fast food workers). I bring this up primarily because I think if you actually attend or even pay attention to these events you'll see how untrue this idea of anger and passion scaring people towards the right is. Do you remember how awful and horrific the Charlottesville "Unite the Right" was? Seas of hateful faces with torches and leers? Note that we haven't seen a second far-right rally on that scale-- why? Because time after time they're outnumbered and outmatched by counter-protestors, and they know that their message can't compete with ours. In Philadelphia this weekend probably close to a hundred socialists, anarchists, activists and students from all across the big tent spectrum of left ideology came together to counter-protest what turned out to be an anemic little knot of less than 20 proud boys, grampas, and confused libertarians. Civil centrism gets Steve Bannon invited to the New Yorker Festival. Conviction and the courage to articulate it gets nazis too terrified to creep away from Gab and into the sun. I know which tactic I'll choose. (and as a corollary to this, consider how few open racists and fascists SA has compared to reddit or the various /chans. This isn't a fluke-- it's because they aren't welcome here and we aren't afraid to demonstrate it. See also really interesting work on how punk venues crack down on nazi infiltration-- it's by, more or less, aggressive no-platforming) Look, time and time again, positions that we now take for granted (abolition, Civil Rights, suffrage, gay lib, ACT UP, #metoo, birth control and marriage reform activism, right on down to the Levellers, gently caress, right on down to the wave of peasant revolts in 14th/15th c. Europe) are only accomplished by people who look like indecorous fanatics to the center. Seneca Falls was a wonderful convention and a lot got done at it, but ultimately women wouldn't be voting today if UK feminists weren't chucking bricks and firebombs and being rude and rowdy as poo poo. John Lewis advocated nonviolence but he didn't advocate inaction-- he didn't hesitate to get directly up in the face of white supremacy, and he certainly didn't make moderate sops to it. In mainstream narratives of 20th century queer liberation, the most visible organ of change is the riot, for god's sakes, and this is because a riot says more and does more than 80 seasons of Will & Grace will ever do. Positions like the one you seem to be circling around-- and which is the tacit position of most establishment Dems and almost all "Never Trump" Republicans-- is that outside of aberrant and exceptional circumstances (like this presidency) society is built on solid scaffolding and everything is fine-- history is over, as Fukuyama so embarrassingly said at the end of the Cold War. Think of those cringe-inducing Daily Show rallies in the late aughts. But things aren't fine, and they never have been, and they never will be if people don't take active, sometimes obnoxious steps to fix them. And if someone is going to be pushed away or alienated by marginalized groups agitating for respect and safety, then gently caress them I guess? edit: It's literally trans day of remembrance today-- 23 trans people in the US alone were murdered in the past year, at least, on top of countless assaults, suicides, and crimes that aren't recorded. The poet and essaying Claudia Rankine ended her 2014 book Citizen with a dedication page to young black men shot by police. With each successive printing that list was longer. IIRC newer editions leave a blank page, because it will be filled. Sometimes I think that the adage "if you aren't helping, you're harming" is a little much-- people do what they can. Small gestures. But for real-- if your contribution is to tell the people who ARE helping, even if they're helping primarily with their voices and their words, that they need to shut up and be polite, then what the gently caress are you trying to accomplish. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Nov 20, 2018 |
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Nov 20, 2018 20:37
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The idea that people saying "actually, no, queer people shouldn't be put to death" will drive people into the arms of "they should, along with black and brown people and Jews" is completely laughable, and you have to be crazy to think this is the case.
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Nov 20, 2018 20:51
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Endless Mike posted:The idea that people saying "actually, no, queer people shouldn't be put to death" will drive people into the arms of "they should, along with black and brown people and Jews" is completely laughable, and you have to be crazy to think this is the case.
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Nov 20, 2018 22:00
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There's a pretty easy out to being a nazi, it's called not being a nazi anymore and saying "Sorry I was a nazi, I hate nazis now". No one is branded for life for having a bad ideology unless they stand by it (or commit actual hate crimes in its name obviously).
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Nov 21, 2018 01:37
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Lurdiak posted:There's a pretty easy out to being a nazi, it's called not being a nazi anymore and saying "Sorry I was a nazi, I hate nazis now". No one is branded for life for having a bad ideology unless they stand by it (or commit actual hate crimes in its name obviously). You can tell a lot about someone by how they react to being called on their poo poo.
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Nov 21, 2018 02:43
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Endless Mike posted:The idea that people saying "actually, no, queer people shouldn't be put to death" will drive people into the arms of "they should, along with black and brown people and Jews" is completely laughable, and you have to be crazy to think this is the case. the problem is that "actually, no, queer people shouldn't be put to death" isn't what those people are hearing, because our messaging loving sucks. the only leftists your average nerdo is likely to see outside of explicitly leftist spaces, because of the magic of algorithms and propaganda, are the legit unhinged ones saying things like "all the non-black people who died in 9/11 deserved it" and "people should be tortured to death in gulags for having TVs." because the right actively seeks that poo poo out and spams it everywhere as "proof" that the left are the real enemy, despite the nutty folks being generally a pretty tiny minority of the left. and then, because right-wingers really like masking themselves as "apolitical," social media algorithms spread that poo poo way, way wider than stuff that's explicitly noted as political content. we really need to work on getting the actual meat of our message out there instead of letting right-wingers and actual crazy people dominate the narrative. we're taking steps in the right direction, as evidenced by people like Bernie and AOC being way more popular than they would've been a decade ago, but we need to take bigger steps, as evidenced by our big fuckin' nazi problem. (before y'all call me a nazi sympathizer troll and try to chase me out/ban me, i have a few ideas for how to attack this problem, but i'm not sure which, if any, are actually good ones. the biggest thing that would help, in my opinion, is to figure out how the gently caress they managed to game social media algorithms so well so we can do it for our own side; "apolitical" youtubers and meme pages and Instagram personalities pushing left-wing ideas would probably do a lot to normalize those ideas. another thing that could work is a crowdfunded news organization going out of its way to write things with a leftist slant, and then dumping as much ad money as feasible into those things to make sure they get seen, though this could backfire if the writing isn't good, so getting people who actually know their poo poo and can smith words well would be important.)
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Nov 21, 2018 03:18
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:the problem is that "actually, no, queer people shouldn't be put to death" isn't what those people are hearing, because our messaging loving sucks. None of what you're describing is an issue with the left's messaging, it's an issue with corporations run by right wingers, libertarians and outright nazis holding the reins of every modern media platform. There's nothing we can do to prevent Sargon of Akkad from finding the ugliest person with pink hair and bad political opinions on youtube and editing them out of context to make them seem outright insane.
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Nov 21, 2018 03:22
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I like how the left has to pass all these tests and be perfect in its message, while the Nazi poster boys are literally diaper wearing morons that can barely string two words together but their message is "on point."
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Nov 21, 2018 03:23
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The left's problem is that everyone who is supposed to represent us is financially incentivized to do the opposite. It's insane how much time and energy is wasted in trying to repackage our messaging, as if the perfect argument is gonna convince a Trump voter to suddenly support unions.
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Nov 21, 2018 03:25
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ravenkult posted:I like how the left has to pass all these tests and be perfect in its message, while the Nazi poster boys are literally diaper wearing morons that can barely string two words together but their message is "on point." Lurdiak posted:The left's problem is that everyone who is supposed to represent us is financially incentivized to do the opposite. i don't think our argument has to be perfect. it just has to both be a) reasonable and b) heard by literally anybody outside the left. the diaper wearing morons are loving savants at making sure that only one of those qualifications can be met at any given time.
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Nov 21, 2018 03:27
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for some examples of people who i think are doing legit great work: Contrapoints and donoteat are both killing it on youtube, and Chapo Trap House pretty much gets it, too. are any of them perfect? not really, no, there's valid criticisms of all three. but none of the three are constantly saying unhinged poo poo (Chapo comes the closest and in their case it's always very obviously a joke), they're charismatic people, and most importantly, they're getting themselves out there and trying to grab people's attention instead of just hiding in echo chambers and griping. so by my ken, they're basically doing what i'm proposing; we just need more than them.
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Nov 21, 2018 03:38
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Lord of Booty I don't know if anyone has told you this but you need to hear it you're amazingly dumb
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Nov 21, 2018 04:11
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LORD OF BOOTY posted:the problem is that "actually, no, queer people shouldn't be put to death" isn't what those people are hearing, because our messaging loving sucks. Yes but nobody here on Something Awful or on RPGnet are saying things like this (okay I'm sure some people on SA are unironically calling for gulags since D&D seems to collect tankies like some people collect exotic fish but it mainly seems to be to laugh at them) and idiots like Captain Rufus still declare these places to be full of hard left loony tumblristas whatever the gently caress pushing him away. The problem that people like Captain Rufus and Jason Yungbluth don't seem to get is people in this thread aren't calling them assholes because they're insufficiently woke or haven't taken the sacred oath of ideological purity, it's because they're assholes. Not liking comicsgate doesn't mean you can't also be a dumb, unlikable rear end in a top hat in other ways, and nobody here is obliged to bend over backwards to accommodate some broke-brained dipshit who shows up here to vomit word salad screeds about how all us loony leftists are mean to him.
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Nov 21, 2018 04:22
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Leftists think that people who don't agree with them on a given subject aren't leftists. Centrists think that people who don't agree with them on a given subject aren't calm, rational or informed. Rightists think that people who don't agree with them on a given subject aren't human. Libertarians don't think. Note the diminishing complexity of the chain of reasoning necessary to dismiss/process opposing views as you go down that list, too. Discendo Vox fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Nov 21, 2018 |
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Nov 21, 2018 04:25
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telling a nazi that their behaviour is unacceptable is more likely to make them more nazi so we need to call them dapper and write glowing articles about them until they do something bad enough to take real action
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Nov 21, 2018 04:33
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Nov 21, 2018 04:35
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Nov 21, 2018 04:46
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Hey, we're back to comics.
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Nov 21, 2018 06:27
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https://comicbook.com/marvel/2018/11/21/bill-maher-response-stan-lee-death/ "But talk about making my point for me: Yeah, I don't know very much about Stan Lee and it certainly wasn't a swipe at Stan Lee. Yeah, fine. I am agnostic on Stan Lee,” Maher said. “I don't read comic books. I didn't even read them when I was a child. What I was saying is, a culture that thinks that comic books and comic book movies are profound meditations on the human condition is a dumb f**king culture. And for people to get mad at that just proves my point."
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Nov 21, 2018 23:44
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Covok posted:https://comicbook.com/marvel/2018/11/21/bill-maher-response-stan-lee-death/ "This medium I have absolutely no experience with is clearly a sign of the degeneration of culture."
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Nov 21, 2018 23:46
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Oh good, the unassailable logic of "if people disagree with something I said it proves they are wrong and I am right."
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Nov 22, 2018 01:21
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Tales, legends and fables are definitely not important to any given culture
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Nov 22, 2018 01:38
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quote:a culture that thinks that comic books and comic book movies are profound meditations on the human condition is a dumb f**king culture.
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Nov 22, 2018 01:42
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Send him back in time to the 18th century so he can whine about how this newfangled "novel" is turning women into masturbators and healthy young German lads into suicidal serial killers.
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Nov 22, 2018 01:48
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All I am saying is that form of literature is a sign of civilizations decline, says a wise man.
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Nov 22, 2018 02:10
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Madkal posted:All I am saying is that form of literature is a sign of civilizations decline, says a wise man. Same position as Socrates! Who we only know ever 'existed' because Plato wrote about him.
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Nov 22, 2018 08:13
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Samovar posted:Same position as Socrates! Who we only know ever 'existed' because Plato wrote about him. To be fair, we actually have quite a few sources on Socrates outside of Plato and independent(ish) of Plato. Xenophon is the big one as well as other students of his, Aristippus, Antisthenes, some others I forget. There's also his star cameo in Aristophanes' The Clouds!
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Nov 22, 2018 08:19
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aren't those the guys who paraded Lee in his twilight years in public events like a carcass in a PT Barnum show
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Nov 22, 2018 08:32
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Adults reading comic books are the reason Trump is president, says man who put Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannapoulos on TV.
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Nov 22, 2018 18:13
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| # ? May 24, 2024 00:53 |
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The Noodle Incident posted:Adults reading comic books are the reason Trump is president, says man who put Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannapoulos on TV. "B-but I hate Trump. I sued him once! I only shook the devil's hand and helped put out the redcarpet for him with ratings! I only tried to legitimize Nazi beliefs because I know the truth is in the middle. I am the good guy and the fact you hate me means you're stupid and wrong and dumb, like germ theory. I am a progressive! Ignore the fact I used to be a libertarian, which means I was a right wing poo poo head. Also ignore I changed none of my beliefs, just realized liberals like me so I became one!" You know, only make it more annoying and smarmy with things like "So, I'm an agnostic on stopping Nazis" and "listen, even if they want to kill all non-whites, I'm white so I'm not afraid to give them a platform: we can't keep them from making money; we're capitalists first and humans second."
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Nov 22, 2018 18:25
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