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goddamnedtwisto posted:In fact I'd say one of the biggest weaknesses on the Left (it happens all across the spectrum of course but it's something the Left should be more able to recognise and avoid, IMO) is this assumption that the other side are moustache-twirling panto villains who do what they do because they are actual biblical evil personified, rather than at best people with an extremely misaligned moral compass (and at worst chancers and spivs looking for a quick buck, but that's a different class of bastards all together). Blair, Thatcher, even Kissinger never did what they did because they correctly identified what was right and wrong and chose to do the wrong thing for the lols, they did what they thought was right, and considered the downsides to be acceptable. This is of course also monstrous and evil but it's a completely different kind of monstrous and evil. and failing to recognise that is a massive blind spot in how you fight it. The problem is that motivation doesn't matter, end result matters. I am totally aware that Tony Blair thinks he's a good guy who made Britain better. So did Thatcher & Churchill. But sincerely believing in something evil is still evil, even if you have convinced yourself/been convinced by cultural hegemony that you're not.
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Oct 18, 2021 17:50
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I agree though that it is important to emphasise that point because otherwise you are stuck with consequentialists yelling at.. I dunno, whatever tories imagine they are, virtue ethicists or just "i don't think about it more wine and pheasant now please"-ists, failing to communicate the point. You gotta specify what you just did, that it doesn't matter what they imagine themselves to be, what matters is the hungry mouths and cold bodies that exist after they are done making their decisions.
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Oct 18, 2021 17:53
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goddamnedtwisto posted:People genuinely can be both helpful and charming IRL and blithely vote for monstrous poo poo. An acquaintance of mine mentioned that Amess had been instrumental in helping a group of Afghan refugees settle in Southend, even going so far as arranging for Farsi bus timetables to be printed up. I've mentioned before that Peter Bottomley has been *amazingly* helpful to people getting hosed over by housing associations. Steven Norris was one of the staunchest allies of gay and lesbian people in the Commons in the 80s and 90s. All three are also straight party-line voting Tories and so have definitely voted for some very, very nasty things. I agree with this. forkboy84 posted:The problem is that motivation doesn't matter, end result matters. I am totally aware that Tony Blair thinks he's a good guy who made Britain better. So did Thatcher & Churchill. But sincerely believing in something evil is still evil, even if you have convinced yourself/been convinced by cultural hegemony that you're not. I agree with this too. There is a moral/ethical difference (although it may be an inconsequential one) between a wrong deliberately done, and one that is done with good intentions. It's the difference between murder and manslaughter. Both are crimes but one is slightly less of a crime. (Not necessarily to the person who ends up dead as a result).
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Oct 18, 2021 17:59
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I've always imagined a kind of pyramid of evil, like at the bottom there's lots of people who just haven't thought about any particular evil thing, next level up is people who have thought about it but reason their way into some read on it where it's excusable and not evil, really, if you think about it,. And like, there's fewer of them. Then there's the fewer still who know a thing is evil but they're going to support it anyway because it benefits them. And on top there's the mercifully few who just enjoy evil poo poo for it's own sake.
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Oct 18, 2021 18:00
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The phrase 'cruel to be kind' wouldn't exist if they didn't know on some level that they're being cruel. They persuade themselves they're doing it to be kind because people generally do persuade themselves their actions are virtuous, or at least as virtuous as everyone else's. This doesn't change anything. I would say that intent absolutely matters, and they intend to be cruel, whether they call it that or not. Someone who accidentally capsizes a boat is not cruel, as someone who does it deliberately is. (They may be negligent and callous, of course). E: ^^I can't see that someone who knows they're doing wrong is worse than someone who does the same deed but also deceives themselves about their motives, personally. Oh dear me fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Oct 18, 2021 |
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Oct 18, 2021 18:01
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goddamnedtwisto posted:People genuinely can be both helpful and charming IRL and blithely vote for monstrous poo poo. An acquaintance of mine mentioned that Amess had been instrumental in helping a group of Afghan refugees settle in Southend, even going so far as arranging for Farsi bus timetables to be printed up. I've mentioned before that Peter Bottomley has been *amazingly* helpful to people getting hosed over by housing associations. Steven Norris was one of the staunchest allies of gay and lesbian people in the Commons in the 80s and 90s. All three are also straight party-line voting Tories and so have definitely voted for some very, very nasty things. Re: The para in bold. I know this. I know this because in my younger, stupider days I was a conservative and a Conservative voter. I, and all the other Tories I grew up around, weren't Tories because we were evil or wanted to do horrible things. As you say, it's always genuinely done with the best intentions and for some aspect of the 'greater good' or 'better in the long term'. I know that Tories don't twirl their moustaches and decide to do stuff they know to be horrific or unethical. It just so happens that when Tories believe things 'for the greater good' or 'it'll help the poor in the long term', what results is policy that just so happens to produce immediate tangible benefits to the Tory (making more money, paying less taxes, getting access to better private services) and lands everyone else with intangible 'benefits' like the Dignity of Work or Greater Aspirations or A Stronger National Balance Sheet. Personally, one of the things that made me turn away from being a Tory (as the Coalition and the austerity years began to bite) was that I realised I was having to continually justify, nulify or explain away stuff that was objectively bad (no you ghouls, making people with chronic disabilities perform manual labour to receive a pitance in benefits is wrong whichever way you cut it. It's not 'instilling a work ethic', it's not helping the national finances, it's not deterring fraudsters or any of that poo poo). Basically: OwlFancier posted:You gotta specify what you just did, that it doesn't matter what they imagine themselves to be, what matters is the hungry mouths and cold bodies that exist after they are done making their decisions.
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Oct 18, 2021 18:10
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Respecting people's gender identity: good, respecting people's moral identity: bad.
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Oct 18, 2021 18:18
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Amess used to be my MP when I lived in Southend, and he actually was a really decent constituency MP. I know of two people he personally helped, and he came to my school 25 years ago and did a presentation on how government works. It's actually very hard to reconcile his voting record with how hard he worked for everyone in his constituency
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Oct 18, 2021 18:48
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Alctel posted:Amess used to be my MP when I lived in Southend, and he actually was a really decent constituency MP. He saw his constituents, who he presumably dealt with face to face, as people
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Oct 18, 2021 18:54
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keep punching joe posted:The original pic without the face censored is 100x funnier because he has the biggest poo poo eating grin. loool "i'm going home for to get hosed up!!!!!!!"
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Oct 18, 2021 18:59
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Interesting thought experiment: What if Amess' killer had said he was hoping to kill Jeremy Corbyn?
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Oct 18, 2021 19:02
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Tarnop posted:He saw his constituents, who he presumably dealt with face to face, as people Won't see someone in person if they have starved to death after getting their benefits cut / died for lack of access to safe abortion.
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Oct 18, 2021 19:03
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sinky posted:Won't see someone in person if they have starved to death after getting their benefits cut / died for lack of access to safe abortion. Yeah that's the point I was clumsily aiming for. Once it's at the scale of "benefits for the disabled" then it's an abstract concept to your average Tory and that's where they fall back to their prejudices and call it common sense
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Oct 18, 2021 19:09
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OwlFancier posted:Respecting people's gender identity: good, respecting people's moral identity: bad. It's much easier to wake up one day and decide to be a dick than it is to wake up and decide to have a dick.
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Oct 18, 2021 19:11
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Alctel posted:Amess used to be my MP when I lived in Southend, and he actually was a really decent constituency MP. OTOH, the GRT folks in his constituency don't seem to have a nice word to say about him. His kindness was somewhat narrow and selective even amongst the people he personally interacted with.
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Oct 18, 2021 19:38
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crispix posted:loool There was a huge crop of magic mushrooms this year, growing on an allotment along the canal where I walk my dog. I thought about stopping to bag them up but I was worried the owners would be there with a camera and I would become this guy
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Oct 18, 2021 19:43
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BalloonFish posted:The bit that lept out at me was: Tesseraction posted:Bit of a slippery slope to upgrade towns to cities just because the local MP gets merked aye?
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Oct 18, 2021 20:04
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Monopoly house rules going a little far I feel.
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Oct 18, 2021 20:07
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WhatEvil posted:Interesting thought experiment: What if Amess' killer had said he was hoping to kill Jeremy Corbyn? I'd be slightly confused as to why he went to Southend. Failed Imagineer posted:There was a huge crop of magic mushrooms this year, growing on an allotment along the canal where I walk my dog. I thought about stopping to bag them up but I was worried the owners would be there with a camera and I would become this guy Clearly the solution is to wear a balaclava.
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Oct 18, 2021 21:11
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don't steal stuff that people are deliberately growing on their allotments, jesus christ
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Oct 18, 2021 21:12
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Julio Cruz posted:don't steal stuff that people are deliberately growing on their allotments, jesus christ tbf it's a huge pile of manure on the edge of their veg allotment that just happened to sprout a whopper amount of mushrooms, and they were never picked in the end. Shame really
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Oct 18, 2021 21:21
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https://twitter.com/declassifiedUK/status/1450060824819679243
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Oct 18, 2021 21:36
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Tesseraction posted:Bit of a slippery slope to upgrade towns to cities just because the local MP gets merked aye? What's the difference between a town and a city?
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Oct 18, 2021 21:42
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As far as I am aware, nothing, except that city designation is handed out by the government subject to a bunch of largely arbitrary rules and a lot of people seem to really care about the distinction.
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Oct 18, 2021 21:44
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Gripweed posted:What's the difference between a town and a city? A dead MP apparently.
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Oct 18, 2021 21:50
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https://twitter.com/BBCNewsNI/status/1450201208866672648
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Oct 18, 2021 21:58
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Not the optimal route to avoid prosecution... but i'll allow it.
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Oct 18, 2021 22:05
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Just Another Lurker posted:Not the optimal route to avoid prosecution... but i'll allow it. Or it could be a smokescreen. Anecdotal unproveable testimony from me... but someone I know was in an undercover military unit. They had to do some dark poo poo, and after they left, about a dozen decided to whistleblow. Within the space of a week, 6 men under the age of 30 had died of heart attacks, mostly 'whilst jogging'. The rest were visited and warned to keep quiet, or the same would happen to them. fuctifino fucked around with this message at 22:11 on Oct 18, 2021 |
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Oct 18, 2021 22:08
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I think IDS has forged a death threat to himself for attention.... https://twitter.com/NickCar46110207/status/1450167502143737861
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Oct 18, 2021 22:10
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Gripweed posted:What's the difference between a town and a city? Nothing, it's just a ceremonial thing. It used to be much more important - cities had considerably more power to set their own laws, taxes, etc but that wasn't because they were a city, they were a city because they had a cathedral and the extra powers came with that.
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Oct 18, 2021 22:11
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Oct 18, 2021 22:15
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fuctifino posted:Or it could be a smokescreen. Not to worry, soon getting justice from soldiers & MI5 won't be allowed by law... problem solved. 
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Oct 18, 2021 22:15
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fuctifino posted:Or it could be a smokescreen.
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Oct 18, 2021 22:15
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Maybe he's just spending the year dead for tax reasons
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Oct 18, 2021 22:16
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I know it's close to popery which makes it un-british but I don't see why someone being dead should be any obstacle to putting them on trial.
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Oct 18, 2021 22:19
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fuctifino posted:I think IDS has forged a death threat to himself for attention.... 
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Oct 18, 2021 22:21
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CGI Stardust posted:nah, very unlikely in this case; dude had like 6 months to live due to kidney disease, and said he was looking forward to "clearing his name" before he died, by being found innocent in court. no whistleblowing or funny business there, i think, just a shithead who died without having cleared his name. very sad and tragic, as i'm sure we can all agree I'm not denying he wasn't long for this world, but in the same light, his testimony under oath may have risked throwing someone more important than him under a bus, and the establishment doesn't allow that sort of thing to happen. The timing is very suspicious. On another military based subject, I've mentioned a few times in the past that I had an uncle who was in the SAS during the Borneo conflict. I was told when I was around 6 that he had spent months in the jungle with his small team, where they entered villages at night, and slit the throats of all the men, woman and children while they slept. They then mutilated the corpses, and planted items from a tribe on the other side of the line of contention before slipping back into the jungle. A night or two later, they would repeat the same on the other side... and they did this for months. This was to ultimately fuel a proxy war between the East and the West, so that each side could test new weaponry and tactics without actually having to do a real war. Said uncle died sometime in the 80's, and I thought that the slain would never get any kind of recognition.... .... so I was surprised to see this article in the Guardian yesterday: Revealed: how UK spies incited mass murder of Indonesia’s communists The victims are still labelled as 'Communists', rather than entire villages of innocent civilians, but it's a start.
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Oct 18, 2021 22:26
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OwlFancier posted:As far as I am aware, nothing, except that city designation is handed out by the government subject to a bunch of largely arbitrary rules and a lot of people seem to really care about the distinction. The stupid thing is Medway already contains the city of rochester, which they also have to fill in the paperwork for each year and if they forget it loses its city status. In conclusion they should have just put up the Medway City Bins because its all meaningless and just having the name on some bins probably would have just convinced people it was a city by now and it'd be up to pedants to point out its technically a conurbation just like greater London.
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Oct 18, 2021 22:28
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fuctifino posted:I'm not denying he wasn't long for this world, but in the same light, his testimony under oath may have risked throwing someone more important than him under a bus, and the establishment doesn't allow that sort of thing to happen. Jesus christ
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Oct 18, 2021 22:31
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Extremely suspicious that a frail old man died of COVID during the COVID pandemic  Glad he's dead tho, shame about the lack of justice but wasn't exactly holding my breath for that
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Oct 18, 2021 22:31
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