The Culture War: Dreams of a Better World

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rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

You're setting up a false dichotomy here, there are more than 2 sides to this conflict, in fact there are at least 4. Observe:

Alt-right: a mish-mash of the angry GOP base united behind anti-immigration rhetoric. While no doubt having white-supremacist and racists involved, it's not exactly clear as to what percentage of the alt-right they constitute, nor who is using who in this relationship. Are the racists running the game, or are they tools of other powerblocks?
Establishment-right: Neocons who are finding themselves increasingly out of touch with the most aggressive members of their base. What they will do in the future is not clear.
Establishment-left: The sinking stone that is dragging the whole left down with it. Arrogant, prideful, wasteful, but well connected, it is in reaction to this that the alt-right gains it's reason for existence.
The Left: Alternatively the cushion for the throne that the Establishment-left sits on, when they are in power, or their punching bag when things go wrong. Even now, after Clintons loss due to a lot of incompetence (and even after the most well funded campaign in history), the response of the est-Left has been to beat down on The Left. This means that this faction is currently in the most vulnerable position, having few real allies and low power. It's not clear whether or not they can overcome these hurdles.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 15:57

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 17:26

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

It's just not even true.

Neither is the assumption that people are unwilling to sacrifice. They do, all the time, they just don't want to get screwed while doing it, they want to get treated fairly. It's rare to find someone who doesn't want to support the elderly or disabled financially, because they know that if/when they're in the same position, they'll get help.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 16:46

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

The economic self-interest of white workers should be solidarity with other workers. You're going to have an easier time making them aware of this fact, than trying to argue that it makes them worse off, but that they should do it anyway (because you're just affirming a completely false narrative).

Like the excuse seems to be that an expansion of the labor supply necessitates that white laborers should lose, but that expansion also comes with an expansion of the consumer class as well. If all workers are treated fairly, it's the rich who loses, no one else.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 17:51

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

It's not even worth ceding that though - it's only a material sacrifice if you're assuming that the white laborers are somehow not having their surplus labor expropriated, even in the racist-new-deal - they are, it's just less.

Like today, the people benefiting from all this aren't rednecks, the people getting beat on for being racists, it's white professionals, the people looking down on them. Who benefits the most from having cheap migrant labor do everything for them?

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 18:09

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

It is if you're arguing it's a material sacrifice. Police brutality and lovely services don't benefit white people, if anything have more successful black people would raise overall productivity = more stuff.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 18:12

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

So what, exactly, is being sacrificed? It's not personal self-interest, because it's 'not just labor and money'. It's not morality, because that's on the side of emancipation here.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 18:24

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Bullshit, you just said they're no physical benefit, and emotional gratification from being racist is derived from ideology, which you can replace with anything you want. You have that degree of freedom.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 18:30

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

No, not at all Helsing, I'm sure their perceptions of their interests are more complex, but I'm talking about the reality.

Like, to all peeps itt, you're arguing that racism just feels good because reasons, that you can't substitute that with anything, aren't you making the same kind of existentialist argument that racists themselves make, about races, without any real evidence?

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 18:37

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Yes?

I think it's okay to 'call people out', but you have to be able to set boundaries. If you're going to end up 'calling out' 70+% of the population, for the normal poo poo they say, you've made a mistake somewhere.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 19:02

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Helsing posted:

I'm just not sure how much we can separate someone's perceived interest from their actual interests. Let's say I undergo elective surgery to donate a kidney to a friend in need. I perceive this to be in my "interest" but am I actually mistaken about this? It doesn't seem like there's a coherent way to a find a correct answer here one way or the other, it just comes down to my personal preference and judgement.

We can talk about racist societies operating below efficiency and thus producing lower standards of living (as measured in economic terms) but I think it's a fairly shallow interpretation of human psychology to think that their "real" interest always lies in whatever path will lead to the largest expansion of their material comforts. People desire to live for things larger than themselves and for people raised in certain cultural milieu that something can be a cultural or racial or otherwise sectarian identity that is necessarily defined in opposition to some kind of other.

Human beings have certain easily observable and quantifiable desires - the desire for security, prosperity, purpose, community, etc. If you believe that 'sectarian identities' are part of those desires (and that such identities can only ever exist in opposition to some other identity), then you're arguing that racism is eternal. I do not agree with that. I think racism exists because it provides a feeling of an imagined community and security, as well as the (false) impression that there are people out there who 'get' you. There's nothing about those desires that necessitates the existence of something that they can only exist in opposition to, and that kind of thinking is a case of too much philosophical idealism. Does Man existing mean Woman must exist? Technically, but there's no special reasons humans must be men or women, perhaps in the future that distinction will no longer exist - that 'necessity' will have simply disappeared.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 19:12

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

How many stories of 'lovely activists' is it going to take, before people entertain the idea that something may be wrong with activist culture, in particular, the way it's essentially been 'professionalized'? Or are we going to pretend this problem cannot exist, ever?

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 19:24

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Do you think Frosted Flake was here just to spread Right Wing Propaganda? I mean there are literal video examples and news stories of the kind of toxic activism being referred to, is that all just propaganda? At what point do you start challenging your assumptions here?

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 19:28

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

It's not about assholes 'existing', it's about enabling assholes, giving them the excuse they need be assholes, without correction. That is what you're granting to them, when you argue, flat out, that tone doesn't matter, or you don't have to explain anything to people (that's their obligation to learn), or whatever other thing you push out here. Those are ideas that are rear end in a top hat-enablers. Conceivably they could be okay in a perfect world, but they're not.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 19:33

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Brainiac Five posted:

Imagine if this post was about crime statistics instead.

You're going to have to lead me through this one.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 19:36

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Brainiac Five posted:

Your post is about how anecdotal events naturally fit your statistical and structural narrative, much like how racists use high-profile crimes and crime rate statistics to argue black people are subhuman.

We don't have any statistics! We've got to deal with the information we have, and the information we have is that America, as a whole, is strongly reacting against what they see as people who are out of touch with them. We are losing, not winning, losing. Strategy must be reassessed. Here's a hypothesis: activists practices are backfiring. Is it 100% true, beyond any reasonable doubt? No. Should it be dismissed totally? No.

We already know racism is bullshit, scientifically, so your comparison doesn't hold.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 19:43

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Helsing posted:

I don't agree that "purpose" or "community" are "easily quantifiable" and I challenge you to actually quantify them in a way that isn't completely vague and tautological.

As far as racism, it's a historical phenomenon and obviously the specific racial and sectarian prejudices plauging the world today are not eternal categories, they're constantly evolving and sensitive to context. But in a larger sense I would say that yes, my own belief is that prejudices and identity-formation based on othering appear to be fairly basic psychological traits and a political philosophy that assumes these tendencies can be permanently overcome is getting dangerously close to utopian. Even if we build a more just society in which these othering tendencies are sublimated into harmless conflicts, there will still always be a lurking danger of these sentiments reappearing in a more harmful form in the future, because humans seem to have an innate capacity for group-based prejudice and I don't think that capacity can be permanently eliminated.

I don't want to come off as saying that racism can never be eliminated because I think any specific instance or racism or sexism or any other prejudice is the result of a specific historical context, which is changeable. But reducing our opponents to irrational caricatures isn't necessarily the best way to develop good strategies to fight them. Racism isn't just an irrational attempt to accumulate material goods, it's a very important way that many people construct their identities and we need to recognize that if we're going to develop effective anti-racist strategies. Just dismissing it as some kind of false consciousness seems dangerous to me as it could lead us to develop the wrong intuitions about the best way to counter racist trends in society.

'easily observable', not easily quantifiable. In principle they must be quantifiable, emotions are just chemicals after all.

Your 'innate capacity' is an assumption you've made, not truth. It doesn't have to be innate to be the 'degenerate/dominant/nash-equilibrium' outcome, but you've no grounds to argue it's eternal. I'm also purposefully not reducing my opponents to irrational caricatures, it's not possible for anyone to have the kind of perfect self-awareness that total rationality implies, nor is saying that their behavior is being guided by a faulty judgement necessarily mean that they're being 'irrational', which has other connotations to it. All I'm suggesting is that there is a reason people construct identities, you're correct in saying that it's not just economic-self-interest-several-steps-removed, but that does not necessarily mean that such construction is not being pushed by other desires (security, community, etc).

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 19:55

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Helsing posted:

But ideally social climbing shouldn't be the problem. Any organization worth its salt is going to try and channel ambitious individuals into serving the goals of the group as a whole. Such people are going to exist, so why not use them? The problem is that the 'method' for actualizing that ambition, right now, consists entirely of saying the right words and guilt-tripping as many people as possible. The more you can display how much of a victim you are, or conversely, how the person you dislike is secretly victimizing others, the greater your own voice.

The whole thing has to come down to a flaw in the philosophy, not simply the lack of a desire to build organizations - no one ever really wants to build organizations for their own sake.

# ¿ Jan 10, 2017 20:09

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Bringing global warming into this debate seems kind of irrelevant, but it should be noted that the inability of activists to work pragmatically and achieve anything, without tearing each other apart, does stifle any kind of climate activism as well.

I'm just not sure how many instances of real activism, being torn apart by petty conflict, it is going to take before finally, the Sufficiently Woke crowd here accepts that there might be a problem. We are currently entering a Republican/GOP strangehold on all branches of government, and the reaction has been to simply say ~everything is fine, stay the course~, continue to act like anti-social douchebags, and that 'slow, grinding, incremental progress' will occur. But that's not happening! At all! That's nothing but a fantasy. Surprise, telling people how terrible they are makes them dislike you, more than it does change their behavior. Telling them that it's against their interests to be good also doesn't exactly encourage anyone either - you're essentially telling them that fascism is in their self-interest. Then you get surprised when they go fascist. Wow.

But all you have to do is pop open a history book to learn otherwise. People want to feel safe, they want to be happy. A fairer society can give that to them. But instead, what happens, is that rich Woke coastal elites, look at their foreign hired help cleaning their kitchens (which they pay below minimum wage), feel guilty about that class privilege, then project that as racial privilege onto white trailer trash dying from opioid overdosing. Like it's just absurd, the people who are actually benefiting from racialized oppression in this country, have the loving gall to tell the lowest white people that they are guilty, that they are what's wrong with America. The white (but increasingly diverse! Turns out non-whites can be assholes as well!) professionals get to advertise how Empathetic and Enlightened they are, without having to ever demonstrate or use a single empathic circuit in their brain, or put themselves in anyone else's shows for like 2 seconds.

rudatron fucked around with this message at 05:45 on Jan 11, 2017

# ¿ Jan 11, 2017 05:43

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

It's kind of ironic to accuse others of strawmanning activists (which is based on actual verifiable accounts - the Washington women's march drama is like exhibit A here), then proceed to strawman your opponents in this thread as all racist sexists.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2017 06:27

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

The exact problem is that 'complex issues of intersectionality' is undermining actual organization efforts and, more likely than not, they're just interpersonal dramas hiding under the veneer of Wokeness.

When the vast majority of your energy as an activist is directed inwards, towards shaming your supporters for WokeCred, the model of activism you are using and the philosophy of social change you believe in are fundamentally broken.

You can either accept that actions have consequences, and that this may have contributed towards the very recent electoral victory of Trump, or you can live in denial, and watch as the whole world spins out of control.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2017 06:35

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

If you're going to frame every example of anti social behavior as The Struggle Against Oppression, then you're condemning movement politics to be overtaken by anti social people. Deflecting criticism of woke activists by using POC as a whole is a kind of disgusting gaming, that you should be ashamed of.

# ¿ Jan 11, 2017 07:51

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

stone cold posted:

You should tweet and email every POC woman who is trying to get a leadership position right now in the movement in Washington that they're playing a disgusting game, that sounds helpful af.

You're the one deflecting my friend. Myself and others have made some coherent, consistent criticisms of the practices and beliefs of activists, as they exist in the year 2016. Your response was to continuously interpret them as attacks on POC as a whole. Do you actually recognize a difference between the two? Do you believe it's acceptable to use that kind of interpretation, to score points in an internet argument?

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 02:12

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Koalas March posted:

Here's a good rule: If someone is an rear end in a top hat, mentally classify them as a jerk and move on. Don't condemn an entire movement because someone hurt your feelings.

The problem starts when said assholes are given leadership positions, or their behavior is excused because criticizing it leads to character attacks on yourself. At that point, the movement is effectively in decline, and cannot recover until something changes. If you believe the loss of allies from this situation is 'no biggie', because the fact that they left means they weren't really allies in the first place, then you're going to find yourself very lonely, very quickly.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 02:18

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

I feel like I made a good post about it here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3804788&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=7#post468209589

I also take bigotry seriously, I don't think it's acceptable behavior. Please provide proof of your accusation.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 02:26

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Koalas March posted:

Hey before you post anything else in this thread, both of you answer this:

Do you really not see the problem with telling a black woman who is talking about combating racism that her mind is "race addled"?

Do you not see the problem with using the term "regular women" in any context?

Do you not see the problem with telling a black woman, who educated and shares their experiences with microaggressions on this very site that you hate them, they're dumb and figments of people's imaginations and oh boy if you accuse someone of a microaggression it might hurt their fragile feelings?

Shouldn't you be directing those questions at the people who made those posts?

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 02:28

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Ah, no, it's at stone cold. The thread moves a little fast.

But if you're looking for evidence, I think Clinton losing an unlosable election, is demonstrating some serious problems, with the effectiveness of activist outreach.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 02:33

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Koalas March posted:

No, I'm specifically asking you.

I don't really see why you're asking some other, random poster, about the behavior or 3rd party, nor do I see how it's applicable to this debate. What other people say is not my responsibility. Could you care to explain yourself?

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 02:36

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

I Killed GBS posted:

Rudatron, you didn't used to be anywhere close to this racist. Did Bernie break your brain?

Excuse me? I'm not, I take racism as a serious problem.

stone cold posted:

Those are not accurate readings of the post you are quoting, and anybody paying attention will notice. I cannot help but think you're intentionally misrepresenting what is being said.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 02:42

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Koalas March posted:

I asked because I want to hear your answer. Why are you so uncomfortable answering those questions?

I'm uncomfortable whenever someone attempts to draw an association between myself and another person, because usually, that's not done in good faith. Point in case, your questions, all three of which are very obviously leading questions, about the behavior of other posters. But, since this is apparently so important to you, the answers are: "race addled" is inappropriate language, calling cis women "regular women" is inappropriate language, and interpersonal drama is not something I terribly care about.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 02:49

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

stone cold posted:

Maybe you need to do some self-reflection if you really see no problems with your white-fragility.txt

You are fabricating reasons for getting outraged, your responses do not logically follow from the quotes you have of me. This debate cannot continue if you are not interested in engaging honestly. When you are ready, we can start again.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 02:53

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Tesseraction posted:

True enough though the election is, I don't consider the Democratic Party an 'activist' group, or outreach - remember I'm a British-based poster, I see the Democratic Party as an overall-right-of-centre but well-meaning coalition. Taking into account personal bias I know they're left-of-centre, especially due to their social liberalism. I don't see the loss of Clinton as a rejection of her policies, necessarily, so much as a problem of messenger.

I can appreciate if that seems like I'm trying to move goalposts, but I promise it's not intentional!

But that's just one interpretation, and I don't think it's right. I also think that the rhetoric of the 'SJW' has, at this point, entered the modern lexicon, and that people are not generally looking on activists with sympathy anymore, or at least less so. That gives an opening for them to be sidelined, which the people in power are going to take. The amount of insane stuff coming out of campuses these days cannot simply be chalked up to 'bad apples', there has to be something that's enabling them to get away with their behavior.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 03:02

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

stone cold posted:

If you can't make a meaningful metaphor encapsulating elite white 1% capitalist swine exploitation without resorting to xenophobic stereotyping, you might be a national socialist.

e: double quote, oops

If you cannot engage with the metaphor honestly, then do not bother at all. There is no claim in that metaphor about gender, what the majority of immigrant laborers actually do, or any other prejudice you care to misrepresent it as having. You projected them into the metaphor, because you couldn't deal with our on its own terms, and needed a handy excuse to dismiss it. All the bigotry you are 'seeing' in my posts, is a creation of your own mind, and I challenge you to prove, with evidence, and to a legal standard, any of the numerous character attacks that you have made, against me.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 05:32

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Jack Gladney posted:

Weak cowards use anything they can latch onto to avoid hearing what they know will not serve their interests. There's no way to win that rhetorical game because the tone objections pop up in response to what they don't want to hear rather than structuring the way they hear it. Accede to one objection and a different one pops up because tons of white people have been programmed from birth to defend themselves from reality. The problem is that they simply can't listen without risking toppling the house of cards that bears the full weight of white supremacy.

This is wrong, and painfully so. People react not just to the message, but to the intent of the message, as they see it. If they view the other person as trying to control them, and they themselves have a spine, they will reject them, and be justified in that choice. If the believe the other person honestly has their own interests at heart, they are going to be more open.

# ¿ Jan 12, 2017 05:38

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

If you're in the process of debating with someone, you are already engaging in the persuasive process. Tone is important to the persuasive process because, like it or not, how you says something is just as significant as what you say. Human beings are constantly engaged in a process of interpreting and reinterpreting what they think someone's motivations are. Part of that is decoding the meaning of language, but another part is decoding implied meaning, which necessarily involves watching tone.

So suppose you're trying to tell someone a Hard Truth. You could deliver this in a soft tone, or your harsh tone. Your intent is simple: you want them to accept this truth.

Flip around this situation. Someone tells you something, and it makes you very uncomfortable. You don't know why. If that person says it in an insulting way, guess what? Your immediate interpretation is that their intent is to hurt you, they're insulting you because they don't like you. They will react to that perceived intent, and defend themselves. If it is said in a soft tone, then the question of why it makes you uncomfortable is still not clear. Maybe they're true, maybe they're false, you don't know. But that impression will stick with you, and the other persons perceived intent is not clear.

Nothing is every 100% successful, immediately, when you're dealing with people, but you can increase or decrease your odds of success.

The response against the tone argument has been either one of moral obligation ("why should the oppressed have to moderate themselves") or effort ("it's difficult to moderate when you feel wronged"). The last has a simple answer: do not bother talking with someone if you don't feel you can muster the effort. If you can't talk persuasively, there's no point in talking, you just have to defend yourself. The later is moralism. The world is not just, the universe does not care about your sense of obligation. Practically, if you want to achieve a goal, and something is going to help you achieve that goal, then do that thing. When pragmatism runs counter to your sense of what is 'right', choose pragmatism. If 'obligation' was some mystical force that actually helped anyone, we'd already be living in a Utopia.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 05:22

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

People demanding that others 'stop being so defensive', yet say and do everything they can to put people on the defensive, are hypocrites. You're essentially asking people to remove their own spine, and submit to your judgement, because you believe you are right. Would you do the same thing if someone made the same demand to you?

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 05:25

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Dialogues involve two people talking to each other, they do not have a designed 'speaker' and 'listener' - that's called a monologue. If you're expect others to simply listen to your monologue, and then do what you want, you're treating them with an incredible about of disrespect, and they're not going to care what you have to say.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 05:59

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Jack Gladney posted:

Yet much of this discussion involves a "you" who educates and a "them" who is educated. There are normative claims going around here that make certain demands of the one who educates. I am wondering whether we expect anything of the person receiving this outreach we've been imagining.

Since you are engaging in a dialogue, the expectations on them are the same as that on you. If they are not engaging in a persuasive process, you have no responsibility to engage with them. But demonstrated good faith deserves good faith in return, and the argument of this thread so far has been that that is not the case, that one side must always engage in good faith, but the other sides does not.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 06:06

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

That's a universal problem, not limited to race relations, or even black-white race relations in the US of 2017. It's a part of living in a society with human beings, that you are going to have to accept, because get this: you are flawed in exactly the same way.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 06:18

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

Tesseraction posted:

Basically that you don't effect change by reasoning with single people, you do it via societal and political pressure. Telling someone to go gently caress themselves doesn't have much of an effect on that.

Neither you nor I have the ability to dictate what the societal and political pressure is going to be, that's not under our control. What is under our control is our behavior, which should be conducted wisely.

But the standard idpol activist strategy of alienating potential allies, conducting useless gestures for virtue signaling, and generally obnoxious behavior, has led to president Trump, so I'd hazard a guess that that societal and political pressure is not going to go in the direction you want it to.

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 18:12

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# ¿ May 11, 2024 17:26

rudatron: May 31, 2011; by Fluffdaddy

All I doing is inverting tesseration's logic. His claim was that, since talking doesn't solve anything, we're seceding that agency to the abstract trends and forces of social pressure, that absolves you of acting respectfully. Even leaving the first, really dubious assumption intact, that talking doesn't solve anything, what is social pressure but the aggregate of individual actions? Worse, what makes you think acting like a douchebag is going to pressure someone in the direction you want? If they have a backbone, they're not going to take that lying down, they're gonna react against you, find others who share that same animosity of you, and work with them.

In light of recent events, which possibility seems more likely? Given that the unthinkable has happened, it's it time that the unquestionable assumptions being presented here get questioned?

# ¿ Jan 13, 2017 18:36

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