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fallenturtle posted:I can understand the position that morality is a weak argument, but with the slippery slope, do you think its unlikely given enough Nazi's punched that they might try to retaliate? The idea is that Nazis want to commit violence as part of their ideology; they don't need an excuse to commit violence they wouldn't already commit. It's not like a Nazi is gonna think "I wasn't going to attack this minority, but now I will due to this antifa!" The only sort of violence I could see them committing in response to stuff like antifa activity (that they wouldn't otherwise commit, that is) is against antifa, and presumably antifa do what they do while understanding the possibility of retaliation.
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Aug 7, 2017 20:21
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Midig posted:Also, anyone here who says they would willingly give up their wealth to charity is lying through their teeth or highly delusional. Just like 99 percent of people you will find any excuse to keep most of the wealth and feel cozy about throwing a few coppers away. People don't need 3 villas, a Yatch, personal airplane etc. They just have all those things because they can't bear to part with wealth that came into their possession. This will never change, we should definitely tax the super rich. It depends how much wealth we're talking about giving away, I think; if I suddenly came into 100 million dollars, I have no doubt I'd give away all but 5-10 million. It wouldn't even be a selfless thing; I'd still be rich as gently caress, but now I'd have also purchased the misguided admiration of countless other people. But I would agree that virtually no one would be willing to give away all of their wealth (or enough to render them working class again, at least). Also, lovely people are more likely to become wealthy in the first place, which distorts things (and anyone who did give away most of their wealth is self-selecting themselves out of the "wealthy" class to begin with). Regardless, the idea that you can't count on rich people to not be evil is still accurate. Wealth fundamentally corrupts people, and there isn't a single super-wealthy (as in tens or hundreds of millions) person alive who isn't evil (not because they were evil to begin with, but because simply being wealthy makes a person evil). Our government and economic system should be designed from the ground up to prevent people from becoming that rich in the first place, ideally with some sort of wealth tax instead of just income/capital gains taxes (which just slow the rate at which wealth is gained, rather than directlyredistributing it). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:58 on Aug 28, 2017 |
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Aug 28, 2017 22:56
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rkajdi posted:This is very true. In the last decade, my salary has gone from ~$60K to ~$105K. It's been a constant fight to make sure I didn't just up my lifestyle to match my salary. Some of it was unavoidable (going from renting a shared townhouse to owning a home on one income and buying a car once my old one bit the dust) but the little things like increased cable plans, cell phones, etc are things I am constantly vigilant about. It also helps I work with negative examples, as in guys who can't make it month to month on $100K+ without additional funds from things like work travel, bonuses, etc. I know most people here see that as impossible, but it's easy when you have payments on a house, trailer, two boats, a car, a bro truck, and a four wheeler. All while sending your kid through private schools for no good goddamn reason. Eh, it totally increases your quality of life beyond a certain point; it's just that the vast majority of people who make good money lack the perspective to understand how good they have it (because most of them have had good jobs for their entire adult lives they just see it as a normal state of affairs). Most Americans don't make enough money to comfortably go on vacations or save up enough to reduce the possibility of future financial ruin. I mean, one could argue that there isn't much of a difference in quality between making 80k and 150k or something, but there's absolutely a difference between living paycheck to paycheck and being able to actually save money and not constantly worry about the possibility of imminent financial ruin. So I guess rather than it being a continuum where "more money" = "more happiness", there's a threshold of sorts where, if you go beyond it, your quality of life dramatically increases (but doesn't continue to increase much past that). While I agree that the sort of psychological process you mention happens with the vast majority of people who make a lot of money (and I'm considering anything above like ~60k a lot*, because, well, it is), it doesn't change the fact that it makes people actively toxic to society as a whole. Like, I have a social group that consists of a bunch of really well off people, and they're not stereotypes or anything; they're generally perfectly nice people. But they're just fundamentally incapable of caring much about poverty/inequality on an emotional level. This isn't to say they don't care at all (I'm sure many/most of them would like to see poverty decrease), but it's more that it's just too easy for them to keep living their awesome lives and not invest themselves in fixing those problems (and generally there's no way they'd be willing to sacrifice their quality of life to achieve these goals). So I guess my feeling about well-meaning wealthy (or upper middle class or whatever) people is that I don't hate them on a personal level, but that (to use a goofy analogy) they're still like viruses within the human body that is society. Wealthy people who aren't well meaning and actively believe they're better than the poor are just animals who aren't even human, but I imagine that's a thing most reasonable people would agree about. *For a single individual without dependents, since it's like twice the median individual income
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Aug 29, 2017 18:19
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JVNO posted:I concur, and this is the type of person I'm getting at. There's some principle underlying this position that isn't strictly 'truth is in the middle'- these are empirically supported, rational positions. Eh, I don't know if I'd call them "empirically supported and rational." It's more accurate to just say "there's a more or less plausible-sounding reason for someone to believe this", even if the belief itself ends up being wrong. edit: I'd actually go as far as to say that the minute someone starts believing ideas that are actually ideological in nature (which is basically all political ideas) are actually "rational/empirical", they develop a huge blind spot in their overall worldview. Harrow posted:I'm kind of curious what the "cure" is for that virus, given that it seems like your cut-off for whether a person isn't slowly destroying society is pretty low from a "lives in a city and has student loans" standpoint. Like, it's still more than I make, but not by a ton. I didn't want to cram a bunch more caveats in, but the money can be adjusted upward based upon the city someone lives in (so $60k probably becomes like $100k or something in an expensive city). The key point is that it's the level at which a reasonable person no longer needs to be concerned about financial problems, and obviously this varies some depending upon location, dependents, debt, student loans, etc. Like, I make around $35k and consider that to be a reasonable living wage in a medium-cost area; an individual making almost twice as much in this same area would basically have no realistic financial concerns unless they had some extenuating circumstance(s), like medical school loans or something. I think many people, who usually make pretty good money themselves, don't realize how little money most other people make. Half of all American full-time employees have individual incomes of less than ~$30-35k, and it's even lower if you're only looking at younger Americans. Like, if you make over $50k as a young person, you are doing way better than most other young people, regardless of whether you live in a city. Most of the people I knew in college were on a general "professional track" (don't know how else to describe "people born into a middle/upper-middle class family who go to good colleges and get good skilled jobs after graduating"), and they honestly thought that ~$50-60k was a relatively normal salary to make immediately out of college, rather than almost double the median amount full-time workers make (and probably triple if you're only referring to other young people). I think this misconception is largely because people who make good money tend to also have friends and coworkers who make a similar amount of money, so the majority of people who make far less money are invisible to them. The cure is just to directly take their wealth/assets* and redistribute them; after all, the issue is "people with a lot of money" and the "with a lot of money" condition is entirely mutable. It's not like "being rich" is some fundamental unchangeable aspect of a person. I imagine the psychological stuff would often resolve itself once someone has been forced to live like a normal person for long enough. Just to be clear, this is all "in an ideal situation" pie in the sky sorta stuff; in the short-medium term I still support anything that would be an improvement. *I don't think this is necessary for people making merely high 5-figures amounts of money; I only mentioned that amount because it's around the point when a person ceases to have reasonable financial concerns (barring sheer stupidity on their part) and often has their priorities and perception of the world change. People at this level generally benefit enough from the economic status quo that it isn't in their personal interest to significantly change it, and as a result they're destined to usually be political enemies in the long run. Such people can be okay short-term allies for stuff like social issues or minor improvements to economic policy, but in the long run they're just as (if not more) different from leftists as liberals are from conservatives. OwlFancier posted:And also all of that sweet ethnic underclass to do all the menial labour that forms the foundation of society and whose work ethic is motivated by their continued poverty, that's pretty great too. It's especially hilarious that the dude talking about how important it is to have a constant source of low-paid immigration labor makes six figures himself. Like, I'm totally fine with immigration myself, but the reasons have nothing to do with having a constant source of "highly motivated" unskilled labor. rkajdi posted:You're basically forcing people to live lesser lives on the basis of what country they're born into. That's pathetic, and also very telling that you live on the right side of that divide. People who legally immigrate to the US generally represent the more well-off citizens of their origin countries. It's not like immigration to the US is uplifting the people who need it most. There are a variety of reasons why immigration is good and legal immigration should be made easier, but "uplifting foreign people" isn't really one of those reasons (if anything, skilled foreign immigration to the US is sometimes harmful to the origin country). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 20:05 on Aug 31, 2017 |
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Aug 31, 2017 18:47
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fallenturtle posted:Sargon is more alt-lite than alt-right. Like as mentioned above, he's more likely to blame black culture than claim blacks are biologically inferior to whites. The thing about blaming "black culture" is that it's ultimately the exact same thing as claiming either biological inferiority or that things are a result of systemic/structural issues. Like, if they're behaving differently there's gotta be some reason for that. Since they deny the latter, that only leaves the former.
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Sep 13, 2017 18:55
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fallenturtle posted:You're forgetting the one where its systemic/structural issues because the Democrats and welfare are making black people lazy. Nope, that's the same thing because you would still need to explain why black people respond to welfare/whatever by becoming "lazy" and other races don't. Ultimately they would always need to explain why black people are having these issues, and any explanation that doesn't involve structural/systemic issues outside their control inevitably comes down to some innate racial difference. Put more simply, the "cultural issues" thing is positing that black people, for whatever reason, created/chose a culture that is harmful/lazy/whatever. So then the question becomes "why is this?" and if you ultimately trace things back to their source you'd end up resorting to the idea of there being some innate difference (assuming, as I mentioned before, that you reject the idea of outside structural/environmental issues being the cause). For example, consider the following exchange: Alt-lite Person: Black people are lazy because they receive more money from government programs Someone else: Why do they recieve more money? Alt-lite Person: Because they're poorer. Someone else: Why are they poorer? Alt-lite Person: (Can't say "because of slavery" because that would reject their general "it's black peoples' fault" thesis, so ultimately they have no choice but to attribute their poverty to some innate characteristic unique to black people)
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Sep 13, 2017 21:16
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boner confessor posted:when i was a kid pretty much every young peer of mine wanted to be in a rock band or a skateboarding star. none of them achieved their dreams but at least they were doing physical activity. and, god bless, them, some of them are still chasing that illusion well into their thirties I knew a guy sorta like this in high school (not specifically related to skateboard/rock bands, but he adamantly refused to get a "regular job") and the last I heard of him was like 8 years after graduating, when he apparently tried to build a boat and ride it down the Mississippi river with some friend of his. At least that's an interesting thing to do, though, even if it's terribly dangerous and ill-advised. boner confessor posted:ah yes because just reading other people's scripts is exactly the same as recording yourself pushing buttons and talking about the comparative benefits of star trek vs. star wars lore You could use this some reasoning to condemn literally all entertainment that isn't good. Like, if enough people enjoy watching this stuff for the streamer to make a living it's obvious that a bunch of people enjoy what they're offering, even if it's video game commentary or whatever. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:35 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 21:32
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boner confessor posted:people who record themselves doing actual things outside that are somewhat unique or difficult to do are in a completely different league than people who record themselves playing video games for the benefit of folks who are perfectly capable of playing the video game themselves but choose not to for reasons The people who are really bad at commentary rarely become popular as video game streamers, though (unless they're particularly attractive or something). There are a zillion people who attempt to do this and just awkwardly read the text on the screen, and they never become popular. But if someone is capable of doing a MST3K-sorta thing while playing a video game and other people find them entertaining, whatever, more power to them. Also, keep in mind that a lot of the streamers that we recognize as really lame and unfunny have audiences mostly consisting of literal teenagers (see Pewdiepie).
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Sep 13, 2017 21:37
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Groovelord Neato posted:i'm mostly just jelly of awful and uninteresting people being able to make a job of just playing video games all day while i gotta toil away. pewdiepie is awful and is the number one youtuber. the number one hearthstone streamer is an uggo with a bad voice and no screen presence. i don't get how any of this works! none of it makes sense! If you're referring to Trump as the Hearthstone guy, I was acquaintances with him during college (I had a couple classes where I would hang out with him and this other guy). He was kinda awkward and never really seemed to be interested in business/finance much (we were business students at NYU Stern), so it was cool to find out that he apparently become pretty wildly successful with this streaming stuff. I remember him giving me Civilization (the computer game) lessons and he was remarkably good at explaining things; I improved dramatically at it after just playing a couple games with him.
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Sep 14, 2017 07:33
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boner confessor posted:the stubborn nerdy white guy that's never faced adversity before who is dying on the hill of his own elemental correctness at the expense of his career has an overinflated estimation of his own abilities, you say lol if you think this guy isn't still going to manage to score some cushy six figure job (or high five figure job that will turn into a six figure one within a few years). For people like this, it is virtually impossible to fail life.
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Sep 20, 2017 18:18
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boner confessor posted:the dude was an academic wonder who developed his arrogance through his rapid climb up the educational ladder. this is just him headbutting the "real world" over and over to hilarious, self destructive effect I agree that this will probably result in him making less money (at least in the short-medium term) than he would have otherwise, but if he's actually a good programmer he'll have no problem finding something that is still quite high paying (and god knows there are unfortunately plenty of programmers who likely share his beliefs). The sad reality is that most privileged bad people will likely never be significantly punished for their sins.
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Sep 21, 2017 05:54
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fallenturtle posted:Contracts mean nothing? You're mixing up legality and morality. People can and do agree to unfair/unjust contracts out of necessity. But more broadly speaking the easiest way to deal with this problem is to just institute an extremely high effective tax rate (that in particular would include a high capital gains tax and high wealth tax). The wealth tax in particular is important, because ultimately most inequality is in the form of wealth/assets rather than income. A wealth tax is basically the same thing as "seizing wealth", just slowly over time. Other taxes only decrease the rate at which a person accrues wealth, but wealth taxes actually directly take from their "coffers" so to speak.
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Sep 26, 2017 00:11
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Lampsacus posted:Egh, I think it's just where you're at. For some people, there is a point in there lives where the realization that religion is bunk is a really mind blowing concept. Unfortunately, a subset get stuck fiending the superiority they feel with this realization (/r/atheists, etc). But yeah, from my personal experience I understand being on the inside of that mind shift. The trick is to then move on and get over yourself. Or start a skeptic youtube channel as a talking skull. I think many/most people in general enjoy the feeling of being right about things, and arguments about religion are an area where 1. it's easy to find opponents and 2. the arguments are pretty straight-forward (at least if you're arguing against someone trying to prove god exists or denying evolution or something). This doesn't just apply to atheists; you see it a lot in political discussions as well, where many liberals/Democrats enjoy debating conservatives because they usually make easy opponents. All this being said, I do think it reflects kind of poorly on a person if they continue to enjoy doing this for more than a couple years or into adulthood. I think most people in their teenage/college years can find this kind of thing appealing, but it gets kinda boring after a while.
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Oct 10, 2017 20:38
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ClancyEverafter posted:Where do the subordinates desires fit into all this. Do people, in your experience, ever get horny for their bosses, and is that okay? The fact it was a repeated trend is important. While still morally questionable, I can kinda understand this happening once, but Whedon apparently did it repeatedly.
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Oct 11, 2017 21:42
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Midig posted:IFM. It's not about deconversion, it's about decreasing their influence. If they get leg space they will just become emboldened and grow. There are plenty of lower class white people who can't wait to blame all their problems on the blacks, Jews, gays etc. and all they need is a little courage. We can't allow that. I think racism is actually a bigger problem among wealthier whites, who trend more towards being Republican than poorer ones. Like, everyone has this mental image of a racist redneck (and those obviously do exist), but most of these folks are just suburbanites. The main reason I mention this is because I think it's actually harmful to cast racism/bigotry as primarily something practiced by the poor/working class. It basically lets the more guilty and influential middle/upper-class racists off the hook through omission.
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Oct 24, 2017 19:45
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Goon Danton posted:e: almost beaten! I feel like it sort of depends what people are considering a "significant risk." Like, I think that the chance of Trump's presidency fundamentally changing our country to become fascist in a way it wasn't before is very low, but still exists to an extent I'm uncomfortable with. Like maybe a 10% chance or something, but a 10% chance of going Nazi is still something that I don't find acceptable.
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Oct 25, 2017 22:31
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Yardbomb posted:Yeah basically. It's not some 'taboo' it's just fruitless with vast piles of evidence to back that up, because I and people like me have undoubtedly collectively tried millions of times and guess how many ever turned out good. Yeah, I generally like Contra, but one of the things (maybe the only thing?) I disagree with her about is that she seems to be kind of naively optimistic about the value of dialogue with certain types of people. As she's shown in her debate videos (with the characters she plays), she understands most of the main counterarguments against this, but just (in my opinion) happens to fall on the wrong side of them. That being said, I think it depends somewhat on the situation. I think there can be value in debating with dumb/terrible people (not in terms of convincing them, but in terms of persuading onlookers), but I think the situation changes when someone is a public figure to some degree and they're signal boosting a message that people otherwise wouldn't be exposed to. edit: Contra is trans, right? I feel like someone mentioned a video where she came out as trans (after earlier videos just sort of expressing gender ambiguity). I've seen other people using female-gendered pronouns recently so I'm assuming that's the case.
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Oct 31, 2017 20:29
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Glagha posted:I don't think that's true at all. Like the Nazi debate video makes it pretty clear that it's pointless to debate Nazis in most cases because they argue in bad faith and that it was mostly critical of all the centrists who give super shitheels platforms and treat them as deserving of equal time. I feel like it's kinda lovely to bring the hammer down on someone for having the unmitigated gall to... let someone lovely interview them. Like seriously, she had an interview what the gently caress why is this an issue. Yeah, that's a fair point, I remember the video sort of mocking the way the mainstream media deals with people like Richard Spencer, and it was pretty unequivocally on the "it's dumb to treat these people with this level of respect and give them a platform like this" side of the argument.
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Oct 31, 2017 20:42
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WampaLord posted:The most toxic gaming communities I've seen are MOBAs, the time investment of up to an hour or more a match leads to some real loving hostility being expressed when a teammate fucks up. This post is from a while back, but one of my most surreal experiences related to this was this time I was at my aunt's house talking to my cousin while he played DotA. My cousin is sitting there totally calm and chatting with me, and I look at the screen and he's just matter-of-factly typing out all this vicious poo poo at the other players in his MOBA game. I always imagined the people typing this stuff to be all wound up and angry in real life, but he was just typing this stuff at people totally calmly while carrying on a conversation with me.
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Nov 8, 2017 00:54
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Groovelord Neato posted:trump won white college educated voters. during the republican primary his voters were the wealthiest. suburbanites and exurbanites aren't really the working class. Just as a minor thing, I don't believe the bolded is true. I think the opposite is, actually. Trump primary voters (like Republican primary voters in general) are more well off than the average American, but I don't believe they were more well off than the other Republican primary voters for the other primary candidates. IIRC Trump primary voters were the least well-off, though only slightly less so than the second least. There was a lot of bad reporting during and after the election implying that "Trump voters" - presumably as a unique group from regular "Republican voters" (which is misleading in its own way) - were exceptionally well off, but the most relevant statistic in this case would be how well off Trump-preferring Republicans were relative to other Republicans, and I believe the answer ended up being "somewhat less wealthy, though not by much since 'Trump Republicans' mostly aren't really a distinct group from just 'Republicans.'" This does a good job of explaining: http://election.princeton.edu/2016/05/07/among-republican-voters-trump-supporters-have-the-lowest-income/
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Nov 17, 2017 20:59
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Stormgale posted:^^^ Thats fair, I just mean I feel Contra is being more Naieve than anything, at least from my reading in that she believes this will help (even If for the point I made I disagree) I've mentioned before that I get the impression Contra is generally naive about the value and use of debate/dialogue, and my impression keeps being validated. Like, she mentions some valid counterpoints to this perspective in her own videos, but I think that, despite that, she still leans in that direction. OwlFancier posted:It's not really clear to me, I stopped watching her videos when she started just doing protracted performance pieces in costume about political caricatures without really saying anything. Before that I would classify her as firmly middle of the road liberal. I think there's some confusion over the definition of "leftist." From reading the comments on her twitter post, it seems like some people interpret "leftist" as sort of a synonym for "SJW" without the baggage, while others (like myself) use it to refer to left-wing politics along both an economic and social axis (so socialists, communists, left-anarchists, maybe social democrats, etc). I haven't seen anything indicating Contra is particularly left-wing in terms of being a socialist or something similar. Her videos seem to focus on social issues. Which is totally fine (especially since they're directly relevant to her), but it's possible for someone to care a lot and do activism for social issues without being a leftist in the "social and economic" sense. selec posted:I agree on most of what you're saying here, but I also think that it's the wedge. Blair White is the thin edge of the wedge. But once that wedge is in, the breach cannot be sealed. Blair White in and of herself is a poo poo. But she's their poo poo, and pretty soon the argument won't be "trans=bad" the way that the argument used to be "gay=bad" it'll be more like "trans and weird" or "trans and socialist" as the bar for badness. I'm doubtful that it's the trans conservatives (or similar figures) who are the cause of this. It seems more likely to me that the more radical LGBT rights activists (or activists for whatever issue) instead push the Overton window in such a way that conservatives start to feel like accepting and complimenting the more "tolerable" members of the minority group in question (partly to show how reasonable they are, and partly as an insult against more radical members of that group; i.e. "you must be really bad, since I'm willing to accept this other person who is a part of your minority group"). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 22:42 on Nov 27, 2017 |
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Nov 27, 2017 22:13
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Regarding debates, I feel like one of the biggest problems with verbal debates is that it's basically impossible for the audience to verify the things the debaters are saying during the course of the debate. Like, someone can say "this study shows that what I'm saying is true" and there's no way for a listener to verify whether it's accurate without writing all this stuff down and looking it up later. Debates can work if you're arguing over something that is fundamentally a matter of logic or ethics, but if you're arguing about something that involves actual evidence they don't work so well. Written debates are much better, because you can provide links and people have plenty of time to put together their responses. edit: That thing by Shaun about debates is really good and basically reflects my opinion on the subject. In general Shaun is probably my favorite lefty youtube person; he's very good at explaining things. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Nov 27, 2017 |
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Nov 27, 2017 23:14
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Falstaff posted:Like you, I define the left largely in terms of economics, and the impression I have of Contra is that she's a leftist rather than a liberal. The reason being that, during the introduction of her Tabby character (where her leftist antifa furry gets lectured by her stock liberal character), the communist manifesto comes up. As one might expect, Tabby defends it as an important work of leftist thought; surprisingly, the liberal character agrees it's important, but that it needs an image update to become more appealing in the modern time. *cue photoshop design joke.* I don't necessarily disagree (when I said "I haven't seen anything implying she's a leftist" that doesn't necessarily mean I'm sure she isn't; just that I haven't seen anything indicating she is), but I don't think this example really indicates much. A lot of more left-leaning mainstream liberals would be totally fine saying the communist manifesto is an "important work." I find that there's some overlap between a subset of leftists and liberals in terms of their goals, though their approach towards achieving those goals differs. Like, there are a number of people who identify as leftists who aren't actually any strand of socialist and just advocate for stuff like an expanded welfare state, and you see the same goals among some liberals (the type who talk about the New Deal and stuff). The difference seems to mainly be in how aggressively they feel these goals should be pursued, and the urgency with which they believe those goals need to be achieved (the latter is the big thing in my opinion). The liberal is more likely to think Democratic politicians are acting in good faith and that these goals can be achieved within our current political environment, while the self-identified non-socialist leftist likely feels these goals are incompatible with the current state of the Democratic Party. The liberal fundamentally assumes good faith on the behalf of Democrats, while the leftist is usually skeptical. I mention this because, if I had to guess, I'd probably say that Contra is what would normally be described as a left-liberal. Someone who is in favor of stuff like expanding the welfare state, but who isn't as deeply concerned with the compatibility of status quo liberal politicians with achieving significant progressive towards economic left-wing goals. I don't believe she's any sort of actual socialist. She might describe herself as a social democrat, but I don't see the same sort of sense of urgency applied to those issues that I tend to see from people who identify as "leftists." And, just to be clear, I don't think there's anything wrong with this. It makes sense for Contra to focus primarily on social issues, since they're of deep relevance to her personally (and unlike many other liberals, she doesn't seem to have any problem with economic leftists). But again, all of this is based around what I perceive to be the working definition for "leftist," which is a term that only began to pop up frequently in a certain context fairly recently.
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Nov 28, 2017 00:29
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OwlFancier posted:Those to me show someone who seems very taken still with the idea of a middle ground and civil debate and respectability politics. None of which are what I would expect from someone who believes pretty basic stuff like "material inequality is unconscionably abhorrent and must be eradicated at the earliest opportunity". This gets to the heart of what I perceive to be the biggest dividing factor among the left - a sense of urgency. Many liberals and leftists might agree about general goals, but liberals usually don't quite comprehend the level of injustice at play and approach it accordingly. The best illustration of this is the gap between the way most left-leaning liberals discuss issues like bigotry and the way they discuss material inequality. They'll frequently (correctly) acknowledge that bigotry is completely unacceptable and must be condemned and stopped at the soonest opportunity, but when it comes to material inequality they're fine with waiting 50 years and endlessly compromising. edit: Like, to use the recent Franken thing as an example, some liberal posts correctly reacted with "this is unacceptable, he should resign immediately." But you'd never see them react the same way to a politician acting in ways that either further inequality or hamper progress towards fighting inequality. Suddenly it's okay to compromise and be pragmatic when those issues are at play. (And of course you also have liberals who are even worse than that and are willing to compromise on social issues as well as economic ones.) To be completely honest, in an ideal world possessing huge wealth would be treated the same way as being guilty of sexual assault. Both are grossly immoral. I realize we're not nearly there yet, but the least we can do is condemn people who act against lessening inequality. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Nov 28, 2017 |
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Nov 28, 2017 00:47
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OwlFancier posted:When you believe that you cannot help but see detestable injustice being actively perpetrated against every human being you meet every moment of their lives. It is automatically radicalizing. Which is why I don't trust people who identify as leftist but lack that conviction. Something doesn't add up. All strands of the economic left I know of, recognize that fundamental truth, that the status quo is not just passively suboptimal, it is actively taking from people. It is not a thing to be improved when convenient, it is a crime to be stopped. This is a really good way to put it. Like, regardless of the specific things they say, the specific nature of their reaction betrays how they really feel. It's not that liberals* can't understand real injustice - as I mentioned before, many react with appropriate urgency towards things like bigotry (though this is usually limited to younger liberals; older ones are also kind of poo poo on social issues) - but that they just obviously don't think issues of material inequality are as serious or important. *One thing I should mention is that when I say "liberals" here I'm specifically referring to people aware of the whole leftist/liberal debate who choose to not identify as leftist. Many, and probably a majority of, liberals are just choosing what is obviously the better of the two most prominent and visible ideologies in the US. I can't really fault these people, because they generally don't know much about the left and aren't really making a conscious choice to reject it. They just see how bad Republicans are and make the reasonable choice to oppose them. Even if they do know about the radical left, it's usually a skewed and biased image, particularly among older generations. But on the SA forums, and D&D in particular, most liberals probably have enough familiarity with leftists/the radical left that rejecting it is an actual choice on their part.
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Nov 28, 2017 03:50
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Josef bugman posted:Do you have any clue as to how to be kind to people? Uh, there's pretty obviously no one to blame but Huzanko for him requesting the permaban. Speaking of which, where did that occur? I don't see any posts where he requests one. Regarding the whole "claiming a moral high ground as a tactic for debating with right-wingers or other ideologies," that's a pretty dumb idea. At best, you just end up with a "he said she said" situation where the other person can just say "nuh uh, what I believe is actually the most moral!" If you're arguing with someone who only cares about bold, unproven claims of moral superiority, you're just wasting your time because there's nothing you can do in the first place. Your perspective sorta reminds me of when I was a teenager and thought it was the most clever thing ever to bring up Bible passages that supported liberal ideas. Those arguments aren't wrong, but they're also completely useless against the sort of conservative who doesn't care about material evidence in the first place. edit: In the first place, this argument was Huzanko's fault because he was the one who chose to repeatedly focus on and defend the use of "objective," and most of his earlier posts seemed to all the world like he was actually arguing that his morality was objectively true (as opposed to arguing about debate tactics against right-wingers). If he had just said "I don't mean it's literally objectively true, but I think saying it is would be a good idea when arguing with right-wingers," this whole argument would have never taken place. OwlFancier posted:I have a hunch that a society without a lot of modern things that increase material quality of life yet possessing a durable ideological commitment to cooperation over domination, might be much better in the long run than one that never addressed that problem. This isn't just turning back the clock, mind you. We've had hierarchy in one form or another for a lot longer than we've had capitalism. This is something different. I disagree with this, though. I feel like this sort of perspective is extremely naive regarding the level of suffering human beings are capable of that can result from not meeting the sorts of material needs modern society allows us to easily meet. I agree with the greater point about a focus on power relationships being necessary for any sort of leftist critique of a society, but that needs to be weighed against the resulting material situation. Basically it's not enough to only focus on how well peoples' material needs are met, but it's also not enough to only focus on power relationships. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 20:54 on Nov 29, 2017 |
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Nov 29, 2017 20:51
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OwlFancier posted:I also sort of agree in that I'm not a primitivist, but I would suggest that if you offered me the chance of one thing to magically fix; power relationships or material conditions, I would pick power relationships. Because I think a society could reinvent material advances under other modes of production, but changing material conditions without changing power dynamics would probably not do much at all in the long run. I would agree (about picking power relationships to fix), but only in the context of our current society (where material conditions being bad is usually the result of inequality in power relationships). If you asked me if I would fix power relationship at the cost of material conditions, it would be a tougher question that would require details about how much material conditions would decrease. But generally speaking I definitely think that a lack of focus on power relationships is probably the biggest difference in liberal and leftist* ideology (the second biggest difference would be a lack of urgency or conviction towards addressing material inequality). Liberals seem to mostly just focus on material conditions (in their own extremely insufficient way), and when they do focus on power inequalities it's usually in a very limited way and only with the goal of decreasing their severity, rather than eliminating them entirely. They're fine with some people having wildly disproportionate power, as long as they wield it in a way that isn't too objectionable (though they're also often lax on that front - see liberal views towards companies like Google or people like Bill Gates). * in the sense of some strain of socialist/communist/anarchist/etc
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Nov 29, 2017 21:44
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I feel like Contrapoints is too nice to appropriately deal with the far-right. It's one thing to create videos that are capable of persuading people on the right, but it's another thing entirely to directly engage with them in a positive way. I think this stems from the fact that she's (understandably) in an emotional place right now where she just doesn't have the energy or endurance necessary to act openly hostile towards anyone, even if it's warranted. She just generally gives me the impression of someone who doesn't have what it takes to fight with or directly insult political enemies. It's basically a much less severe version of Lacy Greene's issue, where the person in question feels a need to be a people-pleaser and not cause any sort of interpersonal conflict (it's less severe mostly because she's still entirely capable of boldly expressing her opinions in her videos; she only seems to fold when it comes to directly interacting with people). I feel like the best way for her to deal with this would be to just completely disengage with right-wingers (which obviously includes folks like shoeonhead, etc). I understand if she isn't up to being hostile towards them or having any sort of conflict, but if that's the case she should just not interact with them at all, instead of making these naive attempts at dialogue. I think that her explanation posted earlier is essentially just a post-hoc rationalization, and that the real reason she's doing this stuff is that it's just plain easier to be nice to everyone, even if doing so might be harmful.
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Nov 30, 2017 20:13
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Yardbomb posted:As soon as they can find a group of them that downplay "Gas the jews" enough, fundamentalist christians are often pretty happy to jump in that camp, I've seen this happen not just a ton online, but in-person more than once. I feel like if we lived in a society that condoned antisemitism and if we didn't have the history of WW2, they would be totally fine with joining the Nazis. One of the only reasons they don't is that the history of WW2 makes the patriotism instinct conflict with the racism. OwlFancier posted:Yes but they want to do that for different reasons. Like I can find myself functionally on the side of liberals in the EU referendum but they're supporting it because it makes them rich while I support it because I hope it may help erase the concept of national identities and serve ultimately to unite people internationally against capital. We want the same thing right now but we definitely won't get along later. This is the way I feel about the upper middle class (like the top 10-20%). It makes sense to ally with them in the short term to accomplish things like social justice goals and unite against the top 1%, but in the long run we'll probably conflict with them because a truly equitable society would be worse for them than the status quo (at least in terms of their personal wealth).
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Dec 1, 2017 21:09
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I will admit that the parts where hbomberguy does the fake laughing for an extended period of time are pretty awkward, but there aren't really that many options for humor-focused leftist Youtubes mocking alt-right Youtubes. shaun's stuff is definitely the best if you're looking for the best actual arguments and information, and Contra is pretty good for a social issues-specific take with a mix of humor/entertainment.
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Dec 7, 2017 00:38
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Goon Danton posted:Yeah it's insane. It's like sitcom levels of mismatch. I'm not really seeing the mismatch (at least based on the video Mr Interweb linked). They're both of relatively similar build and neither has a face that is exceptionally good or bad looking (conventionally, anyways). Regarding the Contra stuff, I feel like she might not be cut out for dealing with having a higher profile. It's one thing to criticize people you don't interact with, but I think she might not be the type of person who can handle criticizing people she's interacted with or might interact with in the future. Like, some people immediately turn around and act nice to people they would otherwise insult in order to avoid the potential discomfort/awkwardness of conflict, and she might be that kind of person (I know I am, and it's why I choose not to publish controversial/political content). Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 00:34 on Dec 8, 2017 |
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Dec 8, 2017 00:32
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