[HN Gopher] Misperceptions of the opponent fringe and miscalibra...
___________________________________________________________________
Misperceptions of the opponent fringe and miscalibration of
political contempt
Author : luu
Score : 53 points
Date : 2022-05-09 17:38 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (psyarxiv.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (psyarxiv.com)
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "In the 1960's, only 5% of Republicans and 4% of Democrats
| reported that they would be "displeased" if their son or daughter
| chose to marry a political opponent (Iyengar et al., 2012). By
| 2010, these numbers had risen tenfold."
|
| When you combine that with twin, adoption, or half-sibling
| studies which all show that political orientation is partially
| inherited, it's like we're splitting into two different species.
| Hopefully things will get back on track long before that.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| The 1960s was in the middle of the long overlapping double
| political realignment between the New Deal and the mid-1990s,
| so the main ideological divides in the country did not line up
| with the divide between the major parties.
|
| This resulted in less _partisan_ division, but no less
| _political_ division, as the large scale political violence of,
| particularly, the 1950s and 1960s, makes pretty clear.
|
| All the hand-wringing over the fact that we've in the last
| couple decades returned to the normal state where salient
| ideological divisions actually map reasonably well to the main
| partisan division is...bizarre.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| If you look at the last ~40 years of government policy in the
| USA, and focus on where the Republicans and Democrats are in
| alignment (neoliberal trade policy & outsourcing of
| manufacturing, steadily increasing military-industrial budgets,
| and no-strings-attached bailouts of Wall Street firms), then
| you get a picture of the country as a corporation where the
| politicians are essentially little more than corporate middle
| managers.
|
| The middle manager has a rather unusual job - keep the
| corporate board and the shareholders wealthy and happy, and
| keep the rank-and-file employees productive and happy. The
| former job is done more in private, the latter job is done more
| in public. (Note how certain politicians notoriously stated the
| need for having both public and private positions, which fits
| this model).
|
| Somewhere along the way, the middle managers had a bright idea:
| if we ensure the rank-and-file employees distrust and hate one
| another more than either us or the corporate board, we can keep
| this whole thing rolling along, even while we screw them over
| and enrich ourselves and the board! Genius. For a while,
| anyway.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Yeah, I was about to say, I want no _parts_ of this track that
| you want to get back on. If my kids bring home white people
| they want to marry, I no longer have to worry about the
| repercussions.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| The 'track' I was referring to, was that it's ok for your kid
| to marry someone from another part of the political spectrum
| than yours.
| r00fus wrote:
| I firmly believe there are more than 2 parties. France is a
| good example - reactionary extreme right, centrist/corporatist,
| and far left. Both the left and right hate the centrist, but
| also have widely divergent views on how to unseat the
| centrists.
|
| It's just that in the US, only 2 parties can work given the
| FPTP system that makes all 3rd parties spoilers.
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| > it's like we're splitting into two different species.
|
| Or nations. A lot of the turmoil in Eastern Europe since the
| 90s is related to certain nations considering themselves
| distinct, and other nations refusing to entertain it. The
| former group will fight for their liberty and the latter group
| will try to conquer and absorb them.
|
| Will the same happen in the US? I see the African Americans
| being their own unique North American nation with associated
| food, music and culture, but also being part of the dominant
| American national culture. Not many of them appear to want to
| be fully separate, black nationalist extremists aside.
|
| If heartland white Americans attempted to distinguish
| themselves as a separate nation, it would be civil war 2, but
| fuelled by nationalism as opposed to slavery, traditionalism
| and states rights.
| logicchains wrote:
| >When you combine that with twin, adoption, or half-sibling
| studies which all show that political orientation is partially
| inherited, it's like we're splitting into two different
| species. Hopefully things will get back on track long before
| that.
|
| Evolution is a very powerful force; ultimately the genes that
| make people incline towards having more children will become
| dominant. https://www.fatherly.com/health-science/republicans-
| have-mor... currently it looks like Republicans are winning the
| reproduction war.
| watwut wrote:
| If they did, they would had enough votes to win popular
| ballots. They don't, they need biased electoral system that
| guves more power to minority.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This same train of thought comes up when talking about
| environmental conservation. Namely: "If you're worried about
| the environment, you should have _more_ kids because they 'll
| _also_ be environmentalists ".
|
| It's so ridiculous on its face that I'm not sure why I'm
| typing out this reply, but if there was a simple straight
| line between genetics and ideology, why would positions like
| those opposed to the Republicans exist at all? Shouldn't they
| all have been bred out by now?
|
| And what about the fact that what it means to be a Republican
| and a Democrat change as well. There used to be a time when
| the Democrats were the pro-slavery party. So what ideological
| elements are inherited exactly? Is it the broad party
| affiliation? Is it beliefs about tax policy? Beliefs about
| gun rights[1]? Religion?
|
| [1] Incidentally, the left is becoming increasingly pro-
| second-ammendment: https://www.theirisnyc.com/post/american-
| gun-rights-activism...
|
| Edit: Oh yeah, and anecdotally plenty of kids raised by
| conservatives grow up to hate their parents' guts. Perhaps
| because of the authoritarian nature of some conservative
| households. As you might expect, this is especially true for
| LGBTQ kids.
| lupire wrote:
| In the 1960s, more parents opposed different race marriage, and
| different religion marriage, than different politics marriage.
|
| The difference now is that the "other species" now has a voice
| in 2-party politics, after previously being silenced.
|
| It wasn't better in the past when Democrats and Republicans
| worked together to oppress non-WASPs.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Certainly it wasn't. I would like to think that there is not
| a 'conservation of intolerance' principle here, though, that
| requires some other kind of intolerance to go up in order for
| intolerance of race, religion, etc. to go down.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Is this really anything new? I think most people who actually
| talk with their neighbors about various topics can see that most
| people aren't as extreme as their party is represented to be in
| the media.
|
| There are hundreds of millions of party members. Did anyone truly
| think that a member of either party supports every policy the
| party supports, or that there are different factions within the
| party that take opposing stances on specific issues? There's no
| way we're able to fully map 100M to 1 on an innumerable amount of
| topics/solutions.
| mistermann wrote:
| > There's no way we're able to fully map 100M to 1 on an
| innumerable amount of topics/solutions.
|
| There's no way to do it _accurately_ , but the mind "does it"
| _all day err day_ without breaking a sweat, as it evolved to
| do. This phenomenon is what this paper is describing, is it
| not?
|
| Possibly relevant:
|
| https://www.simplypsychology.org/context-and-state-dependent...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31338304
| jqgatsby wrote:
| >>Did anyone truly think that a member of either party supports
| every policy the party supports?
|
| I see you haven't met my in-laws.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Sorry, I shouldn't have used absolutist language. You're
| right, there are likely a small minority that agrees with
| everything that at least their faction of the party says.
| banannaise wrote:
| (hopefully) relevant perspective from a transgender person: It
| is irrelevant to me that most people are not extremists. There
| are a lot of "non-extremist" people who consider me a loon
| because of my appearance and gender. Those people seem to get
| along perfectly fine with "moderates" who are more accepting of
| me... and that really doesn't help, because the typical result
| is that both of them will agree to treat me as an extremist.
| For existing.
| [deleted]
| hedora wrote:
| I could say everything you said, as a person hoping the
| planet will remain habitable for my children.
|
| (Substitute the bit about appearance with "because I think we
| should immediately stop new fossil fuel exploration / capital
| investment and institute atmospheric carbon recapture taxes
| of $1-2 per gallon-of-gasoline-equivalent emissions")
|
| Anyway, I think the premise of the article is flawed:
|
| I don't care whether voters in some red state are queer-
| bashing, abortion-banning putin apologists that want to strip
| mine for coal. (Want them for neighbors, or not? Move!)
|
| I care that the people they've voted in and appointed to the
| supreme court are all of those things, and this planet is not
| large enough to let the rest of us escape from their idiocy.
| mistermann wrote:
| > I care that the people they've voted in and appointed to
| the supreme court are all of those things...
|
| Do you care whether this belief (which may have the
| appearance of knowledge) is objectively and flawlessly
| true?
| watwut wrote:
| The abortion banning part is provably true at this point.
|
| And it is very fair to guess it was plan from the start,
| despite pretention not. Despite calling those who guesses
| it 100% correctly exaggerating and hysterical.
| mistermann wrote:
| The claim was:
|
| >> I don't care whether voters in some red state are
| queer-bashing, abortion-banning putin apologists that
| want to strip mine for coal. (Want them for neighbors, or
| not? Move!)
|
| >> I care that the people they've voted in and appointed
| to the supreme court are all of those things
|
| > The abortion banning part is provably true at this
| point.
|
| a) Not comprehensively for all people, _as was claimed_.
|
| b) It is supreme court justices that would be banning it,
| not elected representatives.
|
| c) How might one prove it for any given elected
| representative, short of an explicit confession?
|
| d) Abortion banning wasn't the only claim.
|
| > And it is very fair to guess it was plan from the
| start, despite pretention not.
|
| "Fair to say" and "correct/true" are very different
| things.
|
| > Despite calling those who guesses it 100% correctly
| exaggerating and hysterical.
|
| Where "100% correctly" refers to perception of reality,
| but is typically perceived as reality itself.
|
| Human beings are silly, I would say _without exception_ -
| News at 11.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| And I encourage everyone to keep whatever circles make them
| happy. But if a devout Christian said she doesn't like anyone
| who hangs out with atheists, or a meat-eater said he doesn't
| like anyone who hangs out with vegans, I don't think you'd
| struggle to identify these as extremist attitudes. The
| expectation that a person is guaranteed to mistreat me if any
| of their friends disapproves of me or think I'm a loon seems
| like a clear example of miscalibrated contempt.
| a_shovel wrote:
| Yeah, that's my position as well. People make fun of leftists
| for infighting and "cancel culture" and "eating their own",
| but the alternative seems to be allowing the worst parts of
| "your side" to keep and even expand their influence over the
| political landscape, and that seems to be what the right has
| done.
| Shish2k wrote:
| This is what happens with a first-past-the-post voting
| system -- you agree to band together behind your side's
| resident extremist, or you lose :/
| twofornone wrote:
| [deleted]
| zmgsabst wrote:
| I think that's because you don't denounce actual extremists
| within the transgender movement.
|
| I think you're conflating both groups denouncing those
| extremists as denouncing you, because those extremists are
| who represents your group on the mainstream narrative.
| watwut wrote:
| I don't see non extremist anti-trans to condem extremists
| in their ranks. Ever. Nor conservatives for that matter.
|
| Until that is requirement for then too, then this just
| amounts to support for anti trans extremists.
| banannaise wrote:
| So now I'm supposed to spend my time proving that I'm
| mainstream enough to be acceptable, because my existence
| makes me guilty by association? This is the "Black people
| should have no issue proving they aren't criminals"
| argument.
|
| Also, transgender people aren't a movement. We're people.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > Also, transgender people aren't a movement. We're
| people.
|
| I'm not saying it's fair or right...
|
| But transgender people are a minority whose voice has
| been appropriated by a political movement to force their
| radical agenda under euphemisms like "inclusion".
|
| I'm not saying that you need to be outspoken about it --
| but if the only exposure most people have is that
| extremist view from TV, they will associate you with that
| due to how humans work.
|
| > "Black people should have no issue proving they aren't
| criminals"
|
| The equivalent would be black people debouncing the neo-
| racism of Democrats under euphemisms like "equity" and
| publicly denouncing nonsense done in their name, like de-
| policing.
|
| Again, I'm not saying it's fair or right... but I'd tell
| a black Democrat who was upset about being associated
| with that idiocy the same thing:
|
| You're tacitly letting your identity be used to push dumb
| policies -- and you'll be associated until you stand up
| and say "no, this doesn't represent me".
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| > I'd tell
|
| It's really at this step where things start to take a
| wrong turn. I truly believe you're acting in good faith,
| so please take this as a gentle suggestion. Rather than
| telling trans/black/etc people anything, pause and really
| listen.
|
| We are already told how to do everything else in our
| lives, being told how to stand up for ourselves and how
| to fight for our rights feels like another example of the
| same pattern. A better question is, "How can we help?" or
| "What do you need?"
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > Rather than telling trans/black/etc people anything,
| pause and really listen.
|
| I don't think you did this yourself, having a knee-jerk
| reaction to the word "tell".
|
| I think your post is bigoted:
|
| You wrote "shut up, white man!" in more words.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| This is a really good example that demonstrates what
| happens when a trans person stands up for themselves.
| Thank you for providing it so that others can witness
| that the careful steps we take aren't enough to prevent
| the abuse we experience.
| banannaise wrote:
| The real racism is when people calmly explain to you that
| the position you are arguing is extremely insensitive to
| minority groups. ????
| Semiapies wrote:
| "I'm not saying it's fair or right..."
|
| Good, because concern trolling like this is pretty
| shitty, and definitely not fair or right.
|
| Certainly not intellectually honest. You attack someone
| repeatedly for supposedly not standing up against "dumb
| policies" and "extremist" positions, without your daring
| to name what you think those _are_. After all, if you did
| that, you might have to defend your stance against
| criticism instead of attacking someone for not preventing
| the entire Democratic Party from committing unspecified
| wrongs of "inclusion".
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| It's not really a matter of "daring". Most online
| platforms don't permit dissent on transgender issues. If
| someone attempted to directly argue that they don't think
| transgenderism is real, they wouldn't face criticism or
| engage in a robust debate, they'd simply get their
| comment deleted. (If you turn on showdead you can see
| that's happened in this very thread, although admittedly
| the guy was a bit rude about it.)
| banannaise wrote:
| The fact that transgender people exist is quite settled
| from a scientific perspective. Most reasonable platforms
| will not put up with people asserting that trans people
| are either mentally ill, clout-chasing, or victims of
| abuse, in the same way that most reasonable platforms
| will not put up with arguments that Black people are a
| criminal race because <insert debunked science here>.
|
| Dissent along those lines, no matter how politely framed,
| is simply an attempt to launder bigotry into "debate".
| Banana699 wrote:
| >The fact that transgender people exist
|
| There is nothing as bizarre as some trans activists
| belief that people debating them will make them disappear
| from existence.
| banannaise wrote:
| This is a willful misinterpretation of the very realistic
| idea that it is possible to make me disappear from
| _public_ existence by legally forcing me into the closet.
| Banana699 wrote:
| There is nobody that can make you disappear from public
| existence unless you help them do so, by being utterly
| dependent on their continued acknowledgement and
| validation of an identity that you made central to your
| existence. But that's really nobody's fault except you,
| anybody is allowed to view any identity as illegitimate,
| it's totally on you that you're so attached to this
| identity that a bunch of people not believing in it is a
| thing that makes you "disappear from public life".
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| And that's all reasonable on its own terms, but your
| opponents don't see it this way at all. I see being trans
| as more like being a Mormon; it would obviously be
| obnoxious for me to walk up to random Mormons and say
| "you don't exist" or "Joseph Smith was a fraud", but it
| would be equally obnoxious if a Mormon friend told me
| that studies have proven they hold the Melchizedek
| priesthood and I need to affirm that or they won't feel
| comfortable around me.
| rocef wrote:
| The only thing that is settled is that some people
| experience gender dysphoria.
|
| The rest of it is highly contentious.
|
| For example, can a person with male genitalia be a woman?
| Like _actually_ a woman, not just masquerading. You ask
| most people, they 'll say no, of course not. But this is
| at odds with the activists who are trying to push this
| unusual belief, and others like it, into mainstream
| acceptance.
| rocef wrote:
| That's true, it's one of the few topics that regularly
| gets dissenting comments flagged on HN, even if the
| commenter is being polite and arguing their points
| substantively.
|
| Whether a comment is flagged seems to depend, in part, on
| the exact language used. For example, using the phrases
| "men who identify as women" or "trans-identifying males"
| instead of the transactivist-approved terminology "trans
| women" (with the space in between the two words - this is
| typically considered important) increases the chance of a
| comment being flagged. Even though both are similarly
| ideological statements.
| Semiapies wrote:
| I don't see any posts by him in this thread with showdead
| on that I can't see with it off, so I don't buy your
| complaint. As it is it, looks like what you think is "a
| bit rude" amounts to some guy facing criticism and
| working himself up into a lather about how that's
| everyone saying "shut up white man".
|
| But at any rate, your argument amounts to, "But he _has_
| to be disingenuous and chickenshit, because Hacker News
| is run by the SJWs! ", which I find laughable.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The comment I'm referring to is by a different commenter
| twofornone.
|
| My argument definitely isn't that Hacker News is run by
| the SJWs, both because I don't think HN moderation is
| particularly left wing and because I don't think "the
| SJWs" is a meaningful category. What I would say is that
| debates about the fundamental legitimacy of transgender
| stuff get too heated for most platforms to accept,
| because people have strong, passionate beliefs on the
| issue which can't easily be compromised on. It's an
| entirely reasonable moderation decision and I might very
| well make the same one if I were in charge - but as a
| consequence, those of us who are transgender skeptical
| sometimes need to carefully talk around the touchiest
| issues rather than engaging on them directly.
| Semiapies wrote:
| "The comment I'm referring to is by a different commenter
| twofornone"
|
| Then you're just being disingenuous, jumping into a
| thread responding to someone else entirely and talking
| about dead comments as if the person being responded to
| had made them.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| To be clear, I was attempting to point to external data
| to explain why people in this thread might be hesitant to
| explain their views in full detail. Sorry if it came
| across as misleading.
| banannaise wrote:
| > It's equally forbidden (and there's also an example of
| this downthread) to go around saying that if you don't
| believe the right things about trans people you're
| committing genocide.
|
| That's a very strange interpretation of my comment. If
| you think my gender identity is invalid, you're not
| committing genocide, you're just an asshole. If you think
| my gender identity makes me a pedophile groomer who needs
| to be kept away from kids, and want to enforce that via
| imprisonment, then you're committing genocide.
| Unfortunately, that is a political position of the
| governor of at least one US state. It is not the
| political position of most of the people voting for him,
| but that's not a ton of consolation.
| banannaise wrote:
| You're using a thin facade of decorum to push the idea
| that the oppression of minorities is their own fault,
| with the strong implication that you have nothing to do
| with it because that's just the way the world works. How
| am I personally responsible by association for the
| actions of others, while you aren't?
|
| And again, am I supposed to be out here actively looking
| for people and views to disavow? Do I have to do this in
| front of everyone I meet, so then they'll be sure I'm one
| of the good ones and they can treat me like a normal
| person?
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > How am I personally responsible by association for the
| actions of others, while you aren't?
|
| Whites not associated with racism are expected to
| denounce it.
|
| Men not associated with misogyny are expected to denounce
| it.
|
| I'm not holding double-standards, just acknowledging that
| humans work based on heuristics.
|
| > Do I have to do this in front of everyone I meet, so
| then they'll be sure I'm one of the good ones and they
| can treat me like a normal person?
|
| You don't _have_ to do it at all, but yelling at people
| because they're human and their brains react to repeated
| exposure by finding patterns isn't going to lead to the
| outcome you want.
|
| So if you don't like being associated with that kind of
| behavior -- you probably want to do it some time, in some
| way.
|
| That perception won't change until there's enough people
| out there denouncing the misappropriation of their
| identity by politicians to make it clear that they _dont_
| represent that group.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Racism and Misogyny are actual forces in this country.
| Minority activists don't actually have any political
| power.
|
| Besides, who are you expecting to do the denouncing and
| what are they supposed to denounce? Before I started this
| comment was I supposed to do a quick google search and
| see if there were any fringe activists saying something
| to denounce? What's the time scale I have to cover before
| I can reply to your comment. A week? A month? What if I
| already denounced it in another thread, do I have to do a
| recap of everything I've denounced in every thread?
|
| I'm not calling you racist, No one asked you to denounce
| racism or misogyny, so why are you bringing it up?
|
| > there's enough people out there denouncing the
| misappropriation of their identity by politicians to make
| it clear that they don't represent that group
|
| This is laughably unquantifiable and political forces
| ensure that even if this was happening you wouldn't know
| about it.
| Banana699 wrote:
| >Racism and Misogyny are actual forces in this country
|
| As everybody knows off course, only the things you hate
| are actual and real, and you're being noble and virtuous
| by talking about them. While the things your opponents
| hate are disinformation and a mirage, and they're being
| hysteric and alarmist by talking about them.
| mikkergp wrote:
| This is the kind of thinking that got us into this mess.
| Banana699 wrote:
| And you're engaging in it by downplaying and denying the
| very real power that that transgender ideology holds in
| US institutions and corporations.
| mikkergp wrote:
| How so?
| Banana699 wrote:
| >> Minority activists don't actually have any political
| power
| mikkergp wrote:
| No I mean, what 'very real power that that transgender
| ideology holds in US institutions and corporations'. All
| the political action is bathroom bills and sports bills
| coming from the right, what political power is the
| 'transgender ideology' wielding.
| Banana699 wrote:
| >All the political action is bathroom bills and sports
| bills coming from the right
|
| It's hilariously disingenuous and backward how you
| mention the _reaction_ to the encroaching transgender
| ideology without mentioning the action itself that
| prompted it. The bathroom and sports bills are defensive
| measures against the ideology infiltrating institutions
| and allowing the easy access of vulnerable spaces to
| mentally unstable individuals.
|
| >what political power is the 'transgender ideology'
| wielding.
|
| Other than
|
| - In [1] an academic professor is fired for publishing a
| book critical of transgender beliefs
|
| - In [2] a school covered for a trans rapist who raped a
| teenager in the girls bathroom, he was eventually
| transfered to another school where he raped a second
| teenager.
|
| - In [3] an. archeologist is fired for trans critical
| views
|
| - [4] documents several other cases of harassment
| perpetrated by trans ideology supporters in academia
|
| - In [5], a British political party struggles with the
| definition of a woman, party representatives repeatedly
| refused to answer straightforward questions about basic
| female biology to avoid angering the trans lobby
|
| - In [6], as in [5], a US Supreme Court judge refused to
| answer the question "What's a woman", citing that "She's
| not a biologist".
|
| - The social media giants ban any dissenting discussion.
| Examples too numerous to mention, and can be empirically
| reproduced for yourself.
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/may/22/kat
| hleen-s...
|
| [2] https://news.yahoo.com/judge-rules-loudoun-county-
| teen-13141...
|
| [3] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-
| 01950-9
|
| [4] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/349967840_Th
| e_Gende...
|
| [5] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/labour-s-refusal-
| to-acce...
|
| [6] https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/22/blackburn-
| jackson-d...
| mikkergp wrote:
| This is a bunch of stories of people acting individually,
| this isn't political power. My argument isn't that there
| aren't people in this world trying to establish their
| validity in our society, and that those people aren't
| upsetting other people, just that those people aren't
| exercising broad systemic political power.
|
| Is your argument that people should just accept their lot
| in life and not challenge the status quo? Or more that
| they should do it in a way that doesn't upset anyone.
|
| I see that you have some concerns here, I don't see why
| your response is to try and ostracize or ban this thing
| you don't understand.
| Banana699 wrote:
| >This is a bunch of stories of people acting individually
|
| Senators and politicians who introduce sports and
| bathroom bills are also just a bunch of people acting
| individually in their best interests, I don't see
| anything different here to justify calling that political
| power as you do.
|
| >this isn't political power
|
| Off course, several academic institutions on both sides
| of the Atlantic, a multi-million person political party,
| a supreme judge in the highest legal authorities in a
| world superpower, and about several dozen giant
| corporation, all and others supporting the same cause
| with the same exact words, do not represent political
| power.
|
| They represent the power of friendship, I suppose.
| Perhaps with pink unicorns.
|
| >My argument isn't that there aren't people in this world
| trying to establish their validity in our society
|
| By raping teenage girls and grooming pre-pubescents, yes.
|
| >and that those people aren't upsetting other people
|
| Rape victims and their parents, mainly.
|
| >Is your argument that people should just accept their
| lot in life and not challenge the status quo
|
| My argument is that there is a systematic and organized
| ideology that grants easy access to people to things they
| aren't supposed to access and grants them escape from the
| legal consequences when they do. Your argument is
| defending this ideology and/or pretending it doesn't
| exist or doesn't have power, whichever easier to defend
| at the moment.
|
| >more that they should do it in a way that doesn't upset
| anyone.
|
| Perhaps they would be invalidated by the inability to
| rape and groom underaged people though ? it might be a
| lot to ask.
| mikkergp wrote:
| It seems like it's hard to believe you're engaged in
| honest debate when you argue that all of liberal America
| is working together to enable pedophiles.
|
| If that's what you think then this wasn't the debate I
| thought it was.
|
| Do you think that all gay people are pedophiles too?
| Semiapies wrote:
| They have the power to make some assholes uncomfortable,
| by existing.
| Banana699 wrote:
| Looks like I hit a nerve here, eh?
|
| I recognize the incoherent rage of true believers when
| you question their idols effortlessly.
| zmgsabst wrote:
| > Minority activists don't actually have any political
| power.
|
| As Malcolm X explained, minorities are routinely used as
| a political cudgel in feuds between parties -- and the
| promotion of extremist voices is part of that today.
|
| > political forces ensure that even if this was happening
| you wouldn't know about it
|
| ...which is why it's important to occasionally share
| those thoughts in your personal life, to help unwind that
| narrative for people around you.
| curi0sity wrote:
| What activity/behaviour, anologous to racism and misogyny
| in your example, do you believe is being done by
| politicians "in the name of (trans) inclusivity"?
| zmgsabst wrote:
| A return to institutional bigotry, under the DIE agenda,
| of which the misappropriation of transgender voices (or
| rather, promoting extremist voices) is a piece. Further,
| using the claim "you're not being inclusive!" as a club
| towards people who object to things such as preferential
| hiring, affinity groups based on protected class,
| censorship on social media, etc.
|
| For example, WA and CA are attempting to repeal civil
| rights laws to re-legalize government bigotry.
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_16,_Repeal
| _Pr...
|
| https://ballotpedia.org/Washington_Initiative_1000,_Affir
| mat...
| arkaniad wrote:
| Radical agenda like... being able to safely receive
| healthcare? Being safe from violence? Being able to grow
| into a happy and successful human being?
|
| Ah, but yes, you're right, that's preposterous.
| [deleted]
| rocef wrote:
| I assume they mean the more divisive topics, such as:
| minors being given "gender-affirming" surgery and
| hormone-altering drugs, males being incarcerated in
| women's prisons, males being permitted in women's locker
| rooms while women are in a state of undress, males
| competing in women's sporting events, and so on.
|
| These are all recent developments that have made many
| people who were previously quietly supportive become very
| critical, very quickly.
| Banana699 wrote:
| Like it or not, you are beholden to what your group says
| and does in public. The group name you identify with
| strongly biases anybody meeting you into modeling you as
| the most visible people of your group.
|
| > transgender people aren't a movement. We're people.
|
| Every movement is ultimately a group of people with a
| purpose.
| [deleted]
| bell-cot wrote:
| Sad to say, but I think this is both (1) fairly true, and
| (2) a sign that the world we live in is fairly f*cked up.
| I'm free to identify as a white male American, without
| needing to immediately denounce a laundry list - ...,
| NAMBLA, Nathaniel Hawthorn's ancestors, Nazi sympathizers,
| negro slavery, NIN's substance abuse, ... - of notorious
| positions, people, and practices which are publicly
| associated with white males Americans.
|
| I have noticed that even the L and G (to say nothing of
| BTQ+) folks who've come out to me in the past 10 years have
| added "but I am _nothing_ like those {unfavorable words
| here} who proclaim themselves L 's or G's on the web" -
| generally so fast that I couldn't have gotten a word in
| edgewise.
| [deleted]
| giantg2 wrote:
| "There are a lot of "non-extremist" people who consider me a
| loon because of my appearance and gender. Those people seem
| to get along perfectly fine with "moderates" who are more
| accepting of me... and that really doesn't help, because the
| typical result is that both of them will agree to treat me as
| an extremist."
|
| I'm curious, why would these people not be considered extreme
| for treating you like a loon or treating you as an extremist?
|
| I've seen similar stuff on other issues. For example, there
| are people who hate guns who treat gun owners as loons and
| extremists regardless of their actions/positions/etc. Just
| saying that some people treat others as extremists just
| because they hold an opposing view. My guess is it's often to
| prevent cognitive dissonance in examining their own beliefs
| (most people don't consider themselves extremists even if
| they hold extreme views).
| banannaise wrote:
| I think you're on to something here, but my (admittedly
| anecdotal) experience (in person, not online) is that these
| people are _not_ generally considered extremist. You make a
| very good point in your last sentence: this extremist view
| is held by a lot of people who are otherwise non-extremist,
| and it 's hard for most people to differentiate between
| "extremist views" and "extremist people". So it ends up
| being considered much less extremist than it should be,
| which also means it gets much more mainstream acceptance
| than it should.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yeah, you said it better than I did.
| anm89 wrote:
| I've spent a lot of time thinking about this. I think a problem
| is that within certain bubbles, the extreme viewpoints are
| genuinely really ubiquotous but if you have certain other
| cultural preferences it can be hard to escape those other
| bubbles.
|
| I find just being around a certain group of people, namely young
| left urban college educated people who are counnterculture, the
| norms for that group are unbelievably far left. Like the nuances
| of Maosism vs Lenninism is a more common discussion than the
| budget of congress amongst this group (percieved to be a right
| wing issue). It's unbelievably extreme. And yet I never interact
| with the other side, let's say Mid west evangelicals, and rarely
| interact with the unengaged center even though those other two
| groups are combined an order of magnitude bigger.
|
| But based on non political preferences I spend a lot of my time
| around woke communists and end up having a strong distaste for
| them even though they are a small minority in the bigger picture.
|
| I think this same group has a very outsized influence in a large
| number of spheres. So I don't think it's unreasonable to worry
| about them even if they are a minority.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| Conservatives who don't hate lgbt folks arent loud enough. I
| don't care how many reasonable people the GOP has, they arent
| loud enough and now their party's cornerstone philosophy is that
| people like me don't deserve rights. Even if my estimation of the
| prevalence of that idea is skewed, there is still legislation
| that serves to harm me and my loved ones. I can be mad about
| that.
|
| In general, pieces like this tend to treat beliefs as value-
| neutral and misinformation as a both-sides issue when in reality,
| the GOP's primary tactic is spreading misinformation on a
| national scale and putting up policy that will "trigger the
| libs". On the other hand, Democrats are too scared to do anything
| but capitulate to the other and wax poetic about "reaching across
| the aisle". The far-right has an active voice in the Republican
| party and on right-wing media. But if one liberal somewhere
| awkwardly talks about their gender on social media or says
| something radical about how cops suck or god-forbid suggests that
| vaccines work, the right will spin that into "Democrats are
| satanic pedophiles". These "fringe beliefs" on each side do not
| behave the same. They are not of equal danger and they are not
| equally treated by their mainstream parties.
|
| Posting this preprint paper on HN got me mad because it is candy
| to centrism. It suggests that the problem is us and our
| misinterpretation of reality and we should just listen more,
| completely absolving people in power of any blame. If you wanna
| sit down with your republican uncle and find a middleground
| between "gay people deserve rights" and "gay people shouldn't
| talk to children", fine go ahead. Increasingly I feel that if you
| believe in anything left-leaning in this country its just a lose-
| lose. Every lefty I know feels exhausted and scared and hopeless
| and the other side thinks that we control the world. I'm kinda
| done with listening to the other side at this point.
| kansface wrote:
| Your response to "America is polarized because of
| misperceptions" is to double down on polarization and
| misperceptions claiming in fact, we don't have enough of
| either?
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| I didnt say that "we don't have enough of either"
|
| Admittedly I was a bit rambley because i am scared for the
| safety of myself and others in this political climate. And
| everytime someone tries to "diagnose" the problem, they do so
| by treating the left and the right as the same, as value-
| neutral, as though they are two people on a tennis court
| following the same rules hitting a ball back and forth. I
| think this fundamentally misses the fact that both sides use
| vastly different tactics and have different standards for
| truth. I think that the values of each side cannot be put on
| the same line ("I think cops should be held accountable" and
| "democrats stole the election" are not equal and opposite
| positions). I think both sides are playing completely
| different games and each can claim the other is
| losing/winning/cheating, that is the problem... not
| individuals misperceptions.
| dontcare007 wrote:
| So there is your problem: you don't see the right as being
| people, yet want the right to see you as a person.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| i think thats a false equivalency. First of all I see
| them as people, I just see them as people who dont care
| about my personhood. Second of all, my value judgement of
| the right is based on the actions they take against my
| personhood, whereas their value judgement of me is based
| on.... who I am? who I love? the clothes I wear?
| belorn wrote:
| Seeing people as persons, judged and viewed as
| individuals, has been one of the major contention between
| the center/center right and the left. The two sides that
| been fighting hardest to push identity politics away from
| the political discussion is generally the same group that
| view the left and the far right as being two sides of the
| same coin.
|
| If the goal is getting people to see you as a person and
| the strategy you are deploying to reach that goal is
| pushing people away, then it might be worth looking into
| the effectiveness of that strategy.
| gryfft wrote:
| Notice how the person you're replying to conflated two
| extremely different forms of "dehumanization." Calling an
| attacker an attacker isn't dehumanizing them. This
| comment section isn't worth your energy.
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| Everyone is scared, even the other side. They are just
| different fears. That's why its so vital to talk to your
| neighbors and to those who are different. To listen and to
| try to change hearts. Especially important is to see why
| people order their beliefs the way they do. They also think
| that values cannot be put on the same line ("I think babies
| should have the right to life" and "republicans stole the
| election from Gore" are not equal and opposite positions).
|
| The hierarchy of needs is different on both sides; they are
| mostly incompatible and each side not only will, but _must_
| violate the other's definition of justice (abortion is a
| perfect example of this, defined not by the act itself, but
| by the conflicting definitions/hierarchy of life and of
| rights).
|
| I think social media is the problem. You used to have to
| get along with those around you. Now you can just bubble
| yourself on the internet, no matter how niche your position
| is. I am glad to have friendships all across the political
| spectrum -- we can always bond over being screwed by the
| system at large instead of the nebulous "other side".
| twoxproblematic wrote:
| bavell wrote:
| I think you should have cooled off for a bit before posting
| this emotion-laden comment. I would suggest that the people you
| should be angry with are the ones behind the singular corporate
| uniparty which pits us against each other by creating false
| narratives and rhetoric that spread through our media
| ecosystem.
|
| > I'm kinda done with listening to the other side at this
| point.
|
| Don't let the propaganda win, always be willing to listen.
| grrrrrbox wrote:
| I think they make a lot of good points, and the post doesn't
| sound too emotionally charged to me.
|
| Frankly, the left should start to go lower, and speak more
| emotionally. It turns out that clinical, sterile statements
| are not a good way to sway a majority, and they don't make
| good sound-bites.
|
| At some point, you have to fight fire with fire to avoid
| becoming yet another victim of the paradox of tolerance.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| >I would suggest that the people you should be angry with are
| the ones behind the singular corporate uniparty which pits us
| against each other by creating false narratives and rhetoric
| that spread through our media ecosystem.
|
| Thats a two way street buddy. I can't listen to the other
| side if they are blabbering on about their own false
| narrative. This comment section is full of people who think
| that its the lefts fault and are absolutely incapable of
| looking at their own party. I don't know how to explain to
| you that I do not give a shit about Democrats or Liberal
| media or the "singular corporate uniparty", let it all burn
| and I will still be fighting for LGBT rights and there will
| still be people who think I shouldn't exist.
| c22 wrote:
| There will always be people who think you shouldn't exist,
| that is true. But parent comment is suggesting that if you
| let it all burn down those people would likely turn out to
| be only a small minority, easily dismissed, rather than a
| unified bloc of 50% of brainwashed america.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| I don't think the GOP is a unified bloc. I think it is
| beholden to a vocal minority without whom they wouldnt
| win elections because running on their last 20 years of
| policy alone hasnt worked. If we destroyed the current
| political parties and had everyone in government rerun as
| independents, that vocal minority would still find a
| political foothold.
| c22 wrote:
| Perhaps! Depends on how you set up the system, I think.
| Fauntleroy wrote:
| I'm in agreement here. How are people supposed to reach
| across the aisle and fight our common enemy when the other
| side of the aisle is completely unwilling to make this sort
| of introspective conclusion?
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| The question is whether it's _true_ that the other side
| of the aisle is unwilling to make introspective
| conclusions, or if they actually are but you 've been
| affected by the misperceptions and miscalibrations the
| source article describes. For example, Social Security
| privatization has entirely dropped off the radar in
| recent years - what happened there if not an
| introspective conclusion that it was a bad idea?
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| Trump said it was a stupid idea (and he was right).
| bavell wrote:
| Similarly, I also do not give a shit about the GOP. Or any
| party for that matter. They can come to me if they want my
| vote.
|
| Where we differ I guess is in degree of nihilism - I don't
| want to see everything burn and I'm happy to listen to
| other people's perspectives. I'm just a mildy intelligent
| ape and don't have everything figured out yet. I don't
| think throwing in the towel is a better solution than
| persevering and standing up for your values though. Thank
| you for listening! :)
| ergonaught wrote:
| If it's only the extremes of a group that want a thing, but
| supporting the group means that the extremes get what they want,
| there is precisely zero distinction. The group is extreme, on the
| ground, in reality.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Self-reported views are irrelevant. Revealed preferences are
| everything. If you vote for a guy who does things directly
| targeted against me - then I'm going to bucket you with him.
| Stated positions don't really matter. Only revealed preferences.
| And the revealed preferences of those who vote with those they
| supposedly disagree with are obvious.
|
| I'll pre-Godwin the thread for everyone: "Davon haben wir nichts
| gewusst".
| giantg2 wrote:
| So you expect roughly 50% of people to hate you, and for you to
| hate about 50% of people? Seems a miserable way to look at it.
|
| The fact is that choices are limited. Things like ranked choice
| voting might start to change that. Maybe we could see other
| major parties at some point. The fact that we have only two
| main parties is a product of your (and most people's) sort of
| game theory mindset - that you have to oppose the other side
| even if your choice isn't great.
| banannaise wrote:
| bavell wrote:
| > literal genocide of transgender people
|
| Did I miss something or is this just inflammatory rhetoric?
| I know about the literal genocide happening in Yemen but I
| haven't heard anything about transgender genocide.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| Florida's HB 1557 doesn't go that far, but the rhetoric
| that people use to support it has echoes of fascism. All
| of the right-wing talking points around trans issues
| equate teaching kids about lgbt issues to pedophilia. For
| many supporters, even walking around as trans is seen as
| sexual deviant and dangerous. When a bill is passed that
| enshrines into law that "it is bad to tell kids about
| this person", and the supporters casually say "breaking
| this law is pedophilia", what do you think is going to
| happen to trans people trying to live their lives in
| Florida?
| bavell wrote:
| Unfortunately your comment is a pretty common
| disingenuous representation of the arguments being made
| from the other side along with some misinformation
| scattered throughout. Please broaden your news sources so
| you aren't so easily swayed by the partisan rhetoric. In
| your defense, the propaganda on this topic has been
| overwhelmingly strong.
|
| What the law actually says is that teaching about sex or
| gender _in the curriculum_ is not allowed prior to 4th
| grade. That goes for heterosexuality as well as LGBTQ. No
| one is exempt or special. Basically, kids at half the age
| of puberty should not be taught about sex, full-stop. Let
| them be kids for a few years longer before they learn
| about sex.
|
| Of course, the law just addresses material in the
| curriculum, so having a picture on your desk of your
| same-sex SO is no problem and you can talk about
| sexuality with young kids as long as it's not curriculum
| (still gross imo).
|
| The lesson of HB 1557... don't mess with parents.
| banannaise wrote:
| The problem is that this equates "relationships" and
| "love" with "sex". The literal text of the law says
| "don't teach children about sex". The explicit reasoning
| behind this law is that this means not teaching children
| about homosexuality.
|
| This positions homosexuality as inherently sexual in a
| way that heterosexuality is not, which is, of course, not
| true. Sex is of course an implied part of heterosexual
| relationships, we're just conditioned as adults not to
| think about that.
| a_shovel wrote:
| And in turn, _your_ comment is a pretty common
| disingenuous representation of the bill from its
| supporters.
|
| No, it is not about "sex", it is about "sexual
| orientation", which is generally understood to be whether
| one is gay or straight or bisexual or asexual. It's often
| used in place of the more accurate technical term
| "romantic orientation", which is about who one is
| romantically attracted to, but the term isn't in common
| usage. In any case, it is not related to sexual
| intercourse. Children can understand it, and it is
| manifestly appropriate for children of any age. The
| support for this bill has seemingly overwhelmingly been
| based on this deliberate conflation between discussing
| sexual/romantic orientation and discussing sexual
| intercourse.
|
| If you check the bill's text, it's not just "material in
| the curriculum", it's "classroom instruction", which
| would include discussion, which could be argued to
| include any mention of being gay. And it's not just under
| 4th grade, it's for any instruction not deemed "age-
| appropriate", which, in a country that still teaches
| abstinence-only sex-ed in some states, could mean
| anything. That these links are tenuous is no comfort; if
| the exceptions aren't strong enough to get the case
| thrown out immediately, it still leaves the school open
| for lawsuits, and the school will self-police to avoid
| them. And you'd have to be _truly_ naive to think that
| this will be applied to straight and gay relationships in
| equal measure.
|
| Plus, there's all the language about parental access to
| health records that are pretty clearly aimed at requiring
| the school help out gay and trans kids to their possibly
| abusive parents, which nobody ever mentions for some
| reason.
| banannaise wrote:
| Pretty much. I try not to go down the "dehumanizing
| language = genocide" path, because dehumanizing language
| has sadly become par for the course, but there has been a
| rapid escalation on two fronts, reflected directly in
| state laws:
|
| 1. Moving from simple dehumanization to "trans people are
| groomers and pedophiles and we must protect our children
| from them at any cost". This is still only an escalation
| _toward_ violence, but it certainly is an escalation.
|
| 2. Forcible detransitioning of trans people, with the
| direct aim of eliminating out trans people as a
| population. It remains to be seen what will be done with
| people who refuse to detransition, but imprisonment
| appears to already be on the table. And when you imprison
| a population for their identity and/or customs, then,
| well... that's genocide.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Exactly where and how are trans people being forcibly
| detransitioned?
| banannaise wrote:
| By making trans healthcare, including hormones, illegal.
| They're already attempting to extend this to adults (up
| to age 25).
| peteradio wrote:
| > a political party whose agenda includes literal genocide
| of transgender people
|
| That's pretty loaded, almost flaggable, but I think in this
| thread I'll ask what are you talking about?
| bitwize wrote:
| If you don't believe that Republican leadership would
| gladly wipe LGBTQ-identifying people off the face of the
| earth given the opportunity if they thought they would
| get away with it, you clearly haven't been paying
| attention.
| orangecat wrote:
| This is exactly the sort of catastrophizing that the
| study is talking about. Yes, I'm sure you can find a few
| lunatics on the right who have said something like that.
| You can also find nutjobs on the left who want a literal
| Communist revolution. Neither is anywhere near the views
| of the vast majority of conservatives or liberals.
| peteradio wrote:
| I think you have extreme views, but I'm not going to
| assume all LGBTQ and allies hold the same.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > So you expect roughly 50% of people to hate you, and for
| you to hate about 50% of people?
|
| You don't have to vote either Republican or Democrat. Third-
| parties, write-ins, and simply abstaining in protest are all
| perfectly valid alternatives which would get you out of that
| 50%. I more-or-less agree with the GP here: If you vote for a
| candidate knowing that they will use the power you give them
| in ways which are harmful to others, you're contributing to
| the problem. That's true even in FPTP voting systems where
| the winner will almost certainly have an (R) or (D) next to
| their name no matter what you do. Overall turnout (voter
| engagement) and the percentage that actually voted for the
| winning candidate both matter even if they don't change the
| official result of the election.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Yes, you don't need to be part of the 50%, but that doesn't
| get you away from that effect of the 50% either. There are
| causes in both major parties that someone is likely to find
| themselves on the receiving end of some law or regulation
| that they don't like. So you could still end up opposing
| that 50% if you're lumping them all in with the politician
| on that side.
|
| "If you vote for a candidate knowing that they will use the
| power you give them in ways which are harmful to others,
| you're contributing to the problem."
|
| Can you name any candidate that wouldn't harm any group? It
| seems they all have ideas about what laws would make things
| better, and those laws tend to involve control of people's
| actions or inactions.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > Can you name any candidate that wouldn't harm any
| group?
|
| No, I can't. That's the problem with voting for
| representatives or officials--you inevitably end up
| voting for a politician. The candidate pool is made up of
| people who see force as a reasonable means for solving
| problems, real or imagined; those who don't see it that
| way have more productive things to do than run for
| political office in a system they consider immoral.
| Occasionally you get an idealist who thinks they can
| change the system from within, but it's too well
| entrenched--the corruption ends up infecting them
| instead.
| renewiltord wrote:
| "Hate" is too much. I can exist in a society with opponents
| and allies pretty smoothly. But morally, I'm going to bucket
| people, yeah.
|
| If you vote one way, you don't care all that much about key
| issues that matter to me. I do. It's relevant to my life. It
| doesn't matter what you say. The truth is you don't care as
| much as I do.
|
| I don't have to oppose anything. That's you projecting.
| Knowing who is opposing me is not opposing them. It's just
| knowing the landscape. I'm quite comfortable not opposing
| someone even if they oppose me, but I do insist on knowing
| they oppose me.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| until we get national ranked choice voting, voting Republican
| in America gives power to a party that believes that it is
| evil to tell children about the effects of slavery or the
| fact that queer people exist and deserve rights. I don't care
| if they promise to lower taxes, the Republican party's
| platform involves chipping away at my rights
| giantg2 wrote:
| I think we also need to move primary voting to the same day
| nationally. Right now just a few states narrow down the
| primary choices. By the time it gets to the later states
| there's only one or two left.
|
| "voting Republican in America gives power to a party that
| believes that it is evil to tell children about the effects
| of slavery or the fact that queer people exist and deserve
| rights."
|
| That's the same sort of extreme view that the paper was
| talking about, and mischaraterizes the party's position
| (even if a small faction does believe it). Don't you think
| that some Republicans think all Democrats want to abolish
| the police or take their guns?
| adamrezich wrote:
| >I think we also need to move primary voting to the same
| day nationally.
|
| while we're at it, Democrat voters should get their party
| to sunset its superdelegates system if they want their
| primaries to actually be, y'know, democratic
| InitialLastName wrote:
| The Republican party might have a better defense if their
| platform in the last election weren't literally "we
| support whatever Donald Trump wants" [0] . That way, the
| American people would have any way to tell whether their
| loudest (and most divisive) voices were representative of
| the larger party on any given position, rather than just
| having to assume they are.
|
| [0]https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,
| _2020
| giantg2 wrote:
| The way I, and likely many other voters, have viewed the
| past couple elections is a little different.
|
| It's basically a choice between a shit sandwich and a
| shit sandwich without the bread. Which one is which
| depends on your perspective. They both suck but the bread
| makes one slightly more palatable.
|
| With that in mind, the platform for democrats was to vote
| out Trump. Similar to four years earlier the republican
| platform was to vote for anyone but Hillary.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| That works if you think only the national scale matters;
| that there's been a similar pattern at the state and
| local level (without the overblown individual
| personalities) suggests that it's not just the "this
| specific person sucks" pattern.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Of course it's not _just_ that pattern. There are others.
|
| It does tend to exist and depends on the state. In the
| general election you still typically have only 2-3
| choices for many offices at the state level. They tend to
| follow a similar two party paradigm and have a "Not that
| person" feel to some of them. Local elections have less
| personality involved in many areas simply because the
| person is less notorious and their positions are less
| well publicized.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| My opinion of Republican values regarding LGBT rights
| comes directly from spoken statements from sitting
| members of congress and state legislators. If Republicans
| can point to actual legislators that say "no one should
| have guns", I'll listen. But typically I find that gun-
| control "debates" involve a nuanced "common-sense" gun
| control side and a "they want to disarm you and take your
| stuff" side. Which again, comes down to disinformation
| spreading among the right and preventing good-faith
| arguments for gun-control.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Common-sense" is a highly opinionated phrase. I do
| sympathize that it's hard to find a good debate due to
| the misinformation or poor arguments on _both_ sides.
| Without good debate it is tough to get a good view of the
| issue. Even then, there can be points that come down to
| philosophy or law around how the action can /should be
| implemented. And of course, there's very little nuance or
| compromise being investigated by either side.
|
| That said, which LGBT rights do you think they oppose? Do
| they oppose all rights or just "common sense regulations"
| (see where I'm going?)? What one person sees as a right,
| someone else might see as a privilege. Or what they see
| as reasonable regulation another might see as
| infringement. The sides have to convey their reasoning
| for why something is a right, or why they see it the way
| they do. It's supposed to be an effort to understand each
| other to make things work for both sides through
| compromise.
|
| There are a lot of vehement and downright ridiculous
| comments out there. Perhaps you see more of them on the
| LGBTQ issues. Perhaps gun owners notice them on gun
| issues. So perspective can matter. You have people like
| Beto O'Rourke saying they will confiscate certain arms.
| There the DNC committee member that said she thinks
| nobody should have a gun (Bonnie Schaefer). Many have
| declined to answer whether they believe if owning a gun
| is a right, including Hillary Clinton. If they can't
| answer the question, then people will think it's a bad
| sign. There are a lot from Feinstein that I'll put at the
| end. And this doesn't even cover all the misinformation
| (what was used in a specific crime, things that are
| already illegal), frivolous laws (a folding stock isn't
| making a difference), and wrong terminology (assault
| rifle, clip/mag, etc). It's hard to write intelligent
| legislation if the terms aren't used correctly or the
| subject isn't well understood. I assume you've seen the
| same on cis people writing LGBTQ laws.
|
| Many gun organizations have supported past restrictions.
| Maybe we could implement "universal" background checks by
| creating a free to use system that can be used for other
| types of checks as well and doesn't keep a record of what
| the check was for (maybe using a zero trust pattern or
| some one way hashing which industry/watch group
| oversight)? This would address the concerns the concerns
| of building registries or abuse of power while making a
| seller civilly liable if the person they sold to was
| prohibited. Why doesn't anyone in power suggest such a
| thing as a compromise?
|
| There are tons of options out there. "Common sense" has
| just become a marketing term by politicians on both sides
| to appeal to people without actually proving out their
| issue.
|
| I'll leave you with some quotes from Feinstein:
|
| "Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of all
| Americans to feel safe." - Associated Press, 18 November,
| 1993.
|
| "If I could have gotten 51 votes in the Senate of the
| United States for an outright ban, picking up every one
| of them; "Mr. and Mrs. America, turn 'em all in," I would
| have done it." - 60 Minutes on CBS, 5 February, 1995.
|
| "All vets are mentally ill in some way and government
| should prevent them from owning firearms."
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| > Associated Press, 18 November, 1993
|
| I would argue that statements made 30 years ago are
| irrelevant to the current debate, considering that would
| also bring into discussion every opinion held by GOP
| operatives over that time period and boy that ain't
| pretty.
|
| Im generally opposed to equating LGBT issues to gun-
| control issues. This dichotomy was brought up by a
| previous comment and I dont really want to get bogged
| down in the issue. After all, one is an issue of bodily
| autonomy and freedom of expression, and the other is an
| issue of "what do we do about this thing that is
| expressly designed to harm other humans".
|
| My personal views on gun control aren't really reflected
| by any sitting member in congress, and I will admit that
| a lot of debate on both sides are largely reactionary and
| you can take impassioned statements from either side out
| of context. Fine. I will still hold that the right will
| shut down at any nuanced discussion of the issue, which I
| see as the main problem. If the GOP took a principled but
| open-minded stance, you could negotiate down from the
| reactionary Dem position down to one that thinks
| critically about privacy as you suggest... but the GOP
| doesn't allow that discussion.
|
| > That said, which LGBT rights do you think they oppose?
|
| My right to self expression. My right to live a life of
| my choosing without fear of retaliation. My right to tell
| others about my existence. As evidenced by objections to
| bills that would enshrine my safety in finding employment
| and healthcare. As evidenced by politicians that equate
| my speech to pedophilia. Are my rights to safety and
| speech privileges given only to cis/straight people? What
| are the "common sense" regulations to me living my life?
| Do you see how I may not agree with the false equivalency
| of gun rights and lgbt rights?
| cityofdelusion wrote:
| You may want to consider viewing things more neutrally.
| As someone who doesn't care about guns, your dishonest
| take on the gun control "debate" is obvious. If you are
| going to apply a silly caricature at least do it to both
| sides ("they want to take all your guns" vs "they don't
| care if children get shot at school").
|
| A nuanced view of the actual debate is that one side
| believes the second amendment is absolute and the other
| believes that it allows for some restrictions similar to
| the free speech / "fire in a theater" situation. The
| posturing you see around this is just to rally votes,
| that is the meta-game. Too many Americans are unable to
| separate the rules of the game and the underlying issues
| at stake.
| watwut wrote:
| > A nuanced view of the actual debate is that one side
| believes the second amendment is absolute and the other
| believes that it allows for some restrictions similar to
| the free speech / "fire in a theater" situation.
|
| I don't think this is accurate description of guns debate
| I have seen.
|
| > The posturing you see around this is just to rally
| votes, that is the meta-game. Too many Americans are
| unable to separate the rules of the game and the
| underlying issues at stake.
|
| What you call meta game is in fact the real thing. The
| posturing is expression of values and opinions. It is
| reflected in laws and court judgements. Too many people
| domt take it seriously and even worst blame those who
| take it seriously.
|
| Then the "posturing" becomes policy and laws. While the
| same people oretend to be all surprised ... who could
| have guess they would do exactly what they said they will
| do.
| nybble41 wrote:
| > A nuanced view of the actual debate is that one side
| believes the second amendment is absolute and the other
| believes that it allows for some restrictions similar to
| the free speech / "fire in a theater" situation.
|
| You presume that there is agreement among the first group
| that the First Amendment is not just as absolute as the
| Second.
|
| BTW, that "falsely yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater"
| bit was actually a threadbare excuse to punish people for
| protesting the draft, something many would consider
| protected political speech. The hypothetical scenario is
| not very well reasoned, either, even ignoring the
| context. If anyone is hurt during the evacuation the
| fault lies with those who panicked and trampled them in
| their haste to escape, not the person who claimed there
| was a fire, regardless of whether that report was true or
| false. The most they could reasonably be held responsible
| for is the interruption of the show for an orderly
| evacuation.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| I don't think my description of right wing talking points
| is caricature. The right wing do see any reasonable
| reform as "taking our guns away", their side is the one
| that fails to see nuance. That absolutist, literalist
| read of the constitution is the side without nuance,
| categorically. My view of gun control is neutral, I want
| to protect the rights of citizens to stand against their
| government and I acknowledge that loose gun laws can lead
| to harm, direct or indirect. That is the most neutral
| position possible and sitting members of Congress would
| consider me far-left and fascist for it. The Right is
| seemingly allergic to nuance, incapable of digesting
| reasonable objection. How do you meet in the middle with
| that?
| giantg2 wrote:
| How far right are we talking? In your previous comment
| you said Republicans. Now you say right wing. There may
| be extremist groups that say any regulation is
| unconstitutional (which can apply to guns, speech, etc).
| But that doesn't represent everyone. Gun groups have
| supported past restrictions/laws. Even fairly recently
| the NRA said that they support banning bump stocks.
|
| The real question is, what is considers an infringement?
| This is true of other rights as well. It's hard to define
| without trampling rights, especially for minority
| interests in a democracy.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| fair, I do use right-wing and republican interchangeably.
| In this context I do mean republican politicians and
| media commentators that largely follow the conservative
| party line, and not the more nuanced voting base that is
| potentially open to debate.
|
| > The real question is, what is considered an
| infringement?
|
| gee itd be great if that question was discussed in right-
| wing media instead of uncritically painting every attempt
| at discussion as a violation.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "gee itd be great if that question was discussed in
| right-wing media"
|
| I don't just mean on this issue, but in general. We see
| vastly different controls on guns/abortion/voting/etc
| from state to state. When is a restriction an
| infringement? Who decides that and on what basis? It
| seems that it's up to judges, but what happens if none of
| the judges are members of the minority group who are
| being restricted (think segregation)? That's the part I
| find interesting.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| > The fact that we have only two main parties is a product of
| your (and most people's) sort of game theory mindset
|
| Or of a winner-take-all electoral system? I can't say that
| the systems I've seen which have you vote for an amorphous
| entity instead of a tangible and somewhat accessible person
| are better in every sense, exactly, but I think of the sort
| of environment which would develop the word _bipartisan_ to
| mean _universally supported_ and can't shake off an
| overwhelming feeling of stupid.
| kansface wrote:
| We've always had this system. We haven't always hated each
| other.
| lapcat wrote:
| From the linked paper: "Time spent watching partisan
| media (controlling political orientation) predicted
| greater overestimations of the prevalence of extreme
| views"
| mperham wrote:
| I'd encourage you to read the People's History of the
| United States.
|
| Who's "we"? I don't think a single Black American would
| agree with your statement.
| [deleted]
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| PR does not mean a list system. Ireland has multi member
| constituencies, PR and no list system.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| We had a talk where I work by Jamie Druckman who comes to similar
| conclusions
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JE78OLNY6JQ
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Keeping it relevant to the paper itself, there is something
| particularly powerful in amplifying if not creating this effect
| in the first place: sock-puppetry, known in the MICIMATT world
| (Military-Industrial-Counter-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think
| Tank complex) as "persona management"
|
| I saw this really take off around 2010 and tried to warn people.
| The issue is that the forces that actually control the major
| political parties need to divide the people, for never forget the
| thing the oligarchs fear the most is a united proliteriat, and
| have heavily invested in creating the illusion of a consesus or
| narrative view from one "side" or the other, reinforcing the
| division at play.
|
| Three letter grade psyops are at play on an unprecendented scale,
| and failing to understand that will leave anyone interested in
| this topic twirling at windmills.
| r00fus wrote:
| I wonder exactly how much of social media are sockpuppets.
|
| Also - perhaps massive disinterest is the goal.
| 99_00 wrote:
| Now that Trump is out of power mistrusting three letter
| agencies is back in fashion.
|
| When he was in power they were trusted and reliable.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Some of us dont blow with the political winds quite so
| easily.
| incomingpain wrote:
| 88 pages from 2021 involving Wilfred Laurier social sciences?
|
| You know what's more interesting, in the months since this study
| it has become much more clear what's really going down.
|
| NYTimes realized their echo chamber and practically ordered their
| journalists to exit their echo chambers. Which upon doing so they
| somewhat returned to better journalistic standards, NYTimes
| suddenly showed some excellent legitimacy.
|
| CNN is basically in complete collapse because they were too late.
| Can't see how they recover without some absolute hail mary.
|
| Rachel Maddow had a bit of a sabbatical and then got rebranded
| and is on air far less. MSNBC ratings not looking so hot lately.
|
| Meanwhile Fox is in dominant #1 position. There's objective
| measurements that the democrats moved far left creating the
| polarization. You have star trek discovery a ultra top secret
| missions best of the best crew... but every character is LGBT.
| Wtf are they trying to say? Even Trek fell into this same trap as
| those above.
|
| Has anyone checked out Star Trek Strange New Worlds episode 1
| where they literally say second US civil war. The story was
| intentionally weak as hell to ensure everyone who watches it sees
| they are talking about the USA. The importance of getting those 2
| parties talking together again. That working together for a
| better future is really the only way.
|
| Even Trek suddenly realized their own mistake. It makes for such
| an amazing first episode.
| klyrs wrote:
| > 88 pages from 2021 involving Wilfred Laurier social sciences?
| You know what's more interesting...
|
| So, I take it that you didn't read the article and dismissed it
| based on its length and source?
|
| > There's objective measurements that the democrats moved far
| left creating the polarization.
|
| Source please?
|
| > You have star trek discovery a ultra top secret missions best
| of the best crew... but every character is LGBT.
|
| Not even close to _every_ character. There are quite a few
| romantic entanglements through the story: Burnham /Tyler,
| Voq/L'Rell, Burnham/Booker, Georgiou/Lorca, Lorca/Cornwell,
| Pike/Vina, Detmer/(unnamed), Airiam/Stephen, Sarek/Amanda,
| Burnham's parents, and, yes, one gay couple, Stamets/Culber.
| There are two trans characters, one bisexual character, and I
| count three gay characters. The cast list on Wikipedia lists 43
| characters in total.
|
| I think you might be misperceiving the opponent fringe here?
| incomingpain wrote:
| >I think you might be misperceiving the opponent fringe here?
|
| Sorry, I wasn't clear, not 'all'. Clearly disproven by just 1
| character if you're going evaluate all characters even if
| they were only on screen for 1 second.
|
| > There are two trans characters, one bisexual character, and
| I count three gay characters. The cast list on Wikipedia
| lists 43 characters in total.
|
| 12 main characters and 6 lgbt?
|
| Mind you, I LOVE the idea of trill being trans/non-binary.
| This makes a ton of sense.
|
| What discovery failed at is exactly what is tearing the USA
| apart. I love they realized why it didnt work and are doing
| better.
| klyrs wrote:
| Okay, that's a pretty big goalpost shift. In nearly 60
| years of Star Trek, we've now got 4 seasons where some main
| characters aren't strictly cisgender and straight (but the
| majority of the couplings are still between straight,
| cisgender characters). In what regard did Discovery "fail"?
| As far as I understand, it's been pretty highly acclaimed.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| you have a lot of criticism of liberal media and a weird
| diversion to be uncomfy about lgbt people, but you really dont
| have anything to say about the how tucker carlson and the
| entire right wing media ecosystem's primary tactic is spreading
| fear and political polarization and misinformation about lgbt
| folks, the election, immigrants, etc... You really don't see
| that, huh?
| tablespoon wrote:
| > NYTimes realized their echo chamber and practically ordered
| their journalists to exit their echo chambers. Which upon doing
| so they somewhat returned to better journalistic standards,
| NYTimes suddenly showed some excellent legitimacy.
|
| Details? I know they've gotten a few people who are outside the
| progressive orthodoxy and tend to poke holes in it to write
| opinion columns in the last few months.
| ssklash wrote:
| > democrats moved far left
|
| I have to wonder if you know what far left means outside of the
| US. Because even the furthest left of the Democratic party is
| barely left-leaning in Europe and most other democracies.
| lapcat wrote:
| Abstract: "Americans' hostility toward political opponents has
| intensified to a degree not fully explained by actual
| ideological polarization. We propose that political animosity
| may be based particularly on partisans' overestimation of the
| prevalence of extreme, egregious views held by only a minority
| of opponents but imagined to be widespread."
|
| You: "There's objective measurements that the democrats moved
| far left creating the polarization."
|
| Hmm. Could it be that you're... overestimating?
| incomingpain wrote:
| >Hmm. Could it be that you're... overestimating?
|
| As I said... wilfred social science...
|
| Here's a nice visual graph that I like:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/7-things-
| to...
|
| Go put your finger on the republican line and see where it
| moves.
|
| There has been analysis done by many groups which have
| confirmed where the political polarization derived heavily
| starting with gay rights. The republicans who had 'closeted'
| homosexuals moved left. Trump literally started a fight with
| russia and the middle east trying to benefit homosexuals.
| https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-
| adm...
|
| The republicans clearly moved left and it was the right thing
| to do. Whereas Truman != Obama. It's rather easy to
| objectively see both parties have moved left.
|
| I feel like this is rather objective fact. The better
| discussion, why is this the case? Is it perhaps where the
| democrats have gone is the right place both parties
| eventually end up? Or are we about to watch 2nd civil war?
| lapcat wrote:
| > As I said... wilfred social science...
|
| I don't know what the point is supposed to be here.
|
| > Here's a nice visual graph that I like:
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/7-things-
| to...
|
| > Go put your finger on the republican line and see where
| it moves.
|
| Ok. I downloaded the gif and went through it frame by
| frame. What it shows is that the Median Democrat stayed
| exactly the same during 1998-2011, while the Median
| Republican moved right the whole period of 2004-2011.
|
| Anyway, this story is from 2014, so it's missing the last 8
| years.
| Izkata wrote:
| > What it shows is that the Median Democrat stayed
| exactly the same during 1998-2011, while the Median
| Republican moved right the whole period of 2004-2011.
|
| Now try doing the whole span it's depicting, instead of
| picking the best years for your viewpoint.
|
| > Anyway, this story is from 2014, so it's missing the
| last 8 years.
|
| Here's an update that includes 2015 and 2017: https://www
| .pewresearch.org/politics/interactives/political-...
|
| It continues the same trend of median Republican barely
| moving while come 2017 median Democrat flies off even
| further left.
| lapcat wrote:
| > Now try doing the whole span it's depicting, instead of
| picking the best years for your viewpoint.
|
| What do you think is my viewpoint?
|
| During 1994-1997, both parties were moving left. And
| during 2012-2014 they were moving in opposite directions.
| I focused on the period of 1998-2011 because that seemed
| to be when there was the biggest difference in behavior
| between the 2 parties.
|
| The claim of incomingpain was that "the democrats moved
| far left creating the polarization". But this is not
| supported by the given data. The parties were moving in
| lockstep prior to 1998, and the Democrats didn't move at
| all for many years after 1998.
|
| It seems difficult to argue that the polarization was
| _created_ in 2017, given the data from 1998-2011. Anyway,
| incomingpain, the one who made the claim, was also the
| one who linked to the pre-2015 data.
|
| Here's the funny thing: incomingpain said "The
| republicans clearly moved left and it was the right thing
| to do." And Republicans did indeed move left 1994-2003...
| but then they moved back right starting in 2004. They
| moved right at the same time that Democrats were staying
| the same. So shouldn't incomingpain argue that
| backtracking was the wrong thing to do, if moving left
| was the right thing to do?
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mikkergp wrote:
| I do think that people are so busy being mad about the
| "Democrats have moved too far left" meme that they haven't
| really thought about it. The problem being the definition
| of "too far left". But yeah, I think they've moved to the
| left because human rights are important.
|
| It would be interesting to go back to Women's suffrage
| because I'm sure people were having the same discussion.
| Liberals have moved left while Republicans have stayed
| where they are. But of course, moving to the left on equal
| rights for women is not liberals moving too far to the
| left. It's society course correcting. You don't get to say
| "Well liberals got women's rights so we get ____" But too
| many Republicans are saying the equivalent of that (hell
| some Republicans do https://www.news-
| leader.com/story/news/politics/2021/10/22/a... say exactly
| that.)
|
| Human rights can't be a partisan consideration. It can't be
| something we compromise over. We just have to evolve as a
| society, get over it and instead have substantive
| conversations about the policies that move the needle in
| people's lives.
| boredumb wrote:
| The left doesn't equal human rights, it means more
| government intervention and currently it means using and
| abusing small portions of society under the guise of
| human rights and social justice as a false pretense to
| expand government control. Liberals have also not 'moved
| left', the democratic party has abandoned liberals in
| lieu of progressives, socialists and other people who
| believe in a more involved government instead of
| individual liberties in order to garner more votes and
| retain their districts.
| mikkergp wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the point of my comment was the opposite
| of "left equals human rights".
| boredumb wrote:
| "I think they've moved to the left because human rights
| are important."
| mikkergp wrote:
| If that's the part of my comment you're latching onto,
| and you're not disagreeing with the notion that
| Repbulicans don't believe in women's rights, than we're
| in a much worse place than I thought.
| boredumb wrote:
| Your entire statement was ridiculous and pompous, but the
| only thing worth replying to was your incorrect belief
| that the left represents human rights. So no, I'm not
| going to sit here and bicker about an ann coulter quote
| who is known for decades as being purposefully
| inflammatory for the sake of having people with your
| point of view bookmark and share her stupid statements in
| order to prove a point.
| mikkergp wrote:
| Anne Coulter aside, there is a core point here and that
| is that historically, we've gotten it wrong and I think
| most of us can agree that looking back we had it wrong.
| Yes, that Anne Coulter quite is ridiculous but was likely
| more representative of opinions around the time of
| Women's suffrage. Is it not possible that we can
| collectively figure out where we continue to get it
| wrong?
| klyrs wrote:
| > The left doesn't equal human rights, it means more
| government intervention
|
| Really? Does "legalize abortion" mean more government
| intervention? Does "abolish the police" mean more
| government intervention?
| boredumb wrote:
| It was actually "replace the police with herds of social
| (government) workers" and the governments ability to
| allow people to kill unborn kids in order to lessen
| government burden by eliminating under privileged
| classes.
| klyrs wrote:
| Well, that certainly is a massive dollop of contempt.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > Go put your finger on the republican line and see where
| it moves
|
| This ignores massive societal shilf we've had - which is
| erosion of worker's rights.
|
| The 'left' used to mean worker's rights, helping the poor,
| maybe socialism or welfare.
|
| Now you have folks who see themselves as left because they
| suport trans right, but their solution to 'No parental
| leave in America' is 'more freee market'
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| And the left could have had it all. They could have built
| a coalition of common cause between trans rights and
| workers rights, with a common philosophical underpinning.
| Instead, they've shifted to look down on blue-collar
| workers as "a basket of deplorables".
|
| Contempt for your constituency is _not_ how you build a
| winning coalition.
| lapcat wrote:
| > And the left could have had it all. They could have
| built a coalition of common cause between trans rights
| and workers rights, with a common philosophical
| underpinning. Instead, they've shifted to look down on
| blue-collar workers as "a basket of deplorables".
|
| Is this actually "the left" though? The same people who
| came up with the insult "basket of deplorables" also came
| up with the insult "Bernie bros".
|
| Seriously, if the left means Hillary Clinton and does not
| mean Bernie Sanders, then we might as well just throw all
| political labels in the trash.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| Fair point, but... Is there any significant politician on
| the left, other than Bernie Sanders, who is actually pro-
| working-class at the moment?
|
| If so, I haven't paid enough attention to politics to
| keep track of what's going on. But if not, then I think
| it's fair to say that the left as a whole abandoned the
| working class, with Bernie being the exception.
| lapcat wrote:
| I think most elected politicians tend to betray their
| constituents.
|
| Bernie has the "luxury" of living in one of the smallest
| states in the nation, Vermont. He can wage a ground game
| campaign and not worry about having to raise massive
| amounts of money for big market TV ads. This makes him
| less susceptible to corruption than other senators. Also
| he was never a Democrat in the first place but an
| independent who decided to run for the Democratic
| nomination, so he was never fully a part of the the party
| apparatus.
|
| It's interesting to contrast with how Trump basically
| waltzed in and took over the Republican party, despite
| not having been a solid Republican himself in the past. I
| take this as a sign of how marginalized the left has been
| from the Democratic party. Sanders has taken over the
| spot of being the Democratic scapegoat for all their
| problems, a spot formerly held by Ralph Nader.
| anamax wrote:
| I don't know how we're defining "an objective measure", but
| pushing CRT sure looks like "move left." So does "we're going
| to help your kid transition without telling you" and XYs in
| women's sports.
|
| Of course, one can argue that none of this is new, that
| what's new is pushback.
| klyrs wrote:
| "Pushing CRT" sounds pretty subjective. What _measurement_
| are you offering here?
|
| CRT, itself, is a pretty nebulous concept outside of actual
| legal scholarship. "Pushing CRT" is a common right-fringe
| talking point. How much do you think the majority of
| Democratic voters agree with "pushing CRT"?
| anamax wrote:
| I didn't say that I was offering a measurement, in fact,
| I asked how we were defining "an objective measure."
| Moreover, I have no idea how many Democrat voters go
| along with the institutional Left.
|
| That said, the institutional left (IL) is pushing Project
| 1619 and associated materials outside of law schools,
| whether or not you want to call that CRT. (Shades of "no
| true Scotsman.")
|
| This is part of a broader "all-in" on DIE by the IL.
| "Everything" is racism, sexism, etc.
|
| There's also deplatforming and doxxing.
|
| No, I'm not going to provide a scale. I'm not even going
| to order deplatforming and doxxing. So, the above isn't
| quantitative measure.
|
| That's a long way from "nothing is happening."
| lapcat wrote:
| > That's a long way from "nothing is happening."
|
| Who are you quoting? Nobody said that. This seems like a
| non sequitur.
| anamax wrote:
| It's sneer quotes.
|
| I'm claiming that the fact that the original poster
| didn't provide something like "0.2 units to the left"
| doesn't actually refute his fundamental point.
|
| Feel free to disagree.
| klyrs wrote:
| Some relevant quotes from the guidelines:
|
| > Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the
| community.
|
| > Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive,
| not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
|
| > Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
|
| What you've done is complain about some general stuff
| that you seem to dislike about "the left" and completely
| fail to engage with the content of the actual article,
| which I was trying to bring the discussion back to. But
| hey, at least you acknowledge ignorance about what most
| people think. Perhaps you should try exiting your bubble
| and figure that one out instead of dwelling on what you
| hate about the fringe.
| anamax wrote:
| The original claim was that the left hadn't moved. The
| response was "prove it".
|
| I provided examples of movement by the institutional
| left. No, those examples don't have numbers, but they do
| show movement. Besides, how do you apply numbers to this
| sort of stuff in any reasonable fashion?
|
| Whether or not I like those things or they're "general"
| has nothing to do with whether they're movement. That's
| likely why you didn't comment on whether they were in
| fact movement.
|
| That said, as long as we're lecturing one another on
| meta-discussion, it's nice of you to provide an
| opportunity to quote Hannah Arendt: "The elite is not
| composed of ideologists; its members' whole education is
| aimed at abolishing their capacity for distinguishing
| between truth and falsehood, between reality and fiction.
| Their superiority consists in their ability immediately
| to dissolve every statement of fact into a declaration of
| purpose."
| lapcat wrote:
| > The original claim was that the left hadn't moved. The
| response was "prove it".
|
| No, the original claim was actually this: "political
| animosity may be based particularly on partisans'
| overestimation of the prevalence of extreme, egregious
| views held by only a minority of opponents but imagined
| to be widespread."
|
| The counterclaim was: "There's objective measurements
| that the democrats moved far left creating the
| polarization."
|
| My suggestion was that this counterclaim seems to be
| exhibiting the same fallacy discussed in the paper.
|
| Both the Democratic and Republican parties are very
| large, and its members have a wide variety of views. If
| you pay close attention, you'll see that there's quite a
| bit of infighting, sometimes very bitter, even within
| each party. Broad generalizations about Democrats or "the
| left" -- and likewise about Republicans or "the right" --
| are often going to be grossly inaccurate. You can't just
| treat huge groups as uniform when they're demonstrably
| not uniform.
|
| The American people -- well over 300 million of them --
| have diverse political views. But we have a political
| duopoly. Which means that these diverse views held by
| Americans have to somehow fit mostly within these 2
| parties. It's a mistake to overgeneralize about political
| parties and similar groups.
|
| I personally find the terms "left", "right", "liberal",
| "conservative" to be practically meaningless. They've
| lost all of their original meaning and become opaque
| cudgels for the political parties to pretend they have
| some kind of coherent ideology. But this is a bit of a
| tangent.
|
| Anyway, I would bet that most Democrats and most
| Republicans don't even know WTF CRT is. Even the ones who
| complain about it!
| klyrs wrote:
| > The original claim was that the left hadn't moved. The
| response was "prove it".
|
| Nope. The top-level post claimed the existence of
| objective measures of "the left" moving "far left", of
| which I haven't seen evidence.
|
| And, I'd never claim that "the left" hasn't moved. The
| left/right terminology is rather sloppy, so I've tried to
| use the language of TFA: Democratic and Republican
| voters. But, let's look at "progressives" for a moment.
| The goal of progressives is to identify oppression in the
| world, and work towards overcoming it. That is to say,
| the goal of progressives is to _change with the times_ ,
| which is why, for example, today's progressives hate
| Margaret Sanger but still support Planned Parenthood. The
| goal of social conservatives is to _resist change_ and as
| we 're seeing with Roe v. Wade, _undo past progressive
| changes_ (which, I think, is technically "regressive")
| which is why, for example, we see today's social
| conservatives rallying around statues of Robert E. Lee.
|
| But that's not what the article about. The article is
| about how each side sees the other. It's nicely
| summarized by this SMBC comic: https://www.smbc-
| comics.com/comic/2013-04-07
|
| What's going on today is that Democratic voters
| increasingly identify Republican voters as the nazi-flag
| bearing Charlottesville rioters, and Republican voters
| increasingly identify Democratic with murderers like
| Kermit Gosnell and Christopher Dorner.
| orangecat wrote:
| This is the same sort of argument-by-definition that gun
| rights supporters use to dismiss anyone who talks about
| "assault weapons". A whole lot of parents don't want
| their children separated by race and have white kids told
| that they bear personal responsibility for historical
| racism and anything they accomplish is only possible due
| to the oppression of others, while black kids are told
| that society hates them and they'll never get a fair
| chance to succeed (unless of course we overthrow the
| racist misogynist capitalist power structure). If your
| response to that is "well actually CRT only refers to the
| specific legal theories of Kimberle Crenshaw", you're not
| addressing the actual point.
| dsr_ wrote:
| Please define what you mean by CRT so that we know what you
| are discussing. (I don't mean acronym expansion, I mean
| substance.)
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Whites are the oppressors and BIPOC are the oppressed.
| That anything and everything boils down to the color of
| your skin. That white Americans in particular are the
| sole perpetrators of historic slavery. That current white
| people should atone for the sins of past slave owners
| regardless of when their family came to the US.
| klyrs wrote:
| Well, you're absolutely correct, inasmuch as that's a
| racist tire fire that shouldn't be in schools. But that's
| not "critical race theory," it's overwrought caricature
| that mainstream (and, in my bubble, even the quite
| radical) progressives would disagree with.
| insickness wrote:
| In recent surveys, Democrats are found to be far more
| intolerant of Republicans than vice-versa.
|
| Young Dems more likely to despise the other party
| https://www.axios.com/2021/12/08/poll-political-
| polarization...
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| thats because Democrats are largely impotent whereas
| republicans have let fringe hateful ideas become their
| platform. If one person in the room smells like shit, can
| you blame other people for taking a step away?
| robonerd wrote:
| > _republicans have let fringe hateful ideas become their
| platform._
|
| In 2001, 23% of Republicans/Republican-leaning Americans
| supported same-sex marraige. By 2019, it was 44%. Among
| white evangelical protestants specifically, it was 13%
| and rose to 29%.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/fact-sheet/changing-
| att...
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| aw thats cute. less than 50% of republicans think gay
| people can get married
| robonerd wrote:
| Cute? I am challenging your perception that Republicans
| let their "hateful fringe" take over. The data shows that
| Republicans have actually been getting more progressive.
| That this trend isn't fast enough to suit you is beyond
| the point, republicans trending in this direction _at
| all_ (let alone doubling) contradicts your stated
| perception of the trend.
| breadbreadbread wrote:
| Your statistic is based on the opinion of individual
| voters. My concern is with the forces in government that
| have made my friends in Florida fear that they cannot
| talk about their lives without being branded a pedophile.
| The sitting members of congress who think trans people
| are an abomination. The 20-something states that allow
| for conversion therapy for minors. But sure, I'm glad I
| can feel safe talking about marriage with 44% of rep.
| voters.
| lapcat wrote:
| If I may inject a bit of dispassionate analysis here: I
| think there's a grain of truth to both sides.
|
| It's true that Republicans have moved more toward same-
| sex marriage.
|
| However, it also seems to be true that the legalization
| of same-sex marriage has politically activated many
| Republicans who are still opposed to same-sex marriage.
|
| When same-sex marriage was not legal, those opposed to it
| could remain fairly complacent. It was the status quo and
| wasn't an issue where they felt the need to engage in
| political activism. The most outspoken people were those
| in favor of same-sex marriage. But when same-sex marriage
| was legalized, there was an almost complete reversal, in
| terms of activism.
|
| So today it _feels_ like Republicans are more opposed to
| same-sex marriage, even if the raw numbers say otherwise.
| But perhaps the raw poll numbers don 't reflect the level
| of enthusiasm or activism regarding the issue.
|
| I think this is actually a general point: the level of
| political activism regarding any issue tends to be
| highest among those who feel threatened. So ironically,
| the level of activism opposed to same-sex marriage, for
| example, becomes higher as that view tends to wane in
| public popularity. A powerful overwhelming majority, on
| the other hand, doesn't need to make much effort to
| maintain its status.
| watwut wrote:
| Actual laws actually enacted by conservatives are not
| middle of the road. Nor justices they pushed into supreme
| court. By that I mean that actual politic of both parties
| is different.
| bitwize wrote:
| ethanbond wrote:
| Very curious what objective measures you're referring to. The
| downfall of leftish media itself kind of suggests the opposite:
| mainstream left-leaners are rejecting their more extremist
| media wings. Meanwhile the right is galvanizing around their
| most extreme.
|
| All of this is a bit conjecturey too, so I ask again, what's
| the objective measure you're speaking of?
| incomingpain wrote:
| >Very curious what objective measures you're referring to.
|
| Take this one with pretty graphs. Political polarization in
| the usa has been ongoing for quite some time. Many groups
| have been recording it.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/06/12/7-things-
| to...
|
| >The downfall of leftish media itself kind of suggests the
| opposite: mainstream left-leaners are rejecting their more
| extremist media wings. Meanwhile the right is galvanizing
| around their most extreme.
|
| I find it telling you see fox news as 'most extreme'.
|
| To me, the polarization is objective. We need to evaluate to
| determine if perhaps that is the path. In 50 years from now
| we might be talking about how ridiculously conservative we
| all are back in those antiquated 2020s. What we would see is
| the far left doing really well. They did do pretty well while
| they pushed various disinformation campaigns.
|
| The evaluation though is obviously the opposite. The
| polarization has derived largely because of echo chambers and
| identity politics. Those who are failing discovered this
| reality and have publicly admitted to this failure.
|
| The USA is now sitting at the choice posed in strange new
| worlds. We dont need to keep fighting. We need to get back to
| talking to each other. This is the essence of why elon musk
| is buying twitter. End the censorship and get everyone
| talking again.
| ethanbond wrote:
| The linked source does not at all support the claim you're
| making. I do not say that Fox is the "most extreme," though
| it is certainly extreme. The growth of OAN, Breitbart, etc.
| is actually what I was referring to.
|
| Yeah yeah, Musk will save the day. Got it.
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