I’m sure the tally is much higher since that meme was made.
annnnnd were back
😎
Yanno what I hate?
This ‘all or nothing’ bullshit.
ACAB, Blue Line…
Absolutism is cancerous.
There are good cops and bad cops and I hope that this sends a message that shittiness won’t be supported.
Authored by Steve Straub via The Federalist Papers,
According to a new report several Texas Democrats who fled the state in a private jet, without masks, to avoid having to vote on the state’s election integrity bill have tested positive for Covid-19.
Via Fox News:
“Several of the Texas Democrats who fled the state capital to avoid voting on an election integrity bill have tested positive for the coronavirus.
Three of the 60 Texas House Democrats tested positive for the virus while staying in Washington, D.C., according to Texas House Democratic Caucus leadership.
One of the members found out about their positive test late on Friday evening but did not have symptoms, officials say. All House members were notified of the positive tests and were all tested themselves immediately.
The caucus says that the two other members found out about their positive test on Saturday.
The members who tested positive will be forced to isolate themselves for 10 days.”
I guess karma really is a bitch.
Maybe next time they’ll stay and do their duty.
The Good Lord loves a bit of irony…
“Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So, the Nothing grows stronger.”
The Neverending Story (1984)
Anonymous asked:
dxscostick-deactivated20170429 answered:
don’t message me again until you’ve finished this book.
oooooooooh shit
Anonymous asked:
¡Viva Cuba libre! ¡Viva la Libertad!
nunyabizni answered:
Be the America these people believe us to be
So re this post, I’ve discovered I actually have opinions on the whole ‘debating someone with bad opinions is basically signing up for their next rally’ thing. So, some jumbled thoughts.
-The whole idea that the correct move is to just block and avoid any arguments of the other side without reading them because if you did you’d end up converted seems like the caricature a movement comes up with to explain why other people disagree with them. (It is, in fact, something I remember liberal types attributing to Bush supporters when I was a kid). It seems like just an admission of defeat about the strength of your own ideas to actually believe it for yourself.
-More concretely, I honestly think a refusal to even slightly engage with the ideas of the other side leaves you naive/vulnerable to basically any change in presentation or decent marketing campaign. See: all the terf shit that does massive numbers among theoretically trans-positive people on here because the OP doesn’t explicitly say ‘I hate trans women’.
-Beyond that, like - I really can’t emphasize enough how much alt right types love being able to strike the post of ‘Forbidden Knowledge that the Globalist Elite tries to suppress because they know they don’t have any arguments against it!” Maybe don’t play right into that?
-And really, all this just gives way too much credit to far right ideology. Like, I read Schmidt and Junger in school for a class on fascist theory and I promise that both of them are way more eloquent and intelligent than any alt right guy on twitter, and I still managed to not be a nazi! It’s not that hard, if you’ve actually thought about your beliefs and commitments and why you have them!
-Not there’s any moral obligation to spend hours debating with assholes online, obviously. More often than not you really shouldn’t. But, like, that’s because it’s exhausting and unpleasant and I dearly hope most people have better ways to spend their free time, not because the tweets of some guy with a white marble statue as an avatar are actually an eldritch tome that’s going to burn out your soul and turn you into a nazi.
So, okay, I think the key insight to take from that post is that when you debate with the fringe types, they are much better at arguing with people like you than you are at arguing with people like them.
They have more practice, and they’re more invested in it, because it’s
the only way to grow from their present marginal standing. A layman usually can’t outmanoeuvre a lawyer in court, even if the law is on their side.
The default outcome when debating anyone is that nobody convinces anybody else, but practice and investment matter more than being correct, so people with a lot of practice and investment tend to have way above-average results, even when their position sucks. And unlike debate club, in real life you can just lie about things that the other party can’t easily check!
To the extent you can get anything at all out of this, it should I think be taken as a caution against hubris: don’t assume that if presented with an extremely wrong argument, you’ll be able to tell, or to frame your objections in terms of specific uanswerable criticisms, and especially don’t assume you’ll be able to do it on the fly. Show respect for people who are better-trained than you in debating a given topic by not taking for granted that you’ll be able to outmanoeuvre them or poke holes in their reasoning.
Now, I do think that it’s generally taking it too far to treat Bad Opinions as a kind of mind poison that people have to avoid coming into contact with, and it’s pretty damning that people with hegemonic opinions almost never learn to defend themselves in debate because they don’t need to. But if you’re going to do it, “don’t think you’re too smart to get suckered by someone whose job is to sucker people” is, I think, the right mindset to approach it from.
Also drastically misses the point with this part (well, the entire post, but this part specifically):
-The whole idea that the correct move is to just block and avoid any arguments of the other side without reading them because if you did you’d end up converted
The idea isn’t that they’ll convert you. It’s the idea that you won’t convert them, but they might win over some of your audience. When you debate them, you are helping then: they aren’t actually here to debate. They just want you to give them your platform, so they can appear to be having a debate, and to use lies and misinformation - which you won’t be able to refute in a debate format where they can just keep throwing more lies and misinformation - to make their ideas sound plausible.
There’s a famous quote by Sartre - here’s the first part:
Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors.
And this is exactly the kind of thing he was talking about. They know they are lying, they are doing it deliberately. They know you will try to debate reasonably with them, to counter their points with facts, and because they have no desire to use facts, and are deliberately using lies, that puts you at a disadvantage. They can easily come out of a debate looking better than you, when you are arguing about things the audience isn’t sure about, and you cant refute their misinformation.
Back in 2018, I think, David Frum, announced he was going to debate Steve Bannon, at the prestigious Munk Debates, and was convinced he would demolish Bannon and his ideas. People advised him against it, that he was just giving Bannon and the alt-right a massive platform, and he ignored it.
Polls of the audience afterwards were not what he expected, and he had to publish a face-saving op-ed afterwards about his mistake. He of course didn’t learn the lesson he should have, but still recognised he had to say something to try to minimize his public humiliation.
When you try to debate fascists, the alright and bigots generally, all you are doing is giving in to your own ego. You want to show off your intellect and skills of argumentation, and you aren’t thinking about what’s at stake.
It doesn’t matter how smart or educated you are (or think you are) - they aren’t playing the same game as you, and you will not win the debate. They aren’t debating, they are engaging in propaganda.
All you are doing is giving them your platform, and helping them to spread their propaganda.
The 2nd-4th bullet points in OPs list are all demonstrations of this kind of folly. Who cares if they “love being able to strike the post of ‘Forbidden Knowledge that the Globalist Elite tries to suppress because they know they don’t have any arguments against it!”
If you choose to debate them because you’re scared of what they might say if you don’t, you are the one serving their ends. You are letting them influence you.
And this crap: “I honestly think a refusal to even slightly engage with the ideas of the other side leaves you naive/vulnerable” - their ideas have been engaged with quite enough, thank you. They have already been debated, and disproven. Why do you feel the need that the ideas of bigots need to be debated? Why is there never a point with you people where we can say, “racism (or sexism or transphobia or homophobia or ableism, etc) is wrong, we don’t do that here, shut up.”
It will give a lot of insight into the rhetorical tactics of the far right. Sometimes just pointing those out is enough.
That’s really a fantastic series, and I encourage everyone to watch it. Also, something I forgot to add in my earlier post:
When you choose to debate bigots, you are explicitly and obviously broadcasting to the targets of those bigots that you are not their ally, and your platform is not a safe place for them.
If you are willing to entertain the ideas of bigots, and talk with them as if their ideas are just opinions, and worthy of discussion, and not the hateful bigotry that it is which is not worthy of debate, you are sending the message that you really don’t care about their victims.
Marginalised people and other victims of bigotry will recognise you for the patsy of bigots that you are, and will assume that since you are willing to give a voice to bigots, you will not be an effective moderator or protector of them when bigots harass them.
You might disagree with that assessment and it might not be true (unlikely, but I’m giving you the benefit of doubt) - but this is the message you are sending, and the message that the targets of bigots will be recieving.
And so the targets of bigots will move away from you, looking for people and places where they will actually be safe.
If you do actually want to be a safe place for targets of bigots, you need to stop treating the ideas of bigots as just opinions that you can debate over, and actually start standing up for the targets of bigots.
Surely we are willing to engage with the ideas of bigots and racists because those ideas result in a non-trivial amount of death. It seems like something that’s kind of too important to just ignore.
Like, obviously if I’m taking their side, that’s bad and sends a bad message to my audience. But in practice this is a hugely counterproductive and counterintuitive way to approach a problem.
It’s like “These are fundamentally flawed, destructive and self-interested beliefs that, when put into practice, result in the deaths of thousands or even millions of people,
which is why I’m not actually going to engage with those ideas in a way that exposes their cruelty to a new or uninformed audience, why I’m actively going to discourage people within my political circles from openly acknowledging or engaging with these ideas, and why I’m not actually going to try and persuade anyone who believes them to change their mind.”
> “-Beyond that, like - I really can’t emphasize enough how much alt right types love being able to strike the post of ‘Forbidden Knowledge that the Globalist Elite tries to suppress because they know they don’t have any arguments against it!” Maybe don’t play right into that?"
So do Progressives, actually. And conspiracy theorists, and a lot of other people. Including ads. It’s just that common. It’s a good “hook”, in marketing-speak. Victimhood is currency.
And it’s a lot more effective when, for example, people literally riot to try and silence you, like they did with Milo Y. at Berkeley.
Or when someone there pepper sprays a woman for wearing a red hat, without realizing that it’s a Trump parody hat.
>"So, okay, I think the key insight to take from that post is that when you debate with the fringe types, they are much better at arguing with people like you than you are at arguing with people like them. They have more practice, and they’re more invested in it, because it’s the only way to grow from their present marginal standing."
I don’t see how "they’re necessarily better at it” follows from those premises. In fact, I don’t even see why the other guy is necessarily more invested or experienced.
I’ve seen plenty of people who have spent years arguing about the same subjects, and they were just as wrong and easily debunked as when they started. Bigots - by definition - aren’t exactly known for their ability to learn and grow.
OP pretty clearly said “some far-right rando on Twitter isn’t necessarily good at debating”, yet you’re acting like OP said the opposite. I really must wonder how well you could’ve understood much, much more nuanced and complicated concepts and statements.
>“When you try to debate fascists, the alright and bigots generally, all you are doing is giving in to your own ego. You want to show off your intellect and skills of argumentation, and you aren’t thinking about what’s at stake."
You say this while, ironically, being bigoted yourself, and making smug assumptions about people’s motives.
Sometimes people debate because they sincerely want to convince the other person they’re wrong. Sometimes they want to publicly debunk folks who play “silenced widdle victim”. Sometimes it works.
Also, "the alt-right playbook” is a pack of lies. Innuendo Studios is a liar. He comes up with narratives about strawmen, based on little to no evidence, that seem compelling to left-wing bigots.
And he acts like “be nice to people and maybe they’ll listen to you” is some kind of 5D Multidimensional Time Travel Chess strat. I think he’s even endorsed tactics from the left like banning edgy jokes that, by his own narrative, drive people right.
sonic5421
