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Scott Alexander gives a great breakdown of Trump and how the portrayal of him as being "openly white supremacist" is probably (likely) wrong.
I stick to my thesis from October 2015. There is no evidence that Donald Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year old white guy, for that matter). All this stuff about how he's "the candidate of the KKK" and "the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement" is made up. It's a catastrophic distraction from the dozens of other undeniable problems with Trump that could have convinced voters to abandon him. That it came to dominate the election cycle should be considered a horrifying indictment of our political discourse, in the same way that it would be a horrifying indictment of our political discourse if the entire Republican campaign had been based around the theory that Hillary Clinton was a secret Satanist. Yes, calling Romney a racist was crying wolf. But you are still crying wolf.
I avoided pushing this point any more since last October because I didn't want to look like I was supporting Trump, or accidentally convince anyone else to support Trump. But since we're past the point where that matters any more, I want to present my case.
He further states: "I realize that all of this is going to make me sound like a crazy person and put me completely at odds with every respectable thinker in the media, but luckily, being a crazy person at odds with every respectable thinker in the media has been a pretty good ticket to predictive accuracy lately, so whatever."
So do his claims hold up under scrutiny, is he manipulating the figures, or is he just a 'crazy person' ?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 19 2016, @08:00PM
Islam is not an ideology, it is a culture. Or rather it is a broad group of cultures.
Literally all it takes to be a muslim is to follow the five pillars - prayer, charity, fasting, pilgrimage and belief in god.
So Islam is not an idology but it entails following a set of doctrines and beliefs... You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.
Being muslim means a million different things to a million different people.
Yes and they all agree they should follow the Quran. Which describes a set of practices that all good Muslims should follow.
So, if even muslims can't agree on who is really a muslim, its ignorant to say that islam is an ideology.
And all Nazis can't agree on who is really a Nazi, therefore it's ignorant to say Nazism is an ideology.
Everything beyond that is subject to interpretation and for plenty of people who consider themselves muslim you don't even have to do all five
Any doctrine with more than 10 followers has practitioners who half-ass it. That doesn't mean they stop being ideologies, it just means there are people who are bad at them.
Kind of like how millions of evangelicals deny that catholics are christian.
That would be a No True Scotsman which is a well-established logical error.
Furthermore, race is not genetic. Race is culture.
Right. Okay, who let the post-modernist loon in here?
That's why guys like Ben Franklin did not consider Italians, Germans or even Irish to be white.
Ben Franklin is not an anthropologist. His opinion on what consists of race is about as relevant as Ted Stevens's opinion on the nature of the Internet.
So your reductive complaint that "islam is not a race" is at best meaningless pedantry, but really a confession that you think race is merely biology when the actual definition is far more broad than that.
Ah, I see what the problem is. The actual definition depends on what all speakers of a given word agree upon. Most English speakers use only one definition for the word, which is the classification of people based on external traits as it defined in the old anthropological models of classifying humans. Furthermore, since people like you are trying to redefine race as cultural in order to abuse the power of branding people of racist, this creates the logical error where the vilification of racism is justified because people are unable to control their heritable genetic traits, but this would not apply to race(culture) since you can choose not to follow tenets of your own culture. Nice sophism through, I rate it 19/84.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @05:43AM
Most English speakers use only one definition for the word, which is the classification of people based on external traits as it defined in the old anthropological models of classifying humans.
That's some fancy ad populum fallacy. And your evidence for what "most english speakers" mean is what exactly?
Because essentially all geneticists say there is no biological basis for race. [scientificamerican.com]
For example, Craig Venter of the Human Genome Project: [nytimes.com] ''Race is a social concept, not a scientific one,''
Perhaps what you really mean is that most in the group of bigoted english speakers like yourself.
Do you really want to argue with the previously cited oxford english dictionary? [oxforddictionaries.com] Are you so confident that you think you know better than them what is common usage?
I guess there is no telling a bigot anything he doesn't want to hear.
Why not just own that r-word? Get it off your chest, out in the open.
You will feel so much freer to indulge your true self without the internal restraint of trying to conform to social norms.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 20 2016, @07:47AM
That's some fancy ad populum fallacy.
No, this is literally how language is formed. It's not faulty logic because this is the actual mechanism of action of word formation. That would be like saying it's an ad populum to say that the person who got most votes won the election.
Incidentally, citing the dictionary is actually an argument from authority, because dictionaries are descriptive rather than prescriptive. A dictionary does not tell you how you should use words, it tells you how words are being used by people. Furthermore, ignoring the fact that the very same page also lists the definition of race you argue against is cherrypicking.
And your evidence for what "most english speakers" mean is what exactly?
None, this is just my opinion. If you really have to be a contrarian about it, we can agree to disagree.
Because essentially all geneticists say there is no biological basis for race.
I didn't say it is. It's not that unusual for people to use vague and inaccurate definitions, that doesn't mean the definition is wrong. A logically unsound concept can be accurately defined.
Perhaps what you really mean is that most in the group of bigoted english speakers like yourself.
No.
Do you really want to argue with the previously cited oxford english dictionary?
I'm not even sure how exactly one is supposed to argue with a definition. Suppose that OED defined "rock" as a "large blue mouse". How exactly would you argue against it?
Are you so confident that you think you know better than them what is common usage?
Being in the dictionary does not imply it's commonly used. Many words have rare, outdated or domain-specific interpretations. Take hacker for example, some tech nerds use a fairly benign meaning for it, but to most people outside the hacker subculture, it just means someone who illegally breaks into computer systems.
I guess there is no telling a bigot anything he doesn't want to hear.
That's a bit extreme to say about someone based on linguistic disagreements.
Why not just own that r-word? Get it off your chest, out in the open.
You will feel so much freer to indulge your true self without the internal restraint of trying to conform to social norms.
Raspberry!