Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Friday February 09 2018, @12:31PM   Printer-friendly
from the Where-is-Waldo-county?-dept. dept.

Small town Republican thoughts on refuting the alt-right. In The Republican Journal:

I want to make one thing very clear: The Waldo County Republican Committee absolutely, unequivocally condemns Nazi and KKK ideologies and actions, as well as any other kind of bigotry, and we encourage all of our voters and the community at large to do the same.

For fellow Republicans out there, worry not, we don't like Antifa's ideology and actions either, but we need to clean our own house; we need to worry about our own responsibilities.

Such honesty, and clarity of thought!

The most dangerous part of politics today is identity politics, trolling, pathos and a severe lack of critical thinking. You cannot defeat the insidious hatred of bigoted politics with more hate. By doing so, you morph the conversation away from policy and ideology to silly label syntax, eventually devolving completely into back and forth verbal gymnastics. Make no mistake, these trolls are ready for you as you stoop to their level, and they beat you up with mountains of experience.

So what do we do? Very simple. Stay neighborly by controlling your reaction. Seek out those with whom you disagree, try to understand them first, and politely offer your counter argument.

And it looks like the Republicans in Maine, if not in Illinois, are rejecting the alt-right.

The way to defeat Mr. Kawczynski is not by attacking him, but by attacking his ideas. Here are some flaws in his thinking: His immigration ideas are antithetical to the Maine Republican party platform, a section of which states, "We support the assimilation of legal immigrants into Maine society."

Kawczynski's ideas stand in contrast to Maine history and culture; in fact, it is white folks with racist ideologies who pose the greatest threat to Maine's foundation, not other races of people.

Another brilliant tidbit:

Ultimately, all you have to do is walk outside with your eyes open in this state to see that Kawczynski's fearmongering about "white genocide" is completely laughable.

Entire guest column is well worth a read.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday February 09 2018, @04:30PM (9 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Friday February 09 2018, @04:30PM (#635547) Journal

    > No matter how well you'd research your arguments, such a person will dismiss whatever you say

    I learned that years ago when I tried to reason with a creationist. The whole debate was a red herring. The guy was really rejecting science and rationality, not just evolution. He was happy to profess acceptance of science that said things he liked, but when it was conclusions he didn't like then it was all "there's no proof", and how do we know anything is real or know anything at all, it was impossible to discover anything about conditions over a million years ago because time and entropy destroy all evidence, etc.

    If you care to learn more about it, I found The Authoritarians ( http://theauthoritarians.org [theauthoritarians.org] ) illuminating. It's tempting to believe all our problems would be solved if only we could send all those kinds of people away, like with the B-ark, but even if that was possible, I wonder if another two generations would replenish their numbers, putting us all right back at square one on that problem. Further, such a move is the very diversity reducing kind of thing they are eager to employ in the mistaken belief it would solve their problems. Reducing diversity is usually a bad idea, makes groups more susceptible to groupthink, even if those kicked out are the ones most prone to groupthink.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Interesting=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Friday February 09 2018, @04:49PM (8 children)

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday February 09 2018, @04:49PM (#635556)

    I learned that years ago when I tried to reason with a creationist. The whole debate was a red herring. The guy was really rejecting science and rationality, not just evolution.

    Yep. Remember when Bill Nye the Science Guy tried debating Ken Ham? Who "won"? It depended on which news source you read: if you read something religiously biased, then Ham won, if you read something biased towards secularism, then Nye won. For fundamentalists, Ham "obviously" won simply by rejecting Nye's arguments by just pointing to the Bible as "proof", case closed. For secularists, Nye "obviously" won by ignoring the Bible as some kind of scientific authority and looking at real evidence, but for religious people that approach is useless, because they don't believe in evidence, only their holy book. The debate was a waste of time and didn't convince anyone. Debating a Creationist is a useless endeavor; it's better to just dismiss them out-of-hand as loons. Remember, these are the same people who really believe that there's angels and demons among us, that the world is going to end any day now with the "Rapture", etc. You can't reason with them, so it's useless to try.

    It's tempting to believe all our problems would be solved if only we could send all those kinds of people away, like with the B-ark, but even if that was possible, I wonder if another two generations would replenish their numbers,

    No, that wouldn't happen. If you sent all those kinds of people away, the US would have a fraction of its present population, and that fraction isn't reproducing much, so the population would simply go down from that point, not up.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday February 09 2018, @05:16PM (3 children)

      by tangomargarine (667) on Friday February 09 2018, @05:16PM (#635576)

      Why do people feel the need to declare a "winner" of a debate? You're supposed to be listening to both sides so that you learn something. Not everything is a damn competition where we need to crown a victor.

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
      • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday February 09 2018, @05:34PM

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday February 09 2018, @05:34PM (#635598)

        I've never heard of a debate where there wasn't a declared winner. That's precisely the way collegiate debates work: two teams debate according to a specific format, and one is declared the winner.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @09:11PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @09:11PM (#635719)

        You win this thread!

      • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @10:30PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @10:30PM (#635750)

        Why do people feel the need to declare a "winner" of a debate?

        Without that, you just have an argument.
        You can do that without leaving your own neighborhood.

        The Oxford Union (a noted debate venue) does this by having the audience exit through 1 of 2 labeled doors. [google.com]
        In doing so, they cast a vote for the most convincing side in the debate.

        -- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @06:37PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 09 2018, @06:37PM (#635640)

      No, that wouldn't happen. If you sent all those kinds of people away, the US would have a fraction of its present population, and that fraction isn't reproducing much, so the population would simply go down from that point, not up.

      Just so. As Peter Medawar pointed out:

      The USA is so enormous, and so numerous are its schools, colleges and religious seminaries, many devoted to special religious beliefs ranging from the unorthodox to the dotty, that we can hardly wonder at its yielding a more bounteous harvest of gobbledygook than the rest of the world put together.

    • (Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Friday February 09 2018, @09:13PM (2 children)

      by jmorris (4844) on Friday February 09 2018, @09:13PM (#635720)

      And who will ask the better question about Bill Nye debating science or philosophy? Why is he considered an authority on either subject? It is about as sensible as listening to Captain Kangaroo pontificate on the details of modern seamanship. Which points to the core flaw here, the left itself is anti-science and anti-reason, but as usual, projecting their sins onto their political opponents. Nye played a character on a children's TV show long ago, a show scripted by other people. He is not a philosopher by training, profession or otherwise. He is not a scientist by training or profession. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering but apparently didn't like the work and went into comedy and then children's TV.

      • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday February 10 2018, @06:34AM

        by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday February 10 2018, @06:34AM (#635896) Journal

        Yeah? And compared to Ken Ham he's Willard V. O. Quine. Cry harder, you disingenuous sack of shit.

        --
        I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10 2018, @10:05AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 10 2018, @10:05AM (#635955)

        Here we see an alt-righter religious nut triggered by a douchey scientist. If you just didn't like Nye then fine, but anti-science and reason? Either you are starting to lose it in the face of your hero falling further and further, or you truly are just a shill and you took your roll a little too far into troll territory.