Just keep in mind, what most Americans refer to as left-wing or leftist is *centrist* (and boring as hell) in the civilized world. People like Sanders are boring, run of the mill centrists in places like Norway.
-- I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
Civilized? Bitch, please. Allowing the government control over every aspect of your life is not civilization, it's just sheep trying to make themselves feel better about being sheep.
Well put, and, as I keep saying, you can't have small government unless you keep the corporations small as well, otherwise they'll control people (eat the sheep) instead.
-- Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
Truth. We're a hell of a long way past what's actually necessary though. And most of that shit is just to cover up that you're being sold to wolves daily anyway.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @05:56AM
(21 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday June 26 2020, @05:56AM (#1012796)
I think the best refutation to this frequently stated claim comes from Norway itself: Hjernevask [wikipedia.org].
Hjernevask was a series run on Norway public television about gender politics. And so you can only imagine what it's about. Except you can't. Hjernevask means to brainwash, and it was deeply critical of gender politics and the radicalized path they had taken. And the film received an exceptionally positive reputation. But not only this, it ultimately led to the termination of public funding for gender studies programs in Norway. If that was run in America he would have been labeled a Nazi or misogynist at the minimum with the video being no doubt labeled hate speech. The author would have faced never-ending digital hate mobs and calls for his head on a spike. American democratic social views and values have become deeply radicalized relative to just about anywhere in the world. The scariest thing is that people don't even realize how radicalized they're becoming. This is how you get those groups we now look back in history wondering 'how did things ever get to this point?'
As an aside, it's an absolutely awesome series. The Wiki page has links to all of the videos, and the English subtitles are excellent. Amusingly though, YouTube has chosen to declare that they have "inappropriate content" and so the videos are marked as adult only. That's also a new thing. New America, eh?
So I'm a radical for supporting human rights then? Even as an outsider to this particular subset of humanity? Jesus. This may come as a very large shock to you, so I want you to sit down and take a breath, maybe have a few sips of water before I hit you with this. Okay? You ready? *deep breath*
NOT EVERYONE YOU DISAGREE WITH HAS THE EXACT SAME SET OF BELIEFS AND NOT EVERYONE YOU DISAGREE WITH IS ALL THE WAY ON THE FAR EXTREME OF THOSE BELIEFS!
I'm sure you're mentally segfaulting right about now, but there are such things as leftist gun owners (hi!) and people who are able to recognize irrational excesses from exponents of the causes they support. Huge revelation, right? What a shock, right? And, oh pooballs, it looks like now you're going to have to actually do some mental legwork instead of just assuming everyone you disagree with is some unthinking tentacle extruded from a writhing, self-propelled mass of slogans.
-- I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
"So I'm a radical for supporting human rights then?"
It's a very radical idea still, almost 200 years after Thomas Jefferson died.
"NOT EVERYONE YOU DISAGREE WITH HAS THE EXACT SAME SET OF BELIEFS AND NOT EVERYONE YOU DISAGREE WITH IS ALL THE WAY ON THE FAR EXTREME OF THOSE BELIEFS!"
Very well said.
-- If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @05:52PM
(14 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Saturday June 27 2020, @05:52PM (#1013318)
Do you even realize how hard you just shifted the goalposts? Your original post was, "Just keep in mind, what most Americans refer to as left-wing or leftist is *centrist* (and boring as hell) in the civilized world." Without missing a breath you now happily transition to your views and behaviors instead of what you literally said "what most Americans refer to as left-wing or leftist".
When "most Americans" speak of a leftist, how often do you think they are referring to whatever you're describing? By contrast how often do you think they're referencing things such as this [youtube.com]. That is US Democratic Representative Maxine Walters encouraging people to form mobs and try to harass (if not worse) any representative from the opposite political party. How often do you think they're referencing the groups that will increasingly aggressively try to destroy the life of anybody who does something they politically disagree with? How often do you think they're referring to the brownshirtsblackshirts that appear in an effort to intimidate, assault, and disrupt any and everybody that disagrees with their ideology?
The problem you're facing is what happens when people choose not to actively reject these radicals that are perceived to be, at least compared to the alternative, ideologically aligned with them. Those radicals behavior becomes normalized and gradually trends towards becoming a part of the group as a whole. Here's a hint for you: you're likely simply not an *American* leftist anymore. You may be a leftist and liberal, but American leftism and liberalism is characterized by the democratic party. And that party has become deeply radicalized and going down a dark path that many other nations have gone in the past - invariably with nothing but regret to show for it.
An increasingly large number of the ideals and behaviors that characterize what most people mean they refer to a 'leftist American' would be unwelcome in nearly any other nation.
If you think the Democratic party machine is leftist, or indeed has been since about the early 70s, you're so delusional that nothing I say or do is going to reach you. Ever since Nixon kicked McGovern's ass all over the electoral map they've been, slowly at first and since about the mid-90s at almost supersonic speed, shifting rightward and authoritarian. Bill Clinton was a moderate Republican by the standards of merely 25 years before, Obama was barely any better than Reagan and substantially worse on civil rights (spying, dronebombing a US citizen), and the beat goes on.
Your characterization of anyone mobbing as leftist is worse than delusional: it's intentional gaslighting. Were all those neo-Nazi fucks flying the literal Nazi flag demanding the governor of Michigan reopen in any sense leftists? You don't know what words mean and until you do I will thank you to shut up. You're talking out your ass at great length and it smells like it, too.
-- I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @06:51AM
(12 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday June 29 2020, @06:51AM (#1013992)
Once again, please look at your own words. You said, specifically: "what most Americans refer to as left-wing or leftist is *centrist*"
Now you're instead engaging in some sort of weird nonsequitur about whatever you personally happen to define as leftist, and then just throwing out politically charged words in a mostly incoherent fashion. Calm down and think rationally.
You intentionally snipped off the context of her post:
Just keep in mind, what most Americans refer to as left-wing or leftist is *centrist* (and boring as hell) in the civilized world. People like Sanders are boring, run of the mill centrists in places like Norway.
Your comment isn't rational. You're arguing in bad faith.
-- Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @04:23PM
(5 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Monday June 29 2020, @04:23PM (#1014143)
She obviously knows what she said. I assumed nobody else was reading this. It's buried in the middle of a dead thread.
Read above since you seem to have skipped to the bottom or something. And no, the views most Americans are referring to when they speak of "leftists" would most certainly not be centrist in a place like Norway. These things like cancel culture, statue toppling, digital hate trying to get people fired for holding different opinions, taking offense at everything by actively working to interpret things in the worst possible way, etc, etc would generally be seen as deeply radicalized in nearly everywhere else in the world. The American left has become deeply and dangerously radicalized.
Sounds to me more like they've successfully adopted the tactics and strategies of the American "right," who are now collectively shitting their Depends.
-- I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @09:15AM
(3 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Tuesday June 30 2020, @09:15AM (#1014434)
I'm not sure I agree unless you go back some number of centuries, at which point the modern notions of liberal and conservative lose all meaning. I mean obviously the conservatives had their brand of ignorant and bigoted self righteous hypocrisy with the Moral Majority, Focus on the Family, and so on. I can still remember people trying to ban Dungeons and Dragons because it was 'Satanic'.
But what we're seeing today is similar to the bigotry (and hypocrisy) of times *far* past. Digital mobs in particular are becoming increasingly reminiscent of lynch mobs. While that has a racial connotation today, people of all sorts were lynched for falling short of what the masses perceived as their social norms of the time. The largest lynching in the US was the Great Hanging at Gainsville. [wikipedia.org] 41 men were lynched for being 'suspected unionists.' The digital mobs of today are actively and purposefully doing all they can to try to destroy people's lives: getting them fired and even actively driving people to suicide. And the digital world is increasingly starting to blend with the real world where that 'digital violence' is becoming physical violence.
This is rather unprecedented at such scales. I mean can't try to step outside of this all and look back at how people are going to see all of this? For that matter, step outside of it and imagine how people in much of the rest of the world *already* see it! This is a serious problem, but people are just kind of shrugging it off, or creating incredibly spurious rationalizations for it. Mobs are stupid and dangerous. Self righteous mobs are the same only many magnitudes worse. Events of this sort are relatively new in modern times, but it's not a new story: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I've always been a shy sort myself, and all this stuff is telling me boils down to "hole up, hunker down, keep your nose clean, and wait for it blow over. Oh, and get across the Canadian border ASAP."
-- I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:13PM
(1 child)
by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:13PM (#1015024)
Wouldn't disagree, though I chose a bit further than Canada - whom I suspect this nonsense will also come to in relatively short order.
The one thing that confuses me about society at large is that I think if you ask people about the trajectory of the country most people can see the directionality/momentum of where things are headed. But they kind of just blank on what the destination is. It's kind of a fun thing about reading very old newspapers around the time of various historical events. They rarely if ever come from nothing. It's all just a gradual stairstepping towards the final show. So recurrent is this that on occasion get this sort of deja vu type feeling when reading of modern events. It just feels I'm just reading more of those old headlines leading up to a historic event you already know.
I'm poor, traumatized, and all alone in the world save for my SO. We have very very limited options. I plan if at all possible to end up in Halifax or thereabouts within 5 years or fewer and basically just disappear off the face of the earth waiting for all this shit to blow over. I know I won't live to see a positive resolution, and I know I'm about to witness geopolitical seismic shockwaves the likes of which have not been seen since world war II. I just don't want to be in the epicenter when the shaking starts.
-- I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
It's like arguing with a fart - a bunch of stinky hot air that only provides relief to the garter at the expense of others.
Not worth it. I've been so busy this last few months that I decided on this Canada Day holiday to see if anything has changed. it hasn't. Too bad the world has.
It's fun to tease the unevolved, but it got boring, and I don't have the spare time to look for any alternative (and don't really need one, so wtf). Bad enough that months after giving all the clients notice that they need to wear masks and they can't enter the building, half still show up unmasked. I discussed it with the younger workers and they aren't confident enough to enforce the rules, so I told them I'd be the mean cunt who enforced it. Half say "I forgot it in the car". One said "I can't wear a mask because I have a cough." Seriously, we're doomed.
But seeing all the Trumpers refusing to wear masks is great - get the libertarians out of the gene pool sooner rather than later. Will also raise the average IQ, so what's not to like?
-- SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @07:08AM
(2 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday July 02 2020, @07:08AM (#1015299)
You may be disappointed to discover that both conscientiousness and a favorable attitude towards regulation have both been correlated quite strongly with lower IQs. Though you may be happy to discover that favorable attitudes towards social liberalism are also strongly correlated with higher IQs.
These are all fairly recent discoveries which confound previously works on 'conservative' vs 'liberal' studies. The reason being that contemporary liberal ideology tends to encompass social liberalism = high IQ as well as well as greater regulation = low IQ. And obviously vice versa for contemporary conservatism. This is likely a part of the reason that the results were so inconsistent. Incidentally libertarianism encompasses the values of social liberalism = high IQ, minimal regulation = high IQ, and freedom over conscientiousness = high IQ.
There's also an issue of age bias in older studies. In my life I've found one old saying to be unfortunately true: "If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at 40, you have no brain." I expect you'd find a rather different distributions of cognitive abilities in looking at older vs younger conservatives and liberals. Views change over time - yet many studies are carried out primarily on college age volunteers in psychology departments.
IQ measures very little aside from how well you do on IQ tests. I've consistently placed from the low 140s to the low 150s...and so fucking what?
EQ and CQ, emotional and cultural intelligence, are at least as important. INT and WIS are separate dice in DnD for a reason. And someone with high IQ, low emotional intelligence, and low cultural competence is extremely dangerous to themselves and other people, because they lack a certain amount of what you may term "memetic immune response" *and* are super, super-good at fooling themselves, justifying their bad takes, and reinforcing them internally. After all, if all those chimp-brained commoners can't argue you out of X, X *must* be correct, riiiiiiiight? And there's no difference, as we know, between theory and practice. A-yup.
-- I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2020, @06:19AM
by Anonymous Coward
on Friday July 03 2020, @06:19AM (#1015686)
I think this argument can be strongly challenged with a simple question. Why would somebody *want* to fool themselves? The answer is easy: because they have an *emotional* desire to reach some outcome that contradicts what logic tells them. If you do not let yourself be controlled by emotion you have no necessity to fool yourself. And while I think I can see the argument you're alluding to, I do not agree that that this is dangerous in the least.
Your argument I suspect is that if people consider, without compassion, that e.g. '6% of people commit 50% of violent crime' then that naturally trends towards 'okay get rid of the 6%, get rid of 50% of violent crime.' But I think that is both an emotional idea and an emotional conclusion. The idea itself is emotional since it makes no sense. Purge millions, many who have done nothing, for the sake of some percent that have? Would you yourself then not be guilty of far worse? And the conclusion itself is emotional since even if you want to achieve this end there are vastly better ways to do so. At the age of 18 each male is offered $10,000 to engage in an irreversible vasectomy. For the sake of gender equality we might extend the offer to females as well though that's probably unnecessary. There'd be absolutely no restrictions on angle shooting the law such as by freezing your sperm. The bias in who would opt in to such a procedure means you've effectively achieved your end while not only never engaging in one non-consensual action, but actually actively improving the lives of many millions of people. Same desired outcome but a vastly better path there. Emotion vs logic.
In many ways I think this is the difference between Jefferson and Lincoln. Jefferson in 1808, the first year it was constitutionally possible, ended the transatlantic slave trade. No new slaves were coming in and the system was only being perpetuated by the fact that children of slaves were also born into slavery. Jefferson wanted to phase out slavery in a peaceful and productive way. His idea was to take the children of existing slaves while providing compensation to their 'owners', train them up, and send them abroad to make a living as skilled freemen. He felt that freeing the slaves en mass in the US would cause issues due to discrimination and the inability of slaves lacking any meaningful skills trying to make their way in a deeply merit based society. Lincoln instead just went for an emotional solution. He forced the matter, started a war resulting in about 2% of Americans being killed (seriously imagine 1 in every 50 people you ever knew or saw suddenly being violently killed!), nearly destroyed the country and certainly did destroy its unity. And the freed slaves were left in exactly the situation Jefferson predicted. They faced immense discrimination and had difficulty making anything of their lives. Their descendants continue to argue, with some degree of merit, that these issues -now approaching 200 years ago- continue to affect them to this day. Jefferson was intelligent, Lincoln was emotional. And today we, as an entire society, continue to pay the price for such emotion. And indeed today we continue along an emotional trajectory.
It's only through consideration of things such as this that I'd ever frame conscientiousness in a negative way. Slavery was of course an absolutely awful institution that was inherently wrong and needed to be abolished. But solutions to problems must always be driven by logic. A man driven by emotion is like an animal on a leash led wherever its master fancies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @09:42PM
(2 children)
by Anonymous Coward
on Wednesday July 01 2020, @09:42PM (#1015163)
Then go live in the civilized world then. If you are a libertarian on either side of the spectrum you only have one option right now, and thats America. After that everything is varying degrees of less liberty. For those who are libertarian minded they have nowhere else to go, they are a bear backed into a cave, and you are the guy with a stick poking it for fun because you can't handle only having 90% of the world being significantly more authoritarian.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @03:00PM
by Anonymous Coward
on Thursday July 02 2020, @03:00PM (#1015414)
I definitely do not agree with this notion. In my opinion libertarianism is particularly under assault in the United States, and to a lesser degree in Western/Central Europe.
The other 90% of the world nobody ever talks about lacks certain niceties, but I find them to be vastly more free places *in general*. One major difference are the liberties you gain and lose. In America you're free to call the government and other people all sorts of nasty things. But that's pretty much the main liberty you have. And it's increasingly becoming a facade. Say the wrong thing and you can find a hate mob going out of their way to ruin your life and meet words with violence. Similarly, the pseudo-governmental companies companies which are increasingly gatekeeper's can erase you without any recompense whatsoever.
But in much of the rest of the world by contrast you have vastly more freedom of action. Want to sell stuff outside your home? You can. Want to turn your home into a restaurant? Can do. Want to have overgrown trees in your front yard because you think they look beautiful? Can do. In general people and the government leave you alone unless you start actively screwing up society. And that is the way things should be. The downside is you often end up sacrificing freedom of speech. And in times of tyranny that would be abysmal. Yet in America today we already see that our freedom of speech is a facade. If the government wants to ban some topic or prevent some person from speaking - they can do so trivially, without ever having to pass a single law. In some ways it's much worse, because there's no accountability. Oh every single American card and financial processing institution decided to start rejecting donations to Wikileaks? Don't worry - they're just private institutions doing whatever they want. I mean don't you now, massive multinational financial organizations just love engaging in actions that do nothing but make them lose money. No governmental action there, nope - none at all.
So while I think freedom of action and freedom of speech are both critical, if I'm left to choose one over the other it would be the one that actually involves doing things.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 26 2020, @01:34AM (30 children)
Just keep in mind, what most Americans refer to as left-wing or leftist is *centrist* (and boring as hell) in the civilized world. People like Sanders are boring, run of the mill centrists in places like Norway.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday June 26 2020, @02:41AM (4 children)
Civilized? Bitch, please. Allowing the government control over every aspect of your life is not civilization, it's just sheep trying to make themselves feel better about being sheep.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 26 2020, @08:45PM
What did I tell you about what happens to you in Hell when you commit strawman genocide, carrion-breath?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by cmdrklarg on Friday June 26 2020, @09:05PM (2 children)
Having no government (anarchy) is worse. Too many wolves out there for all the sheep to be rugged individualists.
The key is balance; small enough government to facilitate freedom, but enough government to keep the wolves from eating all the sheep.
The US does a horseshit job at both, because most of the shepherds are wolves.
Answer now is don't give in; aim for a new tomorrow.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Saturday June 27 2020, @01:10AM
Well put, and, as I keep saying, you can't have small government unless you keep the corporations small as well, otherwise they'll control people (eat the sheep) instead.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday June 27 2020, @03:16AM
Truth. We're a hell of a long way past what's actually necessary though. And most of that shit is just to cover up that you're being sold to wolves daily anyway.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @05:56AM (21 children)
I think the best refutation to this frequently stated claim comes from Norway itself: Hjernevask [wikipedia.org].
Hjernevask was a series run on Norway public television about gender politics. And so you can only imagine what it's about. Except you can't. Hjernevask means to brainwash, and it was deeply critical of gender politics and the radicalized path they had taken. And the film received an exceptionally positive reputation. But not only this, it ultimately led to the termination of public funding for gender studies programs in Norway. If that was run in America he would have been labeled a Nazi or misogynist at the minimum with the video being no doubt labeled hate speech. The author would have faced never-ending digital hate mobs and calls for his head on a spike. American democratic social views and values have become deeply radicalized relative to just about anywhere in the world. The scariest thing is that people don't even realize how radicalized they're becoming. This is how you get those groups we now look back in history wondering 'how did things ever get to this point?'
As an aside, it's an absolutely awesome series. The Wiki page has links to all of the videos, and the English subtitles are excellent. Amusingly though, YouTube has chosen to declare that they have "inappropriate content" and so the videos are marked as adult only. That's also a new thing. New America, eh?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday June 26 2020, @08:45PM (20 children)
So I'm a radical for supporting human rights then? Even as an outsider to this particular subset of humanity? Jesus. This may come as a very large shock to you, so I want you to sit down and take a breath, maybe have a few sips of water before I hit you with this. Okay? You ready? *deep breath*
NOT EVERYONE YOU DISAGREE WITH HAS THE EXACT SAME SET OF BELIEFS AND NOT EVERYONE YOU DISAGREE WITH IS ALL THE WAY ON THE FAR EXTREME OF THOSE BELIEFS!
I'm sure you're mentally segfaulting right about now, but there are such things as leftist gun owners (hi!) and people who are able to recognize irrational excesses from exponents of the causes they support. Huge revelation, right? What a shock, right? And, oh pooballs, it looks like now you're going to have to actually do some mental legwork instead of just assuming everyone you disagree with is some unthinking tentacle extruded from a writhing, self-propelled mass of slogans.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1) by Arik on Saturday June 27 2020, @02:46PM
It's a very radical idea still, almost 200 years after Thomas Jefferson died.
"NOT EVERYONE YOU DISAGREE WITH HAS THE EXACT SAME SET OF BELIEFS AND NOT EVERYONE YOU DISAGREE WITH IS ALL THE WAY ON THE FAR EXTREME OF THOSE BELIEFS!"
Very well said.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 27 2020, @05:52PM (14 children)
Do you even realize how hard you just shifted the goalposts? Your original post was, "Just keep in mind, what most Americans refer to as left-wing or leftist is *centrist* (and boring as hell) in the civilized world." Without missing a breath you now happily transition to your views and behaviors instead of what you literally said "what most Americans refer to as left-wing or leftist".
When "most Americans" speak of a leftist, how often do you think they are referring to whatever you're describing? By contrast how often do you think they're referencing things such as this [youtube.com]. That is US Democratic Representative Maxine Walters encouraging people to form mobs and try to harass (if not worse) any representative from the opposite political party. How often do you think they're referencing the groups that will increasingly aggressively try to destroy the life of anybody who does something they politically disagree with? How often do you think they're referring to the
brownshirtsblackshirts that appear in an effort to intimidate, assault, and disrupt any and everybody that disagrees with their ideology?The problem you're facing is what happens when people choose not to actively reject these radicals that are perceived to be, at least compared to the alternative, ideologically aligned with them. Those radicals behavior becomes normalized and gradually trends towards becoming a part of the group as a whole. Here's a hint for you: you're likely simply not an *American* leftist anymore. You may be a leftist and liberal, but American leftism and liberalism is characterized by the democratic party. And that party has become deeply radicalized and going down a dark path that many other nations have gone in the past - invariably with nothing but regret to show for it.
An increasingly large number of the ideals and behaviors that characterize what most people mean they refer to a 'leftist American' would be unwelcome in nearly any other nation.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday June 27 2020, @09:35PM (13 children)
If you think the Democratic party machine is leftist, or indeed has been since about the early 70s, you're so delusional that nothing I say or do is going to reach you. Ever since Nixon kicked McGovern's ass all over the electoral map they've been, slowly at first and since about the mid-90s at almost supersonic speed, shifting rightward and authoritarian. Bill Clinton was a moderate Republican by the standards of merely 25 years before, Obama was barely any better than Reagan and substantially worse on civil rights (spying, dronebombing a US citizen), and the beat goes on.
Your characterization of anyone mobbing as leftist is worse than delusional: it's intentional gaslighting. Were all those neo-Nazi fucks flying the literal Nazi flag demanding the governor of Michigan reopen in any sense leftists? You don't know what words mean and until you do I will thank you to shut up. You're talking out your ass at great length and it smells like it, too.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @06:51AM (12 children)
Once again, please look at your own words. You said, specifically: "what most Americans refer to as left-wing or leftist is *centrist*"
Now you're instead engaging in some sort of weird nonsequitur about whatever you personally happen to define as leftist, and then just throwing out politically charged words in a mostly incoherent fashion. Calm down and think rationally.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Monday June 29 2020, @02:24PM (11 children)
You intentionally snipped off the context of her post:
Your comment isn't rational. You're arguing in bad faith.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 29 2020, @04:23PM (5 children)
She obviously knows what she said. I assumed nobody else was reading this. It's buried in the middle of a dead thread.
Read above since you seem to have skipped to the bottom or something. And no, the views most Americans are referring to when they speak of "leftists" would most certainly not be centrist in a place like Norway. These things like cancel culture, statue toppling, digital hate trying to get people fired for holding different opinions, taking offense at everything by actively working to interpret things in the worst possible way, etc, etc would generally be seen as deeply radicalized in nearly everywhere else in the world. The American left has become deeply and dangerously radicalized.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday June 30 2020, @01:53AM (4 children)
Sounds to me more like they've successfully adopted the tactics and strategies of the American "right," who are now collectively shitting their Depends.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @09:15AM (3 children)
I'm not sure I agree unless you go back some number of centuries, at which point the modern notions of liberal and conservative lose all meaning. I mean obviously the conservatives had their brand of ignorant and bigoted self righteous hypocrisy with the Moral Majority, Focus on the Family, and so on. I can still remember people trying to ban Dungeons and Dragons because it was 'Satanic'.
But what we're seeing today is similar to the bigotry (and hypocrisy) of times *far* past. Digital mobs in particular are becoming increasingly reminiscent of lynch mobs. While that has a racial connotation today, people of all sorts were lynched for falling short of what the masses perceived as their social norms of the time. The largest lynching in the US was the Great Hanging at Gainsville. [wikipedia.org] 41 men were lynched for being 'suspected unionists.' The digital mobs of today are actively and purposefully doing all they can to try to destroy people's lives: getting them fired and even actively driving people to suicide. And the digital world is increasingly starting to blend with the real world where that 'digital violence' is becoming physical violence.
This is rather unprecedented at such scales. I mean can't try to step outside of this all and look back at how people are going to see all of this? For that matter, step outside of it and imagine how people in much of the rest of the world *already* see it! This is a serious problem, but people are just kind of shrugging it off, or creating incredibly spurious rationalizations for it. Mobs are stupid and dangerous. Self righteous mobs are the same only many magnitudes worse. Events of this sort are relatively new in modern times, but it's not a new story: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 01 2020, @01:04AM (2 children)
I've always been a shy sort myself, and all this stuff is telling me boils down to "hole up, hunker down, keep your nose clean, and wait for it blow over. Oh, and get across the Canadian border ASAP."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:13PM (1 child)
Wouldn't disagree, though I chose a bit further than Canada - whom I suspect this nonsense will also come to in relatively short order.
The one thing that confuses me about society at large is that I think if you ask people about the trajectory of the country most people can see the directionality/momentum of where things are headed. But they kind of just blank on what the destination is. It's kind of a fun thing about reading very old newspapers around the time of various historical events. They rarely if ever come from nothing. It's all just a gradual stairstepping towards the final show. So recurrent is this that on occasion get this sort of deja vu type feeling when reading of modern events. It just feels I'm just reading more of those old headlines leading up to a historic event you already know.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:54PM
I'm poor, traumatized, and all alone in the world save for my SO. We have very very limited options. I plan if at all possible to end up in Halifax or thereabouts within 5 years or fewer and basically just disappear off the face of the earth waiting for all this shit to blow over. I know I won't live to see a positive resolution, and I know I'm about to witness geopolitical seismic shockwaves the likes of which have not been seen since world war II. I just don't want to be in the epicenter when the shaking starts.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday June 29 2020, @09:58PM (4 children)
So is she by implying we're not part of the civilized world.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Tuesday June 30 2020, @01:51AM (3 children)
We're fucking close to not being part of it. Money, wealth, and technology alone do not make you civilized.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday June 30 2020, @03:57AM (2 children)
Unfortunately, you do not get to decide what civilized means.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday July 01 2020, @01:04AM (1 child)
Then neither do you :)
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:09AM
The difference being, I don't try. You're the one who thinks one little bit of the world gets to set the standard for the rest.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by barbara hudson on Thursday July 02 2020, @03:37AM (3 children)
Not worth it. I've been so busy this last few months that I decided on this Canada Day holiday to see if anything has changed. it hasn't. Too bad the world has.
It's fun to tease the unevolved, but it got boring, and I don't have the spare time to look for any alternative (and don't really need one, so wtf). Bad enough that months after giving all the clients notice that they need to wear masks and they can't enter the building, half still show up unmasked. I discussed it with the younger workers and they aren't confident enough to enforce the rules, so I told them I'd be the mean cunt who enforced it. Half say "I forgot it in the car". One said "I can't wear a mask because I have a cough." Seriously, we're doomed.
But seeing all the Trumpers refusing to wear masks is great - get the libertarians out of the gene pool sooner rather than later. Will also raise the average IQ, so what's not to like?
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @07:08AM (2 children)
You may be disappointed to discover that both conscientiousness and a favorable attitude towards regulation have both been correlated quite strongly with lower IQs. Though you may be happy to discover that favorable attitudes towards social liberalism are also strongly correlated with higher IQs.
These are all fairly recent discoveries which confound previously works on 'conservative' vs 'liberal' studies. The reason being that contemporary liberal ideology tends to encompass social liberalism = high IQ as well as well as greater regulation = low IQ. And obviously vice versa for contemporary conservatism. This is likely a part of the reason that the results were so inconsistent. Incidentally libertarianism encompasses the values of social liberalism = high IQ, minimal regulation = high IQ, and freedom over conscientiousness = high IQ.
There's also an issue of age bias in older studies. In my life I've found one old saying to be unfortunately true: "If you're not a liberal at 20, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative at 40, you have no brain." I expect you'd find a rather different distributions of cognitive abilities in looking at older vs younger conservatives and liberals. Views change over time - yet many studies are carried out primarily on college age volunteers in psychology departments.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday July 02 2020, @10:49PM (1 child)
IQ measures very little aside from how well you do on IQ tests. I've consistently placed from the low 140s to the low 150s...and so fucking what?
EQ and CQ, emotional and cultural intelligence, are at least as important. INT and WIS are separate dice in DnD for a reason. And someone with high IQ, low emotional intelligence, and low cultural competence is extremely dangerous to themselves and other people, because they lack a certain amount of what you may term "memetic immune response" *and* are super, super-good at fooling themselves, justifying their bad takes, and reinforcing them internally. After all, if all those chimp-brained commoners can't argue you out of X, X *must* be correct, riiiiiiiight? And there's no difference, as we know, between theory and practice. A-yup.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 03 2020, @06:19AM
I think this argument can be strongly challenged with a simple question. Why would somebody *want* to fool themselves? The answer is easy: because they have an *emotional* desire to reach some outcome that contradicts what logic tells them. If you do not let yourself be controlled by emotion you have no necessity to fool yourself. And while I think I can see the argument you're alluding to, I do not agree that that this is dangerous in the least.
Your argument I suspect is that if people consider, without compassion, that e.g. '6% of people commit 50% of violent crime' then that naturally trends towards 'okay get rid of the 6%, get rid of 50% of violent crime.' But I think that is both an emotional idea and an emotional conclusion. The idea itself is emotional since it makes no sense. Purge millions, many who have done nothing, for the sake of some percent that have? Would you yourself then not be guilty of far worse? And the conclusion itself is emotional since even if you want to achieve this end there are vastly better ways to do so. At the age of 18 each male is offered $10,000 to engage in an irreversible vasectomy. For the sake of gender equality we might extend the offer to females as well though that's probably unnecessary. There'd be absolutely no restrictions on angle shooting the law such as by freezing your sperm. The bias in who would opt in to such a procedure means you've effectively achieved your end while not only never engaging in one non-consensual action, but actually actively improving the lives of many millions of people. Same desired outcome but a vastly better path there. Emotion vs logic.
In many ways I think this is the difference between Jefferson and Lincoln. Jefferson in 1808, the first year it was constitutionally possible, ended the transatlantic slave trade. No new slaves were coming in and the system was only being perpetuated by the fact that children of slaves were also born into slavery. Jefferson wanted to phase out slavery in a peaceful and productive way. His idea was to take the children of existing slaves while providing compensation to their 'owners', train them up, and send them abroad to make a living as skilled freemen. He felt that freeing the slaves en mass in the US would cause issues due to discrimination and the inability of slaves lacking any meaningful skills trying to make their way in a deeply merit based society. Lincoln instead just went for an emotional solution. He forced the matter, started a war resulting in about 2% of Americans being killed (seriously imagine 1 in every 50 people you ever knew or saw suddenly being violently killed!), nearly destroyed the country and certainly did destroy its unity. And the freed slaves were left in exactly the situation Jefferson predicted. They faced immense discrimination and had difficulty making anything of their lives. Their descendants continue to argue, with some degree of merit, that these issues -now approaching 200 years ago- continue to affect them to this day. Jefferson was intelligent, Lincoln was emotional. And today we, as an entire society, continue to pay the price for such emotion. And indeed today we continue along an emotional trajectory.
It's only through consideration of things such as this that I'd ever frame conscientiousness in a negative way. Slavery was of course an absolutely awful institution that was inherently wrong and needed to be abolished. But solutions to problems must always be driven by logic. A man driven by emotion is like an animal on a leash led wherever its master fancies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @09:42PM (2 children)
Then go live in the civilized world then. If you are a libertarian on either side of the spectrum you only have one option right now, and thats America. After that everything is varying degrees of less liberty. For those who are libertarian minded they have nowhere else to go, they are a bear backed into a cave, and you are the guy with a stick poking it for fun because you can't handle only having 90% of the world being significantly more authoritarian.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by barbara hudson on Thursday July 02 2020, @03:20AM
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 02 2020, @03:00PM
I definitely do not agree with this notion. In my opinion libertarianism is particularly under assault in the United States, and to a lesser degree in Western/Central Europe.
The other 90% of the world nobody ever talks about lacks certain niceties, but I find them to be vastly more free places *in general*. One major difference are the liberties you gain and lose. In America you're free to call the government and other people all sorts of nasty things. But that's pretty much the main liberty you have. And it's increasingly becoming a facade. Say the wrong thing and you can find a hate mob going out of their way to ruin your life and meet words with violence. Similarly, the pseudo-governmental companies companies which are increasingly gatekeeper's can erase you without any recompense whatsoever.
But in much of the rest of the world by contrast you have vastly more freedom of action. Want to sell stuff outside your home? You can. Want to turn your home into a restaurant? Can do. Want to have overgrown trees in your front yard because you think they look beautiful? Can do. In general people and the government leave you alone unless you start actively screwing up society. And that is the way things should be. The downside is you often end up sacrificing freedom of speech. And in times of tyranny that would be abysmal. Yet in America today we already see that our freedom of speech is a facade. If the government wants to ban some topic or prevent some person from speaking - they can do so trivially, without ever having to pass a single law. In some ways it's much worse, because there's no accountability. Oh every single American card and financial processing institution decided to start rejecting donations to Wikileaks? Don't worry - they're just private institutions doing whatever they want. I mean don't you now, massive multinational financial organizations just love engaging in actions that do nothing but make them lose money. No governmental action there, nope - none at all.
So while I think freedom of action and freedom of speech are both critical, if I'm left to choose one over the other it would be the one that actually involves doing things.