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On Tolerance - For Everyone Who Needs To Hear This

Journal by Azuma Hazuki
Tolerance Is Not A Moral Precept.

This is a thorough once-over giving the lie to the "conservatives'" self-serving bullshit squealing that "Butbutbutbutbut if you don't tolerate my intolerance you're a hypocrite!" The short version, as put forth in the article, is this: tolerance is a peace treaty, not a suicide pact.

Put another way, it's social technology, just like laws. It allows us, in an ever-more-connected global society, to exist and function. Like a treaty it covers those, and only those, who are party to it.

This means that if you're a genocidal fucking psychopath then no, Virginia, we do not have to "tolerate" your unhinged ramblings. You are cancer in the body politic. You have gleefully ripped your human card to shreds and dropped the pieces in an incinerator, cackling like a hyena on PCP at how you have "owned the libs." You have placed yourselves outside the treaty. We are not obligated to put up with your shit.

tl;dr: if you can't behave like a civilized human being, don't be surprised when you get treated like a rabid animal. Read and be better, or don't, it's your choice, but don't bitch when you get your find-outs.
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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by dalek on Sunday April 30, @11:40PM

    by dalek (15489) on Sunday April 30, @11:40PM (#1304105) Journal

    It's all context. If it's one crazy liberal saying mean things on the internets, then sure, that response is inappropriate. But if it's 50 million crazy liberals trying to kill poor Runaway and a lot of other people like him, then it's not. And well, given that Runaway is seeing groomers in every classroom right now, I'm leaning towards not appropriate. But neither do I consider this a significant sin. Maybe if Runaway threatens to personally murder a trillion crazy liberals with his bare hands. That's a lot of crazy liberals and we'll have to start the sin counter at that point.

    My view is that this whole thing is crazy. The line should be drawn at a rational standard of causing harm not beliefs. It's not that hard. Someone has racism cooties doesn't mean that the forces of good need to be mobilized to isolate the contagion. Similarly, a trans in the classroom isn't a sign of the endtimes.

    There aren't fifty million liberals who want to kill Runaway. Those fears are unfounded. I am aware of only one person who is actually trying to cause harm to Runaway, and that is the creep who ran the aristarchus account. Nearly everyone else, regardless of their political views, condemned that behavior and supported punishing aristarchus. But one batshit crazy person is not the same as fifty million liberals, and is hardly representative of what liberals think or want.

    I'm not proposing that anything be done about Runaway. I am sincerely concerned about his mental health. His comments aren't a direct threat, however. But tolerance doesn't mean that I sit back and indulge his fantasies or pretend that this is a simple difference of opinion. No, I'm going to tell him that what he's saying is awful. It's not a simple difference of opinion like me arguing with you about what is an appropriate level of economic regulation. You might disagree with my views, but Runaway's views are objectively wrong and truly loony. When he expresses those views, it's appropriate to condemn them. When he discusses his paranoid delusions, it's appropriate to tell him that he's not being rational and that his paranoid delusions are lunacy. I fail to see why you might have a problem with this.

    Despite all the whining about the scary January 6 protest, that's an excellent model for how to handle protesters who break the law. A terrible model is how the violent aspects of the Floyd protests were handled in the northwest US, in Portland and Seattle. People were allowed to commit crimes for months on end in Portland, and just take over a neighborhood for several weeks in Seattle. It's done now, but that helped escalate the craziness we see now.

    Lawless protests should be punished. That includes January 6, the protests in Portland and Seattle, and the truckers in Canada. There have to be consequences for breaking the law, and ideology of those breaking the law shouldn't change that.

    Also, pick better leaders in the US. Trump is particularly bad, being a significant contributor to the all the protests I have mentioned.But we haven't had a decent president since Clinton. Let's fix that.

    While I think Obama did a decent job, I generally do agree with you on this matter. Congress is horribly broken, too. Having must-pass votes on massive bills that nobody has a chance to read is no way to govern. I know that you want there to be a high bar to pass new laws. That's exactly how Congress is supposed to work, where bills have to pass through committee, pass two houses and perhaps be subjected to many amendments along the way, and then become law either by the president signing them into law or Congress overriding the veto. It's a lot easier to sneak questionable things into rushed legislation than into bills that are properly vetted by committees and by both houses of Congress. Our leaders in Congress are truly awful, and we need to do better there, too. But I certainly am not looking forward to another Biden vs. Trump general election. Ron DeSantis is not the answer, either.

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