I grew up in Texas but worked in Silicon Valley for a few years. One of the toughest adjustments was going from a small conservative town to a major liberal populace. It was astonishing the number of people who got angry _at me_ for having a different opinion then they did.
At one workplace I saw two coworkers get into a fist fight because the liberal was "offended" that the conservative differed on a viewpoint.
Go to Texas and I'm sure you can find the opposite if you are looking for it. It's just a shame that we're letting society create the lens that we want to see, and we push things out that don't fit into our comfy bubble blanket.
Edit: To clarify what people got angry at me most: I told them I voted for Bush. It was simply that statement, nothing more.
A vote to treat people badly is _absolutely_ a good reason to be angry at someone.
If you're voting to take away people's healthcare, or to discriminate against them based on who they love, or their gender, then of course they are angry!
Still no excuse for physical violence. Votes are how we make decisions in our society. You don't always win. You can argue your position all you want, but you don't get to intimidate others with violence.
OP said the fight was about a different viewpoint, not voting for a different party. There's a whole world of viewpoints outside the two dominant political parties in the US.
"I think your kind is an abomination that should be hearded into camps and slaughtered", is a political opinion that might well lead to a fight or 'anything in between'. It has little to do with a vote. Some 'conservative' people now believe it's ok to voice those opponions at work. We don't know what was said based on the parent, and we don't know how it escalated... so maybe that's it?
Some people won't be cowed by a publicly aggressive racist... I'd tell my boss that I'm uncomfortable working with them. I'm not a snowflake, if someone else can't handle my speach and the resulting consequences of their own.
Anger at another perspective might be argued to be reasonable. There are some pretty abhorrent perspectives in the world. Getting into a fistfight with someone because they hold a different point of view, no matter how heinous, is absolutely and unequivocally unacceptable.
The idea that there are points of view (not actions or laws but ideas) that warrant violence is a large and growing problem.
Wasn't the passivity and meekness of the opposition the exact reason fascists were able to rise relatively easily in the intrawar period?
Personally, I think the concept that there aren't ideas worth throwing a punch over is equally as repugnant as saying you should punch anyone you disagree with.
The position "Your people shouldn't exist", or "Your people shouldn't be in this country" to be specific. Tolerance to all but the intolerant. This is because if we tolerate the intolerant, they'll just eliminate tolerance, and then nobody will get to express their views.
You describe the Paradox of Tolerance: for a tolerant society to exist, it must be intolerant towards intolerance, or the intolerant slowly dominate.
This is the paradox enabling many to blindly say Antifa is a racist or fascist organization. No, they are the intolerant side of tolerance laying down the law. Without them, any tolerant society devolves slowly to fascism.
That's not actually an argument? Also the Paradox of Tolerance is a paradox and is a component of decision theory, and is a pretty well understood mathematical construct. So you can't argue that the Paradox of Tolerance isn't a thing you can only argue that the Nazis and KKK aren't intolerant. Most people would disagree with that...
The "Paradox" you are citing was posed by a philosopher, not a mathematician. Philosophy is not mathematics, no matter how much they might like the association.
This isn't as complicated or confounding as you seem to think. The "fascists" that Antifa think they're fighting aren't attempting to overthrow the government or build armies of SS-style street thugs. They are usually just protesting, or sometimes trying to give a speech at a university.
Speech should be countered with more speech. Violence, with violence in the proportion needed to stop it.
Antifa's agenda is to use violence to suppress speech. Like a lot of self-righteous activity it is rooted in hypocrisy. Their goal is to stop people from disagreeing with their political agenda by labelling any such disagreement as "Nazi" or "fascist" and then claiming their violence is justified as otherwise they'd be "tolerating intolerance". It is doublethink.
I never mentioned antifa and I don't care to discuss whether violence is or is not effective at making social change. I'm personally not a violent person, so that's not my path.
Secondly it is a component of decision theory and yes philosophers can propose mathematical propositions that do get rigorously investigated by real mathematicians. Saying a philosopher can't do math is probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
"Antifa's agenda is to use violence to suppress speech." Wrong. Antifa's entire purpose is to pose as the alternative thugs, ready to act should the intolerance groups choose execute their more overt agendas. I have participated, and the strict line we draw is only interact when someone's person space is violated. As a basic rule, that's pretty solid.
The paradox of tolerance is false - the intolerant can change their minds - it's their intolerant ideas that must be attacked, not the person whose minds hold those ideas. The persons always deserve to be treated with as if they are fellow human beings, because they are.
Those ones who would not tolerate those with intolerant ideas, have intolerant ideas too, and they must be convinced their ideas are wrong.
The paradox of tolerance isn't false, and doesn't make the claims you're saying are false. I think you're conflating the person who responded to me in support of antifa and tolerating vs not tolerating. There are many ways to be intollerant, and violence does not have to be one of those ways. I won't have the discussion around the effectiveness of violence in changing discourse as I am non-violent so it is not my place.
> Wasn't the passivity and meekness of the opposition the exact reason fascists were able to rise relatively easily in the intrawar period?
No, it wasn't. I can't speak to what passivity would have caused, maybe things would have been even worse in Germany, but we can't really know, because 'passivity and meekness' didn't happen.
From around the time hyperinflation started, Weimar Germany was torn apart by openly violent factionalism. There was no significant period where fascists propagandized and recruited freely, or even did so without violent opposition. Bear in mind that the Beer Hall Putsch saw 16 Nazis and 4 police officers die, plus a large number of arrests.
The Sturmabteilung, the Nazi paramilitary arm, was only one of many streetfighting organizations pushing to violently resist and silence its opponents. The RotFront was a famous paramilitary group advocating total communist revolution, which led major actions against the SA. The Stahlhelm were reactionary, monarchist conservatives who opposed the Weimar government, communists, and Nazis. The Iron Front were center-leftist paramilitaries whose 'three arrows' logo represented opposition to fascists, communists, and monarchists alike.
All of these groups engaged in extensive streetfighting and propagandizing, and everyone who wasn't the SA hated the Nazis. There was no shortage of anti-fascist violence in Germany - most visibly in the early thirties, but beginning well before that.
The lesson of interwar Germany isn't that tolerance breeds fascism. It's that streetfighting violence can fail completely. Fighting Nazism with rocks and clubs was tried, to no effect - it turns out that beatings neither dissuade nor deconvert people. In the end, the violence which solved the problem was a war, which proceeds on rather different lines - it changes views by killing people with said views.
I agree that there are plenty of ideas worth fighting for. But the claim that passivity is what enabled fascism in Germany is factually false; passivity simply wasn't the state of affairs in the Weimar period.
It's not that there aren't ideas that are important, it's that violence is really really awful. Punch someone in the face for holding, for example, a racist view, and what happens? He becomes more entrenched in his view. And more angry. And more violent. What doesn't happen? His racism is never ever 'punched away'. So what was the point of that? Maybe it sated the punchers anger, but it made the situation unequivocally worse.
One thing that it is important to distinguish is holding an idea versus acting on it. The fascists were acting on their views, not merely holding them and talking about them. And violence may demand violence. And action, passing laws that enslave and oppress, that may demand violence too in some circumstances. But speech, even organized speech, demands speech not violence. It may demand a LOT of speech. But it does not demand violence.
If a person is willing to use violence to silence an opposing view that is being non-violently spoken, then that is the worse thing in my view. This includes the violent suppression of racist and sexist and other discriminatory views. Though I detest those positions, I detest violence more.
Now, inciting people to violence. Calling people to violence. I do believe that that is a different issue. And one that I do not know how to deal with.
I doubt they got into a fist fight over their opinions, the fist fight erupted over their delivery of their opinions and the lack of respect each gave the others' opinion.
Holding different opinions is natural to everyone. It is the treatment of how one listens, your body language while listening, the amount of time given after one stops speaking before a counterpoint is given. Fights erupt when people do not listen, and of course when one side can't articulate their position and the conversation devolves from mature.
Two respectful mature adults can talk about any painful subject. If you can't, that's an indication of a need to mature, either yourself or your attitude towards others.
It wasn't a great policy before. It's not great now. Hiding who you are to avoid ridicule doesn't solve the problem. If the majority opinion is safe to express, but your opinion isn't, then being forced to hide doesn't actually solve the problem. Even if you hide your views, you may get asked why you don't support the majority's viewpoints.
I see it less as a "policy" and more of an issue of maturity and professionalism. If you are going to take a controversial stance on something you have to accept that you might not be Mr. Joe Popular after that. This is true at work and in life. So you either let it go or get okay with being "that weirdo."
As others have said, it goes both ways: liberal in a red state, conservative in a blue state.
At the end of the day, the people you meet at work are not there because they want to be friends. They're there for one reason: to make money. If you respect other people's boundaries then they respect you.
Arguably political orientation is not a choice if your political choices are informed solely by facts. Unless you are arguing that facts can be whatever you want.
Except sometimes it's public information. Brendan Eich was pilloried not for telling people how he voted, but for having made a contribution to an unpopular cause several years past.
There's no value in dredging this back up. People are pretty set in their opinions on it. You're not going to be convined that what he did was worse than just having an opinion. No one on the other side will be convinced donating to a campaign of hate against them is harmless.
You already see why posting that was a bad idea because you're primed to argue, even though you know it won't go anywhere.
The irony in the furor over Brendan Eich is that it is well out of proportion. I worked with Mozilla long enough to recall the time when a community engagement manager soliticed calls for donations to an anti-gay-marriage organization on his blog, which was replicated to Planet Mozilla. There were no calls to boycott Mozilla or to fire said person for that act.
I bring it up because the outrage is clearly so manufactured, not because I'm "primed to argue, even though I know it won't go anywhere."
I think the reason this is all coming to a head now is that it's harder to hide your opinions, or rather it's easier to unintentionally air them to a broader audience than you might prefer. Social media makes it too easy to inadvertently make a political statement. See elsewhere in this thread where a commenter mentions being unfriended by people for congratulating his sister on her wedding to another woman. It's easier for people to police the details of their acquaintances lives and it's harder to hide your differences by compartmentalizing. It's probably a good thing in the long term because people are becoming more accepting, but in the short term it's definitely introducing frictions where otherwise a little tact could avoid a conflict altogether.
See also: Brendan Eich, who was booted from his job at Mozilla because someone went digging to find his personal voting record and found something they didn't like.
What happened to Eich is another issue entirely. The article is about people getting into political arguments with their co-workers and then getting upset when those co-workers don't want to be their friend anymore.
Yes, but this thread is about people being "punished" by large groups for voting differently from those groups (and how difficult it is to "keep your politics at home" when those groups go to your "home" to track down your politics and decide whether to "punish" you)
Nobody looked into Eich's voting record. Eich donated to a campaign against gay marriage, and donations above a certain threshold are public record. Gay people and people who support civil rights who are strong enough coders to work for Mozilla will easily find employment at any of a number of other Bay Area employers run by people who support them. Mozilla was losing developers[1], and Eich took the reasonable action of stepping down instead of destroying his organization. You can imagine a CEO spending money to bring back California's antimiscegenation laws and how Asian employees and their allies would react.
Once again, it's not his voting record. He donated to a campaign that vilified gays.[1] It was publicized years before he was offered the CEO role and had already made gay Mozilla employees uncomfortable[2], but it's obviously different working with somebody who vilifies you vs. working for somebody who does.
The gay employees of Mozilla were understandably upset when he became CEO, and since the Bay Area in general is pretty progressive, many other employees were also upset. They were looking for new employers.
I gave an anti-miscegenation analogy earlier. How is this different from a CEO making a public donation to The Daily Stormer (perhaps pointing to the stories of Judas and Cain as justification) and the Jewish and non-white employees and their allies not wanting to work for him? You cannot take public action to vilify your employees and deny them civil rights and expect them to keep working for you.
Having moved from the liberal coasts to Texas, I can tell you that you're right about the opposite experience happening too, and you definitely don't have to go looking for it.
I was assaulted by a ROTC cadet once, around 2005 or 2006 in a conservative town at a conservative college for saying that the Iraq War was a mistake (in several ways, I'm not sure which one was specifically being discussed that day). I wasn't even speaking to the guy, just discussing news with some friends and he happened to be nearby.
I found it amusing that a man who was going to take an oath to defend the Constitution thought it was reasonable to call me un-American and try to beat me into silence. He left when I laughed at him instead of fighting back.
I had friends un-friend me on Facebook after my sister married a woman and I posted pictures and congratulations to them. I had colleagues who stopped talking to me after the same. They talk to me now (2 years later), but only professionally, formally. No more informal or loose friendship happening between us apparently.
Trump uttering "Bush lied, people died" at debate, inside Bush library, to the cheers of the crowd, Republican Conservative crowd.
If Trump hadn't done that, I would have gone for eternity judging those people as war mongers no matter the cost.
If Trump hadn't said "I want some punishment for the woman" on abortion, I would have gone for eternity judging all anti-choice folks to be for incarceration of women for exercising choice.
I was going to ask: what happens in small town Texas if you are an atheist, don't support the war, support a woman's right to have an abortion, etc.?
It's been my experience that each region has its dominant sociopolitical culture and that there are always people who are unable to see beyond that and who become angry when confronted by anything other.
I grew up in small(ish) town Texas with those exact viewpoints. I wouldn't say that my viewpoint was exactly ostracized, but it was definitely "odd" and Other. I never really suffered any physical intimidation for my viewpoints, but that's probably because I'm a giant ogre that people tend not to feel like they can mess with. But I did have my fair share of heated arguments when refusing to pray before a football game or counter-protest the abortion protestors, etc.
r u kidding ? bush was largely more evil than trump.
trump is just randomly going from one to another mostly unconsequential decision.
bush went to war, purposefully let torture be instigated (while trump say ok for torture motsly to look tough) and promoted hugh oil conglomerates.. he's also the governor who order the most inmates to be sent to death row
Learn to see the difference between talk and action.
> so right wing they can't even get anything passed by their own party.
I do have to say this part has amused me the most, as a registered independent who leans heavily socially liberal (I'm more conservative when it comes to economic issues - but more in the sense that I want money going to things that advance the species, rather than destroy it).
I certainly expected after the last election to see a steamroller of conservative GOP legislation being passed left and right. Instead, we got a bunch of EOs - and a stalled Congress. I was not expecting that.
It's not that it's right wing - it's the general incompetence that is slowing progresss. The scary thing, as an outside observer, would be a vaguely competent extreme right wing president, such as the current VP.
politics is used to divide people in this country, not bring them together. sadly it won't be fixed until we can find some means to secure a third or fourth party's ability to compete but Congress does its best to prevent any money from entering politics which does not support the norm
Neither of the two major presidential candidates last election came anywhere near halfway matching my stances on issues. Yet there was a third party (I guess sort of a fourth) whom I agreed with on quite a few things, as did many others. But those votes got drowned out by the "wasted vote" crowd.
I'm curious if any nation has experimented with a hybrid of direct and representative democracies: people choose their stances on actual issues, and the candidate most matching the spirit of society is elected.
Most democracies don't have winner-take-all systems like ours. I would argue as part of the "wasted vote" crowd that this viewpoint is entirely justified given the mechanics of a U.S. presidential election, and that the best any of us can do is take our idealism to a more local level.
Parliamentary systems with proportional representation and "coalition" governments exist throughout the world. The U.S. just isn't one of them and would require a big overhaul of the Constitution in order to change that.
While there still exists voting along party lines, having more than 2 major parties there tends to be a little more variety in official platforms.
Recently, Alberta which is traditionally more conservative voted for a Muslim mayor in Calgary, and the NDP (Canada's socialist democratic party) into provincial office. Even our Green party gained a seat in Victoria/Saanich (British Columbia) last election.
I moved to San Francisco from a small, deeply red town. I'll just say this - I think even that small town would be more tolerant of liberals than I felt when I worked in San Francisco, and I'm not even really that conservative (just economically). The leadership at the company was very reasonable, but the politically active folks terrified me, and didn't just think that those that held conservative viewpoints were misguided, but that they were actively evil. There's a big difference.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I know many, many good people that did. I made the mistake of mentioning that once and somehow that turned me into a pro-Trump spokesperson. I can do that for the sake of a rational conversation, but I somehow ended up being the Trump supporter spokesperson despite the fact that I can't stand the guy.
I think the current level of political discourse is downright dangerous.
In my opinion, some of the policies of the Republican Party seem downright evil to me. Restrict the civil rights of gays and Muslims (Trump himself stated that he was going to start a Muslim ban, he asked people to make it legal but the intent was very clear and stated by Trump several times: Muslim ban). They also want to restrict information on the internet which seems pretty evil to me (modern day book banning). They want to deport kids who have lived in the US their whole lives through no fault of their own.
Define "rational". If you mean "Can someone justify those beliefs to themselves through a logical chain, while allowing for personal belief systems", then yes, of course, there are plenty of non-evil reasons a rational person could hold those.
However, you can still have irreconcilable differences in belief systems at an existential level.
No, I can't. And it really isn't up to my imagination either. If this 'rational' person has a 'rational' argument for wanting to ban Muslims or gays then let's hear it because I can't imagine it. Yes, you will get pushback on that.
It wasn't a Muslim ban. The ban didn't include Malaysia, Indonesia, or Algeria for instance and many other Muslim countries. There were 6 countries on the travel ban list. There are 50 Muslim-majority countries in the world.
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on
Fear. Fear of the other. Fear of a widening disparity between the haves and have-nots - and they're increasingly in the have-not category. Fear that their children won't be able to do as well or better than they did. Fear. And Donald Trump expertly capitalized on that fear while Hillary chose to ignore it. Trump won. I'm not convinced we progressives/liberals fully understand this because we're still ignoring this fear.
The risk materialized for victims of illegal aliens committing crimes including identity theft.
The risk materialized for victims of outsourcing. The risk materialized of well paying manufacturing jobs disappearing.
It's wasn't fear, it was the materialized risk. Many voted for Obama overcoming fear, choosing hope. But they realized you can't just choose hope, you have to go and bend reality to be what you want it to be. And they put a bend in flow of reality, choosing Trump.
The elite fail to sympathize with their own countrymen in peril, because having compassion for your fellow countryman means you were being a 'xenophobe'. That label is not very vogue in elite circles.
I, for one, am glad that the risk of Trump being elected materialized.
The only widespread reason that I have seen for restricting the rights of gay folks is one of ignorance fueled by religious dogma. This was a common view at the churches I attended during my youth. I wouldn't call this "evil", but I would call it harmful.
Logical reason for wanting to restrict the rights of gay people and ban all Muslims? I'm all ears, I literally cannot think of a rational reason for supporting such policies.
Honestly, none of those things matter to me. I vote on the second amendment and fiscal policy. As a libertarian, I am an advocate for civil rights, clean energy, equality, and so forth. I care about those issues, but you can't be a moderate without making idealogical compromises.
Net neutrality was a disappointment, but myself and others in the tech community will learn to deal with the inconvenience.
The plight of illegal immigrants and the "religion of peace" has zero relevance to me, I simply don't care enough one way or the other to vote in favor of them.
Let's rewind a bit of history and look back to what the Democratic Party did to civil rights and a race for the next 100+ years after a bold Republican emancipated the slaves. People everywhere can do horrible, horrible things. Read your history books, and try hard to prevent history from repeating itself.
>They want to deport kids who have lived in the US their whole lives through no fault of their own.
Why are all white people being asked to pay for some white slave owners? Why are they being punished for the sins of their forefathers? No white person alive now, ever owned slaves, it is illegal. No black person alive now, was ever enslaved, it is illegal.
Are you giving a clean sheet to all white "kids" because slavery was no fault of their own?
Ben Affleck's ancestors were slave owners, does that mean Ben should be punished and have to pay reparations?
>They want to deport kids who have lived in the US their whole lives through no fault of their own.
The interpretation for someone considering crossing border illegally: If you can sneak in with a less than 10 year old child into USA, stay hidden for 5 years or so, you can claim that the kid grew up in USA, is in USA for no fault of her own, and her family of undocumented parents should get to stay as well since USA doesn't want to separate families, which means we are all safe. That's Amnesty for entire family. I would be safe. Totally worth giving lives savings and taking loans to pay the human traffickers, there is risk of death and rape, but after that ordeal we would be safe. May be I will carry some drugs on me to pay for the trip.
Tell me why that interpretation is wrong?
You sympathize with the well-off, but still illegal, DACA recipients in USA. I am concerned about that family in South America starting the journey where enslavement and rape is real certainty.
>Muslim ban
Campaign rhetoric vs. reality. See his Saudi visit. That was a way to explain extreme vetting.
> Civil rights of gay
Trump is the first USA President who came to office while supporting Marriage Equality for gay and lesbian. Hillary and Obama declined Marriage equality for political gains.
I see this as a pure power play: Let me do what I want to do without any questioning, because somebody somewhere somehow, by some interpretation, is being oppressed.
Do you seriously think there's any moral correspondence whatsoever between trying to make a living in the US against its will, and owning/importing slaves?
A person alive today, who happens to be white, never owned slaves in his life. Why is left hell bent on punishing that white person for some crimes that that person's ancestors, may have done. Most whites never owned slaved even in those days. It was white people who fought for and paid with their lives ending slavery.
Left wants to hold all whites responsible for crimes of slavery.
Left wants to give clean sheet to DACA recipients for crimes of their parents.
Why do you want to hold kids responsible for parents crimes when it comes to white people?
> I'll just say this - I think even that small town would be more tolerant of liberals than I felt when I worked in San Francisco, and I'm not even really that conservative (just economically).
As a liberal atheist who has spent most of his life in the deep red parts of the south, I can assure you that you're wrong.
Your personal anecdotes don't prove OP's anecdotes wrong. I can re-assure you of OP's view with my own personal anecdotes, but I wouldn't go as far as to say you are "wrong".
I hear this. It's frightening how some people can rationalize taking extremely punitive actions in response to encountering mere disagreement or differing identity.
Everyone needs to remember that the people they disagree with are people too, and treat them as they'd like themselves to be treated.
> I think the current level of political discourse is downright dangerous.
I would call it polarization. The discourse is just a consequence of that.
I don't disagree that those comments were wretched (again, I didn't vote for Trump), and neither do the majority of the people I know that voted for him, but it seems entirely possible to me that someone would vote for him in spite of those comments, not because of them.
Indeed, if you were to assume that every vote for a candidate is de facto support of everything they do/are, I don't think I ever could have voted for anyone.
>Arguably "good people" don't support nor vote for an individual who openly brags about assaulting women...
If you take that stance, then your options are:
1. 45% of the voting people in USA support sexually assaulting women.
Are you OK with that understanding? Do you not find something unsettling about saying 45% people in USA are OK for sexually assaulting women? The same conservative family oriented people, the same law and order people, the same god and sins people are supportive of sexually assaulting women? Can we have survived as a nation so far if so many people supported sexually assaulting women?
2. Hillary still lost to such person. What does that say about Hillary?
If Trump's audio conservation had not leaked, he would have won by even larger margin. What does THAT say about Hillary? Why do you think that was the case?
I agree that the west coast left is getting too jumpy with regards to Trump. I'm far left and certainly not a supporter of Trump ( I voted Stein because I felt Hillary to be too wealthy ). Once I mentioned to a family member on the west coast that I thought it was interesting that so many of the smart and kind people in the woodworking community come directly from Trump-land and that it was a paradox that such hateful rhetoric comes from a place that I associate with such intelligence and sharing. And my family member got very angry at me and was unable to continue the conversation.
I find it terrible that when you're only given two options, and both of them suck, choosing one over the other can be seen as such a treason. To me these conversations sound like "You prefer diarrhea to vomiting! I'm never going to sit on your couch again!"
> Because it's hard to unanimously and unequivocally identify those who are intolerant as such. Owing to the beguiling nature of language and rhetoric, the intolerant can thrive and propagate by arguing that they're not in fact intolerant, and appealing to "free speech". This seems to be the MO of this so-called "alt-right" stuff; legal or constitutional barriers are almost impossible to define or enforce.
That is creepy to me. You have the ingredients of a witch hunt.
"can't easily distinguish them" aka "anyone could be a witch", "can't use legal methods to attack or 'regulate' them" aka "something... must be done", that's what I'm reading.
There's no evidence that the altright as a group are plotting to murder other citizens. The reverse, threats to do violence to altrighters, I see that on a daily basis without looking for it online e.g. the "punch a nazi" meme. Going from that to "beat up a nazi" to injury/death is not a leap.
And who are they? It's a large collection of loosely connected right wing groups. A full list would take several A4 pages. Most of them hold beliefs little different to our grandparents or possibly great-grandparents in the case of the monarchists. Anybody to the right of the Republican party could be 'altright'. This isn't true but that seems to be how most people have built their classifier.
It's easy to prove that because if you ask (as Trump did to a reporter) people to define the group, they don't know how to do it. I think there is a definition but nobody in the media has mentioned it AFAIK, it's not something that is well understood and so "Nazis!". That nazi flag at the charlottesville rally? A singular item unless the photographers were holding out on us. There are lots of photographs and it's this one guy walking around with a nazi flag.
There seems to be a curious motte and bailey argument going on here. The altright is a relatively small set, but in the media and twitter they are either a fringe sect of right wing lunatics or they are an all pervasive threat to society. It can't be both. Not unless you have an infinitely extensible definition that you can be using for ulterior political purposes.
Perhaps not "murder" but certainly "attack and maim". Please don't try excuse this with the "but they're only JOKING" trope - their intent is blatant and clear.
> it's this one guy walking around with a nazi flag
This article has a photo with two different guys holding two different flags - that makes at least 3.
> Perhaps not "murder" but certainly "attack and maim". Please don't try excuse this with the "but they're only JOKING" trope - their intent is blatant and clear.
If you're looking for people talking shit about their ideological rivals on the Internet you're going to find it. We can find examples of nazis or tankies threatening people any day of the week. They're nearly always posturing. What's different about "Punch a Nazi" is that it's a widespread meme across Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.
Imagine the reverse for a second. A meme called "Cut a Commie" receiving widespread acceptance from large groups of people across social media, including authority figures and celebrity endorsement.
> This article has a photo with two different guys holding two different flags - that makes at least 3.
Barely getting to plural!
It's the same as with that NPI conference in which 3-5 people raised their arms in a Nazi salute. The rise of the 4th Reich this is not. It's possible even those people are doing it 'for a laugh'. They're edgelords.
Have you any idea how many protests feature the flag with the hammer & sickle? Quite a lot more. I am not worried about Communist infiltrators interfering with my bodily fluids. They're nearly all edgelords, not Bolshevism 2.0
This is a moral panic, we have the media fanning the flames.
I strongly suspect if a lot of people on this forum simply turned off their television or newsfeed they'd be in a healthier place.
Ah, there's the "they're only joking" trope we know and love.
> Imagine the reverse for a second. [...] "Cut a Commie"
I know where this is going. I say "Oh, but communists aren't as bad as Nazis, that would never happen" and you bring up that wikipedia page showing that more people died under communism than nazism and we all mark you down as a "whataboutism" sympathiser and the world is a little bit shittier.
> Barely getting to plural!
But definitely more than "a singular item".
> Have you any idea how many protests feature the flag with the hammer & sickle?
> Ah, there's the "they're only joking" trope we know and love.
It's not like that. I don't want to trivialize the death of the girl in Charlotte either, it's a domestic terror incident.
There's a constant background hum of political violent extremism throughout Europe and America. The key indicator for which species is ascendant is whether the popular media narrative is leaning one way or the other. The validation of these group's concerns seem to give them the entitlement they need to turn rhetoric into activity.
There's already been an attempt on one Congressman's life so imagine what will happen if something similar succeeds.
> I know where this is going. I say "Oh, but communists aren't as bad as Nazis, that would never happen" and you bring up that wikipedia page showing that more people died under communism than nazism and we all mark you down as a "whataboutism" sympathiser and the world is a little bit shittier.
I see you've been here before. We can always hold a truce and declare both groups unworthy.
>> Have you any idea how many protests feature the flag with the hammer & sickle?
> Oh, there's the whataboutism.
It does bug me. One gets consternation. The other "meh".
Back in university, I had a flatmate that was pro-Bush. He wasn't unintelligent. He was getting his masters. He was a good guy and generally progressive in his views. He actually had pretty well laid out arguments as far as what he saw as best for the country and policy with the continuation of the Bush administration over Kerry.
Both myself and my other housemates didn't understand it at the time, but I didn't lose respect for him as a person. In the most recent election, I've come to at least understand more of his views. I wish I could talk to him about it, but he passed away a few years ago.
I currently hold a controversial opinion myself, that the parties are essentially the same and the elections simply do not matter. I do not think anything would be different under either potential candidate. You can say some of the social issues would be affected (trans people in the military), but if you focus on those, you view the current government as just stupid. But they're not. They knew banning trans people would cause outrage. You add a stupid reason, and you need to realize they knew that was an intentionally stupid reason, and people focus their hate. It is literally the 2 minute hate from Orwell's 1984, except it's been around for over a decade and it's now the 24/7 hate from all the news networks.
In big tech areas, I cannot get over the number of people who would say, "No there is a difference [between the parties]!" whenever I expressed this view. Over 60 million people voted for Trump. That doesn't mean those 60+ million are uneducated or stupid or racist. Over 60 million people voted for Clinton. That doesn't mean those 60+ million are compromising or ignorant. Over 40% of those eligible chose not to vote. They all get clumped together, even though their reasons are greatly varied.
And keep in mind, there is a 2014 Princeton Study that shows the the opinions of the average voter in America have a statically insignificant, near zero, effect on all policy decisions (unless you're part of the top 10% of income earners):
America, and even many European nations, are becoming increasingly polarized. But human beings don't fit into two categories. There is no real left or right. Someone might be supportive of gay rights, be for gun control and yet still think trans people suffer from mental illness. Another might be against gun control and affirmative action, and have other libertarian-ish beliefs, yet believe strongly in public transportation and universal health care.
We do not fit into the nice cylinders of political categories, and we certainly don't fit into the false dichotomy of the left/right. But we're taught that's where the line is, that we have to take sides, and keep fighting each other instead of the real players, the _eminence grise_ of Exxon, BP, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Boeing and all the other players who really control what's going on and who are systematically implementing policy that increases tension, increases conflict and escalates war throughout the would.
You are absolutely correct - there has been a collusion of both political parties in the US to serve the globalist elite. With plenty of "useful idiots" among us to look at you (and me) as if we had two heads and argue that we have a "choice".
Unfortunately, it will take years (if ever) for most people to realize this.
> I currently hold a controversial opinion myself, that the parties are essentially the same and the elections simply do not matter. I do not think anything would be different under either potential candidate.
That's a bit of a point towards what libertarians and conservatives (but, to be clear, not alt-righters) think. If fewer issues were national and more were left up to individuals, even, you wouldn't have to lament what the national government does. You could move to a more sane place. And your opinion would matter more in a smaller jurisdiction.
Interestingly, we're seeing this symptom happening more in tech companies, which are not the government but they certainly govern in some respects, at least the things they are responsible for. There is starting to be appetite in conservative and libertarian circles for discussion about what to do about unelected corporate bureaucracies having this sort of power.
Yes, each party has their sponsors that they need to keep happy. Hence the differences.
The sponsors are... not you and I. OK, sometimes they pander to voters regarding their pet issues (transgender bathrooms, etc)
Neither party ever even tried to do anything about:
- term limits, limits on money in politics
- getting rid of lobbyists (their own sponsors)
- punishing Wall Street criminals
- reforming business law to give shareholders more control over executive compensation
- stopping the runaway train of national debt
- etc.
> Neither party ever even tried to do anything about:
> - term limits
Term limits are a horrible non-solution, but Republicans did push a Constitutional Amendment for them them on Congress in 1995, securing a majority but not the supermajority required for a Constitutional Amendment.
> limits on money in politics
Bipartisan finance reform has passed several times, only for the most significant measures to be struck down by the courts.
A number of your other points are similarly ill-informed.
the parties differ on fiscal policy, and each has chosen opposing sides in the inter-generational culture war, but besides that they are shockingly similar.
both parties are corporatist, neoliberal, military-interventionist, and in general anti-democratic in that they are very happy to allow wealthy interests to set policy without deferring much to the will of the people.
> Go to Texas and I'm sure you can find the opposite if you are looking for it
I went to Texas and wasn't looking for it - but the first bar I walked into had photos of Obama and Hillary duct taped to the urinal for people to aim at :P
As a theoretical coworker of yours, my reaction would depend a lot on which vote you were talking about.
In 00 I thought Bush voters were just sort of clods, hopelessly partisans with a poor understanding of the dangers of nepotism and monarchy. (I thought the same about Clinton voters in 08 and much of 16, to be fair)
In 04, Bush voters were supporting a guy who responded to the 9/11 attacks by invading _the wrong country_ (secular Hussein working with bin Ladin? honestly), and okaying the torture of human beings for information. You can’t chalk this up to “some people like chocolate, others vanilla,” Abu Ghraib doesn’t fit under a comfy blanket.
If you had admitted voting for his re-election to me at lunch I would have gotten up and left the table without saying a word.
((Not that it matters, but I grew up in Montana, I understand conservatives and conservativism))
If you had admitted voting for his re-election to me at lunch I would have gotten up and left the table without saying a word.
I can understand feeling this way, but do you see this as a response that improves the situation? Is your impulse to silent action just that it's easier than engaging, or is there a positive outcome of silently leaving that would not be also achieved by explaining your reasons for leaving?
Engaging in a discussion of why you feel the way you do seems like it might have the best chance of a possible outcome. If their response is that are in favor of our behavior at Abu Graib that you despise, then I can understand giving up and leaving.
(Ironically, this responseless post was voted below zero when I found it, and dead from user flagging when I tried to reply, which I think is equivalent to the "silently leaving" approach espoused by the author. I'd be interested to hear from those who flagged it why they did so.)
No. I don't think "just leaving" would have improved the situation. A screaming match and fists wouldn't have improved the situation either.
American culture has found itself in this weird space where arguments that were supposedly settled in the last century are apparently still up for debate. In the case of torture, there are two questions at hand: One, does it work, and two, if it works, is its use defensible. Believing the first is ignorant; believing the second is inhumane.
I don't see any sort of constructive middle ground or even argument to be had over such a basic conversation of good vs. evil. Since I spent most of 2004-2008 in a state of rage over the presence and defense of actual evil in a country and society that I love, I would not have had the self-control necessary to engage in a dialogue. So I would have left.
What does conservative mean? Some people say that conservatism includes things like gun rights, support for anti-immigration and lower taxes. As well as Christian values, which for a decade or two, has meant something around abortion, homosexuals, and recently transgenders.
What are these viewpoints that are claimed to be conservative in nature? I have read the Texas GOP platform. Is that representative of conservatism?
This. When I read stuff like "his conservative support for free speech" the only thing that comes to my mind is excusing hate speech by appealing to freedom of expression, and generally the "tolerating the intolerance" issue. I'm from Europe though, so maybe my point of view on what "conservative" and "liberal" means differs from American one, so an explanation would sure be handy.
This is a fair question at this point. I would posit answering this and also answering "What does liberal mean?" would be great things to address in high school political science classrooms, however it doesn't seem to be in the curriculum. We've had the better part of 30 years where media pundits have been doing their best to conflate these terms with concepts which are tangential at best or completely unrelated at worst.
First, I think it's important to understand that concepts like "conservative" and "liberal" refer to overarching political philosophies, and the actual ideology a person holds that describes themselves as such is probably a subset. Since we're focused on conservatism, I'll provide examples from there. So, in this case there may be broad differences in beliefs about particular political issues between an evangelical conservative Republican and a Libertarian, however both are conservatives. This type of difference arises with the concept of liberalism as well. Fundamentally, the liberal/conservative distinction is a line, and therefore each person falls at some point on that line within a broad spectrum.
Second, let's address the most simplistic explanation of the overarching philosophy, and then we'll get into some specifics of how this might manifest when applied to an individual. Conservatism is effectively a combination of three ideas:
1. Individuals know best about their own situations and working together can improve things better than a central authority (i.e. "government sucks at doing things"
2. Broad social and political change should be infrequent and considered fully, and therefore an adhesion to our founding charter (Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution) is critical to correct governance (i.e. "we've done it this way and it's worked out so far, why change?")
3. In order to ensure that both of the above are true it's essential to have a small central government which is only empowered and funded minimally at the bare necessity to achieve those general aims (i.e. "the best government is a small government")
Third, it's important to understand how much upbringing and experiences in life affect an individual's political ideology and the philosophy from which it is derived. It is no mistake or surprise that cities tend to be more liberal and rural locations tend to be more conservative in the United States. It's a result of somewhat unintended consequences of democracy conceptually and the realities of optimizing for bureaucratic efficiency. We know that basic rules of optimization (the Pareto principle) says that 80% of the job requires 20% of the work. This is true of many things when it comes to urban/rural divides, all the way down to broadband Internet connectivity. Democracy in its simplest form becomes rule by the majority, so larger concentrations of people (cities) hold more sway.
These two items result in people inhabiting rural areas being felt that not only do they not have a voice but that nobody cares to help them with their problems. The response to this is "clinging to traditions" because those traditions are by and large what has helped get them and their families through hard times for many years. In a fit of irony, the more underfunded the government the more heavily the government focuses on cities as that becomes the most rational pathway.
Finally, conservatism is rooted in two additional beliefs that are about the conduct of a person individually. That is, that generally everyone should be treated as an individual rather than via group identity (individualism as a loose philosophical base) and that because of this personal responsibility and hard work are the most important factors in success. This is one reason why people with conservative beliefs are less likely to approve of social safety nets, even though they would likely qualify as beneficiaries....
The book "A Conflict of Visions" is by far the best treatment of this topic I have ever read. It was recommended to me some years ago by an anonymous poster on an internet forum and I am glad he/she did.
It's essentially a generalised theory that explains left/right (liberal/conservative) differences in terms of a single underlying intuition about human nature. Because it's an intuition, you can't alter people's point on the political spectrum through an interesting fact or argument, it's only experience that can change people. And yet he shows how starting from this one basic assumption you can logically extrapolate all conservative and liberal political positions from it, in an entirely rational way.
I'm not sure why we'd expect politics not to be highly contentious and divisive. It's life-or-death stuff. Do you force a teenager carry an unwanted pregnancy to term, or allow her doctor to kill an organism that is, at least genetically, human? Do we let unfettered immigration undermine the welfare state, or break apart families who are just trying to have a better life? What kind of legacy will we leave our children? It's bizarre to thing these sorts of questions wouldn't lead to fist fights.
I myself tend to get along with people with a wide range of political views. But I've always assumed it's because I'm a bit of a sociopath. I don't care enough to put other peoples' struggles above my personal relationships.
I really enjoyed your framing of some common issues. Most people don't think there are actually two sides to any political argument and spend the majority of their time laughing at strawmen rather than learning about someone else's perspective.
Also I think lowered emotional connection to the issues can actually be a huge benefit to understanding them rather than just "feeling" what side to pick.
I wanted to second this comment re: approval of the framing of the discussion. One of the few ways to have, IMO, meaningful discourse if to be able to understand the other side, for who they are and instead of a talking point (e.g. a strawman). I can't say that I've lived enough to be firmly on one side of the discourse or the other, but I've found that it's much easier to be "center" when the issues are framed in such a way that show both sides properly.
Another thing that might make it easier for you to get along with people of other political persuasions is that you will personally be less affected by whatever policy decisions are made. If you were a pregnant teenager or a poor person who just lost their job to an illegal immigrant you would likely care more.
Coworker: "My younger brother was killed in Iraq in 2007."
You: "I voted for Bush."
I'm sure you can see why Coworker wouldn't be pleased by your statement in this instance. I'm on the Left working at an oil company, so I feel your pain. It helps if you want to talk about these things to shift their Overton window slowly, not to expect tolerance for unthinkable actions right out of the gate (it's not right, but that's how it is).
Liberals and Left-wingers are people too, and thus are vulnerable to the same tribal bullshit that some (luckily few) people on the Right and (luckily) fewer people on the Left are proud of. Despite all effort, you (general and specific) and they can't stop from feeling these tribal in-group feelings any more than they can just stop feeling thirsty after a day of not drinking any water.
EDIT: One of these days I should write a post, How to Talk About Politics with People Who Disagree With You.
I agree with what you say, but your example of context seems to (unconsciously?) reflect your own politics. What if the coworker's brother signed up specifically to go to Iraq because he truly believed in the mission? What if the coworker's family viewed him as an all American hero? In that case, why would the coworker be upset?
Your conversation leading to upset is based in the assumption that the coworker already shares your worldview in regard to the Iraq war. It's one I share too, so I can see why that'd be automatic, but I've met and known people who fought in Iraq. They didn't exactly seem ashamed!
Honestly, I am not the least surprised. I don't know if anyone is really. Because never before has there been so much hate towards simply holding different opinions.
People actively share "if you like x you can remove me as your friend" shit on facebook, companies fire people for expressing their political views and media companies "choose a side" more then ever. And don't tell me Google isn't. Just look at Youtube with their new anti-free speech rules that they enforce in restricted mode and the new demonitazation for content. Look at their search engine. If you swap to DuckDuckGo you will instantly see the bubble you were in and the many results that are not shown.
This is not really unique to USA or a single company like Google, it's happening within EU and other companies as well. This is coming from me, who probably would in the US be called a communist by conservatives :)
If someone is "simply holding different opinions" that people should have lesser rights, or be treated differently because of how they were born, then we shouldn't really be surprised that people are upset by that.
I'm not seeing hatred towards people for arguing over correct levels of import taxes. I'm seeing it because they're backing politicians who are actively causing harm to real human beings.
GP is not insinuating that person is a racist, they're pointing out that some 'political' views are really hard to be civil about. For exactly that reason they stir up very strong feelings.
I've seen strong feeling (but relatively civil discussion) about topics like handling North Korea or immigration. Things like taxes tend to be far more civil as GP pointed out.
Well obviously there's far too many instances to go into great detail, but the Democratic strategy for the past few decades is to call most conservatives strategies racist.
That's certainly rarely the case, and next to never the intention.
All i say, and ask is that you think to yourself, is this really racist? or do i just want to vote democrat now?
They really don't tend to be more civil. The only reason it may seem like that in America is that the USA has never really attempted to cut its deficit.
Go look at political conversation in the UK and you'll find large numbers of left wingers / liberals foaming at the mouth about how the government trying to balance its budget is the same thing as hating people, killing them, that austerity is unthinkable evil, that any solution which isn't vast taxes on the rich is evidence of a defective moral compass, etc.
"Go look at political conversation in the UK and you'll find large numbers of left wingers / liberals foaming at the mouth about how the government trying to balance its budget is the same thing as hating people, killing them"
I see you've listened closely to them and engaged with their arguments.
"The cause of death that dare not speak its name: austerity"
Politicians that aim for a balanced budget without raising taxes = murderers is an exceptionally common refrain from the extreme end of the British left. It's hard to engage with their arguments because I don't share their basic axioms, namely, that they tend to assume there are no tradeoffs in life, and in particular, they tend to assume that tax revenues can be set to more or less any level without any negative side effects.
Of course, if you argued that the Guardian is no longer really representative of mainstream left-wing opinion in the UK I'd support you on that, but I pointed out the extremism of the Guardian on HN a week or so ago and got downvoted a lot ... lots of Guardian readers here I think!
I don't get it, you don't like these articles because you find the idea that govt. negligence can actually kill people who rely on the govt. offensive?
My original assertion was that there's nothing magic about taxes that makes them unusually civil, it's simply that austerity is not an issue in US politics because the government has never tried to balance its budget. I cited the UK as a counter example.
You suggested I had never engaged with their arguments because I described them as based in hatred.
I proved that my description of these opinions was entirely accurate. You can find endless articles like that in the left wing press, or banners at protests that say exactly the same thing. This resolved the point you raised.
Whether these articles have merit or not is irrelevant to my original point.
More like: you presented a framing of the argument against austerity as purely being about tax levels, I gently mocked this. You then cited some guardian articles and reasoned that "Politicians that aim for a balanced budget without raising taxes = murderers" was a message. I replied questioning what you thought about what I took as the main message from those arguments: that govt. negligence can occur as a result of this tax policy. And now this:
"I proved that my description of these opinions was entirely accurate. You can find endless articles like that in the left wing press, or banners at protests that say exactly the same thing. This resolved the point you raised." Sure you did.
You conclusively proved that the mere existence of these arguments is offensive to you because you seem to believe that a policy such as austerity (or "tax policy"), which directly cuts the benefits that portions of the population rely on to survive, apparently has no effects and is a mere mathematical debate.
You also consistently proved that you see yourself as eminently rational and arrogantly above engaging with the arguments which are made against your world view. Given this, I'd say that your statement "Whether these articles have merit or not is irrelevant to my original point." is incorrect.
You conclusively proved that the mere existence of these arguments is offensive to you
No. I realise it may seem this way to someone in the part of the political spectrum you inhabit, where offence is so central to so much, but I never argued or even implied that these views are offensive to me. I do say they're extreme, but extreme views are not inherently offensive. You've picked a fight with a straw man there.
And I'm afraid arguments about austerity are about tax levels. The alternative is tax is borrowing, which is no alternative at all, as eventually that money must be paid back via even higher taxes (to pay the borrowed amount + the interest). You can also do money printing, but that's simply a tax on cash savings by another name.
All arguments about austerity are ultimately arguments about tax incidence.
You also consistently proved that you see yourself as eminently rational
I didn't discuss my own rationality either. Again, you're setting up a straw man and then attacking it. I said I don't share the same axioms as these people without commenting on the rationality of that position (it's possible for two people to disagree on basic axioms without either being irrational).
You keep trying to drag me into an argument about austerity. I have no interest in such an argument. It's much more relevant that Americans realise that the list of 'dangerous topics' that can get people branded evil/kiddie killer/etc is not restricted to race, sex or religion. Tax policy can certainly be included if the Republicans ever actually reach the point of trying to cut government spending.
> yet you already insinuate this person is a racist bigot
Where on Earth did you read that into his post? He said those are the kinds of opinions that tend to elicit those responses, not anything about the OP.
What is harm? Lowering taxes could for example cause a lot of harm too indirectly if those taxes went to something important.
I don't like religion for example and would like organized religion to be illegal in my country. If I went on TV and said this I bet this would be a very unpopular opinion and people would most likely send me tons of death threats. I think this mentality is stupid and if you are upset the correct assement is not being a child about it but actually proving me wrong by arguments and facts.
Well, to offer one clear example of harm, we have Nazis openly marching in the streets and arguing for racial cleansing of the US. As someone of Jewish decent, I find that pretty directly threatening.
Given where those arguments have lead before -- the holocaust -- is allowing people to advocate for those viewpoints truly harmless?
Yes because then you can easily break them down by showing people that those people are scumbags. Otherwise you will only see increased support if you do not let them express their opinions.
I would broadly agree with this approach, but it's important to recognize that many of those advocating the Antifa violent approach take that approach from a considered position having carefully studied the history of the Nazi's rise to power.
We can't just ignore the fact that there is a well reasoned argument there in favor of treating certain ideas and ideology as active violent threats.
It's also a real and present issue to many people in the current climate.
I hate to call Godwin's law on this, but this argument is descending in that direction.
And keep in mind, all the people who profited off that war: IBM who made the punch cards to track those interned, Ford motors who built the rail tracks for concentration camps, Ford himself who had his employees hand out anti-semetic propaganda, Prescot Bush/American Standard Oil who sold oil to both sides .. all these companies funded and benefited greatly from the results of that conflict.
By focusing on the Nazis you ignore the fact that wars needs funding. Few of those who funded and profited from that conflict were ever held accountable.
Modern neo-Nazis are the modern boogieman. They make us afraid, but unless they are funded, their reach is quite limited. They are loud, but easily ignored. Those who give them a voice, news and media outlets, do so to profit from the readership.
There's a strong counter argument that examines the history of the Nazi's initial rise to power and points out that they started very small, unfunded, unsupported and were able to gain power shockingly quickly. This is the basis behind Antifa's reasoning and tactics.
I'm not saying I agree with it, but when trying to feel out the contours of an issue like this, it's important to start at the edges.
The issue of when ideology and ideas become actively "harmful" or "dangerous" is an extremely complex one with a ton of grey area. It makes sense to start with the extreme cases where some of that grey area is removed. Those who argue that it makes sense to actively work to silence certain ideas argue it on the basis that those ideas represent a real and present danger to their lives and safety.
This certainly goes for Jewish people, like me, arguing against an ideology that promotes genocide of us based on our heritage -- I'm not even religious nor do I identify that strongly with jewish tradition, but based on the Nazi's accounting I'd have been sent to the concentration camps. People voicing support for those ideas are essentially saying I should be murdered for no good reason.
I hold it's reasonable to feel threatened by that and even to react to that with violence. Though it's not the strategy I adopt or recommend, it's one I feel a reasonable case can be made for.
Move in towards (ever so slightly) greyer cases. Take for instance people of color arguing against ideas that they feel would marginalize them for the color of their skin. What's the history, how much do those ideas represent a clear and present threat to these people's safety? In the case of those arguing in favor of, say, more militarized and aggressive police -- you could make a decent argument that this represents a real and present threat to black people's safety, given the prevalence of police shootings. Similarly, support of more profiling of brown people or requiring papers for immigration status. That represents a certain threat to the safety of perfectly legal brown people in the case that they are profiled and detained because they can't produce their papers.
All I'm saying that this is a huge grey area and that it is important to recognize that some ideas, beliefs, and ideologies are not harmless and do on their own represent varying levels of threat to other people.
Words are not harmless. The pen can be mightier than the sword and it can cut both ways.
> Well, to offer one clear example of harm, we have Nazis openly marching in the streets and arguing for racial cleansing of the US. As someone of Jewish decent, I find that pretty directly threatening.
Could I maybe inquire why Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Che who wiped out a lot more people than Hitler and whose images ( especially Che ) show up quite prominently on T-shirts worn by people on the coasts do not trigger the same kind of hysteria?
The key heuristic is the acceleration of murders over time. But the perception of foreign leaders has to do with the amount of insurance domestic interests are willing to pay to preserve the justification of their mandate.
Look into what Islamic migration into Europe is doing to Jewish population in Europe.
>allowing people to advocate for those viewpoints truly harmless?
How else would you get to have fun at those people's expense?
And, not letting someone advocate their viewpoints because you don't like it, is more un-American than Nazism. And, not letting someone advocate viewpoints you don't like, is cornerstone of Nazism. So, there is that.
I'm not seeing hatred towards people for arguing over correct levels of import taxes
Sure you are. You see someone vote for Trump and immediately assume it must be because they're an evil, ethically flawed person who inexplicably hates love, sunshine and puppies, whereas perhaps they mostly care about taxes. You even did it in this post. Your thinking is knee jerk and shallow, and it's people like you that are causing the problems in the first place.
How is it knee-jerk and shallow? If you voted for Trump you either directly support Trump's social policies or you don't think they were abhorrent enough to not vote for him.
I'm not pro-life, but I feel like if I thought abortion was actually murder of babies, I think I'd probably hold my nose and vote for whoever had the best chance of ending that practice. (Though, I also believe that would be Clinton--banning abortion is less viable than proving effective sex ed, and probably not hugely more effective.)
Similarly, if I had spent much time in Libya, I might consider holding my nose and voting for the candidate who didn't work hard to create that situation. (Again, I will grant that situation was going wrong without our involvement, but we're good at making things worse.)
I voted for Clinton because I agree with most of her policies, and think she's immensely qualified, but I keep hearing "if you voted for Trump, that means you didn't consider his statements disqualifying" But it doesn't--it could just mean you think the other candidate had stuff that was more disqualifying.
It's not absurd to consider bombing people worse than saying sexist and racist shit. It seems like a lot of Trump voters thought Trump's worst aspects were "just talk".
There wasn't an option for "Clinton without the interventionism" on the ballot. Similarly, there's no "Trump without the sexism/racism" option.
I will grant that most of them didn't have "Clinton bombed Libya" as their justification for their Trump vote. Abortion, though, I think is a real reason for a lot of religious people.
I don't think my vote for Clinton should be taken to mean I'm okay with the positions she pushed for in North Africa and the Middle East, and that means also not declaring Trump voters were necessarily okay with his crap either.
> Similarly, if I had spent much time in Libya, I might consider holding my nose and voting for the candidate who didn't work hard to create that situation.
I have a friend who grew up in a country that was the subject of a rather messy US intervention back when he lived there. He's socially liberal on almost every level, but voted without hesitation for Trump. His explicit reasoning was that he found Trump less likely to start lasting, Iraq/Libya style interventions, and believed the death toll of such an action would outweigh literally everything else.
There wasn't really much to argue there. It's not as though he considered Trump's comments acceptable, it's not like he didn't understand the importance of protections for trans people, he just saw everything else as smaller than tens (or hundreds) of thousands dead and millions displaced. I couldn't really disagree; honestly I'm frightened by the indifference of much of the left to our trail of destruction abroad.
The only question dividing our votes was what decisions we expected Trump and Clinton to make on foreign wars. It really was the biggest issue going for both of us.
> That seems like a false dichotomy. There were third party candidates. Plus, you can always choose not to vote.
I've voted third-party a number of times, but that's because I've lived in unflippable states and I'm playing the long game. If you care about the short-term results that are this specific election and are in a state where it can change the results, voting third-party is the wrong choice. Not voting is an even more wrong choice--"both are bad and I'd like us to have better choices in the future" can best be achieved by voting third-party. "Both are bad, so I'll let other people decide" seems less likely to influence future elections, and it's obviously not the right way to effect this election. The one economic principle I always cite rings true here: Rational people think on the margin.
People who think abortion is infanticide saw an opportunity to fill the Supreme Court with justices who might ban abortion. Given their goals, not voting would have been a worse decision than voting for Trump was.
> ... I feel like if I thought abortion was actually murder of babies, I think I'd probably hold my nose and vote for whoever had the best chance of ending that practice.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I know a lot of people that did.
Abortion is actually a huge part of it. To the point that I'm wondering why Trump-voter-haters think the election was just about xenophobia or something.
There was also a non-trivial portion of the right who expected things like the Damore firing and voted for the person least likely to contribute to that future. They think that the Pope himself could easily become a persona non grata at Google or certain parts of the national bureaucracy.
I voted for Trump to raise the chances of getting a conservative supreme court justice assigned. They have more power than Trump anyway since they are in for life. Trump will be out in 3 years, but if we had voted Hillary we would have certainly gotten a liberal supreme court justice.
I voted for him because he told the truth about the massive problems with drugs, crime, and rape that we have in border states as well as his willingness to defend himself and his supporters from the violent Alt Left disruptors that plague his public events.
But maybe you voted for him because you thought he's just purposefully saying stupid shit and none of that is serious, because you thought he won't get elected anyway, and this is a good way of expressing your disappointment with the US politics in general?
Or maybe you didn't vote for, but voted against (I hear some studies say this is the primary way people vote, btw.)?
Or maybe you had some other reason? I could invent plenty more. The point being, judging someone by the sole data point of their choice in the voting booth, without knowing reasons for it, is one of the most stupid kind of thinking imaginable. In fact, in less emotionally charged contexts, people generally don't show that kind of stupidity.
judging someone by the sole data point of their choice in the voting booth, without knowing reasons for it, is one of the most stupid kind of thinking imaginable
I'd call that holding them accountable and I only know how they voted because they told me. Also, I'd put hating people for the color of their skin, the sexuality, their religion, ... as much much stupider.
You only get to do that after you understand their reasons, which you can then judge.
> and I only know how they voted because they told me
It doesn't work like that. People don't generally run around, telling everyone who they voted for. It usually comes up in conversations, where the person who divulges their choice don't expect to get hated for it.
> Also, I'd put hating people for the color of their skin, the sexuality, their religion, ... as much much stupider.
I agree with that (maybe not with the much much part, because to me it seems to be a similar kind of stupidity; different flavours of the same bug in thinking). This doesn't invalidate my point though. People should not do either of those things.
Your conversation example is basically saying that even understanding your reasons that I'm supposed to give you a pass because ... because what?
As for stupider, the color of your skin or your sexuality aren't choices. Whether you voted for Trump is. Holding someone accountable for their choices isn't stupid. Hating them for their race, sexuality, ... is.
My point is that judging a person - a sophisticated individual with complex life history and embedded in equally complex environment - by just few bits of information, is a very stupid thing to do in general. There are situations in which you have no other choice, when few bits is all you have to go on and you need to make some decision. But those situations are very rare. In a typical case, such evaluation is just irrational - few bits are not enough to describe a person in any useful way.
> [if someone thinks people should] be treated differently because of how they were born [then outrage they face is justified]
This has always piqued my curiosity -- would you mind explaining? Why is this such a deep tenet that I hear it so often as justification for shunning people? Apparently, there is something egregious about "treating people differently" because of "how they were born." What is wrong about this? Can you make this statement more concrete? How are the following "treatments" egregious?
* Someone is born deaf, so his parents give him care related to his disability, which is different compared to what they would have done otherwise.
* Someone was born with a great vocal range, so people encourage them to become a singer.
* Someone is born with great mathematical abilities, so later in life they are top-pick by quantitative companies, which pay them extra for the value they are expected to deliver.
* Someone has many insecurities and a history of nervous breakdowns and psychological damage, so we don't give them a high-stress job (for instance, the military doesn't hire them).
It's all fine for qualities that don't get tied to your (or your group's) personal and social identity.
To go over your examples - the singing case is rather clear-cut, so is the math one (barring the Tiger Mother meme). Psychological damage starts entering into "neurodiversity" sphere. And about deaf people - there are many deaf communities which don't consider this as a disability, but as a different type of experience. In fact, the right for deaf parents to purposefully create a deaf child (when normally it would have working hearing) is a topic that's sometimes discussed.
It's not a very detailed explanation, but the rule of thumb is - when there's a vocal group of people who tie some quality X into their identities, talking about discriminating on X gets off-limits in the current culture.
My examples are just 4 quick things off the top of my head, there are probably many more. I also don't see your point about the deaf person (they're still treated differently -- you wouldn't talk vocally to them).
I agree with your rule of thumb, but that seems like a positive description of the situation, not the normative one I'm looking for. You're giving me the conditions under which there will be outrage for discrimination (i.e., there exists a socially vocal/outspoken group that identifies with the quality being discriminated on). However, I was trying to tease out what the moral rule purported by such groups could be, since I see the "don't discriminate for how I was born" claim so often (and so forcefully put). I would suppose there should be some deep moral law being broken.
I don't know if there even is a moral rule there. I feel like the root cause is simply people being insecure about threats to their identity, and anything above that being just rationalizations.
Yeah, but I have a feeling that we're both outside of the set of people who would make the statement I was quoting in my OC, which might explain why you and I can't find such a rule.
Appealing to the veil is a good but insufficient step. For instance, we might disagree what people would agree on behind the veil (imo because we encode moral assumptions into our conclusions from it). Nonetheless, if we were to get that far I'd say the veil would be doing its job.
For example, suppose I beleive in the systematic rejection of blind people from bus driving positions. I can see myself getting behind this even if I wouldn't know whether I'd be blind or not because I imagine behind the veil I'd put greater moral value associated with the safety of bus passengers than blind people's rights to the bus driving job.
In other words, I've exposed the "driving" moral valuation behind my stance.
> If someone is "simply holding different opinions" that people should have lesser rights, or be treated differently because of how they were born, then we shouldn't really be surprised that people are upset by that.
It's almost like you are purposely trying to rile people up
First, I think part of the problem is that many people assume that any disagreement is equivalent to total disagreement. That is, if you don't agree with me on arbitrary position X, you must not agree with me that we shouldn't feed babies to hippos for sport either. Vocally disagreeing with Nazis is fine. Spiraling toward "people who disagree are Nazis" isn't.
Second, I work in tax policy. There is absolutely hate between many people who disagree on taxation.
The mentality that if you are not with us then you are against us has nothing to do with "people should have lesser rights, or be treated differently". Quite the opposite.
I would love to hear from some third-party voters about how they were treated by the left after the 2016 election.
Well I'd say those people in Michigan/Wisconsin/Pennsylvania who voted for stein, because Hillary just wasn't good enough, deserve a "feel good about that?"
> I'm not seeing hatred towards people for arguing over correct levels of import taxes.
I sure am. I think import taxes should be raised so that workers in the western world aren't competing in a race to the bottom with the third world. Somehow over the last few years this has come to mean that I'm a racist, uneducated redneck. The left have abandoned the working class.
When I see posts in my facebook feed that say unfriend me if you believe x, I always unfriend them even if I don't believe x. If you are not tolerant of different points of view I really don't want to be your friend.
"Never before" is a very shortsighted statement. I know we in tech like to think that mass/social media is pushing the limits of the human psyche to think and do things our ancestors' primitive brains would never comprehend. But there is no way to objectively say that we're especially worse off these days - just that we're as human as ever.
Being called a communist by US conservatives isn't really something worthy of notice, as anything that goes against them is called as such.
That said, with the polarization of political debate, people rabidly defend viewpoints they don't even understand or never thought about rationally. It means you cannot have interesting arguments because you don't share any axioms with the other party, and you have different opinions on basic stuff such as "do poor people deserve to die" or "should gay people be reeducated" or "do we put immigrants in concentration camps", at which point you can only give up and break contact with resignation. Sure, I can interact with people like that on trivial stuff if I have to, but don’t ask me to be overly nice to someone who would rather see me or people I like dead.
Sure but how many people really share those extreme views? Most of the hate goes to pretty vanilla opinions like "we should lower the amount of immigrants", "education should be free and payed by taxdollars" or similar stuff.
> I don't know if anyone is really. Because never before has there been so much hate towards simply holding different opinions.
This is a very, very poorly thought out thing to say. Nothing we're experiencing right now in the US compares in terms of vitriol and danger to McCarthyism, the first red scare, the civil rights era, or abolitionism. We're not even close.
I think this is all circles of America right now. I'm a typical social leaning west coast tech dude and I cannot be pragmatic in my conversations and points about the state of affairs because I'm immediately a supporter of this that or the next thing. Constructive public discourse is dead?
One cannot even seem to have 'conservative' stances on one thing and 'liberal' stances on others. And, no, I'm not libertarian either. The US had a great opportunity to elect a third party last time around, yet decided to dig in its heels more on candidates that were unpopular and take out their spite against 'the other side'.
So you can't even debate an issue. You have to take a 'side' on an issue.
Totally!!! It's wild. I feel like growing up it was normal to identify as say a very social leaning fiscal conservative. These days if I say everyone should be allowed to be married and everyone should be allowed to carry a gun, I'm likely labeled the opposite view of the person I'm talking with (I don't re: guns, to be clear). Very strange times.
I don't think it's even just conservatives, anyone who has an even slightly different opinion than the golden calves US libertarian society has set up is shunned. It's closer to religion at this point.
I consider myself liberal, but (and?) I disagree on various topics, mostly on affirmative action. However, if you think that introducing more bias is a bad way to solve existing bias, you're a racist.
It's not "I disagree with you", it's "your opinion is different from what I adhere to so I won't even consider it" on very specific topics, and my opinions aren't even that far from the rest of the ideology. I can certainly see how it'd make people with wildly different opinions feel isolated.
>However, if you think that introducing more bias is a bad way to solve existing bias, you're a racist.
Perhaps instead of labeling people as "x, y, and z" much like war propaganda has done through the years, we should try to understand where they are coming from?
The conversations on race I've seen recently have been more about institutionalized racism than personally attacking someone for being "a racist". So if one person advocates for a policy that would disadvantage minorities, someone else might point out that it's racist without ascribing some irredeemable evil to the person.
But you can just say "this will disadvantage minorities" and your point has been made, without even saying "it's racist". Then again, I don't really disagree with you on your larger point.
> than the golden calves US libertarian society has set up is shunned
This doesn't make any sense to me - as an (extreme) libertarian, I see very little progress on that front. The Democrats and Republicans have each used the libertarian "brand" when it has suited them, but neither have implemented any actual libertarian positions in my lifetime, at least not that I can recall.
Out of curiosity, are you perhaps viewing American politics from the perspective of someone accustomed to European politics?
No, he looks at it like left and right. From a European perspective American politics are simple:
Republicans: extreme right (slight adjustment: closed borders, mostly for laissez-faire economic reasons)
Democrats: extreme right (slight adjustment: (ever so slightly more) open borders, mostly for laissez-faire economic reasons)
Libertarians: extreme right
Even the bloody US communist party does not want to abolish markets. Think about how crazy that is.
On the borders point of view, a traditional leftist (one from the 70s or 80s) might even say that the republicans are clearly to the left, politically, of the democrats. Why ? Closed borders protect the rights, and increase living conditions and wages of laborers. Or, as we might say today, of "the 99%".
But yes, those same closed borders will make your iPads more expensive. A leftist should not care.
So by my measure, both Republicans and Democrats are in the middle leaning left - both supporting various forms of rights violations. Libertarians are further right, advocating a lot of good rights-protecting policies, but often for the wrong reasons - so they're not consistent in the policies they promote.
Also, "closed borders, mostly for laissez-faire economic reasons" doesn't really make sense, as that's an explicitly anti-laissez-fare policy (if you understand laissez-fare as "abstention by governments from interfering in the workings of the free market.", as it's most commonly meant).
That is an absurdly incorrect definition of left/right wing. The original use of left and right wings was that the right wing supported the French monarchy while the left wing opposed it, but under your definition supporters of an absolute monarchy would be far left.
Sure, historically that is true, but that historical usage doesn't capture that, philosophically and ideologically - absolute monarchy and communism just aren't that different - both rely on subjugation of the individual's rights to some authority (a monarch in one case, and society in another).
The historical, and common left/right distinction is even more absurd when you consider that socialism is considered left-wing, and fascism is considered right-wing. Where does that leave Nazism? Centrist?
What I like about the spectrum put together by the Objective Standard is that it essentializes the ideological distinctions between these movements, as viewed from the perspective of "degrees of respect for / violation of individual rights".
I am well aware that it's not the way most people understand the terms left-wing and right-wing, but to be frank, most people DON'T understand the terms, because they're not conceptually consistent in the slightest.
It's not that easy. Especially when it comes to illegals or criminal immigrants, the democrat position would be the extreme left in Europe.
Closed border, for example, is something all European parties but the extreme left could agree on. Deporting illegal criminals is something even the moderate left supports, and support for deporting non-criminal illegals is still pretty widely supported (it doesn't happen that often mostly because of technicalities, like the country of origin not wanting their citizens back).
Really controversial is only deporting legal immigrants who committed a crime. That's something most parties on the left wouldn't support.
> are you perhaps viewing American politics from the perspective of someone accustomed to European politics?
I probably am. With the "golden calves" point, I meant that there are specific topics that are adhered to religiously, and any attempt to discuss them produces a reflexive negative reaction. I'm not even talking about extreme ideology, I'm talking about things like the Google memo, which, although it did have some points that didn't really stand (and which should have sparked discussion, as the memo intended), didn't merit the shitstorm that ensued, in my opinion.
I see this in various friends of mine, when we discuss, for example, hiring quotas. Personally, I generally consider hiring quotas a bad practice, and discussed this with a friend, who is heavily in favor of them. However, when I told him about how my sister got passed over for hiring in favor of a male competitor as a result of affirmative action (lawyers here are overwhelmingly female), I could sense that my friend didn't agree with it either. It felt like his opinion wasn't "minorities should have an advantage", but rather "this particular group of people should have an advantage even where they're the majority". That strikes me as a fundamentally non-rational position.
Another point is that I feel that if you're a white, middle-class male, you can basically never be right. If someone puts you down, you can't complain because there are other people who are less privileged than you. It's the "starving children in Africa" argument.
Take all this with a grain of salt, though, as the society I live in isn't like this. All of the above is what I gather from talking to my american friends and colleagues, so I may be off the mark or wrong in many things.
> However, if you think that introducing more bias is a bad way to solve existing bias, you're a racist.
You can always refer to the UK(a country that ended slavery before the USA and didn't need a civil war to do it) decided that affirmative action is illegal exactly because it is a racist policy.
No, they didn't ban “affrimative action”; they banned a very small subset of the mechanisms that have been used for affirmative action in certain contexts.
Ok, yeah. But as a barometer of attitude, that's a lot of people who agree that affirmative action is a bad idea. It's not an unassailable tenet of American politics.
No, it's a lot of people that agree that explicit racial preferences are a bad idea; but then, in most contexts (e.g., hiring) those have been banned federally even where Affirmative Action is mandatory (e.g., federal contracting covered by the EOs requiring affirmative action.)
I could not agree more on the "it is closer to religion" point. I have been saying this for a decade now. National politics has replaced religion, community, and family for many people. Political parties and political virtues are how one defines themselves and how they fit into the world. Due to moving frequently (even within a 2 hour radius), more dispersed families, lack of long term involvement in a truly local community (be it a club/lodge or a church), and politics becoming a replacement for relgion in defining what is "right" and what is "wrong" people on both sides are looking at political opposition in manners similar to the Crusades or Protestants vs Catholics.
Politics has become a singular (or at minimum, the dominant) identifier for so many people, that seeing someone who opposes your views means that they are not part of your community. I think re-establishing communities that bring meaning to people's lives would go a long way to helping get through this rough patch. These can be clubs, churches, sports, etc. People need something that they are passionate about that connects them to other people and let's them focus on something local. I think shifting eveyone's attention back toward their local politics and community (where most of the governing that actually impacts you is done) would do wonders.
Aren't these the same sort that will moan ceaselessly about the ludicrousness of "safe spaces" and "snowflakes"?
I don't particularly care. You're free to speak your mind. You're not free to force people around you agree. Either get over it, or move on. I hear welding is an in-demand industry and I bet they'll find more receptivity to their viewpoints there.
> I hear welding is an in-demand industry and I bet they'll find more receptivity to their viewpoints there.
I know what point you're trying to make here, and it's true that there may be more receptivity, but welders are more likely to be, say, pro union than your run of the mill SV bro.
Yes, I was mostly being flippant there. I've known several welders and iron workers and they tend to mostly be apolitical and when they have opinions they're a fair mix of both left and right.
But welders is what came to mind first when I was thinking of "stereotypically right wing jobs". Whoops.
lol. While I get your point, I would say it's not quite true. At least in Canada. Source: father's a 2nd-generation pipe fitter at a large refinery. The guys that work those kinds of rough jobs tend to be a bit more rough around the edges, but tend to support more left-wing policies. They just feel the tax bite more than people like us who can take a "work from home" day, because they have to put a lot of themselves into their work every day. But most union-member tradespersons tend to support our public healthcare, public works, view the company's motives with skepticism, and have an arguably higher degree of respect for human life than a 3rd-generation white collar worker. (They need to, because their coworkers can die if they don't)
But like I said, that's in Canada. I can't speak for the US.
I don't think you understand the conservative objection to 'safe spaces', or else you are intentionally misinterpreting. The problem with 'safe spaces' is precisely that they hinder free discourse and mutual interaction between people with differing opinions, not that they prevent people's feelings from getting hurt. You don't get to redefine the concept.
First of all, you are associating conservative beliefs with the trades. That's exactly the sort of thing that is being brought up here - you're effectively saying that the left claims white collar jobs, particularly those in tech, and that anyone who doesn't fit that mold shouldn't even bother.
Secondly, you're implying that welding is a lower-status field. Nothing could be further from the truth - of the two people that I know that became welders after high school, one is now an underwater welder working on offshore oil platforms and the other has specialized in heavy industrial stuff. Both of them make more than any developer I know, including myself.
> Aren't these the same sort that will moan ceaselessly about the ludicrousness of "safe spaces" and "snowflakes"?
One of the distinguishing characteristics of those on the right is the importance of equal application of the rules.
I don't think I implied that at all. If you felt that way, you might be revealing your own cognitive biases. I don't think any form of labor is morally superior to anything else, mainly because I disagree with the whole concept of the labor system in general, but I disgress.
My point was that you can't denigrate people asking to share their opinion peacefully and without verbal assault, ie a "safe space", while simultaneously complaining that your viewpoints aren't allowed to be shared peacefully and without verbal assault.
Which, btw, I believe is a load of bull. I've been party to multitudes of political conversations in the workplace and a negligibly tiny percentage of them have I seen actually get out of control. You may feel that your viewpoints aren't aligned with the culture, but that's my entire point. You have no reasonable expectation to force the culture to do anything, leading back to my point of I wouldn't go to to work at, say, an oil rig with the expectation of my political culture aligning with theirs.
And before you begin, I'm not saying anything against people who work on rigs. I am saying that there is evidence that it overall is a right leaning culture.
Its not bigotry. Its demography. Bigotry would be me, upon hearing someone is a welder, asking them why they voted for Trump. Demography is the realization that welders work nationwide, multitudes in rural areas, multitudes in traditionally conservative industries such as oil and gas, and therefore a person is much more likely to find people who share political culture than in an industry that is clustered in major coastal cities.
You just don't know what you are talking about with your guesses and assumptions about the industry. Welding has a lot of union members. Union members traditionally voting for liberal politicians.
> multitudes in rural areas,
Where are you getting that stat? Most of the big construction projects are near urban areas. And for the remote jobs they are usually bringing people in, not hiring locals who generally aren't qualified for the work. Some welders do a lot of travel.
> therefore a person is much more likely to find people who share political culture
If you really want to better understand the mix of political views in that industry, join a welding forum and go to the "off-topic, politics welcome" board and you'll see just as many people complaining about illegal immigrants as you will people correcting the misconceptions about immigrants. Trump? Plenty of Trump supporters on welding forums, but just as many people there predicting buyer's remorse and complaining about how Trump is an awful president. The shared political culture that you are imagining doesn't exist.
If you want a softer term, it's certainly uninformed prejudice. You made a guess about the political leanings of an industry based on your stereotype of a working class person and you were wrong. That's ok, but don't dig yourself even deeper by going into greater detail about your wrong assumptions.
If they are isolated maybe this is not so bad taking into account how they see immigration, isn't it?
Jokes apart, sometimes is very hard to left aside those differences that might be hiding an interesting person. I am in the same situation with a coworker which is very conservative, sometimes is hard to get along with it.
Can't we just keep politics out of the workplace? Who really wants to sit next to the guy who's going to spend a half an hour telling me about my company's “social justice agenda”?
I don't know. It is kind of hard. I feel that if someone supports Trump, it is my moral obligation to change their mind. I wouldn't shame or degrade them, but I would argue my point fairly strongly.
I'd say that makes my case for me. Politics has a draw, a tribalistic compulsion that draws everyone in. That's why it shouldn't exist in the workplace.
While I generally agree with the sentiment, if I were a manager that seems like something I wouldn't be able to allow because t would be too disruptive for no company benefit.
That's assuming it's done during work hours. If done outside it may still be an issue if it starts to effect the working relationship.
Is that really productive though? For me, at least, I try and imagine how I would feel if the roles were switched - in that case I am pretty sure I wouldn't change my mind, because I have thought about my political views a fair bit, and it would just be annoying to have someone arguing with me when I don't feel like it.
I agree, I avoid talking politics or religion in the workplace. For some people it’s difficult, because who they voted for in the last election or things that happen at church are part of their personal identity - and I get it, but you should keep it to yourself when interacting with people you work with (this is why I have a strict policy about keeping anyone I work with in a professional relationship only - we work together, we’re not best buds).
Exactly my take. Work is work. Keep that separate from your political, religious, and social life.
That's the reason that I never attend work social events outside of work hours (Christmas parties, etc). If nothing else it's an unpaid imposition on my free time.
My question is, why do all of a person's co-workers need to know their political affiliation?
You can choose what aspects of yourself you want to reveal and conceal from people at work. For example, I don't reveal my religious beliefs to people at work unless someone asks me, which rarely happens. Politics is much the same.
> He showed coworkers emails he exchanged with Ivanka Trump after he mailed her photos he took at the Republican convention, and on election night, he texted colleagues snapshots from the floor of Trump’s victory party in New York City.
This person sounds like they're trying to rub their political views in everyone else's face.
But, unfortunately, the irony is that the same mechanism that isolates conservatives on SV and liberals on oil companies is working here to isolate your good sense in Hacker News.
I can't believe we're suddenly having a moral crisis about business cultural politics... over the fact that a guy was fired for arguing in part that historically discriminated-against groups are underrepresented because of biological unfitness.
Political business monocultures have been a thing since forever. Dial the clock back a little and you have bosses pressuring you to campaign for Nixon. Dial it forward again and you have CEOs starting meetings with prayer. Dial it forward to today where one dude gets fired for arguing Nazi race science, and suddenly we all have to chat.
I see it more like instinct vs. reason. When reason fights instinct, the later usually wins.
We get surprised when groups that we expect to be sophisticated behave exactly like Polynesian/Amazonian tribes or chimpanzees in the Congo.
But, many times, civilization is just a varnish over bestiality, a make-up on a pig. Deep down we react like tribes that repress behavior that looks threatening to our group cohesion.
Can confirm, I'm on the Left in an oil company and luckily I don't have to talk to many people in informal situations day-to-day. It doesn't help that the company is Authoritarian, so I made a mistake talking about the sad state of the 4th Amendment here.
>>“Work is work, and not everything needs to be about politics,” he said. While he sees liberal colleagues who sit nearby don’t seemingly need to filter their comments, he’s decided it’s not worth engaging, adding “I don’t want to be known as that guy who wants to argue with everybody.”
As someone who falls on the Liberal side of the spectrum, this bothers me more than almost anything else regarding modern day politics. If you fall in line with the "right" (left) side, you are allowed to say any number of disparaging, mean, hateful, or ignorant comments without fear of consequence - as long as it's aimed at the political right-wing. If you mention you are a conservative or hold conservative views, you are aligned with the worst of the worst and anything you say is inherently wrong.
The liberal echo chamber is just as bad, if not worse, than the conservative's version of the same thing. I don't think work is ever the correct place to discuss political views in depth, but I can't imagine feeling like I can't express any view without fear of being downright hated.
I didn't decry thinking less of others - that would be hypocritical because I publically and loudly think less of anyone who supports the GOP and/or Tories (check my comment history). I do decry people who bleat about being thought less of when their own stance is thinking less of people - it's your petard, your lookout.
I'm conservative, I do not think less of anyone else as a human being (I may well think less of their opinions, actions, or behaviors, but that's not at all the same thing).
Your viewpoint that "thinking less of others" is a "core" conservative value very much implies that you don't really know any conservatives, and are just parroting the party line from within your bubble.
I am indeed just parroting the GOP party line. Their policies comprehensively demonstrate that they think less of others - LGBTQ people, women, poor people, POC, immigrants are all "lesser" in the eyes of the GOP.
I have quite a few gay friends who think a core conservative value is to oppress them. How could they not? The Republican Party to this day actively tries to strip them of rights.
Actually, most of us conservatives have a core stance of "don't trust anything you care about to the government." Nothing more, nothing less. Liberals love to parade out the worst of us because then no "reasonable" person wants to be on that team. To be honest, I don't want to be on that team, but I'm not going to give up because I really believe there's a better way. Better to vote my conscience and try to improve the party reputation buy being a good neighbor than give in so the McCarthys don't accuse me of being racist.
See, now you're just being a troll. The person you replied to gave you a well reasoned response and you're being flippant in return. This is not the level of discourse I'd hope to see on HN.
Would you please not engage in partisan flamewar here regardless of how right your position is? It's destructive of what we're hoping for here: please see https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Except that it isn't. People conflate all sorts of ideas about particular issues with the larger overarching political ideology. It's entirely possible to be conservative, be pro-gay marriage, pro abortion, pro legalization of marijuana, etc. There are some specific issues which the conservative ideology does fall squarely on, such as a resounding no to universal healthcare, but these are few and far between.
The conservative ideology in the most simplistic terms is "a smaller central government with less power is a better government". Modern conservative and liberal ideologies are nothing more than an extension of federalism and anti-federalism from the founding of the nation. Conflating this ideology with some of the worst people who claim it is unfair and divisive without cause or care.
This, in fact, is the exact thing the person you're responding to is pointing out. You are claiming conservative = "a belief in punitive actions against marginalized members of society" (paraphrasing you slightly for clarity). This simply isn't true, by any measure. It's a nice rhetorical soundbite to raise the ire of your political fellows as a clarion call, but it's not factually accurate and espousing this viewpoint about conservatives normalizes and encourages the type of political divisiveness we are seeing today.
Fun story, if we go by the last 5 years (honestly if we go by the last 100 years, but that's a deeper discussion about ideology shifts related to specific key issues) the majority of political violence occurring in the US is being done in the name of liberal ideologies, with much irony I presume. This very position you are putting forth is actually rather anti-liberal, but it's not conservative either. As a shock to all, there are more than two sides to a cube.
> the majority of political violence occurring in the US is being done in the name of liberal ideologies
Gerrymandering, Voter suppression, bias against POC, denial of bodily autonomy for women, denial of basic rights to LGBTQ - all done in the name of conservative ideologies.
None of those things (with the exception of voter suppression) could be remotely classified as "political violence". While I find the idea of denying basic human rights to anyone repugnant, it is not violent in and of itself.
"Political violence" is violence perpetrated to reach political goals. For something to be political violence, it first must be violence, only then does the political angle even matter. I would also broadly separate "politicized violence" from "political violence". The first could be a war that is being discussed politically, the latter is physically assaulting someone because they hold a political view you disagree with.
Let's not play funny with words, it doesn't help the quality of the discussion. You're clearly not ignorant, so don't act that you are for the purpose of trolling. Not to mention, basically NONE of the things you brought up are part of the conservative ideology. You're focusing on "issues", which have nothing to do with ideologies. Ideologies are deeper, and determine individual's stances on issues. An individual can hold an ideology and have differing stances on an issue from other individuals with the same ideology.
Something helpful to consider might be that Republican != conservative and Democrat != liberal. While the terms are often conflated, it is wrong and done by pundits /specifically/ to confuse the conversation. Don't play into the same game.
> As someone who falls on the Liberal side of the spectrum, this bothers me more than almost anything else regarding modern day politics. If you fall in line with the "right" (left) side, you are allowed to say any number of disparaging, mean, hateful, or ignorant comments without fear of consequence - as long as it's aimed at the political right-wing. If you mention you are a conservative or hold conservative views, you are aligned with the worst of the worst and anything you say is inherently wrong.
It has a name: double standard
I like to think of it like weak minded people who love to dish out insults but accuse you of being the most indecent person on the planet if you repeat their exact words back to them.
> The liberal echo chamber is just as bad, if not worse, than the conservative's version of the same thing.
I'd lean towards worse. I don't recall anyone attempting to publicly shame me for not being "conservative enough". I'd wager that most liberals have encountered some version of that.
> I like to think of it like weak minded people who love to dish out insults but accuse you of being the most indecent person on the planet if you repeat their exact words back to them.
Yeah, but you'll always have rationalization on why one side thinks it's okay: "It's okay in my case because I'm intolerant of intolerance" "It's okay in my case because I'm bigoted against bigotry"
Today, the right is stereotyped as tolerant of intolerance and the left is stereotyped as intolerant of intolerance. Both are untrue, but anonymity on the internet makes it seem like one vile person you disagree with is following you around spewing hate. When people are experiencing a rush of adrenaline from an argument, even online, many lose the ability to distinguish the words and actions of individuals from those of groups or to recognize subtlety and shades of gray. Everyone is arguing all the time these days, everyone has an opinion on everything, this huge adrenaline bubble is forming and it's going to pop one way or another...
> I'd lean towards worse. I don't recall anyone attempting to publicly shame me for not being "conservative enough". I'd wager that most liberals have encountered some version of that.
Odd. Just an observation: conservatives in the US have a commonly used name for that - RINO - Republican in Name Only - and there is no equivalent name among liberals.
Nope. In order to be equivalent it would need to be used as frequently as the corresponding term (the textual similarity of the terms is not the point).
Has anyone here ever actually been called a "DINO?" My personal sphere is populated largely with Democrats, Leftists, and Libertarians of various stripes and I've never seen this phrase written or spoken in conversation. (the only one I've seen on that page you linked to is "Blue Dog Democrats," and I'm pretty sure I've never heard that one spoken in person. I wasn't aware it was a pejorative.)
I am not at all sure that means Democrats are more accepting of dissent in the ranks, but they haven't got such a commonly used term for it.
> Has anyone here ever actually been called a "DINO?"
Not much since center-right neoliberals became clearly and solidly the dominant faction within the party, since “DINO” was largely what more progressive Democrats labelled that faction; the label also applied to actual conservatives in the party, though they mostly completed the migration to the Republican Party shortly after the Republican congressional majority in the 1994 election (since they had stayed in the Democratic Party largely for the organizational benefits of being in the majority, despite increasing ideological tension through the long post-civil-rights partisan realignment.)
Google search for DINO democrat and RINO republican indicate that the terms are used with similar frequency (340k vs 417k).
This coincides with my experience hearing the terms, so perhaps your experience is simply different based on where you live or who is in your social circle. FWIW, I have lived in CA and PA, and my friends are a mix of liberals and conservatives.
Ah, thanks, that is interesting. (my background is actually similar - from OH but spent five years in Berkeley, where people won't use a simple term to dismissively label you when they could just talk at you until you fall asleep...)
And the result is just as predictable. People with conservative views will stay quiet and get more isolated and annoyed. They'll identity with other "underdogs" that are being attacked, even if they wouldn't otherwise really agree with their positions. Then everyone acts all surprised when a more extreme candidate shows up to overwhelming support.
Some of my saddest friends, at least when it comes to expressing themselves politically, are my liberal friends who have beliefs just a bit outside the left-norm. Things like owning firearms, or support for free speech even when it's ugly.
These folks are shunned by both groups. One guy told me once he had friends of 20 years that wouldn't let him in the house when they found out he owned a gun.
But the question one asked that I keep getting back to is this: would the Civil Rights movement stand a chance today in the world many in the left wants to set up?
Another commenter mentioned being assaulted by a ROTC cadet for expressing liberal views. As bad as that is, I'm much more supportive of open fisticuffs, along with a jail sentence for whomever started it, than creating systems of political suppression that many major SV corps seem intent on doing. It doesn't get more fucked up and evil than that -- and I have no doubt in my mind that the people doing it are nice and well meaning. All the worse.
I identify with your left-of-norm liberal friends.
Most of my views sit closer to the middle than either pole - but I can't actually discuss this with any of my "liberal" friends. If I say anything that isn't a complete regurgitation of a leftist facebook meme, I'm suddenly an "alt-right sympathizer" (real quote). It's made it so that whenever politics comes up at all I just check out of the conversation. It's hard because I really do enjoy debating and talking about politics, but nobody wants to debate anymore. Everyone wants to be correct and shame the other side into changing their views.
The liberal echo chamber is a problem, but I don't think it's anywhere near the scale of problem as things like climate change, healthcare, consumer protection rollbacks, voter suppression, mass incarceration and deportation. These issues are more important than whether someone feels comfortable wearing a MAGA hat at Google.
Politics isn't baseball. The stakes are real, more so for some than for others. If you want to express a political view at work then the people to whom you are expressing it have a right to dislike you for it.
> If you want to express a political view at work then the people to whom you are expressing it have a right to dislike you for it.
Do those people have a right to take action to negatively impact your career/livelihood/ability-to-provide-for-your-family because of your political views?
If your political views negatively impact their career/livelihood/ability-to-provide-for-your-family then it would be a violation of the golden rule if they couldn't.
I feel like this is a strange position, because every single political issue does this to someone. Raise my property tax for schools? Time to blacklist you, I needed that money for elder care.
If your politics, or the beliefs of those who share your politics, make your coworkers feel hurt, scared, and angry, then I see absolutely no reason to bring them to your workplace. It's basic human interaction 101. And sorry, but insisting that people grow a thicker skin won't work, because that's not how people operate.
I discuss controversial topics in person with my close friends, and I don't feel any poorer for it.
> If your politics, or the beliefs of those who share your politics, make your coworkers feel hurt, scared, and angry, then I see absolutely no reason to bring them to the workplace.
On one hand, I would argue that getting angry because someone doesn't share your views is unprofessional. On the other, I would like to point out that the point of this article is that this is a one-way street: If Progressives experience any of these emotions in reaction to your political views, those views are unwelcome. If conservatives/libertarians/etc. experience those emotions in reaction to your views, then that's just too bad for them.
Well — yeah, that's how it works when most people around you share certain opinions. You can't change human nature all by your lonesome. You certainly wouldn't find me chatting about the Clintons, universal healthcare, etc. in a conservative office. (Or any office, for that matter.)
It's not even clear that "most" people in tech firms are liberal. Rather, liberals feel it's OK to talk about their personal political views in public all the time and to throw massive tantrums / try and get opposing voices fired.
Even if just 10% of a company was like that, unless management intervened to stop it, that'd be enough to ensure they were the only voices that got heard regardless of the true balances.
I say your politics, whatever they are, make me feel hurt, scared, and angry.
Obviously you can't argue with this; my feelings are my feelings and are thus inarguable.
Therefore, by your basic rule, you are no longer allowed to even state any of your political beliefs, because such would make me feel hurt, scared, and angry. And it doesn't matter what your beliefs are or how you arrived at them or what reasoning is behind them. Because according to you, maintaining my feelings, no matter how fragile or hypersensitive or unreasonable they may be, is an absolute imperative and all other values must be sacrificed to achieve that goal.
Now I've got total control over the speech of anyone around me. I can shut down anyone, making any statement on any topic. I need only declare that I feel hurt, scared, or angered by that statement - and such inarguable declarations have absolute unappealable power to silence.
See the problem here? It's obvious you can't run a society this way. It just becomes a race to the bottom of people being more and more hypersensitive to gain power. At a certain point, people do need to be told to grow a thicker skin.
> Now I've got total control over the speech of anyone around me. I can shut down anyone, making any statement on any topic.
Not really. This only works if your opinions are part of the current zeitgeist. If not, then nobody will really care what some loner is hurt by, and will probably just avoid talking to you, period.
> At a certain point, people do need to be told to grow a thicker skin.
OK, but that doesn't work. It only makes people angrier and even more determined to exclude you.
> Now I've got total control over the speech of anyone around me. I can shut down anyone, making any statement on any topic. I need only declare that I feel hurt, scared, or angered by that statement - and such inarguable declarations have absolute unappealable power to silence.
If someone, in your place of business, says "what you just said was hurtful and offensive", then yes, I think maybe you shouldn't say it. Or at least take pause and consider why what you said may be hurtful.
None of that prevents your ability to say what you want outside the office.
You can stop and consider it, and then say "actually, you shouldn't be offended by that. It is immature to be offended by that. Please grow up"
That will offend them even more of course, which is why companies that don't have tough management will all be wrecked by this social strategy in the coming years. Google is already clearly far gone. At some point employees that constantly claim to be offended need to be told they'll be fired if they don't toughen up.
This is a two-way street. As a Christian, I get upset when I hear my employer promote Bhuddist values (inviting Bhuddist monks on-site to otherwise-nonreligious corporate events) while also parading their role in defeating legislation to protect religious clergy who hold traditionally-Christian beliefs from being sued over their beliefs. This communicates to me both "you're the enemy, and we are working hard to make you vulnerable" and "these others who are directly opposite you are our favorites."
The CEO has brought his religion to the workplace to the detriment of many of his employees, and as a result I am both hurt (by being "enemied") and scared (for the long-term existence of 1st-Amendment protection for my religious practice, given the company's legal activism). Is it still true in this case that "insisting that people grow a thicker skin won't work"?
I actually think that's a perfectly reasonable thing to be uncomfortable with, and probably warrants a chat with a higher-up or an anonymous complaint.
Indeed; several months ago I used an anonymous-at-the-time internal feedback mechanism to submit a note about how the CEO's top-down religious decisions affect me. Since then, the only thing that's happened is that the internal feedback mechanism was made no-longer-anonymous.
I'm one worker bee among thousands, sitting on the opposite coast in a different office from the CEO, with (last I counted) 8 layers of management between me and the CEO. If any change is going to happen, it's much more likely that the change will be delivered to my employment status, so I keep my head down and learn to tactfully avoid subjects that could get me in hot water for simply being different from the folks in power. A kind of "script switching", if you will.
* Your boss parading his religion around and making you feel othered, while probably legal, is uncool.
* Though I would be remiss if I didn't point out that across America, it's by and large the Christian viewpoint that's flaunted at employees. I feel bad for you, but I'm also happy that you've been given an opportunity to understand why this is bad.
* You're protected from being _discriminated against_ based on his religious beliefs.
* That law being "paraded" is the one that protects you from your boss discriminating against you based on his religious beliefs.
2. While I understand what you're trying to say, I don't think you'd be remiss, and in fact, I found it a bit presumptive to assume that I advocate for Christian viewpoints being "flaunted at employees" and that I somehow need "an opportunity to understand why this is bad" as though I didn't already.
3. While it's true that as a public secular institution, the company can't make hiring decisions based on religious beliefs, there appears to be no protection from being intentionally treated poorly on a systemic level (and no regard for "behaving" unless I wanted to pony up and lawyer up against my employer)
4. The law being "paraded" is the one that would have permitted religious clergy in religious institutions to make business decisions based on religious values (i.e. I can't sue a rabbi for refusing to host my pork BBQ event on Saturday night at a synagogue).
An update on this: all employees' posters and signs that have been part of the office for years have been taken down, and replaced with photos of HQ-based employees marching in various LGBTQ Pride parades (which is pretty controversial on its own), and photos of Bhuddist monks on stage at company events.
Marc Benioff is not so good at hiding his religious intolerance.
I might be misunderstanding your comment, but I'm curious to hear more about why you have felt that Buddhist monks have been communicated as being "directly opposite" to Christian clergy? Having studied and adopted practices from both traditions, this statement doesn't seem to accurately reflect core values from either of them.
(I understand that "Christian" and "Buddhist" are very broad categories, and that there are myriad forms contained within each of them...)
"Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:16).
It is a core doctrine of Christianity that there is exactly one path to righteousness, which is through acknowledgement of personal sin and personal inability to pay the penalty for said sin, acceptance of the payment offered by Jesus Christ as the only way to pay that penalty, and submission to the Christian God as the only divine sovereign God.
Bhuddism is, from what I understand, a pluralistic religion, where there are many paths to enlightenment, and where many of those paths involve seeking something from within ones' self.
These are at odds as much as two signs saying "there is exactly one door to this room" and "there are many doors to this room".
To the extent that this is true generally of Christians (even by the narrow definition as those groups holding to the doctrines espoused in the Apostle's and Nicene Creeds, which excludes many groups that describe themself as Christian) it is arguaby only trivially true. While there are certainly Christians who hold to a narrow view of exclusivity where only that which is within the visible bounds of the Christian Church can be holy and only those people within it's visible bounds may be saved, many (and the official doctrine of the largest organized Christian group) do not.
I think the problem is that when someone hears your opinion on one of the big issues that divide liberals from conservatives, they often make the leap and assume that they also know your opinions on all the other issues as well.
I don't understand why is this surprising. Has there ever been any group of primates/hominids where deviating behavior isn't frowned upon?
Every group prizes social cohesion. When a behavior looks threatening to that cohesion it is a natural defense for the group to isolate such threat. It is a necessary part of its survival, like an organism reacting to parasites, infections or offending threats.
This reaction even has respectable philosophical ethical justifications, see Karl Popper's discussion on the limits of tolerance.
I do not condone with intolerance, but we should understand that, at a very primary instinctive level, there are evolutionary and biological reasons for this. These are even some of the reasons for the downvotes I will get.
I think the real issue is that we're sliding toward excessive emotionalism in our politics, and the side with the simplest and most poingnant argument is the one that tends to dominate on any particular issue. Sometimes liberals are better at riling people up, but conservatives certainly have managed some "victories" as well.
This is precisely the wrong way to make political decisions, but it pushes all of our lizard-brain buttons and I'm not sure how we pull out of it.
I can imagine they may feel isolated in the sense that their views are not very common. But isolated in the sense of, if I let on I voted for Obama I will get fired? I am very skeptical of that.
My experience of these issues is that one part of society has become exceptionally intolerant far beyond other parts. I do not hear stories of conservative companies engaging in mini civil wars and retribution firings over liberal memos.
You should try being liberal in a red state. I've had people try to run me off of the road for an Obama sticker before. It's not social isolation here, it's straight up aggression.
You are aware of what you're doing and the reactions it will incite. What do you think happens to parked cars with MAGA stickers in California? Well you don't have to wonder, there are more than enough "social experiments" on youtube documenting this subject matter.
You're effectively arguing that you know (and possibly deserve) any reaction you get out of having a certain opinion. Justifying that with "well, it happens to others" is not great. You political opinions should never be justification for harm.
As the person whose post that was deleted mentioned, this is effectively the same type of argument as saying: "well, you know what will happen if you wear a sexy short skirt alone late at night".
I was going to say. Living as a Red in a Blue state isn't much different than living as a Blue in a Red state.
And I'm sitting here without any official party to call my own because I think both are idiotic with their identity politics. Which can be worse half the time because the Republicans think I'm a liberal, and the Democrats think I'm a conservative.
>> Politics often don’t mix easily at work, but it’s particularly fraught in tech, where free thinking is prized yet the workforce is predominantly liberal.
It used to be free thinking. They would embrace "inclusiveness" under that banner. The problem is they've gone all-in with the notion that being a Social Justice Warrior is a morally superior ideological position and anyone else is a bad person. They really have become a distinct hate group even though in some places they are a majority.
I no longer associate with people who throw around the terms misogyny, patriarchy, and rape culture. I'm a pretty simple guy but I'm tired of hearing how bad I am just because I have a Y chromosome. The war on masculinity is very real.
Oh boo hoo. For every supposedly "pro liberal" tech company there are plenty of "conservative" ones you can work for (EMC and Lockheed have huge presences in the Valley). Or you could just, you know, enjoy your technical work and not worry about the politics within a private sector organization.
If you really think there's a change that needs to happen you could drive for it, but no, it's not inherently going to make you popular. The same issues faced by people who struggle/have struggled for more diversity in the private sector over the decades.
I think, though, the reality is that politics (and concomitant voting choices) has consequences on the lives of others, and this pattern of some social isolation is in turn a consequence of that.
It isn't Star Wars vs Star Trek, it's whether Jim the SRE can marry his long-term boyfriend Mike, or whatever.
It's not just politics. It never is. Votes make a difference in people's lives.
What do conservatives expect, when society is moving away from the social views their party has aligned itself with?
And, to remain solution-focused, how should the rest of us befriend them when the conservative party in this country has such views? What's the common ground we can look for?
To go with gay issues (I have a lot more gay friends than people of color friends, so I'm more sympathetic to their issues day-to-day), to you folks out there who oppose gay marriage now, or supported Reagan when AIDS was decimating the gay community in the 80s, or any number of examples...
How may I find common ground with you when your politics and votes have hurt so badly the community so many of my friends are a part of?
I think this is still a false dichotomy. Some of us just don't want the government subsidizing marriage at all. Why should any dual-income pair get tax benefits? I say this as a married person.
The thought I'm guessing at the time was to encourage new families to build up society, but not even all straight, married couples are doing that. Why not just take the government out of the equation and let anyone declare any kind of relationship status they want. It's not like I have to take part in it.
Personally, I agree! I'd get the government out of marriage entirely, except to recognize whatever union you wanted.
Because again there are real-world consequences, like being considered a family member if your loved one's in a hospital, or getting access to death benefits if your loved one dies in the line of duty, or whatever.
But that's not what one of the two mainstream parties is saying: they're saying, "traditional marriage, and the rest of you can go sit on a fence."
This stuff gets personal for so many people so quickly because, in effect, one political party is telling a lot of folks that their humanity is lesser or less deserving of access to government than the rest of us.
How do you not take that personally (and make social choices based on), if you're in that group that's being told they should have less access to government?
Yeah, the hospital visitation rights and death benefits are good points. I'm not sure why those are so restrictive at all? Why even require a documented relationship? Just let people choose who can visit them, or get their death benefits. Is that a crazy stance?
Pragmatically speaking, supporting Republicans who hate gay people because you don't think the government should be in the marriage business has the exact same effect as actually trying to block gay marriage: straight marriage is allowed; gay marriage isn't.
The "who" you elided is rather critical in that sentence. The GP is referring to specific "Republicans who hate gay people". They are not saying that all Republicans hate gay people.
Take care in how you edit people's posts in a quote so that yours can remain honest. Otherwise, everything you've posted becomes suspect and will be dismissed easily.
It's not an us vs them mentality. Traditional marriage is a core Republican Party platform.
> Foremost among those institutions is the American family. It is the foundation of civil society, and the cornerstone of the family is natural marriage, the union of one man and one woman. Its daily lessons — cooperation, patience, mutual respect, responsibility, self-reliance — are fundamental to the order and progress of our Republic. Strong families, depending upon God and one another, advance the cause of liberty by lessening the need for government in their daily lives. Conversely, as we have learned over the last five decades, the loss of faith and family life leads to greater dependence upon government. That is why Republicans formulate public policy, from taxation to education, from healthcare to welfare, with attention to the needs and strengths of the family. [1]
Hate, dislike, enmity, love. Call it what you want but the end result is that the Republican platform explicitly calls out marriage between a man and a women good, between two people of the same sex bad and pragmatically they support taking away the rights of gay people.
Also, just so we are clear. Im not saying all Republicans hate gay people. There are definitely some who do and those are the individuals that seem to drive the platform policy.
does this differ at all from other organizations that have a strongly biased demographic. I work in tech. and admit there is a bias, but that is one of the many reason i prefer to working in a tech field. Is the difference, that in tech, in particular the silicon valley tech sector, work work and life are so intertwined, that not only is your work-life politically bias, but by virtue of this a la carte lifestyle, everything else is too.
What people call conservative to me sounds like common sense. How do you tell your indian/chinese/pakistani/... colleagues that they are very nice but that they are making their country unrecognisable and that globalisation alienates people.
What if you are tired of multiculturalism, how do you "revert back" if you live in EU or US?
IMO, part of the problem is that some "conservative" viewpoints nowadays are directly attacking or undermining how your coworkers might live. And in many cases, so much so that their views go from "well, that sucks but I can still live my life" to "if your views were enacted, my way of life would be destroyed".
Pretty much. Economic wise I think the republicans are wrong, but it's not a moral issue (well, it is because of corporate influence but that's a different argument).
It's when you start doing things like making it illegal to 2 adults to have sex in the privacy of their home that I start to think "these are just bad people".
417 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] threadAt one workplace I saw two coworkers get into a fist fight because the liberal was "offended" that the conservative differed on a viewpoint.
Go to Texas and I'm sure you can find the opposite if you are looking for it. It's just a shame that we're letting society create the lens that we want to see, and we push things out that don't fit into our comfy bubble blanket.
Edit: To clarify what people got angry at me most: I told them I voted for Bush. It was simply that statement, nothing more.
If you're voting to take away people's healthcare, or to discriminate against them based on who they love, or their gender, then of course they are angry!
But it's fair to expect that you won't get into a fistfight with someone just because they make you angry.
Some people won't be cowed by a publicly aggressive racist... I'd tell my boss that I'm uncomfortable working with them. I'm not a snowflake, if someone else can't handle my speach and the resulting consequences of their own.
The idea that there are points of view (not actions or laws but ideas) that warrant violence is a large and growing problem.
Wasn't the passivity and meekness of the opposition the exact reason fascists were able to rise relatively easily in the intrawar period?
Personally, I think the concept that there aren't ideas worth throwing a punch over is equally as repugnant as saying you should punch anyone you disagree with.
This is the paradox enabling many to blindly say Antifa is a racist or fascist organization. No, they are the intolerant side of tolerance laying down the law. Without them, any tolerant society devolves slowly to fascism.
The key is to realise that the "Antifa" agenda has nothing to do with tolerance, regardless of what they claim.
This isn't as complicated or confounding as you seem to think. The "fascists" that Antifa think they're fighting aren't attempting to overthrow the government or build armies of SS-style street thugs. They are usually just protesting, or sometimes trying to give a speech at a university.
Speech should be countered with more speech. Violence, with violence in the proportion needed to stop it.
Antifa's agenda is to use violence to suppress speech. Like a lot of self-righteous activity it is rooted in hypocrisy. Their goal is to stop people from disagreeing with their political agenda by labelling any such disagreement as "Nazi" or "fascist" and then claiming their violence is justified as otherwise they'd be "tolerating intolerance". It is doublethink.
Secondly it is a component of decision theory and yes philosophers can propose mathematical propositions that do get rigorously investigated by real mathematicians. Saying a philosopher can't do math is probably the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Those ones who would not tolerate those with intolerant ideas, have intolerant ideas too, and they must be convinced their ideas are wrong.
No, it wasn't. I can't speak to what passivity would have caused, maybe things would have been even worse in Germany, but we can't really know, because 'passivity and meekness' didn't happen.
From around the time hyperinflation started, Weimar Germany was torn apart by openly violent factionalism. There was no significant period where fascists propagandized and recruited freely, or even did so without violent opposition. Bear in mind that the Beer Hall Putsch saw 16 Nazis and 4 police officers die, plus a large number of arrests.
The Sturmabteilung, the Nazi paramilitary arm, was only one of many streetfighting organizations pushing to violently resist and silence its opponents. The RotFront was a famous paramilitary group advocating total communist revolution, which led major actions against the SA. The Stahlhelm were reactionary, monarchist conservatives who opposed the Weimar government, communists, and Nazis. The Iron Front were center-leftist paramilitaries whose 'three arrows' logo represented opposition to fascists, communists, and monarchists alike.
All of these groups engaged in extensive streetfighting and propagandizing, and everyone who wasn't the SA hated the Nazis. There was no shortage of anti-fascist violence in Germany - most visibly in the early thirties, but beginning well before that.
The lesson of interwar Germany isn't that tolerance breeds fascism. It's that streetfighting violence can fail completely. Fighting Nazism with rocks and clubs was tried, to no effect - it turns out that beatings neither dissuade nor deconvert people. In the end, the violence which solved the problem was a war, which proceeds on rather different lines - it changes views by killing people with said views.
I agree that there are plenty of ideas worth fighting for. But the claim that passivity is what enabled fascism in Germany is factually false; passivity simply wasn't the state of affairs in the Weimar period.
One thing that it is important to distinguish is holding an idea versus acting on it. The fascists were acting on their views, not merely holding them and talking about them. And violence may demand violence. And action, passing laws that enslave and oppress, that may demand violence too in some circumstances. But speech, even organized speech, demands speech not violence. It may demand a LOT of speech. But it does not demand violence.
If a person is willing to use violence to silence an opposing view that is being non-violently spoken, then that is the worse thing in my view. This includes the violent suppression of racist and sexist and other discriminatory views. Though I detest those positions, I detest violence more.
Now, inciting people to violence. Calling people to violence. I do believe that that is a different issue. And one that I do not know how to deal with.
Holding different opinions is natural to everyone. It is the treatment of how one listens, your body language while listening, the amount of time given after one stops speaking before a counterpoint is given. Fights erupt when people do not listen, and of course when one side can't articulate their position and the conversation devolves from mature.
Two respectful mature adults can talk about any painful subject. If you can't, that's an indication of a need to mature, either yourself or your attitude towards others.
It wasn't a great policy before. It's not great now. Hiding who you are to avoid ridicule doesn't solve the problem. If the majority opinion is safe to express, but your opinion isn't, then being forced to hide doesn't actually solve the problem. Even if you hide your views, you may get asked why you don't support the majority's viewpoints.
As others have said, it goes both ways: liberal in a red state, conservative in a blue state.
At the end of the day, the people you meet at work are not there because they want to be friends. They're there for one reason: to make money. If you respect other people's boundaries then they respect you.
You already see why posting that was a bad idea because you're primed to argue, even though you know it won't go anywhere.
I bring it up because the outrage is clearly so manufactured, not because I'm "primed to argue, even though I know it won't go anywhere."
Unpopular with a powerful lobby within the liberal tech industry, yes.
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/3028664/lgbt-programmers-speak-o...
How is this different to what the OP said?
The gay employees of Mozilla were understandably upset when he became CEO, and since the Bay Area in general is pretty progressive, many other employees were also upset. They were looking for new employers.
I gave an anti-miscegenation analogy earlier. How is this different from a CEO making a public donation to The Daily Stormer (perhaps pointing to the stories of Judas and Cain as justification) and the Jewish and non-white employees and their allies not wanting to work for him? You cannot take public action to vilify your employees and deny them civil rights and expect them to keep working for you.
[1] https://youtu.be/pSb3jiuIhUM
[2] http://observer.com/2012/04/tech-celeb-makes-prop-8-donation...
I found it amusing that a man who was going to take an oath to defend the Constitution thought it was reasonable to call me un-American and try to beat me into silence. He left when I laughed at him instead of fighting back.
I had friends un-friend me on Facebook after my sister married a woman and I posted pictures and congratulations to them. I had colleagues who stopped talking to me after the same. They talk to me now (2 years later), but only professionally, formally. No more informal or loose friendship happening between us apparently.
This shit definitely happens on both sides.
If Trump hadn't done that, I would have gone for eternity judging those people as war mongers no matter the cost.
If Trump hadn't said "I want some punishment for the woman" on abortion, I would have gone for eternity judging all anti-choice folks to be for incarceration of women for exercising choice.
It's been my experience that each region has its dominant sociopolitical culture and that there are always people who are unable to see beyond that and who become angry when confronted by anything other.
trump is just randomly going from one to another mostly unconsequential decision.
bush went to war, purposefully let torture be instigated (while trump say ok for torture motsly to look tough) and promoted hugh oil conglomerates.. he's also the governor who order the most inmates to be sent to death row
Learn to see the difference between talk and action.
I do have to say this part has amused me the most, as a registered independent who leans heavily socially liberal (I'm more conservative when it comes to economic issues - but more in the sense that I want money going to things that advance the species, rather than destroy it).
I certainly expected after the last election to see a steamroller of conservative GOP legislation being passed left and right. Instead, we got a bunch of EOs - and a stalled Congress. I was not expecting that.
Not that I like it, mind you...
I think it is great. If we could stick the Senate and the House onto vacation for 364 days a year the country would be able to adjust quite quickly.
I'm curious if any nation has experimented with a hybrid of direct and representative democracies: people choose their stances on actual issues, and the candidate most matching the spirit of society is elected.
Parliamentary systems with proportional representation and "coalition" governments exist throughout the world. The U.S. just isn't one of them and would require a big overhaul of the Constitution in order to change that.
While there still exists voting along party lines, having more than 2 major parties there tends to be a little more variety in official platforms.
Recently, Alberta which is traditionally more conservative voted for a Muslim mayor in Calgary, and the NDP (Canada's socialist democratic party) into provincial office. Even our Green party gained a seat in Victoria/Saanich (British Columbia) last election.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I know many, many good people that did. I made the mistake of mentioning that once and somehow that turned me into a pro-Trump spokesperson. I can do that for the sake of a rational conversation, but I somehow ended up being the Trump supporter spokesperson despite the fact that I can't stand the guy.
I think the current level of political discourse is downright dangerous.
However, you can still have irreconcilable differences in belief systems at an existential level.
That's a quote.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer...
You may not like that fact but it remains a fact. Extra points for referring to himself in the third person because, you know, Obama was so arrogant.
The risk materialized for victims of terrorism.
The risk materialized for victims of drug gangs.
The risk materialized for victims of illegal aliens committing crimes including identity theft.
The risk materialized for victims of outsourcing. The risk materialized of well paying manufacturing jobs disappearing.
It's wasn't fear, it was the materialized risk. Many voted for Obama overcoming fear, choosing hope. But they realized you can't just choose hope, you have to go and bend reality to be what you want it to be. And they put a bend in flow of reality, choosing Trump.
The elite fail to sympathize with their own countrymen in peril, because having compassion for your fellow countryman means you were being a 'xenophobe'. That label is not very vogue in elite circles.
I, for one, am glad that the risk of Trump being elected materialized.
Net neutrality was a disappointment, but myself and others in the tech community will learn to deal with the inconvenience.
The plight of illegal immigrants and the "religion of peace" has zero relevance to me, I simply don't care enough one way or the other to vote in favor of them.
Why are all white people being asked to pay for some white slave owners? Why are they being punished for the sins of their forefathers? No white person alive now, ever owned slaves, it is illegal. No black person alive now, was ever enslaved, it is illegal.
Are you giving a clean sheet to all white "kids" because slavery was no fault of their own?
Ben Affleck's ancestors were slave owners, does that mean Ben should be punished and have to pay reparations?
>They want to deport kids who have lived in the US their whole lives through no fault of their own.
The interpretation for someone considering crossing border illegally: If you can sneak in with a less than 10 year old child into USA, stay hidden for 5 years or so, you can claim that the kid grew up in USA, is in USA for no fault of her own, and her family of undocumented parents should get to stay as well since USA doesn't want to separate families, which means we are all safe. That's Amnesty for entire family. I would be safe. Totally worth giving lives savings and taking loans to pay the human traffickers, there is risk of death and rape, but after that ordeal we would be safe. May be I will carry some drugs on me to pay for the trip.
Tell me why that interpretation is wrong?
You sympathize with the well-off, but still illegal, DACA recipients in USA. I am concerned about that family in South America starting the journey where enslavement and rape is real certainty.
>Muslim ban
Campaign rhetoric vs. reality. See his Saudi visit. That was a way to explain extreme vetting.
> Civil rights of gay
Trump is the first USA President who came to office while supporting Marriage Equality for gay and lesbian. Hillary and Obama declined Marriage equality for political gains.
I see this as a pure power play: Let me do what I want to do without any questioning, because somebody somewhere somehow, by some interpretation, is being oppressed.
Left wants to hold all whites responsible for crimes of slavery.
Left wants to give clean sheet to DACA recipients for crimes of their parents.
Why do you want to hold kids responsible for parents crimes when it comes to white people?
As a liberal atheist who has spent most of his life in the deep red parts of the south, I can assure you that you're wrong.
I hear this. It's frightening how some people can rationalize taking extremely punitive actions in response to encountering mere disagreement or differing identity.
Everyone needs to remember that the people they disagree with are people too, and treat them as they'd like themselves to be treated.
> I think the current level of political discourse is downright dangerous.
I would call it polarization. The discourse is just a consequence of that.
Arguably "good people" don't support nor vote for an individual who openly brags about assaulting women...
...unless you have a different definition of what is considered "good".
/much like christians claim "everything god does is good" - you know, like genocide via a flood...
Indeed, if you were to assume that every vote for a candidate is de facto support of everything they do/are, I don't think I ever could have voted for anyone.
They really don't give a shit about anyone or anything but their investment holdings. Nothing but some numbers on an account.
If you take that stance, then your options are:
1. 45% of the voting people in USA support sexually assaulting women.
Are you OK with that understanding? Do you not find something unsettling about saying 45% people in USA are OK for sexually assaulting women? The same conservative family oriented people, the same law and order people, the same god and sins people are supportive of sexually assaulting women? Can we have survived as a nation so far if so many people supported sexually assaulting women?
2. Hillary still lost to such person. What does that say about Hillary?
If Trump's audio conservation had not leaked, he would have won by even larger margin. What does THAT say about Hillary? Why do you think that was the case?
Hillary attacked brave women who stepped up to tell the world that her husband attacked them.
Words vs. actions. Clinton was worse than Trump. (BTW, I voted for neither.)
Unless you can show some evidence for this, it's just an unprovable counterfactual and completely useless.
In other words, if you don't agree, you can safely ignore the comment, or take upon yourself to prove it wrong.
I find it terrible that when you're only given two options, and both of them suck, choosing one over the other can be seen as such a treason. To me these conversations sound like "You prefer diarrhea to vomiting! I'm never going to sit on your couch again!"
> Because it's hard to unanimously and unequivocally identify those who are intolerant as such. Owing to the beguiling nature of language and rhetoric, the intolerant can thrive and propagate by arguing that they're not in fact intolerant, and appealing to "free speech". This seems to be the MO of this so-called "alt-right" stuff; legal or constitutional barriers are almost impossible to define or enforce.
That is creepy to me. You have the ingredients of a witch hunt.
"can't easily distinguish them" aka "anyone could be a witch", "can't use legal methods to attack or 'regulate' them" aka "something... must be done", that's what I'm reading.
There's no evidence that the altright as a group are plotting to murder other citizens. The reverse, threats to do violence to altrighters, I see that on a daily basis without looking for it online e.g. the "punch a nazi" meme. Going from that to "beat up a nazi" to injury/death is not a leap.
And who are they? It's a large collection of loosely connected right wing groups. A full list would take several A4 pages. Most of them hold beliefs little different to our grandparents or possibly great-grandparents in the case of the monarchists. Anybody to the right of the Republican party could be 'altright'. This isn't true but that seems to be how most people have built their classifier.
It's easy to prove that because if you ask (as Trump did to a reporter) people to define the group, they don't know how to do it. I think there is a definition but nobody in the media has mentioned it AFAIK, it's not something that is well understood and so "Nazis!". That nazi flag at the charlottesville rally? A singular item unless the photographers were holding out on us. There are lots of photographs and it's this one guy walking around with a nazi flag.
There seems to be a curious motte and bailey argument going on here. The altright is a relatively small set, but in the media and twitter they are either a fringe sect of right wing lunatics or they are an all pervasive threat to society. It can't be both. Not unless you have an infinitely extensible definition that you can be using for ulterior political purposes.
https://www.wired.com/story/leaked-alt-right-chat-logs-are-k...
Perhaps not "murder" but certainly "attack and maim". Please don't try excuse this with the "but they're only JOKING" trope - their intent is blatant and clear.
> it's this one guy walking around with a nazi flag
This article has a photo with two different guys holding two different flags - that makes at least 3.
https://azjewishpost.com/2017/hate-in-charlottesville-the-da...
If you're looking for people talking shit about their ideological rivals on the Internet you're going to find it. We can find examples of nazis or tankies threatening people any day of the week. They're nearly always posturing. What's different about "Punch a Nazi" is that it's a widespread meme across Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.
Imagine the reverse for a second. A meme called "Cut a Commie" receiving widespread acceptance from large groups of people across social media, including authority figures and celebrity endorsement.
> This article has a photo with two different guys holding two different flags - that makes at least 3.
Barely getting to plural!
It's the same as with that NPI conference in which 3-5 people raised their arms in a Nazi salute. The rise of the 4th Reich this is not. It's possible even those people are doing it 'for a laugh'. They're edgelords.
Have you any idea how many protests feature the flag with the hammer & sickle? Quite a lot more. I am not worried about Communist infiltrators interfering with my bodily fluids. They're nearly all edgelords, not Bolshevism 2.0
This is a moral panic, we have the media fanning the flames.
I strongly suspect if a lot of people on this forum simply turned off their television or newsfeed they'd be in a healthier place.
Ah, there's the "they're only joking" trope we know and love.
> Imagine the reverse for a second. [...] "Cut a Commie"
I know where this is going. I say "Oh, but communists aren't as bad as Nazis, that would never happen" and you bring up that wikipedia page showing that more people died under communism than nazism and we all mark you down as a "whataboutism" sympathiser and the world is a little bit shittier.
> Barely getting to plural!
But definitely more than "a singular item".
> Have you any idea how many protests feature the flag with the hammer & sickle?
Oh, there's the whataboutism.
It's not like that. I don't want to trivialize the death of the girl in Charlotte either, it's a domestic terror incident.
There's a constant background hum of political violent extremism throughout Europe and America. The key indicator for which species is ascendant is whether the popular media narrative is leaning one way or the other. The validation of these group's concerns seem to give them the entitlement they need to turn rhetoric into activity.
There's already been an attempt on one Congressman's life so imagine what will happen if something similar succeeds.
> I know where this is going. I say "Oh, but communists aren't as bad as Nazis, that would never happen" and you bring up that wikipedia page showing that more people died under communism than nazism and we all mark you down as a "whataboutism" sympathiser and the world is a little bit shittier.
I see you've been here before. We can always hold a truce and declare both groups unworthy.
>> Have you any idea how many protests feature the flag with the hammer & sickle?
> Oh, there's the whataboutism.
It does bug me. One gets consternation. The other "meh".
Both myself and my other housemates didn't understand it at the time, but I didn't lose respect for him as a person. In the most recent election, I've come to at least understand more of his views. I wish I could talk to him about it, but he passed away a few years ago.
I currently hold a controversial opinion myself, that the parties are essentially the same and the elections simply do not matter. I do not think anything would be different under either potential candidate. You can say some of the social issues would be affected (trans people in the military), but if you focus on those, you view the current government as just stupid. But they're not. They knew banning trans people would cause outrage. You add a stupid reason, and you need to realize they knew that was an intentionally stupid reason, and people focus their hate. It is literally the 2 minute hate from Orwell's 1984, except it's been around for over a decade and it's now the 24/7 hate from all the news networks.
http://fightthefuture.org/articles/the-fallout-of-american-a...
In big tech areas, I cannot get over the number of people who would say, "No there is a difference [between the parties]!" whenever I expressed this view. Over 60 million people voted for Trump. That doesn't mean those 60+ million are uneducated or stupid or racist. Over 60 million people voted for Clinton. That doesn't mean those 60+ million are compromising or ignorant. Over 40% of those eligible chose not to vote. They all get clumped together, even though their reasons are greatly varied.
And keep in mind, there is a 2014 Princeton Study that shows the the opinions of the average voter in America have a statically insignificant, near zero, effect on all policy decisions (unless you're part of the top 10% of income earners):
https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/fi...
America, and even many European nations, are becoming increasingly polarized. But human beings don't fit into two categories. There is no real left or right. Someone might be supportive of gay rights, be for gun control and yet still think trans people suffer from mental illness. Another might be against gun control and affirmative action, and have other libertarian-ish beliefs, yet believe strongly in public transportation and universal health care.
We do not fit into the nice cylinders of political categories, and we certainly don't fit into the false dichotomy of the left/right. But we're taught that's where the line is, that we have to take sides, and keep fighting each other instead of the real players, the _eminence grise_ of Exxon, BP, Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Boeing and all the other players who really control what's going on and who are systematically implementing policy that increases tension, increases conflict and escalates war throughout the would.
Unfortunately, it will take years (if ever) for most people to realize this.
That's a bit of a point towards what libertarians and conservatives (but, to be clear, not alt-righters) think. If fewer issues were national and more were left up to individuals, even, you wouldn't have to lament what the national government does. You could move to a more sane place. And your opinion would matter more in a smaller jurisdiction.
Interestingly, we're seeing this symptom happening more in tech companies, which are not the government but they certainly govern in some respects, at least the things they are responsible for. There is starting to be appetite in conservative and libertarian circles for discussion about what to do about unelected corporate bureaucracies having this sort of power.
There IS a difference between the political parties.
All you have to do is look at their voting records on key issue. Here's a comprehensive breakdown, for proof:
https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/6pc5qu/democrats...
Neither party ever even tried to do anything about:
- term limits, limits on money in politics
- getting rid of lobbyists (their own sponsors)
- punishing Wall Street criminals
- reforming business law to give shareholders more control over executive compensation
- stopping the runaway train of national debt - etc.
Both parties were/are mostly:
- anti-privacy (anti-Snowden, anti-Wikileaks, etc)
- pro-war, the military budget is untouchable, whether it is McCain or Hillary
- ever-increasing spending (despite Reps rhetoric)
- happy (Dems) or uninterested (Reps) in lowering healthcare costs
- corrupt, with "foundations" and "speaking fees" flowing freely
There is much more, but this thread is off-topic, so I will stop here.
Term limits are a horrible non-solution, but Republicans did push a Constitutional Amendment for them them on Congress in 1995, securing a majority but not the supermajority required for a Constitutional Amendment.
> limits on money in politics
Bipartisan finance reform has passed several times, only for the most significant measures to be struck down by the courts.
A number of your other points are similarly ill-informed.
both parties are corporatist, neoliberal, military-interventionist, and in general anti-democratic in that they are very happy to allow wealthy interests to set policy without deferring much to the will of the people.
I went to Texas and wasn't looking for it - but the first bar I walked into had photos of Obama and Hillary duct taped to the urinal for people to aim at :P
In 00 I thought Bush voters were just sort of clods, hopelessly partisans with a poor understanding of the dangers of nepotism and monarchy. (I thought the same about Clinton voters in 08 and much of 16, to be fair)
In 04, Bush voters were supporting a guy who responded to the 9/11 attacks by invading _the wrong country_ (secular Hussein working with bin Ladin? honestly), and okaying the torture of human beings for information. You can’t chalk this up to “some people like chocolate, others vanilla,” Abu Ghraib doesn’t fit under a comfy blanket.
If you had admitted voting for his re-election to me at lunch I would have gotten up and left the table without saying a word.
((Not that it matters, but I grew up in Montana, I understand conservatives and conservativism))
I can understand feeling this way, but do you see this as a response that improves the situation? Is your impulse to silent action just that it's easier than engaging, or is there a positive outcome of silently leaving that would not be also achieved by explaining your reasons for leaving?
Engaging in a discussion of why you feel the way you do seems like it might have the best chance of a possible outcome. If their response is that are in favor of our behavior at Abu Graib that you despise, then I can understand giving up and leaving.
(Ironically, this responseless post was voted below zero when I found it, and dead from user flagging when I tried to reply, which I think is equivalent to the "silently leaving" approach espoused by the author. I'd be interested to hear from those who flagged it why they did so.)
No. I don't think "just leaving" would have improved the situation. A screaming match and fists wouldn't have improved the situation either.
American culture has found itself in this weird space where arguments that were supposedly settled in the last century are apparently still up for debate. In the case of torture, there are two questions at hand: One, does it work, and two, if it works, is its use defensible. Believing the first is ignorant; believing the second is inhumane.
I don't see any sort of constructive middle ground or even argument to be had over such a basic conversation of good vs. evil. Since I spent most of 2004-2008 in a state of rage over the presence and defense of actual evil in a country and society that I love, I would not have had the self-control necessary to engage in a dialogue. So I would have left.
(The down-voting was weird but predictable.)
What are these viewpoints that are claimed to be conservative in nature? I have read the Texas GOP platform. Is that representative of conservatism?
https://www.texasgop.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/PERM-PLA...
This is a fair question at this point. I would posit answering this and also answering "What does liberal mean?" would be great things to address in high school political science classrooms, however it doesn't seem to be in the curriculum. We've had the better part of 30 years where media pundits have been doing their best to conflate these terms with concepts which are tangential at best or completely unrelated at worst.
First, I think it's important to understand that concepts like "conservative" and "liberal" refer to overarching political philosophies, and the actual ideology a person holds that describes themselves as such is probably a subset. Since we're focused on conservatism, I'll provide examples from there. So, in this case there may be broad differences in beliefs about particular political issues between an evangelical conservative Republican and a Libertarian, however both are conservatives. This type of difference arises with the concept of liberalism as well. Fundamentally, the liberal/conservative distinction is a line, and therefore each person falls at some point on that line within a broad spectrum.
Second, let's address the most simplistic explanation of the overarching philosophy, and then we'll get into some specifics of how this might manifest when applied to an individual. Conservatism is effectively a combination of three ideas:
1. Individuals know best about their own situations and working together can improve things better than a central authority (i.e. "government sucks at doing things" 2. Broad social and political change should be infrequent and considered fully, and therefore an adhesion to our founding charter (Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution) is critical to correct governance (i.e. "we've done it this way and it's worked out so far, why change?") 3. In order to ensure that both of the above are true it's essential to have a small central government which is only empowered and funded minimally at the bare necessity to achieve those general aims (i.e. "the best government is a small government")
Third, it's important to understand how much upbringing and experiences in life affect an individual's political ideology and the philosophy from which it is derived. It is no mistake or surprise that cities tend to be more liberal and rural locations tend to be more conservative in the United States. It's a result of somewhat unintended consequences of democracy conceptually and the realities of optimizing for bureaucratic efficiency. We know that basic rules of optimization (the Pareto principle) says that 80% of the job requires 20% of the work. This is true of many things when it comes to urban/rural divides, all the way down to broadband Internet connectivity. Democracy in its simplest form becomes rule by the majority, so larger concentrations of people (cities) hold more sway.
These two items result in people inhabiting rural areas being felt that not only do they not have a voice but that nobody cares to help them with their problems. The response to this is "clinging to traditions" because those traditions are by and large what has helped get them and their families through hard times for many years. In a fit of irony, the more underfunded the government the more heavily the government focuses on cities as that becomes the most rational pathway.
Finally, conservatism is rooted in two additional beliefs that are about the conduct of a person individually. That is, that generally everyone should be treated as an individual rather than via group identity (individualism as a loose philosophical base) and that because of this personal responsibility and hard work are the most important factors in success. This is one reason why people with conservative beliefs are less likely to approve of social safety nets, even though they would likely qualify as beneficiaries....
It's essentially a generalised theory that explains left/right (liberal/conservative) differences in terms of a single underlying intuition about human nature. Because it's an intuition, you can't alter people's point on the political spectrum through an interesting fact or argument, it's only experience that can change people. And yet he shows how starting from this one basic assumption you can logically extrapolate all conservative and liberal political positions from it, in an entirely rational way.
I myself tend to get along with people with a wide range of political views. But I've always assumed it's because I'm a bit of a sociopath. I don't care enough to put other peoples' struggles above my personal relationships.
Also I think lowered emotional connection to the issues can actually be a huge benefit to understanding them rather than just "feeling" what side to pick.
So maybe you aren't a sociopath. :)
Coworker: "My younger brother was killed in Iraq in 2007."
You: "I voted for Bush."
I'm sure you can see why Coworker wouldn't be pleased by your statement in this instance. I'm on the Left working at an oil company, so I feel your pain. It helps if you want to talk about these things to shift their Overton window slowly, not to expect tolerance for unthinkable actions right out of the gate (it's not right, but that's how it is).
Liberals and Left-wingers are people too, and thus are vulnerable to the same tribal bullshit that some (luckily few) people on the Right and (luckily) fewer people on the Left are proud of. Despite all effort, you (general and specific) and they can't stop from feeling these tribal in-group feelings any more than they can just stop feeling thirsty after a day of not drinking any water.
EDIT: One of these days I should write a post, How to Talk About Politics with People Who Disagree With You.
Your conversation leading to upset is based in the assumption that the coworker already shares your worldview in regard to the Iraq war. It's one I share too, so I can see why that'd be automatic, but I've met and known people who fought in Iraq. They didn't exactly seem ashamed!
People actively share "if you like x you can remove me as your friend" shit on facebook, companies fire people for expressing their political views and media companies "choose a side" more then ever. And don't tell me Google isn't. Just look at Youtube with their new anti-free speech rules that they enforce in restricted mode and the new demonitazation for content. Look at their search engine. If you swap to DuckDuckGo you will instantly see the bubble you were in and the many results that are not shown.
This is not really unique to USA or a single company like Google, it's happening within EU and other companies as well. This is coming from me, who probably would in the US be called a communist by conservatives :)
I'm not seeing hatred towards people for arguing over correct levels of import taxes. I'm seeing it because they're backing politicians who are actively causing harm to real human beings.
The post you reply to doesn't even list any specific political opinions, yet you already insinuate this person is a racist bigot. Well done.
I've seen strong feeling (but relatively civil discussion) about topics like handling North Korea or immigration. Things like taxes tend to be far more civil as GP pointed out.
There was absolutely no need to call GP a bigot.
That's certainly rarely the case, and next to never the intention.
All i say, and ask is that you think to yourself, is this really racist? or do i just want to vote democrat now?
Go look at political conversation in the UK and you'll find large numbers of left wingers / liberals foaming at the mouth about how the government trying to balance its budget is the same thing as hating people, killing them, that austerity is unthinkable evil, that any solution which isn't vast taxes on the rich is evidence of a defective moral compass, etc.
I see you've listened closely to them and engaged with their arguments.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/may/15/recessions-h...
"Recessions can hurt, but austerity kills"
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/20/engels...
"The victims of Grenfell Tower didn’t just die. Austerity, outsourcing and deregulation killed them"
https://www.theguardian.com/membership/commentisfree/2017/ap...
"The cause of death that dare not speak its name: austerity"
Politicians that aim for a balanced budget without raising taxes = murderers is an exceptionally common refrain from the extreme end of the British left. It's hard to engage with their arguments because I don't share their basic axioms, namely, that they tend to assume there are no tradeoffs in life, and in particular, they tend to assume that tax revenues can be set to more or less any level without any negative side effects.
Of course, if you argued that the Guardian is no longer really representative of mainstream left-wing opinion in the UK I'd support you on that, but I pointed out the extremism of the Guardian on HN a week or so ago and got downvoted a lot ... lots of Guardian readers here I think!
My original assertion was that there's nothing magic about taxes that makes them unusually civil, it's simply that austerity is not an issue in US politics because the government has never tried to balance its budget. I cited the UK as a counter example.
You suggested I had never engaged with their arguments because I described them as based in hatred.
I proved that my description of these opinions was entirely accurate. You can find endless articles like that in the left wing press, or banners at protests that say exactly the same thing. This resolved the point you raised.
Whether these articles have merit or not is irrelevant to my original point.
"I proved that my description of these opinions was entirely accurate. You can find endless articles like that in the left wing press, or banners at protests that say exactly the same thing. This resolved the point you raised." Sure you did.
You conclusively proved that the mere existence of these arguments is offensive to you because you seem to believe that a policy such as austerity (or "tax policy"), which directly cuts the benefits that portions of the population rely on to survive, apparently has no effects and is a mere mathematical debate.
You also consistently proved that you see yourself as eminently rational and arrogantly above engaging with the arguments which are made against your world view. Given this, I'd say that your statement "Whether these articles have merit or not is irrelevant to my original point." is incorrect.
No. I realise it may seem this way to someone in the part of the political spectrum you inhabit, where offence is so central to so much, but I never argued or even implied that these views are offensive to me. I do say they're extreme, but extreme views are not inherently offensive. You've picked a fight with a straw man there.
And I'm afraid arguments about austerity are about tax levels. The alternative is tax is borrowing, which is no alternative at all, as eventually that money must be paid back via even higher taxes (to pay the borrowed amount + the interest). You can also do money printing, but that's simply a tax on cash savings by another name.
All arguments about austerity are ultimately arguments about tax incidence.
You also consistently proved that you see yourself as eminently rational
I didn't discuss my own rationality either. Again, you're setting up a straw man and then attacking it. I said I don't share the same axioms as these people without commenting on the rationality of that position (it's possible for two people to disagree on basic axioms without either being irrational).
You keep trying to drag me into an argument about austerity. I have no interest in such an argument. It's much more relevant that Americans realise that the list of 'dangerous topics' that can get people branded evil/kiddie killer/etc is not restricted to race, sex or religion. Tax policy can certainly be included if the Republicans ever actually reach the point of trying to cut government spending.
Where on Earth did you read that into his post? He said those are the kinds of opinions that tend to elicit those responses, not anything about the OP.
I don't like religion for example and would like organized religion to be illegal in my country. If I went on TV and said this I bet this would be a very unpopular opinion and people would most likely send me tons of death threats. I think this mentality is stupid and if you are upset the correct assement is not being a child about it but actually proving me wrong by arguments and facts.
Given where those arguments have lead before -- the holocaust -- is allowing people to advocate for those viewpoints truly harmless?
We can't just ignore the fact that there is a well reasoned argument there in favor of treating certain ideas and ideology as active violent threats.
It's also a real and present issue to many people in the current climate.
And keep in mind, all the people who profited off that war: IBM who made the punch cards to track those interned, Ford motors who built the rail tracks for concentration camps, Ford himself who had his employees hand out anti-semetic propaganda, Prescot Bush/American Standard Oil who sold oil to both sides .. all these companies funded and benefited greatly from the results of that conflict.
By focusing on the Nazis you ignore the fact that wars needs funding. Few of those who funded and profited from that conflict were ever held accountable.
Modern neo-Nazis are the modern boogieman. They make us afraid, but unless they are funded, their reach is quite limited. They are loud, but easily ignored. Those who give them a voice, news and media outlets, do so to profit from the readership.
I'm not saying I agree with it, but when trying to feel out the contours of an issue like this, it's important to start at the edges.
The issue of when ideology and ideas become actively "harmful" or "dangerous" is an extremely complex one with a ton of grey area. It makes sense to start with the extreme cases where some of that grey area is removed. Those who argue that it makes sense to actively work to silence certain ideas argue it on the basis that those ideas represent a real and present danger to their lives and safety.
This certainly goes for Jewish people, like me, arguing against an ideology that promotes genocide of us based on our heritage -- I'm not even religious nor do I identify that strongly with jewish tradition, but based on the Nazi's accounting I'd have been sent to the concentration camps. People voicing support for those ideas are essentially saying I should be murdered for no good reason.
I hold it's reasonable to feel threatened by that and even to react to that with violence. Though it's not the strategy I adopt or recommend, it's one I feel a reasonable case can be made for.
Move in towards (ever so slightly) greyer cases. Take for instance people of color arguing against ideas that they feel would marginalize them for the color of their skin. What's the history, how much do those ideas represent a clear and present threat to these people's safety? In the case of those arguing in favor of, say, more militarized and aggressive police -- you could make a decent argument that this represents a real and present threat to black people's safety, given the prevalence of police shootings. Similarly, support of more profiling of brown people or requiring papers for immigration status. That represents a certain threat to the safety of perfectly legal brown people in the case that they are profiled and detained because they can't produce their papers.
All I'm saying that this is a huge grey area and that it is important to recognize that some ideas, beliefs, and ideologies are not harmless and do on their own represent varying levels of threat to other people.
Words are not harmless. The pen can be mightier than the sword and it can cut both ways.
Could I maybe inquire why Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Che who wiped out a lot more people than Hitler and whose images ( especially Che ) show up quite prominently on T-shirts worn by people on the coasts do not trigger the same kind of hysteria?
Islamist in the USA is a real threat to USA.
Look into what Islamic migration into Europe is doing to Jewish population in Europe.
>allowing people to advocate for those viewpoints truly harmless?
How else would you get to have fun at those people's expense?
And, not letting someone advocate their viewpoints because you don't like it, is more un-American than Nazism. And, not letting someone advocate viewpoints you don't like, is cornerstone of Nazism. So, there is that.
Sure you are. You see someone vote for Trump and immediately assume it must be because they're an evil, ethically flawed person who inexplicably hates love, sunshine and puppies, whereas perhaps they mostly care about taxes. You even did it in this post. Your thinking is knee jerk and shallow, and it's people like you that are causing the problems in the first place.
No?
But that was her policy - the "no fly zone" that could only be implemented by shooting down Russian jets, or perhaps people have forgotten.
In contrast Trump wanted to make peace with Russia.
So maybe I can assume anyone who didn't vote Trump has a racist hatred of Russians.
Similarly, if I had spent much time in Libya, I might consider holding my nose and voting for the candidate who didn't work hard to create that situation. (Again, I will grant that situation was going wrong without our involvement, but we're good at making things worse.)
I voted for Clinton because I agree with most of her policies, and think she's immensely qualified, but I keep hearing "if you voted for Trump, that means you didn't consider his statements disqualifying" But it doesn't--it could just mean you think the other candidate had stuff that was more disqualifying.
It's not absurd to consider bombing people worse than saying sexist and racist shit. It seems like a lot of Trump voters thought Trump's worst aspects were "just talk".
There wasn't an option for "Clinton without the interventionism" on the ballot. Similarly, there's no "Trump without the sexism/racism" option.
I will grant that most of them didn't have "Clinton bombed Libya" as their justification for their Trump vote. Abortion, though, I think is a real reason for a lot of religious people.
I don't think my vote for Clinton should be taken to mean I'm okay with the positions she pushed for in North Africa and the Middle East, and that means also not declaring Trump voters were necessarily okay with his crap either.
I have a friend who grew up in a country that was the subject of a rather messy US intervention back when he lived there. He's socially liberal on almost every level, but voted without hesitation for Trump. His explicit reasoning was that he found Trump less likely to start lasting, Iraq/Libya style interventions, and believed the death toll of such an action would outweigh literally everything else.
There wasn't really much to argue there. It's not as though he considered Trump's comments acceptable, it's not like he didn't understand the importance of protections for trans people, he just saw everything else as smaller than tens (or hundreds) of thousands dead and millions displaced. I couldn't really disagree; honestly I'm frightened by the indifference of much of the left to our trail of destruction abroad.
The only question dividing our votes was what decisions we expected Trump and Clinton to make on foreign wars. It really was the biggest issue going for both of us.
That seems like a false dichotomy. There were third party candidates. Plus, you can always choose not to vote.
I've voted third-party a number of times, but that's because I've lived in unflippable states and I'm playing the long game. If you care about the short-term results that are this specific election and are in a state where it can change the results, voting third-party is the wrong choice. Not voting is an even more wrong choice--"both are bad and I'd like us to have better choices in the future" can best be achieved by voting third-party. "Both are bad, so I'll let other people decide" seems less likely to influence future elections, and it's obviously not the right way to effect this election. The one economic principle I always cite rings true here: Rational people think on the margin.
People who think abortion is infanticide saw an opportunity to fill the Supreme Court with justices who might ban abortion. Given their goals, not voting would have been a worse decision than voting for Trump was.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I know a lot of people that did.
Abortion is actually a huge part of it. To the point that I'm wondering why Trump-voter-haters think the election was just about xenophobia or something.
There was also a non-trivial portion of the right who expected things like the Damore firing and voted for the person least likely to contribute to that future. They think that the Pope himself could easily become a persona non grata at Google or certain parts of the national bureaucracy.
knock the crap out of them …. I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees
You didn't vote for Trump over the correct level of import taxes.
Or maybe you didn't vote for, but voted against (I hear some studies say this is the primary way people vote, btw.)?
Or maybe you had some other reason? I could invent plenty more. The point being, judging someone by the sole data point of their choice in the voting booth, without knowing reasons for it, is one of the most stupid kind of thinking imaginable. In fact, in less emotionally charged contexts, people generally don't show that kind of stupidity.
I'd call that holding them accountable and I only know how they voted because they told me. Also, I'd put hating people for the color of their skin, the sexuality, their religion, ... as much much stupider.
You only get to do that after you understand their reasons, which you can then judge.
> and I only know how they voted because they told me
It doesn't work like that. People don't generally run around, telling everyone who they voted for. It usually comes up in conversations, where the person who divulges their choice don't expect to get hated for it.
> Also, I'd put hating people for the color of their skin, the sexuality, their religion, ... as much much stupider.
I agree with that (maybe not with the much much part, because to me it seems to be a similar kind of stupidity; different flavours of the same bug in thinking). This doesn't invalidate my point though. People should not do either of those things.
Your conversation example is basically saying that even understanding your reasons that I'm supposed to give you a pass because ... because what?
As for stupider, the color of your skin or your sexuality aren't choices. Whether you voted for Trump is. Holding someone accountable for their choices isn't stupid. Hating them for their race, sexuality, ... is.
Your equivocation isn't getting anywhere.
I judge actions, in context, but I avoid doing even that if I don't know a lot about the actions and the context.
Yes, you do. This is equivocation.
This has always piqued my curiosity -- would you mind explaining? Why is this such a deep tenet that I hear it so often as justification for shunning people? Apparently, there is something egregious about "treating people differently" because of "how they were born." What is wrong about this? Can you make this statement more concrete? How are the following "treatments" egregious?
* Someone is born deaf, so his parents give him care related to his disability, which is different compared to what they would have done otherwise.
* Someone was born with a great vocal range, so people encourage them to become a singer.
* Someone is born with great mathematical abilities, so later in life they are top-pick by quantitative companies, which pay them extra for the value they are expected to deliver.
* Someone has many insecurities and a history of nervous breakdowns and psychological damage, so we don't give them a high-stress job (for instance, the military doesn't hire them).
To go over your examples - the singing case is rather clear-cut, so is the math one (barring the Tiger Mother meme). Psychological damage starts entering into "neurodiversity" sphere. And about deaf people - there are many deaf communities which don't consider this as a disability, but as a different type of experience. In fact, the right for deaf parents to purposefully create a deaf child (when normally it would have working hearing) is a topic that's sometimes discussed.
It's not a very detailed explanation, but the rule of thumb is - when there's a vocal group of people who tie some quality X into their identities, talking about discriminating on X gets off-limits in the current culture.
I agree with your rule of thumb, but that seems like a positive description of the situation, not the normative one I'm looking for. You're giving me the conditions under which there will be outrage for discrimination (i.e., there exists a socially vocal/outspoken group that identifies with the quality being discriminated on). However, I was trying to tease out what the moral rule purported by such groups could be, since I see the "don't discriminate for how I was born" claim so often (and so forcefully put). I would suppose there should be some deep moral law being broken.
Would you advocate for the systematic mistreatment of group X if you didn't know whether or not you yourself would be born as part of that group?
For example, suppose I beleive in the systematic rejection of blind people from bus driving positions. I can see myself getting behind this even if I wouldn't know whether I'd be blind or not because I imagine behind the veil I'd put greater moral value associated with the safety of bus passengers than blind people's rights to the bus driving job. In other words, I've exposed the "driving" moral valuation behind my stance.
It's almost like you are purposely trying to rile people up
Second, I work in tax policy. There is absolutely hate between many people who disagree on taxation.
I would love to hear from some third-party voters about how they were treated by the left after the 2016 election.
I sure am. I think import taxes should be raised so that workers in the western world aren't competing in a race to the bottom with the third world. Somehow over the last few years this has come to mean that I'm a racist, uneducated redneck. The left have abandoned the working class.
That said, with the polarization of political debate, people rabidly defend viewpoints they don't even understand or never thought about rationally. It means you cannot have interesting arguments because you don't share any axioms with the other party, and you have different opinions on basic stuff such as "do poor people deserve to die" or "should gay people be reeducated" or "do we put immigrants in concentration camps", at which point you can only give up and break contact with resignation. Sure, I can interact with people like that on trivial stuff if I have to, but don’t ask me to be overly nice to someone who would rather see me or people I like dead.
It's been worse in the past: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCarthyism
After all, these are boomers' children.
This is a very, very poorly thought out thing to say. Nothing we're experiencing right now in the US compares in terms of vitriol and danger to McCarthyism, the first red scare, the civil rights era, or abolitionism. We're not even close.
Cheer up! Things can get a whole lot worse.
So you can't even debate an issue. You have to take a 'side' on an issue.
I consider myself liberal, but (and?) I disagree on various topics, mostly on affirmative action. However, if you think that introducing more bias is a bad way to solve existing bias, you're a racist.
It's not "I disagree with you", it's "your opinion is different from what I adhere to so I won't even consider it" on very specific topics, and my opinions aren't even that far from the rest of the ideology. I can certainly see how it'd make people with wildly different opinions feel isolated.
Perhaps instead of labeling people as "x, y, and z" much like war propaganda has done through the years, we should try to understand where they are coming from?
This doesn't make any sense to me - as an (extreme) libertarian, I see very little progress on that front. The Democrats and Republicans have each used the libertarian "brand" when it has suited them, but neither have implemented any actual libertarian positions in my lifetime, at least not that I can recall.
Out of curiosity, are you perhaps viewing American politics from the perspective of someone accustomed to European politics?
Republicans: extreme right (slight adjustment: closed borders, mostly for laissez-faire economic reasons)
Democrats: extreme right (slight adjustment: (ever so slightly more) open borders, mostly for laissez-faire economic reasons)
Libertarians: extreme right
Even the bloody US communist party does not want to abolish markets. Think about how crazy that is.
On the borders point of view, a traditional leftist (one from the 70s or 80s) might even say that the republicans are clearly to the left, politically, of the democrats. Why ? Closed borders protect the rights, and increase living conditions and wages of laborers. Or, as we might say today, of "the 99%".
But yes, those same closed borders will make your iPads more expensive. A leftist should not care.
I know the left/right spectrum has many definitions, and there is little consensus on them, but I think this captures the essential philosophical and ideological distinctions: http://www.pocatelloshops.com/new_blogs/politics/wp-content/...
So by my measure, both Republicans and Democrats are in the middle leaning left - both supporting various forms of rights violations. Libertarians are further right, advocating a lot of good rights-protecting policies, but often for the wrong reasons - so they're not consistent in the policies they promote.
Also, "closed borders, mostly for laissez-faire economic reasons" doesn't really make sense, as that's an explicitly anti-laissez-fare policy (if you understand laissez-fare as "abstention by governments from interfering in the workings of the free market.", as it's most commonly meant).
The historical, and common left/right distinction is even more absurd when you consider that socialism is considered left-wing, and fascism is considered right-wing. Where does that leave Nazism? Centrist?
What I like about the spectrum put together by the Objective Standard is that it essentializes the ideological distinctions between these movements, as viewed from the perspective of "degrees of respect for / violation of individual rights".
I am well aware that it's not the way most people understand the terms left-wing and right-wing, but to be frank, most people DON'T understand the terms, because they're not conceptually consistent in the slightest.
I probably am. With the "golden calves" point, I meant that there are specific topics that are adhered to religiously, and any attempt to discuss them produces a reflexive negative reaction. I'm not even talking about extreme ideology, I'm talking about things like the Google memo, which, although it did have some points that didn't really stand (and which should have sparked discussion, as the memo intended), didn't merit the shitstorm that ensued, in my opinion.
I see this in various friends of mine, when we discuss, for example, hiring quotas. Personally, I generally consider hiring quotas a bad practice, and discussed this with a friend, who is heavily in favor of them. However, when I told him about how my sister got passed over for hiring in favor of a male competitor as a result of affirmative action (lawyers here are overwhelmingly female), I could sense that my friend didn't agree with it either. It felt like his opinion wasn't "minorities should have an advantage", but rather "this particular group of people should have an advantage even where they're the majority". That strikes me as a fundamentally non-rational position.
Another point is that I feel that if you're a white, middle-class male, you can basically never be right. If someone puts you down, you can't complain because there are other people who are less privileged than you. It's the "starving children in Africa" argument.
Take all this with a grain of salt, though, as the society I live in isn't like this. All of the above is what I gather from talking to my american friends and colleagues, so I may be off the mark or wrong in many things.
You can always refer to the UK(a country that ended slavery before the USA and didn't need a civil war to do it) decided that affirmative action is illegal exactly because it is a racist policy.
Politics has become a singular (or at minimum, the dominant) identifier for so many people, that seeing someone who opposes your views means that they are not part of your community. I think re-establishing communities that bring meaning to people's lives would go a long way to helping get through this rough patch. These can be clubs, churches, sports, etc. People need something that they are passionate about that connects them to other people and let's them focus on something local. I think shifting eveyone's attention back toward their local politics and community (where most of the governing that actually impacts you is done) would do wonders.
I don't particularly care. You're free to speak your mind. You're not free to force people around you agree. Either get over it, or move on. I hear welding is an in-demand industry and I bet they'll find more receptivity to their viewpoints there.
I know what point you're trying to make here, and it's true that there may be more receptivity, but welders are more likely to be, say, pro union than your run of the mill SV bro.
Your point about the "safe spaces" is hilarious!
But welders is what came to mind first when I was thinking of "stereotypically right wing jobs". Whoops.
But like I said, that's in Canada. I can't speak for the US.
First of all, you are associating conservative beliefs with the trades. That's exactly the sort of thing that is being brought up here - you're effectively saying that the left claims white collar jobs, particularly those in tech, and that anyone who doesn't fit that mold shouldn't even bother.
Secondly, you're implying that welding is a lower-status field. Nothing could be further from the truth - of the two people that I know that became welders after high school, one is now an underwater welder working on offshore oil platforms and the other has specialized in heavy industrial stuff. Both of them make more than any developer I know, including myself.
> Aren't these the same sort that will moan ceaselessly about the ludicrousness of "safe spaces" and "snowflakes"?
One of the distinguishing characteristics of those on the right is the importance of equal application of the rules.
My point was that you can't denigrate people asking to share their opinion peacefully and without verbal assault, ie a "safe space", while simultaneously complaining that your viewpoints aren't allowed to be shared peacefully and without verbal assault.
Which, btw, I believe is a load of bull. I've been party to multitudes of political conversations in the workplace and a negligibly tiny percentage of them have I seen actually get out of control. You may feel that your viewpoints aren't aligned with the culture, but that's my entire point. You have no reasonable expectation to force the culture to do anything, leading back to my point of I wouldn't go to to work at, say, an oil rig with the expectation of my political culture aligning with theirs.
And before you begin, I'm not saying anything against people who work on rigs. I am saying that there is evidence that it overall is a right leaning culture.
Nice job making sweeping generalizations about an entire industry. If this type of bigotry were based on skin color, we'd call it racism.
> multitudes in rural areas,
Where are you getting that stat? Most of the big construction projects are near urban areas. And for the remote jobs they are usually bringing people in, not hiring locals who generally aren't qualified for the work. Some welders do a lot of travel.
https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Welding&utm_medium=cpc&utm_sou...
> therefore a person is much more likely to find people who share political culture
If you really want to better understand the mix of political views in that industry, join a welding forum and go to the "off-topic, politics welcome" board and you'll see just as many people complaining about illegal immigrants as you will people correcting the misconceptions about immigrants. Trump? Plenty of Trump supporters on welding forums, but just as many people there predicting buyer's remorse and complaining about how Trump is an awful president. The shared political culture that you are imagining doesn't exist.
If you want a softer term, it's certainly uninformed prejudice. You made a guess about the political leanings of an industry based on your stereotype of a working class person and you were wrong. That's ok, but don't dig yourself even deeper by going into greater detail about your wrong assumptions.
That's assuming it's done during work hours. If done outside it may still be an issue if it starts to effect the working relationship.
That's the reason that I never attend work social events outside of work hours (Christmas parties, etc). If nothing else it's an unpaid imposition on my free time.
You can choose what aspects of yourself you want to reveal and conceal from people at work. For example, I don't reveal my religious beliefs to people at work unless someone asks me, which rarely happens. Politics is much the same.
> He showed coworkers emails he exchanged with Ivanka Trump after he mailed her photos he took at the Republican convention, and on election night, he texted colleagues snapshots from the floor of Trump’s victory party in New York City.
This person sounds like they're trying to rub their political views in everyone else's face.
Okay, see how utterly useless this "controversy" is now?
But, unfortunately, the irony is that the same mechanism that isolates conservatives on SV and liberals on oil companies is working here to isolate your good sense in Hacker News.
Political business monocultures have been a thing since forever. Dial the clock back a little and you have bosses pressuring you to campaign for Nixon. Dial it forward again and you have CEOs starting meetings with prayer. Dial it forward to today where one dude gets fired for arguing Nazi race science, and suddenly we all have to chat.
We get surprised when groups that we expect to be sophisticated behave exactly like Polynesian/Amazonian tribes or chimpanzees in the Congo.
But, many times, civilization is just a varnish over bestiality, a make-up on a pig. Deep down we react like tribes that repress behavior that looks threatening to our group cohesion.
As someone who falls on the Liberal side of the spectrum, this bothers me more than almost anything else regarding modern day politics. If you fall in line with the "right" (left) side, you are allowed to say any number of disparaging, mean, hateful, or ignorant comments without fear of consequence - as long as it's aimed at the political right-wing. If you mention you are a conservative or hold conservative views, you are aligned with the worst of the worst and anything you say is inherently wrong.
The liberal echo chamber is just as bad, if not worse, than the conservative's version of the same thing. I don't think work is ever the correct place to discuss political views in depth, but I can't imagine feeling like I can't express any view without fear of being downright hated.
[many of which involve punitive action against the least well off / most marginalised in society]
> you are aligned with the worst of the worst and anything you say is inherently wrong.
Amazing, really, that people think less of you when you specifically say you think less of others (which is the core conservative stance.)
And here you are, thinking "less of others" in the very same sentence in which you decry it.
> the cornerstone of the family is natural marriage, the union of one man and one woman.
Thinking less of LGBTQ people.
> American taxpayers should not be forced to fund abortion.
Thinking less of women by denying them bodily autonomy.
It's all there, written down, in their own damned party manifesto.
Your viewpoint that "thinking less of others" is a "core" conservative value very much implies that you don't really know any conservatives, and are just parroting the party line from within your bubble.
I am indeed just parroting the GOP party line. Their policies comprehensively demonstrate that they think less of others - LGBTQ people, women, poor people, POC, immigrants are all "lesser" in the eyes of the GOP.
The Republican Party.
> try to improve the party reputation
I'm afraid you've got quite a way to go there.
Except that it isn't. People conflate all sorts of ideas about particular issues with the larger overarching political ideology. It's entirely possible to be conservative, be pro-gay marriage, pro abortion, pro legalization of marijuana, etc. There are some specific issues which the conservative ideology does fall squarely on, such as a resounding no to universal healthcare, but these are few and far between.
The conservative ideology in the most simplistic terms is "a smaller central government with less power is a better government". Modern conservative and liberal ideologies are nothing more than an extension of federalism and anti-federalism from the founding of the nation. Conflating this ideology with some of the worst people who claim it is unfair and divisive without cause or care.
This, in fact, is the exact thing the person you're responding to is pointing out. You are claiming conservative = "a belief in punitive actions against marginalized members of society" (paraphrasing you slightly for clarity). This simply isn't true, by any measure. It's a nice rhetorical soundbite to raise the ire of your political fellows as a clarion call, but it's not factually accurate and espousing this viewpoint about conservatives normalizes and encourages the type of political divisiveness we are seeing today.
Fun story, if we go by the last 5 years (honestly if we go by the last 100 years, but that's a deeper discussion about ideology shifts related to specific key issues) the majority of political violence occurring in the US is being done in the name of liberal ideologies, with much irony I presume. This very position you are putting forth is actually rather anti-liberal, but it's not conservative either. As a shock to all, there are more than two sides to a cube.
Gerrymandering, Voter suppression, bias against POC, denial of bodily autonomy for women, denial of basic rights to LGBTQ - all done in the name of conservative ideologies.
"Political violence" is violence perpetrated to reach political goals. For something to be political violence, it first must be violence, only then does the political angle even matter. I would also broadly separate "politicized violence" from "political violence". The first could be a war that is being discussed politically, the latter is physically assaulting someone because they hold a political view you disagree with.
Let's not play funny with words, it doesn't help the quality of the discussion. You're clearly not ignorant, so don't act that you are for the purpose of trolling. Not to mention, basically NONE of the things you brought up are part of the conservative ideology. You're focusing on "issues", which have nothing to do with ideologies. Ideologies are deeper, and determine individual's stances on issues. An individual can hold an ideology and have differing stances on an issue from other individuals with the same ideology.
Something helpful to consider might be that Republican != conservative and Democrat != liberal. While the terms are often conflated, it is wrong and done by pundits /specifically/ to confuse the conversation. Don't play into the same game.
It has a name: double standard
I like to think of it like weak minded people who love to dish out insults but accuse you of being the most indecent person on the planet if you repeat their exact words back to them.
> The liberal echo chamber is just as bad, if not worse, than the conservative's version of the same thing.
I'd lean towards worse. I don't recall anyone attempting to publicly shame me for not being "conservative enough". I'd wager that most liberals have encountered some version of that.
Yeah, but you'll always have rationalization on why one side thinks it's okay: "It's okay in my case because I'm intolerant of intolerance" "It's okay in my case because I'm bigoted against bigotry"
Proof that you did not grow up in a very religious community.
Odd. Just an observation: conservatives in the US have a commonly used name for that - RINO - Republican in Name Only - and there is no equivalent name among liberals.
DINO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democrat_In_Name_Only
Has anyone here ever actually been called a "DINO?" My personal sphere is populated largely with Democrats, Leftists, and Libertarians of various stripes and I've never seen this phrase written or spoken in conversation. (the only one I've seen on that page you linked to is "Blue Dog Democrats," and I'm pretty sure I've never heard that one spoken in person. I wasn't aware it was a pejorative.)
I am not at all sure that means Democrats are more accepting of dissent in the ranks, but they haven't got such a commonly used term for it.
Not much since center-right neoliberals became clearly and solidly the dominant faction within the party, since “DINO” was largely what more progressive Democrats labelled that faction; the label also applied to actual conservatives in the party, though they mostly completed the migration to the Republican Party shortly after the Republican congressional majority in the 1994 election (since they had stayed in the Democratic Party largely for the organizational benefits of being in the majority, despite increasing ideological tension through the long post-civil-rights partisan realignment.)
This coincides with my experience hearing the terms, so perhaps your experience is simply different based on where you live or who is in your social circle. FWIW, I have lived in CA and PA, and my friends are a mix of liberals and conservatives.
Oh, thanks, THAT is one that I had heard and subsequently forgotten.
These folks are shunned by both groups. One guy told me once he had friends of 20 years that wouldn't let him in the house when they found out he owned a gun.
But the question one asked that I keep getting back to is this: would the Civil Rights movement stand a chance today in the world many in the left wants to set up?
Another commenter mentioned being assaulted by a ROTC cadet for expressing liberal views. As bad as that is, I'm much more supportive of open fisticuffs, along with a jail sentence for whomever started it, than creating systems of political suppression that many major SV corps seem intent on doing. It doesn't get more fucked up and evil than that -- and I have no doubt in my mind that the people doing it are nice and well meaning. All the worse.
Most of my views sit closer to the middle than either pole - but I can't actually discuss this with any of my "liberal" friends. If I say anything that isn't a complete regurgitation of a leftist facebook meme, I'm suddenly an "alt-right sympathizer" (real quote). It's made it so that whenever politics comes up at all I just check out of the conversation. It's hard because I really do enjoy debating and talking about politics, but nobody wants to debate anymore. Everyone wants to be correct and shame the other side into changing their views.
Politics isn't baseball. The stakes are real, more so for some than for others. If you want to express a political view at work then the people to whom you are expressing it have a right to dislike you for it.
Do those people have a right to take action to negatively impact your career/livelihood/ability-to-provide-for-your-family because of your political views?
I discuss controversial topics in person with my close friends, and I don't feel any poorer for it.
On one hand, I would argue that getting angry because someone doesn't share your views is unprofessional. On the other, I would like to point out that the point of this article is that this is a one-way street: If Progressives experience any of these emotions in reaction to your political views, those views are unwelcome. If conservatives/libertarians/etc. experience those emotions in reaction to your views, then that's just too bad for them.
Even if just 10% of a company was like that, unless management intervened to stop it, that'd be enough to ensure they were the only voices that got heard regardless of the true balances.
I say your politics, whatever they are, make me feel hurt, scared, and angry.
Obviously you can't argue with this; my feelings are my feelings and are thus inarguable.
Therefore, by your basic rule, you are no longer allowed to even state any of your political beliefs, because such would make me feel hurt, scared, and angry. And it doesn't matter what your beliefs are or how you arrived at them or what reasoning is behind them. Because according to you, maintaining my feelings, no matter how fragile or hypersensitive or unreasonable they may be, is an absolute imperative and all other values must be sacrificed to achieve that goal.
Now I've got total control over the speech of anyone around me. I can shut down anyone, making any statement on any topic. I need only declare that I feel hurt, scared, or angered by that statement - and such inarguable declarations have absolute unappealable power to silence.
See the problem here? It's obvious you can't run a society this way. It just becomes a race to the bottom of people being more and more hypersensitive to gain power. At a certain point, people do need to be told to grow a thicker skin.
Not really. This only works if your opinions are part of the current zeitgeist. If not, then nobody will really care what some loner is hurt by, and will probably just avoid talking to you, period.
> At a certain point, people do need to be told to grow a thicker skin.
OK, but that doesn't work. It only makes people angrier and even more determined to exclude you.
If someone, in your place of business, says "what you just said was hurtful and offensive", then yes, I think maybe you shouldn't say it. Or at least take pause and consider why what you said may be hurtful.
None of that prevents your ability to say what you want outside the office.
That will offend them even more of course, which is why companies that don't have tough management will all be wrecked by this social strategy in the coming years. Google is already clearly far gone. At some point employees that constantly claim to be offended need to be told they'll be fired if they don't toughen up.
The CEO has brought his religion to the workplace to the detriment of many of his employees, and as a result I am both hurt (by being "enemied") and scared (for the long-term existence of 1st-Amendment protection for my religious practice, given the company's legal activism). Is it still true in this case that "insisting that people grow a thicker skin won't work"?
I'm one worker bee among thousands, sitting on the opposite coast in a different office from the CEO, with (last I counted) 8 layers of management between me and the CEO. If any change is going to happen, it's much more likely that the change will be delivered to my employment status, so I keep my head down and learn to tactfully avoid subjects that could get me in hot water for simply being different from the folks in power. A kind of "script switching", if you will.
* Your boss parading his religion around and making you feel othered, while probably legal, is uncool.
* Though I would be remiss if I didn't point out that across America, it's by and large the Christian viewpoint that's flaunted at employees. I feel bad for you, but I'm also happy that you've been given an opportunity to understand why this is bad.
* You're protected from being _discriminated against_ based on his religious beliefs.
* That law being "paraded" is the one that protects you from your boss discriminating against you based on his religious beliefs.
2. While I understand what you're trying to say, I don't think you'd be remiss, and in fact, I found it a bit presumptive to assume that I advocate for Christian viewpoints being "flaunted at employees" and that I somehow need "an opportunity to understand why this is bad" as though I didn't already.
3. While it's true that as a public secular institution, the company can't make hiring decisions based on religious beliefs, there appears to be no protection from being intentionally treated poorly on a systemic level (and no regard for "behaving" unless I wanted to pony up and lawyer up against my employer)
4. The law being "paraded" is the one that would have permitted religious clergy in religious institutions to make business decisions based on religious values (i.e. I can't sue a rabbi for refusing to host my pork BBQ event on Saturday night at a synagogue).
Marc Benioff is not so good at hiding his religious intolerance.
(I understand that "Christian" and "Buddhist" are very broad categories, and that there are myriad forms contained within each of them...)
"Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:16).
It is a core doctrine of Christianity that there is exactly one path to righteousness, which is through acknowledgement of personal sin and personal inability to pay the penalty for said sin, acceptance of the payment offered by Jesus Christ as the only way to pay that penalty, and submission to the Christian God as the only divine sovereign God.
Bhuddism is, from what I understand, a pluralistic religion, where there are many paths to enlightenment, and where many of those paths involve seeking something from within ones' self.
These are at odds as much as two signs saying "there is exactly one door to this room" and "there are many doors to this room".
To the extent that this is true generally of Christians (even by the narrow definition as those groups holding to the doctrines espoused in the Apostle's and Nicene Creeds, which excludes many groups that describe themself as Christian) it is arguaby only trivially true. While there are certainly Christians who hold to a narrow view of exclusivity where only that which is within the visible bounds of the Christian Church can be holy and only those people within it's visible bounds may be saved, many (and the official doctrine of the largest organized Christian group) do not.
Every group prizes social cohesion. When a behavior looks threatening to that cohesion it is a natural defense for the group to isolate such threat. It is a necessary part of its survival, like an organism reacting to parasites, infections or offending threats.
This reaction even has respectable philosophical ethical justifications, see Karl Popper's discussion on the limits of tolerance.
I do not condone with intolerance, but we should understand that, at a very primary instinctive level, there are evolutionary and biological reasons for this. These are even some of the reasons for the downvotes I will get.
This is precisely the wrong way to make political decisions, but it pushes all of our lizard-brain buttons and I'm not sure how we pull out of it.
I wonder if liberals who work for libertarian company cultures also feel isolated.
Union organisers certainly do - until they're fired.
Or, in some notable historical cases, murdered.
I can imagine they may feel isolated in the sense that their views are not very common. But isolated in the sense of, if I let on I voted for Obama I will get fired? I am very skeptical of that.
My experience of these issues is that one part of society has become exceptionally intolerant far beyond other parts. I do not hear stories of conservative companies engaging in mini civil wars and retribution firings over liberal memos.
Kind of like the girl who wears a mini-skirt and gets raped?
As the person whose post that was deleted mentioned, this is effectively the same type of argument as saying: "well, you know what will happen if you wear a sexy short skirt alone late at night".
In either case you don't deserve violence.
And I'm sitting here without any official party to call my own because I think both are idiotic with their identity politics. Which can be worse half the time because the Republicans think I'm a liberal, and the Democrats think I'm a conservative.
(this coming from someone living in a red state).
It used to be free thinking. They would embrace "inclusiveness" under that banner. The problem is they've gone all-in with the notion that being a Social Justice Warrior is a morally superior ideological position and anyone else is a bad person. They really have become a distinct hate group even though in some places they are a majority.
I no longer associate with people who throw around the terms misogyny, patriarchy, and rape culture. I'm a pretty simple guy but I'm tired of hearing how bad I am just because I have a Y chromosome. The war on masculinity is very real.
It is not.
Really, cause never once have I felt that way.
If you really think there's a change that needs to happen you could drive for it, but no, it's not inherently going to make you popular. The same issues faced by people who struggle/have struggled for more diversity in the private sector over the decades.
I think, though, the reality is that politics (and concomitant voting choices) has consequences on the lives of others, and this pattern of some social isolation is in turn a consequence of that.
It isn't Star Wars vs Star Trek, it's whether Jim the SRE can marry his long-term boyfriend Mike, or whatever.
It's not just politics. It never is. Votes make a difference in people's lives.
What do conservatives expect, when society is moving away from the social views their party has aligned itself with?
And, to remain solution-focused, how should the rest of us befriend them when the conservative party in this country has such views? What's the common ground we can look for?
To go with gay issues (I have a lot more gay friends than people of color friends, so I'm more sympathetic to their issues day-to-day), to you folks out there who oppose gay marriage now, or supported Reagan when AIDS was decimating the gay community in the 80s, or any number of examples...
How may I find common ground with you when your politics and votes have hurt so badly the community so many of my friends are a part of?
The thought I'm guessing at the time was to encourage new families to build up society, but not even all straight, married couples are doing that. Why not just take the government out of the equation and let anyone declare any kind of relationship status they want. It's not like I have to take part in it.
Because again there are real-world consequences, like being considered a family member if your loved one's in a hospital, or getting access to death benefits if your loved one dies in the line of duty, or whatever.
But that's not what one of the two mainstream parties is saying: they're saying, "traditional marriage, and the rest of you can go sit on a fence."
This stuff gets personal for so many people so quickly because, in effect, one political party is telling a lot of folks that their humanity is lesser or less deserving of access to government than the rest of us.
How do you not take that personally (and make social choices based on), if you're in that group that's being told they should have less access to government?
"Republicans [...] hate gay people" "[If you're not on my side you're on theirs]"
Take care in how you edit people's posts in a quote so that yours can remain honest. Otherwise, everything you've posted becomes suspect and will be dismissed easily.
> Foremost among those institutions is the American family. It is the foundation of civil society, and the cornerstone of the family is natural marriage, the union of one man and one woman. Its daily lessons — cooperation, patience, mutual respect, responsibility, self-reliance — are fundamental to the order and progress of our Republic. Strong families, depending upon God and one another, advance the cause of liberty by lessening the need for government in their daily lives. Conversely, as we have learned over the last five decades, the loss of faith and family life leads to greater dependence upon government. That is why Republicans formulate public policy, from taxation to education, from healthcare to welfare, with attention to the needs and strengths of the family. [1]
Hate, dislike, enmity, love. Call it what you want but the end result is that the Republican platform explicitly calls out marriage between a man and a women good, between two people of the same sex bad and pragmatically they support taking away the rights of gay people.
Also, just so we are clear. Im not saying all Republicans hate gay people. There are definitely some who do and those are the individuals that seem to drive the platform policy.
[1] https://gop.com/platform/renewing-american-values
I would like to see the Democratic party focus on issues like workers rights, fighting white and black poverty, healthcare, etc.
What if you are tired of multiculturalism, how do you "revert back" if you live in EU or US?
It's when you start doing things like making it illegal to 2 adults to have sex in the privacy of their home that I start to think "these are just bad people".