Maybe they should be. A Boomer had no choice of when and where they were born. Nor can they opt out of being a Boomer. Discrimination based on a characteristic that wasn’t chosen and can’t be changed tends to be fraught.
Also, isn’t age a protected category in American law?
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I’m willing to present my case against those rights, and have done so, for example here.
But you don’t know me and I don’t know you. If I am certain you want to hurt me and mine, and are willing to lie and cheat to do so, nothing you can merely write or say will ever convince me otherwise. This being the internet, the chances of anyone I trust vouching for you are slim to none. Any effort on your part directly would be a distracting waste of bandwidth.
~Max
Problem is the slur and the name of the generation are the same.
Most Boomers are Boomers but not all Boomers are Boomers. (Also Buffalo.)
That’s an objectively bigoted, evil position, as much as any moral issue can be called objective. Slave owners didn’t believe they were motivated by base intentions. Neither did the Nazis. But they were.
Ignoring basic human rights and the impact of that oppression is an expression of malice. I don’t give a shit what your reasons are. But more to the point, it’s appropriate to describe such a position as hateful.
I tend toward the Forrest Gump “evil is as evil does” evaluation of actions. I find much of the semantical “debate” over intention for positions beyond the pale to be ridiculously irrelevant. I’ll use my position from some of the troll threads (not applying it here, except as an analogy!). People would spend hours discussing whether someone really believed what they were arguing, whether that someone was sincere.
Who gives a shit?
If someone regularly derails discussion, elicits outrage from normally calm posters, and makes an interesting thread into their personal shit show, they’re a troll. Same thing here. You (the generic you) hold an abhorrent position, one that advances malice? You’re indistinguishable from someone motivated by cruelty and malice.
“Not me! My motives are logical and virtuous!” Yeah, whatever.
Yes, well, you’re entitled to that opinion. And I feel like you would probably agree that there’s no point in me trying to convince you that I’m not personally motivated by malice - it would be a distracting waste of time for all involved. (And to @What_Exit’s point, if I did so in-thread it would probably and rightfully be reported as a hijack.)
~Max
No matter what logic and legality you use, Plessy v Ferguson was a shitty decision made by shitty people who belong on the ash heap of history.
They are, on the other hand, the intellectual heroes of the modern conservative.
You misunderstand me, since I don’t disagree. If the people aren’t actually acting in good faith, then you get the paradoxical outcome where free exchange of ideas leads to its own extinction.
~Max
If a given policy is malicious is there a distinction to be made whether you support that policy out of malice or, what you view, as a well reasoned and non-malicious reason to support it? Will the people affected care about your well intentioned and thought-out reasoning?
Malicious means intentionally harmful. All malicious views are held for malicious reasons.
~Max
Should the entire board change the policy on behalf of a group of people based on your claims of your own personal feelings, especially when said group of people aren’t even close to being an oppressed minority?
Yes, I agree, and for the same reason I reject the idea that it’s somehow inappropriate to call out evil positions as inherently evil. And the only intention that’s relevant for me is that such a person sees the evil position as acceptable. That’s close enough to malicious for me.
Ok…you are part of a group that wants to separate children from their parents if they are illegal immigrants. Quite possibly forever.
What non-malicious and supportable reason is there for that?
The above is meant as an illustration, this is the wrong thread to get into those debates. The point being, you belong to a group that does malicious things for malicious reasons but you are upset when people apply that to you as a member of that group.
No, that doesn’t work and anyone trying to defend the KKK like that is almost certainly trolling and should be banned on the spot. Because the chances of someone not just saying this to make people angry are about zero.
~Max
I don’t believe ‘intentionally’ is part of the definition. And I don’t believe you understand how unintentionally malicious your views are by imposing your definition of a “lifestyle choice” on folks who never made such a “choice.”
You start from the view that your position on this is unassailable. That’s a malicious, erroneous assumption. I am sure you don’t see it that way, but much of the rest of the world does.
And again, you’re attempting to claim that your views are representative of an entire class of persons described as ‘conservatives.’ They’re not.
Yes, but we generally defer to the consensus on what defines malice. Whether or not the bad actor agrees with that definition is irrelevant. Your comment applies, given that qualification: If you support evil outcomes, you’re malicious, whatever your personal opinion on the nature of your motivations.
Respectfully, you are mistaken.
Malicious
Having the nature of or resulting from malice; deliberately harmful; spiteful: malicious gossip.
Malice
A desire to harm others or to see others suffer; extreme ill will or spite.
Someone who is malicious on these boards should be banned.
~Max
Then let’s substitute the word, ‘harmful,’ for ‘malicious.’ You want to do unintentional harm to a bunch of people and not be called out for it because you don’t intend to harm them.
Not many people draw the distinction you do.
Here’s another word for it: Vile.
Point taken, but I say not in Great Debates. That kind of discussion belongs in P&E where it is not necessarily assumed the debate is to be had on the question itself, so much as whether and to what extent groups support different answers.
If there’s a debate about why conservatives support X, in Great Debates, I take that to be an invitation for conservatives to defend X against criticisms. It’s not a foregone conclusion that you don’t want to hear the arguments in support of X. Someone says here’s why I support X, someone else responds, everyone in that group is evil and motivated by hatred. That’s an insult. It’s not fit for GD.
If there’s a topic about why conservatives support X, in Politics & Elections, I expect that to be about why different groups poll differently on the measure. Not a more involved back and forth on the arguments themselves.
~Max
Age is protected under employment law. But there is no statute that you can’t make broad defamatory statements about “boomers” or anyone else, as long as you aren’t advocating imminent physical harm.
I have no idea what @Max_S’ ‘non-malicious’ arguments against same sex marriage are, and since the poster hasn’t stated them we can only guess at his motivations, but as far as religious objections go dressing up such objections in pious trappings of cherry-picked Bible quotations doesn’t make them any less hateful, particularly given the deliberate effort such people make to avoid applying the general tenets of the eponymous figure of the Christian of tolerance and acceptance in this one particular case.
But if you need an incontrovertible example of the collective cruelty and maliciousness of conservatives as a group, look no further than broad support (or at best tepid silence) regarding the Trump Administration policy of deliberately separating undocumented immigrant children from the parents as a means of deterring immigration. Fox News, et al, got all riled up (and have done so again and again) about the White House Press Secretary being politely asked to leave a restaurant but couldn’t muster enough indignation over the unnecessary cruelty of the deliberate child separation policy that did intrinsic and long lasting harm to children in a crucial state of emotional development.
Stranger