It’s a fairly typical gotcha. If a liberal promotes religious freedom, then that means that they are promoting everything that every religion stands for. So, by showing that there are religions that are not tolerant, it is shown that the liberal is a hypocrite.
It falls short, of course, when it is clarified that promoting religious freedom does not mean promoting everything that every religion promotes, but that seems to be a “nuance” that those who really don’t want to understand somehow manage to not understand.
I’ve found it considerably useful to say “Let’s move on to the next item on the agenda”; or sometimes “I move that we (specific phrasing.) Do I have a second?”
Of course, it helps to be running the meeting. However, when not, one can often still strongly suggest moving on to the next item, or can volunteer a specific motion. (Sometimes a mention of ‘so we can get to lunch’ or ‘so we can all go home before midnight’ can come in useful when suggesting moving on.)
I’ve seen almost everybody at a badly disorganized meeting greet that sort of thing with a huge sigh of relief. You, however, know your meetings better than I do.
I don’t know if this is the argument that @moonrise is making, but I’ve seen this argument as a gotcha from the right before.
“You liberals are hypocrites! You claim you want to treat LGBTQ people well, but you also claim you want to treat Muslims well. But guess what? Supporting muslims means you’ll implement Sharia law and then the muslims you were so worried about will execute all the gays you were so worried about! Better to just leave the currebt system in place, you woke buffoon”.
I think the breakdown in logic is really quite simple. When you’re on top, equality looks like oppression. And so some people say “you’re for muslims? Well, that can only mean you want to cast Christians down from their dominant place in society and replace them with Muslims! You think WE are bad to Trans people? Wait till you see them!”. I guess these people struggle to imagine a truly secular society?
I think it’s even simpler–some people cannot imagine others are not as filled with hate as they themselves are. The basic “every accusation is a confession”.
There are a whole lot of people who think ‘Everything is either right or wrong. If the way I’m living/I want to live is right, then the way others are living/want to live must be wrong. If somebody says it’s right for others to be allowed to live in a different way, then they must be saying that the way I live is wrong. How dare they attack me by claiming that I’m wrong!’
This false either-or shows up in everything from trivial issues to ones with massively serious consequences. I once, many years ago, said to a group of co-workers in a vineyard that I didn’t much like most country music. They reacted as if I’d said that country music was all awful noise that nobody whatsoever should ever listen to, and had attacked them personally for liking it.
You aren’t following because that’s not what I said at all. I said there is an entire movement of nihilists, the hard right MAGAs, that are currently undermining and trying to destroy all of the institutions that make America what it is. We probably are using vastly different definitions of what an institution is. I’m using it to mean the things that are the very structure of our society. It seems like you are assuming that all institutions are inherently bad things unless they convince you otherwise. Do you treat people that way too? Do you refuse to respect any other person unless they prove to you that they deserve your respect? Or do you, like me, default to respecting every other person unless they show you good reason not to respect them?
This actually makes no sense to me at all in response to anything I said. Those that are currently attempting to destroy the institutions that allow us to have a functioning society will succeed if everyone takes your stance of refusing to respect anything by default. One side trying to destroy, the other side not caring about it due to a default of disrespecting everything = bad news for society. This seems pretty straight forward to me.
Also, this pretty afield of the topic in the OP, so I’m fine with letting this tangent go at this point.
Was the term ever as popular on the left as it now is on the right? Trumpists use the word nonstop.
You don’t have to make every character in uniform a good guy to “respect civilization.” Children old enough to read the Hardy Boys are old enough to get some degree of subtlety. If Chief Collig is a jackass, children will not become nihilists.
Changing the police chief’s character isn’t a problem because kids will start hating all cops, because that’s ridiculous. Kids in the target age are not THAT stupid. It’s a problem because it makes it a worse book. Some cops are arrogant assholes and some are nice professionals; that is how life works. Chief Collig is portrayed as being an arrogant ass because that introduces a B-story conflict for the protagonists to deal with, which raises both the obstacles to success and the stakes, thereby making it a more interesting and exciting story.
The central target age for Hardy Boys books is 10. At that age kids are well past the idea that all authority figures must be regarded as perfect and beyond question. Books should be challenging and cause development.
Right, we have lots of institutions, some run by the government and others not. Our law enforcement system, our prison system, our health insurance system, the military (and arguably the military-industrial complex), the Catholic Church, etc etc etc.
How on Earth did you get that from any of my posts? What I said is that institutions should be evaluated based on their actions and performance rather than being treated as inherently worthwhile simply because they exist.
People, as living sentient beings, deserve certain basic dignities and treatment, whether they improve the world or not. Institutions do not dseserve anything of the kind, and should be evaluated based on the impact they have on the world and the people living in it.
Whereas under your stance, we should never have abolished slavery because that shows a great lack of respect for that “peculiar institution”.
Left: “I’d like to propose these changes to the status quo because that would be very woke.”
Right: “I hate your changes. You say they’re called ‘woke’? What does that even mean?”
Left: “Dudn’t matter. We feel strongly we want the changes.”
Right: “But I hate ‘woke’ and all that it stands for.”
Left: “Of course you do. You’ve always been against any progressive policy. They threaten you. Nonetheless we’re going to promote them forcefully.”
Right: “You’re imposing woke on us!!”
Left: “Trying to.”
Right: “We’re victims of woke!! Woke, woke, woke, woke, woke.”
Left: “I thought you didn’t even know what ‘woke’ means.”
Right: “Waaaaaah! Waaah! Woke!”
Left: “You know what? Let’s drop the term ‘woke’ and get back to the issues at hand.”
Right: “No! This term is getting people riled up! I’m repeating it: WOKE WOKE WOKE also communist indoctrination and other scary words WOKE WOKE WOKE…”
Left: “Jesus, sometimes I think you folks are incapable of discussing anything.”
Seems pretty clear to me that you said institutions should automatically be disrespected. Your words.
Who do you think create, comprise, and run institutions? Robots?
False because I said respect should be default but when it is shown that respect is not deserved it should be taken away. Slavery immediately showed it should not deserve respect due to it’s very nature. There is nothing absolute in my position.
I don’t mean to be talking past eachother, but my point is that those who do believe that the left focuses on nothing but the minutia of “wokeness” would use your example as being typical of what goes on in school meetings, when it really sounds like it was just a badly planned and executed meeting.
I only have your description to base anything on, however, and so I’m sure I’m missing some nuance. At the same time, the complaint changed from spending all the time talking about how harmful using the phrase “shoot you an email” is to spending all the time praising someone for agreeing not to use it anymore, so I assume there is a lot that transpired in that meeting that is hard to sum up in a quick post.
True, but unfortunately, there is no longer such a thing as an intended audience, your audience is anyone in the world that wants to stick their nose in. If you complain about any flaws, then that does give meat to the trolls to say, “See, even that lefty liberal agrees with me!”
I’m not saying not to point out flaws as you see them, just be aware that they will be magnified and distorted to act as a typical example of systemic behavior.
Like I said, it makes more sense to me to chalk it up to being a badly run meeting than to blame it on the “woke” subject matter in it. Politically speaking, it also gives less ammo to the far right to describe it in those terms.
Pretty much. Of course, it’s also useful if the participants respect the rules as well. I’ve had plenty of times when we’ve moved on to another item, and someone just isn’t done making whatever point they think they need to make.
Robert’s Rules are one set of rules, and honestly they aren’t all that great for a contemporary meeting, which is why I said, “or some such”. There are lots of rules out there for running a meeting, or you can even make your own.
The point is that you do need to have some sort of rules, or you don’t have a meeting, you just have a gathering of people.
In the case under discussion, the fictional police went from not being respectable to being respectable in the re-write.
I didn’t get too into Hardy Boys, and I’m pretty sure that what I did read was the newer version, as the police in those novels were worthy of respect (even if the Boys were more clever.)
My point isn’t about the Hardy Boys, it’s about what we should be teaching our kids about institutions (and in a roundabout way, which Hardy Boys portrayal accomplishes that goal better)
Yes, we should teach them to respect the institutions that deserve it, not respect the ones that don’t, and to fear the ones that don’t deserve respect but have the power to demand it anyway.
And I would say that the Hardy Boys creation of a respectable police force gives people an example of the sort of institutions that should be respected. (and hopefully an example to those institutions on how to earn it.)
Again, the extreme right are literal terrorists. You’re comparing people who think the word “fat” needs to be taken out of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, with people who blow up federal office buildings.
Do you have the remotest idea of the life I’ve lived ?
It so happens that I converted to Islam over 20 years ago. I lived day in day out with Muslims for 18 years and that includes my ex-wife, our daughters, her family and absolutely all of her friends. I have spent several extended stays in Muslim-majority countries, living alongside the locals. I spent over 2 years taking religious classes and used to* be able to recite about 25 suras by heart. I prayed 5 times a day and fastened on Ramadan. I’m willing to bet I know more about Islam from first-hand experience than 90% of you guys here.
*I’ve since left the faith.
I picked an Islamist preacher because Islam is still a minority religion in the West. So are trans people. The problem I see with every minority groups, no matter how fringe, pushing to have their every demands catered to, aside from the obvious loss in social cohesion is that it is impossible to please all, as their worldviews and goals are often conflicting with each other.