I’m at a small town protest. Lots of USA flags, lots of people waving signs.
Those signs say different things. Some of them say ICE Out. Some of them say No War On Canada, or on Denmark, or on Iran. Some of them say Release the Epstein Files. Some of them say Protect the Constitution; maybe referencing the First Amendment, or the Second, or the Fourth, or the power of the purse. Some of them say No Nazis in the USA. Some say No Tariffs, They’re Raising My Bills. Some say, Protect the Air We Breathe. Some say, Protect Trans Rights. Some say, Stop Hiding Black History. Somebody’s got a sign about Ukraine, somebody’s got one about Palestine, somebody’s got one about antisemitism in the Trump administration, somebody’s got one saying Our Diversity Is Our Strength.
I think maybe you mean to say that we shouldn’t chase anybody out for not carrying all those signs at once. But what you’re coming across as is saying that we should chase out everybody carrying a sign that’s not about the Constitution. And doing that wouldn’t concentrate a movement into doing one thing better. It would instead shrink it into uselessness.
You’ve missed the point. I’m not saying that trans people or gays or non-whites or women should be sacrificed. I’ve been saying the exact opposite. I’m saying that stopping the killing of these people is more important than having arguments about their status.
Be my guest . . . two caveats;
All examples must be attacking someone who is planning on voting against the Republicans.
No example can be it happening to you.
What’s happened is that sometimes when I disagree with another poster’s opinion, they respond by directing personal attacks against. And directing personal attacks against people who are planning to vote against Trump and the Republicans because you disagree with their reasons does undermine the cause of defeating Trump and the Republicans.
I plan on continuing to berate people for this. Not due to any personal satisfaction I get from it. I’ll do it because defeating Trump and the Republicans is really important.
I would like to point out that this entire thread is, almost, nothing but you arguing that people, in this thread, are planning to vote “against Trump” for the, IYHO, wrong reason.
One set of straw goalposts replaced by another, evidently.
This thread actually started out complaining about anti-Trumpists allegedly telling “lies” about Trump by claiming that he wants to commit genocide or bring back slavery or start a nuclear war. For some reason, you considered that such an immediate threat to US political discourse that you needed to start a thread scolding people for it.
When it was pointed out that nobody here was making any such claims—except in a much more rare and nuanced sense that does meaningfully relate to specific policies that Trump is in fact pursuing—you pivoted to asserting that what you’re concerned about is anti-Trumpists gratuitously and directly insulting disenchanted ex-Trumpists as “assholes” because they don’t agree with all the anti-Trumpist positions.
And then when it was pointed out that nobody here is actually doing that either, you walked the cat back to accusations of “direct[ing] personal attacks against people who disagree with them”. Wow, people do that?!? And in the BBQ Pit, no less. Oh dearie dearie me.
Your model for constructive political discourse is apparently “Little_Nemo’s the only one who gets to attack and chastise people who disagree with him.” When other people do it, it’s very very counterproductive, but when you do it, it’s saving democracy or something.
Your martyrdom is now handily keeping pace with your intellectual dishonesty and fucking idiocy. Now, you clearly need to feel like you’re a martyr, defending the benighted millions against the relentless onslaught of the teeming marauders.
No. It’s mostly just you (with the occasional, but capable, assistance of Smapti).
“Disagree”, for example, by calling them “hysterical”, and accusing them of “trivializing mass murder” and “screaming in people’s faces” and “doing nothing” and “fighting imaginary problems” and “encouraging extremists” and “looking dumb”, and calling their arguments “bullshit” and “imaginary fights”. And so on and so on and so on.
You are really captivated by this notion of your holding some kind of imaginary moral high ground, where your contemptuous and dismissive attacks on other people are excused as a necessary disciplinary measure to uphold the righteous cause, whereas their attacks on you are just divisive quarreling that undermines the cause. Your oblivious sanctimonious smugness here is just off the charts.
You can’t save people’s lives without arguing that they have the status of people whose lives are worth saving.
I don’t have to quiz the person who shows up at the protest with a First Amendment sign about their opinion of trans people. But they’d better be willing to be at the same march with the person with the Trans Rights sign and the one leading the trans rights chant. Because they (and gay people and non-white people and women and whoever that is in the dinosaur costume) have the right to be there. And trying to tell them that they’re not fit to be seen in public is most certainly an argument about their status; and not an argument on the side you say you’re on.
Most of the critical replies you’ve gotten in this thread have attacked your arguments.
But aside from that — starting a thread in the Pit and then complaining that you get personal attacks is just silly.
Those are directed at other people’s arguments. They are not directed at other people. One of the principles of this board is you can attack the post without attacking the poster.
It’s 1943. Hitler and the Nazis are killing millions of Jews. What’s the best way to stop the killings?
Remove Hitler and the Nazis from power? Or argue that killing Jews is wrong?
If you argue that killing Jews is wrong, who are you going to argue with? Hitler and the Nazis? I don’t see you changing their minds and getting them to decide to stop killing Jews. Plus, even if you did they would still be doing all of the other terrible things they were doing.
So you need to remove Hitler and the Nazis from power. You’re going to need a lot of people to do this; it historically took tens of millions of people. You want to motivate millions of people to fight against Hitler and the Nazis.
In some cases, you can use the argument about Jews being killed to motivate people to fight against Hitler.
But suppose you’re dealing with a bunch of Ku Klux Klan members. They hate Jews. If you argue with them that Hitler and the Nazis are killing Jews, they’ll say that’s a good idea and they support Hitler and the Nazis.
But you want them to fight against Hitler and the Nazis. So you don’t mention that Hitler and the Nazis are killing Jews. Instead, you talk about how Hitler and the Nazis are planning on invading the United States. The Ku Klux Klan members are outraged by this and they volunteer to go fight against Hitler and the Nazis.
You’ve got Ku Klux Klan members, who hate Jews, to fight against Hitler and the Nazis, in order to stop the killing of Jews. By not talking about that issue.
That’s what we need to do here. Trump and the Republicans are doing a lot of terrible things. We need to remove them from power, in this case by voting rather than fighting. We need to convince people to vote against Trump and the Republicans. In some cases, people who might vote against Trump and the Republicans for one reason might also agree with Trump and the Republicans on some other thing. So we need to avoid arguing with these people on the subject they agree with Trump and the Republicans on in order to get them to vote against Trump and the Republicans.