I asked octopus if he thought the forums at FOX news were also one-sided hive minds, and he replied he doesn’t read them. He wuvs us.
Conservatives are always the real victims; just ask them.
Fascism is bad both for that reason, and for additional reasons.
The point I was making, in case there’s really any doubt, is that calling everyone who does that fascist is incorrect, because others do it also.
All X do Y
Z does Y
Therefore Z is X
is not a correct form of argument.
They’re the fucking worst.
It does save an enormous amount of time and denies the other side a platform.
The alt-right/Q/nutjob/climate denier/anti-vax side has been hugely successful in shifting the Overton window away from rationality and decency. This is largely because the side of rational thought and decency is continuing to “debate” them, as if there is anything to debate. Let’s stop doing that.
This sort of thing is why we say there is a double standard. It’s just as content-free as @octopus’s posts, but someone agreeing with the majority can do this all day long and never get any shit for it.
Sure.
Yes, I agree. Fascist is way overused to describe stuff like authoritarianism when that is just a component of fascism, or even just ‘things the speaker dislikes’ that don’t have much to do with it at all.
Need a safe space?
One thing I’ve noticed (and I don’t think this is off-topic):
The hostility towards conservatives (and not even just Trumpist loons – actual conservatives), and also towards Christianity (and yes, there’s a lot of overlap between Christians and conservatives, but there’s a non-trivial amount of overlap between Christians and liberals, too), far exceeds anything I’ve ever encountered in the real world. I mean, by light-years.
I can and do have interesting and pleasant conversations with my conservative friends (and even my Trumpist nut-case unvaxxed brother), and my atheist friends, every day. All the time. Nobody calls anybody names, nobody insists that those who disagree with them are of low intelligence, or are racists, and we’re all the better for those conversations.
I’m the only observant Christian among my friend cohort (outside of friends made through parish activities). My friends don’t talk to me about invisible pink unicorns or flying spaghetti monsters, or tell me that I’m actively cooperating in the sexual molestation of my own children by letting a priest into our home, or having them baptized. And I don’t preach to them, or proselytize in any way.
That doesn’t seem to be the case here anymore (if it ever was, but my memory is that, in the nearly twenty years I’ve been here, it was a bit better once). That’s pretty sad.
Funny, here at the home of the smartest people in the world, fighting ignorance every day, you’d think it would be better than the unfiltered outside world, dealing with the rabble every minute.
But it isn’t.
The things that are most interesting and engaging about this message board are insightful differences of opinion and actual fact based arguments that serve to inform (fight ignorance). It’s never the pedantic expositories and “me too” circle jerks.
It’s not true of all conservatives by any means, but there is nonetheless a strong (and largely undeserved) persecution complex amongst the American right-wing, especially in conservative Christian circles. As such, while hyperbolic it isn’t “content-free” inasmuch as it has a solid empirical base to it.
The hostility in general is far beyond what I’ve encountered in face-to-face conversations, outside of situations like Earth First! protests where drunk loggers show up and punch people. I mean, people in face-to-face conversation don’t tell me I’m a tiresome woke person, or a school marm, or part of a hivemind; this is the only place in my life where I put up with that sort of namecalling nonsense.
Absolutely, the “conservatives” here can behave just as badly. But they’re far outnumbered by the liberals/lefties/what-have-you. And the OP seems to be saying that we should just ban the conservatives (whatever that means to the OP) altogether.
Please, this board is overly tolerant of ugly and bigoted opinions. Hurricane, Starving Artists, and Shodan were allowed to openly troll for years because we don’t hold conservatives to the same standards and as for the board’s acceptance of misogyny, I don’t have to tell you.
I suspect your judgement of what is content-free vs what has a solid empirical base might be influenced just a teeny-tiny bit by your own political beliefs. Regardless, the comment doesn’t contribute anything new or interesting to the discussion.
For conservative (and ‘conservative’) posters here, it feels like having to be on your A-game at all times. Anything less than detailed, well sourced arguments will get other posters jumping all over you. Meanwhile the ‘liberal’ members of the board are free to launch a blizzard of snarky throwaways with no judgement. Partly that is just because there are more of them, so there is always someone else to pick up the slack of making real arguments. It gets pretty exhausting, being in the minority with no one else to help carry the load.
I think this is true in 95% of all real life cases. I have friends and family that I would 100% chew out if they were anonymous strangers on line for their ignorant anti-vaxx views and support of Trump, among other things. But in real life, these people were nothing but kind and caring towards me my entire life and earliest childhood memories. I grew up with their children. Went on family vacations with them. To this day they ask about me and care about how I am and how my kids are, etc.
It’s easy to cuss out a complete stranger from the safety of your keyboard. It’s much harder to do it with someone you care about and who you know cares about you.
I’m just as guilty as anybody here for the pile-ons on these posters, among others. I stand by some of the criticisms I expressed about some of their views. But if I’m honest, they frequently had to deal with much more criticism than most of us who are left of center. I think if I had to face daily attacks for my views, I might come across as being much more defensive and provocative after a while. Now, you can argue it’s because my views are wrong, but I’m not sure you can argue that that should make it easier to accept that kind of pile-on.
Listing the names of posters who have actually been banned, and claiming that the fact that they weren’t banned as fast as you’d like, as evidence of conservative bias, is a tough sell.
Also, Shodan, to my mind, had some psychological issues and maybe wasn’t 100% together. So that’s kind of a special case. I have no idea about Hurricane, doesn’t ring a bell. Starving Artist did seem to be kind of a jerk.
Anyone you choose to victimize is always a conservative who therefore deserves it; just ask you.
In the same sense that some rich white men occasionally being arrested shows that our police force is totally not racist, you’re right