Listen yourself… you left wing fools have used terms such as Nazi, fascist, bigot, etc directed at anyone to the right of Stalin for so damn long it’s time you get a taste of what it is like. The difference when I use it is that the modern progressive left is actually authoritarian and illiberal and dangerous to fundamental freedoms that are commonly accepted in the Western democracies.
That being said, radical compromise is necessary to salvage the best of what capitalism can offer us. We cannot continue to embrace growth, particularly growth of an economic system that is driven by the top few percent of wealth earners. Not when they compel us, against the public’s interests, to destroy natural resources faster than they can be replenished. The elites, with their catastrophic capitalism, are driving growth so that most of us will benefit from the economic/political system just enough not to rebel against it – after all, rebellions require not just destruction of a system but replacing it with something at least as good, if not better.
But the elites are the ones who reap the rewards. They have incentive to keep up the exploitation of resources. They can relocate to another water source after they’ve poisoned the water in Flint, or Detroit, or in some Texas or Louisiana town where the Koch Brothers have set up shop. They can probably survive the worst impacts of climate change. But not the North Africans, Indians, or Western US/Mexicans who will be forced to suddenly relocate elsewhere when their water runs out, and not everyone else when sudden population surges through economic equilibriums out of order.
Look at any system in the history of the world and you will see that there is a hierarchy. You have no idea about the nature of humanity and governance. The whole reason we have a system of checks and balances is to pit institutions against each other in order to avoid a concentration of power. Sure, corporate power is strong but the state is far far stronger and empowering the state too much more is very dangerous.
It does not make you smarter, just an idiot still.
Nope, your idiocy continues, I do know what ideologies are a danger to western democracies. The ones coming from most of the residents of the SDMB aren’t.
The evidence is that corporate power is being abused by the right wing in the USA right now. Ever since the Tea Party, corporations that are in favor of anti-intellectualism are gaining more power.
Not opposed to hierarchy; opposed to hierarchy that is unchecked. Without the checks, without an agreement by the wealthy that they need to redistribute their gains, they are essentially encouraging economic and political inequality. The inevitable result is civil conflict. What the rich forget is that ‘big gubmint’ includes soldiers. Fail to pay them, and you have a problem.
You really come across as uneducated. And so do many of the hive. For homework compare the French and American revolutions and note the key differences. The problem with the modern left who are sincere is that they are naive. They don’t understand that the concepts used to gain power by the modern left are rooted in a philosophy that is fundamentally incompatible with classical liberalism. The cleverness of the implementation of modern leftism is coupling the desire for power with the claim that equity and social justice are in fact good. They aren’t. Equity and social justice replace individual rights and freedoms with collectivism. Another brilliant aspect is the language used. By using language that is superficially virtuous the left can make the claim that anyone who opposes the policy actually is committing an unforgiveable sin of being bigoted, racist, _____phobic or whatever.
This is why the modern left is anti free speech, anti merit, anti objective, etc. It’s basically a modern religion with no god but exploiting the concepts of blasphemy and sacrilege to punish those who fail to submit to an increasingly absurd ideological purity.
And that is mostly my line in past discussions about the environment.
Perhaps you think I don’t notice what is one of the solutions, it is not to limit growth, it is to fight to have governments that do let the ones destroying natural resources as to the real price for doing so. And for that one has to vote for parties that are more in favor of dealing with the issue, rather than voting for parties that deny that there is a problem to begin with.
Trump lost, stop being naive and accept that there was a lot that the left (not the caricature of the left you are using) compromised to do so.
As for being “anti free speech, anti merit, anti objective, etc.” you are the one that is the naive about the current conservatives.
Just in Arizona they, likely in an unconstitutional move, rammed anti-intellectual, anti science (No masks mandates), anti-free speech for educators (no CRT), items in the Arizona budget.
Globalization is what you have to address. How are you going to solve the concentration of wealth without dealing with the fact that capital and goods can flow very easily but labor cannot? You know I’ve promoted a UBI and a means tested expansion of the social safety net in order to ensure basic needs are met without destroying the incentive to be productive. I’m just not sure how you get around the fact that you can destroy the value of domestic labor by exploiting workers across the borders. At some point we have to realize it’s not just domestic inequality that’s a problem but global inequality.
I know Trump lost and Sleepy Joe is nominally at the helm. When did I say otherwise?
Do I have to remind you what party or group you are pretending that is the one that is not naive?
The certified naive thing is to still propose that that is not uneducated. Or, as I would point to you, that is what you should complain to, the real naive core that you are supporting with your efforts here.
I didn’t use the words “mightily pissed off”. That was in your quote. You claimed that you don’t take part in a pile-on unless you’re “mightily pissed off”. I just pointed out how many Pit threads on posters you took part in since most Pit threads turn into pile-ons. Distinguishing between those two is splitting hairs, IMO… But if you are splitting hairs that finely, it goes again to show that what you meant by that post wasn’t much.
I didn’t read every post but I did take a quick glance because I knew this would be the response. I’ve read enough of your posts to know that what you mean by “defense” is that you say that the Pittee is not a “troll”, he just has X problem (which is always an insult).
Here’s one on Sam Stone
Here’s one on DrDeth
This is part of what some conservatives complain about, IMHO. People change the derogatory words with other derogatory words but the meaning is the same. It’s still derogatory. There’s no “defense” there.
Here’s the list of the 4 posters that you took part in the Pitting. Sam Stone, UltraVires, DemonTree and DrDeth. The 3 you passed on at the time I checked were pj, jtur88, and Martin Hyde. A couple of these were new at the time and I didn’t go back to check.
I’m not a conservative, but I know that people on the left also use “facts” and “statistics” to show evidence of their points. Using air quotes doesn’t change that reality.
So what magic does makes the cites that showed that Sam still comes with “facts” that Rachel Carson killed millions to not be a real demonstration of Sam denying reality? Or that we should ignore that Demontree did use crap partisan cites to rant against Critical Race Theory? And she and most of the anti-intellectual posters continues to ignore that minority scholars and teachers are being affected by the orwellian efforts from right wing politicians to make their sorry propaganda to become “their reality”?
I think you are willing to ignore a lot just make your idea that we should treat anti-intellecual Conservatives as if they are the same as the ones that do make an effort to get proper cites. As the anti–intellectual politicians in Arizona showed, thinking that they are following reality just as the moderate left is doing, is not a healthy thing.
( I have not read this thread since July 28th. There were many more than 1,800 posts since then. Nope, not reading them all {even though I love most of you guys. That’s a Lot.}
That said, I’m hearing that the ignorant grunts are planning to attack DC again two days before Trump gets arrested in NYC in September. I’m hoping that the US military can assemble a better resistance than the Afghans did. I’d hate to think that they are weak, powerless, incompetent, and unable to mount a decent defence given 30 Full Days Notice.)
If only.
Who are the top posters in my pit thread?
If there is something that everyone does… well that about does it. I expect that is the last word on this topic. We’re all the same in other words? What an insight. You mean people from “Both sides”? What are those people from both sides doing?
Oh yeah. “It”
What is “it”? Whatever it is if both sides do “it” then there is no need to think anymore. Just lie back and think of England.
What if both sides are not doing “it”?
OK, I’m going to have one more go at this.
So now you claim that you never said the part that I bolded here?
It must be nice to be clairvoyant!
Except that’s not what I was referring to at all. I’m talking about Pittings that I felt were unwarranted and either directly defended the poster or did so indirectly by ridiculing the Pitting.
Again, you are citing empty “statistics” without understanding substance and context. Take the Sam Stone thread, for example. There are (at present) 1001 posts in that Pitting. Precisely four of them are mine (not “dozens”) and other than the single post that you saw fit to quote, the other three are all substantive discussions that would not be out of place in any of the normal forums. Funny, too, that in your desire to “prove” that I like joining pile-ons, you neglected to quote my second post there (bolding added by me for emphasis):
I then go on to make some serious substantive comments about climate change.
Similarly, you cite the fact that I also joined in the Pitting of UltraVires. There are actually two threads Pitting him, one of which I never participated in at all. In the longer one (495 posts) I made five posts, and all of them were to express my strong disagreement with some of his more outrageous views.
And I’m not sure what the purpose was of the quote from my post in the DrDeth pitting. As I made explicitly clear in the post, it was not snark and was meant sincerely; I really do feel sorry for him (we knew at the time that a suspension was pending) and he genuinely does have some kind of psychological quirk that makes it difficult for him to maintain civil and rational discussion. I didn’t (and don’t) want him to be banned and hope that he can improve.
In short, I resent your attempt to cast me as some sort of vengeful villain who enjoys pile-ons and hurling insults at “pretty much everyone who is Pit”, to use your exact words.
Not to join the pile on, but, isn’t that the entire reason we have a Pit?
