I don’t doubt your honesty (nor that of most other posters on this board), just surprised it wasn’t one of those from the other side responding.
They may not be the targets, but they’re the ones making the specious arguments, and the ones to whom we end up responding. We’re not addressing the middle directly. Of course, it’s partly that this is a debate-based board and you’re going to have people taking opposing positions anyway. But the problem comes when that opposition departs from evidence to purely unsubstantiated conclusions deriving from “I believe…”
And what works isn’t always going to be kid-gloving it. As a RL example, what chance do Democratic Congressmen have to advance any kind of left-facing agenda, or for that matter stop the current regime’s march toward the '50’s? For the former, almost none whatsoever, and the latter, it will require using every tool in the bag and the Senate and House rules to slow them down. Convincing the ‘middle ground’ there just isn’t going to work, because practically speaking there is none. (I’m speaking primarily of the Senate here, which is the only place there’s realistically any chance of effective opposition.)
Re: the middle ground reading the board, you’d have a great deal of trouble telling that from the posters here, at least in Elections and Great Debates. As you apparently understand, it’s not a tool used with broad strokes. But the willingness has to be there when it’s necessary. It’s a matter of degree. I’m not going to call someone out as an idiot for having questions. That’s a natural part of the search for knowledge. But when they’re not looking to do anything but advance their own views based on nothing but fairy dust and invisible, omnipotent beings, or belief that Trump is great, Trump is good, they’ve pretty much painted a target on their own backs. This has really become much more of a problem since his election, with loony toons washing liberal boards with the apparent intention of shutting down reasoned debate for the meek acceptance of the entrenched right’s rule.
Heh thankfully I’m no Jeremy Corbyn. I just point the direction. I don’t have a lot of control over how others perceive me.
Again, it’s a matter of degree. And the bottom line as far as policy change is concerned is that at this point obstruction is the only thing that has any chance of working. Relying on the consciences of Republican Senators is a losing proposition at the outset. As for applying it here, I doubt that my cutting down some joker who spells chagrin ‘shirgrin’ (an actual occurrence from a week or two ago) and then goes on to espouse the Trumpist line is going to chase anyone else off except possibly others of his ilk, though it does appear to have worked with him specifically.
It’s worth noting that not only is the supposed offense more often than not nonsense, but the reaction to it is invariably overblown and way out of proportion to the actual so-called offense.
PC is stupid and an overreaction, but what exactly is the point here? (Btw, I saw the entire episode including that New Rules segment.) Did PC force moderates to vote for Trump, or even change their point of view? Did it prevent those who would have voted for Hillary from doing so?
I’d cut Republicans some slack on this if they didn’t do exactly the same thing, just on other issues. Remember that whole controversy about athletes not standing for the national anthem at football games. I just did a survey: ten out of 10 actual flags don’t give a shit.
Im not sure I follow you. I said precisely the opposite, that I expect a political shift.
A future political shift has little to do with the government being perceived as bad. It has to do with big government politicians running out of goodies to hand out to the electorate. I believe we are beginning to see this in Western Europe. Admittedly the European lurch to the right has been exacerbated by the refugee issue.
So let me rephrase: You 're saying, at some point, it’s “Govt not give me stuff. Go right!”
That seems like no change in politics to me. No demographic change, no philosophical change and no post trump post truth change. (And, god forbid, no environmental, war, or catastrophic change) Isn’t that quite a lot to just ignore? Just why will we go right wing because the govt can’t give out goodies?
What do you mean “as if?” It is inarguably factual that Trump’s election is a shameful stain upon America. If we get away with being a pariah state (instead of destroying the planet), we’ll be lucky.
What you think makes no difference to those who think other. Trumpo’s Immigration order distresses many, but to those who voted for him, specifically on the specious grounds of ‘Taking Our Country Back’ and the Miss Coulters who at the beginning exclaimed this was the single issue that would put him in the White House, this fully justifies their peculiar choice.
There is not a widespread movement amongst those who voted for him to have him turfed out ( and perhaps imprisoned ) ( on the charge of being Donald Trump ), whatever anti-trumpistas tell themselves.
They don’t hate America, they hate us. A group so diverse and inclusive, most of us don’t even know that we are an “us”, wouldn’t identify the descriptions as applying to “us”. Don’t think I’ve ever had a latte, owned a Volvo, and if trailer trash counts as part of an “elite”…well, I sure am curious for details.
Starving Artist is apparently on a mission to persuade liberals that many conservatives are so childishly oversensitive that they deliberately chose to vote for, in Bill Maher’s words, “a madman” because hearing liberals talk about “cultural appropriation” on social media hurt their feelings. Yeah, doesn’t make a lot of sense to me either.
Bill Maher in SA’s cite seems to be suggesting that it was liberals’ responsibility somehow to provide the adult supervision to prevent that from happening:
ISTM that the responsibility for that lies with the people who actually voted for the madman. But Maher and Starving Artist apparently think that conservatives can’t be trusted not to make massively and dangerously irrational electoral choices if they hear a liberal somewhere complaining about “microaggressions”.
Personally, I find this attitude demeaning and derogatory to conservatives, and I don’t endorse it: I pay conservatives the compliment of assuming that in general they vote for the person whom they honestly want to elect. But another of Maher’s cited remarks suggests a hint about where this attitude may be coming from:
The real issue seems to be that according to this mindset, showing concern for the dignity and feelings of traditionally disadvantaged groups is insufficiently manly. This is a classic illustration of the concept of “fragile masculinity”, in which men who feel insecure or inadequate about living up to (very exaggerated) cultural expectations of “manliness” overreact wildly to anything that appears to challenge such expectations.
E.g., thinking that being expected to apologize if you said something offensive is somehow equivalent to castration. Conservatives are apparently so threatened by this prospect that they have to rush out and vote for Trump in self-defense, while even liberals apparently need to respond to the threat with belligerent obscenities. Right.
I personally think all of this interpretation is basically bullshit, and that conservatives who voted for Trump probably did so because they wanted Trump as President. Simple as that.
No matter how much they may dislike “PC” or other stereotypes of “liberal discourse”, conservatives in general are, I presume, not so stupid and childish that they would actually vote to hand the reins of Presidential power to a candidate they despised and rejected just to get back at liberals for “castrating” them by telling them they should apologize for saying something offensive. :rolleyes:
Interesting, but what do you make of the fact that the “anti-PC backlash” story often comes directly from conservatives? It seems some of them would rather explain their votes as a reactionary tantrum than as actual support for Trump and his policies.
As near as I can figure, it’s some combination of buyer’s remorse and a desire to shift the responsibility. And I think some of them haven’t quite noticed yet how extremely uncomplimentary it is to conservatives to suggest that liberals somehow “made” them vote entirely against their own better judgement, just by saying that we should change the name of a football team or not mock fat kids about their weight.
I see Kimstu fully intends to keep up with this silly narrative that anti-PC conservative ire is based on ‘hurt feelings’ and thin-skinnededness, or that we can’t handle it that liberals are being ‘mean’ to us.
The truth of course is that none of that is going on. Not remotely. We think political correctness is silly and stupid, and is driven mainly by people who think they’ve found a foolproof and socially justifiable way to bully people. It seeks to have its way by attempting to shut down discourse and trying to portray anyone who doesn’t agree with it as being some form of asshole. Or moron. It is rigid and dictatorial and seeks to quash free speech and opposition. And it demands obeisance to every silly and ridiculous thing that anyone anywhere decides is ‘offensive’. It’s gotten to the point now where to call a woman beautiful is construed as an outrageous insult, and where Ellen Degeneres is assailed as a racist for playfully jumping on Usain Bolt’s back for a photograph. Political correctness seeks to shut down points of view it doesn’t like on college campuses and it demands people forfeit careers years in the making should they dare say the wrong word or criticize the wrong thing.
Curiously enough however, most of the condemnation of political correctness since the election has been coming from liberals themselves, who are smart enough to realize that ‘We the people’ (i.e., the 70% of the population not afflicted with liberalism) have finally had enough of this shit and people are starting to push back. The rant in the OP and Bill Maher’s comments do a perfectly good job of explaining what’s wrong with it and the problems it’s created.
Kimstu has gone on record with his or her intention to ignore the advice of people like ‘Jonathan Pie’ in the OP and Bill Maher, and instead double down on the abusive, insulting, demanding and unyielding kind of behavior that they’re condemning. Kimstu is apparently like the well-known guys in the rowboat who, having lost sight of land, decide to redouble their efforts and row even harder. On the one hand this is fine with me because backlash against it has paid off for conservatism far more than I’d ever hoped for or imagined. But even I can see that total one party dominance isn’t good for the country, just like the one-sided social dominance of political correctness isn’t good for the country. So it’s toward that end that I argue for a stop to the 90% of political correctness that is just silly over-the-top bullshit and manufactured outrage even though it serves to benefit me politically in the short run.
So go ahead, Kimstu, and knock yourself out. It’s obvious that you are the one whose feelings have been hurt and who thinks people have been mean to you as a result of Donald Trump’s election, which was virtually a nationwide repudiation of all you hold dear, and so you’re trying to save face by turning your hurt feelings around and projecting them on me. But you’re not fooling anyone and like I said in the OP, those who are wise will heed the words of those liberals who are clear-headed enough to recognize what much of the problem is and will begin to moderate their behavior accordingly, and those who aren’t, won’t.
What Bill Maher is saying is that people don’t like self-righteous and ridiculous nags. I’ve been saying that reflexively calling people racist, sexist, bigoted, ______phobic, __________ist, is counterproductive since I’ve registered on this site. Backlash against nagging is just a function of resentment. And some of the concepts, such as offense at “cultural appropriation” are themselves bigoted.
No, he’s saying that Trump got elected largely because people “don’t like self-righteous and ridiculous nags”. Which seems to me like a rather scathing disparagement of the rationality and common sense of the people casting those votes.
I may find a particular strain of political discourse irritating, but I wouldn’t vote for a candidate I genuinely don’t like or respect just to get back at the people irritating me. I’m surprised that Bill Maher thinks that conservatives would.
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Backlash against nagging is just a function of resentment.
[/QUOTE]
But surely you are not arguing that significant numbers of conservatives got their resentment so blown out of proportion that they actually cast their votes against their own better judgement, merely as a “backlash against nagging”? :dubious:
That sounds very uncomplimentary to conservatives. I disagree with conservatives on many things, but I have a hard time believing that a significant proportion of them are really that feckless.
:dubious: Hey, you’re the one promoting that “narrative”, not me.
I personally don’t think it’s a big deal if conservatives like to complain about “PC”, nor do I think “anti-PC conservative ire” in and of itself necessarily indicates catastrophic levels of “hurt feelings and thinskinnedness”.
But when you yourself insist that “anti-PC conservative ire” was crucial to the election of Trump—i.e., that conservatives who didn’t actually support Trump nonetheless voted for him just in order to lash out at the annoying “PC” liberals—then the behavior you claim to be describing does indicate catastrophic levels of “hurt feelings and thinskinnedness”.
You can’t have it both ways, Starving Artist. If conservatives voted for Trump because they honestly thought he was the best candidate, then the issue of “liberal PC” is basically irrelevant to the outcome. In which case, all this “it’s liberals’ fault Trump got elected” bloviation is meaningless.
If, on the other hand, you’re claiming that irritation at “liberal PC” somehow did tip otherwise anti-Trump conservatives over the edge of voting for Trump even though they didn’t sincerely think he was the best candidate, then those voters’ behavior was massively illogical and immature.
But you wouldn’t cast a vote for a candidate whom you didn’t actually support, just because you were annoyed with “political correctness”, would you? Because you know that would just be throwing an irrational and counterproductive tantrum.
So why do you keep trying to persuade us that that’s what significant numbers of other conservative voters in fact did?
I just point the direction. I don’t have a lot of control over how others perceive me.