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Lefty Internal Politics: How to Talk About This Stuff?


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9 hours ago, Zorral said:

It does not.  It is a name created by the fascists for those of any kind, particularly in the realm of Black Lives Matter, that push back in public against the neo nazis and fascists, the same nazis, white supremacists, election deniers, climate change deniers etc., who often false flag  making a protest become violent. Which has been proven by many investigations. This is documented all over the place.  Your determination to make 'antifa' the equivalent of Proud Boys, etc. is preposterous, just again, beginning with the fact it doesn't exist except in bad faith minds like yours.

Show me just one real example, taken to court and convicted, of anybody who is part of 'Antifa'.  Good grief the wrongwingers, reichwingers, all have complained that they can't because there is no organized ideological group they can go and arrest members of.

Why would I need to show evidence of them taken to court and convicted to prove that they exist outside of right wing demonizations? 

It's clear that you weren't, and are still not, reading the previous comments about antifa very carefully. No one here said that antifa was the left-wing equivalent of the Proud Boys. No one even said the movement was bad. I did give criticisms for certain specific actions by specific actors, and voiced concerns about message control, and about escalation in general. But that is not the same as equating antifa with the Proud Boys.

And saying that antifa doesn't exist, simply because the right wing demonizes them and makes shit up about them, is just strange. The right wing makes shit up about BLM too, but it sounds like you accept that the movement (which is also decentralized) exists. Why the difference?

 

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9 hours ago, Zorral said:

Yet you have the obligation to commit the courtesy of respect to those you expect to read your comments to be clear, organized and factual. Otherwise you're just another guy on a bar stool who has had at least two drinks over his limit blathering senselessly and boring everyone. 

IOW, you cannot claim you're just effin' around and not bringing a mature game and then complain that people aren't taking you seriously.

 

You're going very hard on this criticism of my commenting. I think you're interpreting my previous acknowledgement of fallibility rather strongly, reflecting your own bias. Plenty of posts by other commenters on the forum do sometimes resemble people well into their cups, blathering senselessy and sloppily. And that's okay. It's a forum. As I said, your take on antifa seems rather sloppy to me, including your recent rebuttal.

What's most important, to me anyway, is the attempt to make oneself clear. No one attempt will ever be perfect for everyone, and some topics are harder to unpack than others. What I tried to focus on in this topic post is rather complicated and hard to unpack, especially in one post. Subsequent comments go further in unpacking, but those have to be based on the questions and critiques of specific commenters, so it can easily go into what other think are tangents, or works for some people and not others. It's always a process, and always imperfect. It's a hard enough process to get right when everyone's trying in good faith. Trying to do it in the midst of strong automatic assumptions that the commenter is wrong/evil/illegitimate/profoundly stupid is just a recipe for disaster, and from my standpoint, an exercise in futility that I will try to avoid.

Anyway, rather than lean into this vague attack on my overall commenting, why not point out concrete instances of what you think to be untrue, unclear, disorganized, or problematic in some way? Using your own words, or quoting mine, why not reach out and ask for an explanation, or a clarification of specific things in the thread?

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10 minutes ago, Larry of the Lake said:

I'd bet good money there are at least a couple of anti-fascists among us.  What brave souls would dare reveal themselves?

I hope that everyone on the board is an anti-fascist. Whether or not they employ the antifa label means a lot less to me.

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11 hours ago, Week said:

That's unfortunate. Substantively, I'm in agreement DMC's response. 

If you care enough to know more, you would put in the time to voice your concerns or questions in your own words. Your reluctance so far is a red flag for me. As I said, I'm done with putting in time just to serve as someone else's entertainment when they're bored. Once again, if you approach in earnest with a question or critique, and treat me like a normal human being in the process, I would try to address whatever it is your comment is getting at.

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23 hours ago, Raja said:

An application to apply for a job was extended to DEI initiatives being 'cults'. In addition, you then get statements like 'obsession with diverse representation', like really?

When I applied for my first job I think I had to write why I deeply respected the company. And the job I got was mostly stacking boxes, and then I got moved to being a janitor.

Like stuff like “tell us how you’ll help diversity” seems to follow a similar vein that people don’t for a lot of statements businesses ask us to make for employment or admission get outraged about a lot.

 

There’s a problem with people even liberals being overly frightful/skittish over things that we accept as normal and morally neutral at worst being done for progressive causes.

 

Like the original dialogue was about jace’s fretting over drag queen story hour and it’s not bigoted for parents to fear such things can make their kids gay.

 

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46 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Like stuff like “tell us how you’ll help diversity” seems to follow a similar vein that people don’t for a lot of statements businesses ask us to make for employment or admission get outraged about a lot.

The personal example I gave wasn't one of outrage, but it was a case of clear overextension of a principle, to the point where it made it difficult for me to actually complete the application. How one contributes to diversity is a relevant question for a broad swath of academic fields, but stuff relating to biology, universal behaviors, and math, not so much. If it had been one requested point among other points in the cover letter, that would be reasonable. But as the principle theme of a cover letter for all positions, it was not appropriate. I don't know if or how it influenced hiring, but given that I didn't even know what to put in the damn letter, I imagine it could easily work as a filter for ideology rather than technical expertise. That's why I gave it as an example of blinkered overextension. I wasn't saying it was the evil of all evils, but even that example could lead to shittier faculty at a school, just via one sloppy policy decision. 

I don't understand the hate for drag queen story hour, or the general concept of using media to humanize minority groups. It's just that social media and general culture war fervor pushes everything to the max. Not to mention the people who care most about such things tend to obsess over banal details from crappy commercial products. But that's a different complaint than the one of blinkered overextension.

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My first impulse was to wave off this lazy, two-sentence remark. But I'll give you a chance to take the issue more seriously.

49 minutes ago, Raja said:

It was actually a terrible example which you then extended into calling DEI as 'cults'.

Your imagination is doing some real work here, especially since I already pointed out to you in a subsequent comment that I was only saying that some DEI efforts can and do get overextensive, and I would say get cult-like. As was mentioned, the trend seemed more popular among Ivy League schools, but it wasn't only Ivy League schools. Evergreen State College was named by me as the most egregious example of feverish DEI behavior caught to tape, and they are not Ivy League. The footage of their Equity Commission meeting looks just like a religious ceremony, one where the leaders tell the other faculty: "this is going to happen regardless of whether you're with us, but we want you to be with us." Sorry, that's rather cult-like to me.

I'm not saying that Evergreen represents all schools or even most schools. Once again, you few are misreading my comments. Probably not taking much time at all before jumping to a conclusion. More of the sloppiness that Zorral says doesn't happen.

The purpose of that larger comment was to try to give examples to unpack this notion of "overextension of a good thing into excess," of focusing on one thing at the cost of other things. On simplifying complex problems or process. It was not to paint all points on the spectrum as bad. You have ignored the details that support this framing over and over.

It's like if I were trying to argue that autism can be debilitating in its most extreme forms, and commenters try to suggest that I am demonizing all autism as debilitating. This is classic flattening for the sake of binary thinking. It makes conversations with nuanced details a lot harder to have.

This is a big reason why I called previous attempts to criticize my writing as straw men, because it does not in any way resemble what I've been trying to get at. It would be futile to discuss the details of Renaissance painting if someone else is running the image through a retro 8-bit filter. I am not going to dictate how others see the world or how deeply or superficially they want to get in a discussion. I'm simply saying that I'm finished trying to split hairs with people who readily indulge in motivated misreadings and distortions, character attacks, and other forms of bad faith commenting.

49 minutes ago, Raja said:

As is your summation that there are certain fields that have no relevance to DEI initiatives.

Again, basic reading comprehension problem here. The essay that I was talking about was about how an academic candidate can contribute to diversity. That is not the same as saying that DEI initiatives are irrelevant to certain fields. You are distorting a very short comment I made, and then attacking that distortion.

As to the point, I was actually getting at: please explain how a statistics teacher, or someone teaching visual perception, is supposed to foster diversity. Obviously some niche fields or personal experiences will be relevant and might make for a good essay, but what does that have to do with showcasing one's knowledge in statistics, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, etc? Can you not at least admit that the principal of diversity, in the specific case of these letters, can sometimes run in competition with other values, such as technical expertise or pedagogical skill? Can you admit that life is more complicated than we often want it to be?

If not, well, see ya.

The ball is in your court.

 

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44 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

As to the point, I was actually getting at: please explain how a statistics teacher, or someone teaching visual perception, is supposed to foster diversity. Obviously some niche fields or personal experiences will be relevant and might make for a good essay, but what does that have to do with showcasing one's knowledge in statistics, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, etc? Can you not at least admit that the principal of diversity, in the specific case of these letters, can sometimes run in competition with other values, such as technical expertise or pedagogical skill? Can you admit that life is more complicated than we often want it to be?

If not, well, see ya.

The ball is in your court.

 

What is your definition of 'foster diversity'? That seems like it's doing the work. From my perspective, it is extremely self evident what a broader, more aware perspective can bring to pretty much any field. You seem to be narrowly defining 'diversity' in a way that I don't understand. 

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2 hours ago, Week said:

What is your definition of 'foster diversity'? That seems like it's doing the work. From my perspective, it is extremely self evident what a broader, more aware perspective can bring to pretty much any field. You seem to be narrowly defining 'diversity' in a way that I don't understand. 

Diversity really only has two possible definitions in this context. The first is the more generic viewpoint diversity that is said to help groups come up with solutions to various problems. The second is a cultural and demographic diversity that ties in with equity, inclusion, and social justice for historically marginalized groups. 

If I had been a scholar of philosophy, history, literature, or other cultural studies, it would be quite easy to write a cover letter that handily speaks to both of those definitions. Bring in multiple perspectives and give voice to those often unheard; focus on the impacts of oppression, challenge students to think beyond their own respective backgrounds; etc.

But again, how does someone whose expertise is statistics or mathematics of any kind seriously answer that question? The very best one might do is to say you'll employ different teaching strategies to acknowledge a diversity of backgrounds and learning styles--which for most people would be BS. Since I was also applying to teach psychology courses, I leaned as well as I could into the "different perspectives" framework, but in truth most of it was about common humanity rather than diversity per se, as that's what psychology and neuroscience tend to be about: universals. I made the best case that I could, but was thinking all the time that it was like fitting a round peg into a square hole.

And as a reminder, this was just one of several examples in which I was trying to unpack the more general notion of when good intentions go too far, into overextension, into sloppy implementation, into a concern for one or two factors with little regard for others. This notion that sometimes people start with good intentions and go overboard, or implement a policy too broadly, or that prioritizing one value can come at the expense of another, really shouldn't be controversial. It's the story of modern human existence for so many other issues. My whole topic has been trying to focus on ways to critique examples of excess, overreach, and zealotry (at least when applicable) without people assuming that I am damning an entire group, or movement, or cause.

I realize that people are protective of the principles of diversity, equity, harm reduction, and others for good reason: because they are under attack by the right. And sometimes right wingers may even voice bad faith "concerns" about excess as a way to start demonizing everyone associated, or at least confuse people. But within left and liberal spaces, we need to be able to talk about this stuff without erupting into toxicity. If we ever hope to address instances of excess, overcorrection, sloppy implementation, or whatever, we need to be able to point out those extreme instances without others automatically assuming that a whole people, movement, or effort is being demonized.

Anyway, thank you for the normal comment.

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6 hours ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

The personal example I gave wasn't one of outrage, but it was a case of clear overextension of a principle, to the point where it made it difficult for me to actually complete the application. How one contributes to diversity is a relevant question for a broad swath of academic fields, but stuff relating to biology, universal behaviors, and math, not so much. If it had been one requested point among other points in the cover letter, that would be reasonable

Careful now you may be sounding like a harm-reduction maximalist.

I joke.

Anyway I don’t know what universal behaviors but a lot of studies relating to biology in the west have historically have over sampled or only sampled cis men, particularly white cis men when trying to make predictions on a whole population.

Like cis women and cis men often require different dosages of medication or some medication won’t work as effectively as either.

 

 

 

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11 minutes ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Anyway I don’t know what universal behaviors but a lot of studies relating to biology in the west have historically have over sampled or only sampled cis men, particularly white cis men when trying to make predictions on a whole population.

Like cis women and cis men often require different dosages of medication or some medication won’t work as effectively as either.

For medicine, sure, though that's not my wheelhouse. Behavioral sciences surely have the problem of WEIRD samples: Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. And white samples too. But beyond pointing out the problem and offering a caveat about findings, there's not much else a teacher can offer in the actual curriculum, not so many substantive alternative findings to meet that need. 

On a related note, a statistics teacher could highlight how the founder of correlations was a racist eugenics-endorsing shithead. But such knowledge doesn't help anyone understand how to run a correlation analysis or interpret the results. It would be perfect material for a history of psych course, not so much the math-heavy courses.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 6/3/2023 at 2:00 PM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

For medicine, sure, though that's not my wheelhouse. Behavioral sciences surely have the problem of WEIRD samples: Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. And white samples too. But beyond pointing out the problem and offering a caveat about findings, there's not much else a teacher can offer in the actual curriculum, not so many substantive alternative findings to meet that need. 

Being able to properly Administer  of Medicine to humans is the prime reason for society to put much stock in the study of biology.

You Encourage their students to strive for diversity when they begin working on things that won’t just be used for white people or even just white men could help out.

On 6/3/2023 at 2:00 PM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

On a related note, a statistics teacher could highlight how the founder of correlations was a racist eugenics-endorsing shithead. But such knowledge doesn't help anyone understand how to run a correlation analysis or interpret the results. It would be perfect material for a history of psych course, not so much the math-heavy courses.

It’s really useful in empathizing the work and analysis of statistics isn’t just always some abstract pure thought experiment that can tickle a person’s intellectual fancy.

 

On 6/3/2023 at 11:47 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

And as a reminder, this was just one of several examples in which I was trying to unpack the more general notion of when good intentions go too far, into overextension, into sloppy implementation, into a concern for one or two factors with little regard for others. This notion that sometimes people start with good intentions and go overboard, or implement a policy too broadly, or that prioritizing one value can come at the expense of another, really shouldn't be controversial.

True, but there seems to be an implication that the last point is bad automatically.

I’d argue no, and that not recognizing certain values need take priority is what causes needless(sometimes it can’t be helped I understand)  attempts to compromise/appease entities who’ve values less worthy of consideration.


Like for example(an anecdote I’ve experienced dealing with) a person positing that marriage should be left to the church instead of the state as to take away something religious zealots a reason to rage against or even some more moderate conservatives who love their gay family members but just think marriage is between one man and a woman.

On 6/3/2023 at 11:47 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

And sometimes right wingers may even voice bad faith "concerns" about excess as a way to start demonizing everyone associated, or at least confuse people. But within left and liberal spaces, we need to be able to talk about this stuff without erupting into toxicity. If we ever hope to address instances of excess, overcorrection, sloppy implementation, or whatever, we need to be able to point out those extreme instances without others automatically assuming that a whole people, movement, or effort is being demonized.

Yeah I’ll say not every attempt to promote equity(fairness), diversity, or harm reduction is wise, some are flat out counterproductive.

See marvel’s black Thor comic series or the constant op-Ed’s on manspreading in 2015.
should be noted some on the right often times use the concern of people not doing enough for any of this to engender attacks on entities who do anything

In the woke thread for example there was an attempt to reorient the overwhelming controversy around Dylan Mulvaney as some legitimate gripe with poor representation of trans people when it was almost universally rage at the existence of a trans woman period.

Oh there is also so many examples of people hiding reactionary takes around a pseudo care for progressivism.

Ex. Dave Chapelle whining about concern of transphobia taking attention away from racism against black people.

I still don’t think harm reduction has an excess or should be viewed as having an excess. It gives off this notion that 

I’ve also gotten no solid argument  for the different groups on the left and liberals to consolidate or work together if not to maximize harm-reduction.

The lack of that mindset often gets people to perceive politics as essentially a social club(they just want a little circle where they can express vaguely lib or progressive sentiment and get called smart with no fear of ever getting flack for a perceived bad take)  or for a lack of a better phrase a way to virtue signal or poorly choosing who to ally with(I’ve seen people on the farther end of the left show more animosity towards moderate liberals than the far right because in their(leftist)  word at least they’re more honest) .

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On 6/2/2023 at 7:18 PM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Jesus, you are tedious. People asked, and so I answered. But now I am blocking. Have a wonderful life and enjoy your anger problems.

I read through this entire thread over the course of a couple of days and I really really tried to extend some patience your way, but here is where you conclusively lost me. First of all, tedious? Seriously, pot meet kettle.

I get that DMC rubs people the wrong way but I thought his questions were pretty incisive and kept waiting for you to at least address them instead of whining about how he hasn't treated you with sufficient respect for you to deign to address him.

If you're going to ignore him, just ignore him. But it is a ridiculous performance to repeatedly tell him you don't like how he says things so you won't actually engage with him when he's actually asked you directly to clarify several points.

 

On 6/3/2023 at 8:01 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

You're going very hard on this criticism of my commenting. I think you're interpreting my previous acknowledgement of fallibility rather strongly, reflecting your own bias.

This comes across like a pretty stale and cowardly defense. Oh, poor me, I'm just a mere mortal humbly expressing my ideas so I must be afforded some grace when I make mistakes, but if anyone pushes back against my claims, I wasn't saying what you said I'm saying, and you were obviously just misreading me, and solely interested in attacking me.

Half of your responses in this thread have been criticisms of the comments of others. If you are really interested in furtherance of communication, why not answer DMC's critiques, not for his own benefit, but for other people reading this thread? 

 

On 6/3/2023 at 8:01 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Plenty of posts by other commenters on the forum do sometimes resemble people well into their cups, blathering senselessy and sloppily. And that's okay. It's a forum. As I said, your take on antifa seems rather sloppy to me, including your recent rebuttal.

What's most important, to me anyway, is the attempt to make oneself clear. No one attempt will ever be perfect for everyone, and some topics are harder to unpack than others. What I tried to focus on in this topic post is rather complicated and hard to unpack, especially in one post.

You've had plenty of posts to try to unpack whatever it is you're trying to unpack and I've gotten no more than you think some leftists do things that are counterproductive to their causes, which has never been denied.

 

On 6/3/2023 at 8:01 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Subsequent comments go further in unpacking, but those have to be based on the questions and critiques of specific commenters, so it can easily go into what other think are tangents, or works for some people and not others. It's always a process, and always imperfect. It's a hard enough process to get right when everyone's trying in good faith. Trying to do it in the midst of strong automatic assumptions that the commenter is wrong/evil/illegitimate/profoundly stupid is just a recipe for disaster, and from my standpoint, an exercise in futility that I will try to avoid.

I think it's bad faith to automatically accuse someone of bad faith just because they thought one of your points was dumb. Not everyone is arguing with you just because they're biased or personally out to slander you.

If this is how you respond to even mild hostility (and not every poster you refuse to respond to has been hostile) then everything will be an exercise in futility.

If you want to make yourself into some martyr of a reasonable leftist, victimized by vicious extremists, you have to actually take some wounds.

 

On 6/3/2023 at 8:01 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Anyway, rather than lean into this vague attack on my overall commenting, why not point out concrete instances of what you think to be untrue, unclear, disorganized, or problematic in some way? Using your own words, or quoting mine, why not reach out and ask for an explanation, or a clarification of specific things in the thread?

It seems to me DMC and Raja and plenty of others did point out concrete parts of your arguments that they took issue with, but you deflected by claiming they were too disrespectful of your augustly flawed self for you to properly address them.

 

On 6/3/2023 at 9:06 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

If you care enough to know more, you would put in the time to voice your concerns or questions in your own words. Your reluctance so far is a red flag for me.

Why does Week need to restate the questions if he, and others, just want to see you directly address DMC's questions? Are you grading papers or are you participating in a discussion that you purport is about precise and patient communication?

 

On 6/3/2023 at 9:06 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

As I said, I'm done with putting in time just to serve as someone else's entertainment when they're bored.

I think you vastly overestimate your own entertainment value. Watching DMC and Ty split hairs about Ty's favorite NBA players for the hundredth time has more entertainment value than this bizarre dance you're doing where you make profound statements about The Left, then walk them back, plead misunderstanding, or whine about disrespect whenever someone responds.

 

On 6/3/2023 at 9:06 AM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

Once again, if you approach in earnest with a question or critique, and treat me like a normal human being in the process, I would try to address whatever it is your comment is getting at.

It looked to me like others were treating you like any other forum poster and you took offense at a pretty typical level of pushback, or made repeated complaints about how they didn't put in sufficient work to respond to your two-whole-hours-of-effort posts. Responding to DMC's questions the first or second time he asked would have surely been less effort than... all this.

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On 6/14/2023 at 6:50 AM, DanteGabriel said:

I read through this entire thread over the course of a couple of days and I really really tried to extend some patience your way, but here is where you conclusively lost me. First of all, tedious? Seriously, pot meet kettle.

I get that DMC rubs people the wrong way but I thought his questions were pretty incisive and kept waiting for you to at least address them instead of whining about how he hasn't treated you with sufficient respect for you to deign to address him.

If you're going to ignore him, just ignore him. But it is a ridiculous performance to repeatedly tell him you don't like how he says things so you won't actually engage with him when he's actually asked you directly to clarify several points.

I won't speak ill of the blocked, or speak about them at all, beyond this comment. I probably should have blocked sooner, but they're blocked now, let's leave it at that. 

If there is anything that was raised in those older comments that you would like clarity on, by all means ask. 

On 6/14/2023 at 6:50 AM, DanteGabriel said:

This comes across like a pretty stale and cowardly defense. Oh, poor me, I'm just a mere mortal humbly expressing my ideas so I must be afforded some grace when I make mistakes, but if anyone pushes back against my claims, I wasn't saying what you said I'm saying, and you were obviously just misreading me, and solely interested in attacking me.

Sorry, I really don't get what you're saying here. I don't pretend to be the best writer or expert on politics here--and probably no one should. The comment thread format alone is suboptimal for discussions about complex subject matter; even if some comments are well articulated, it's a challenge to respond to each point in a response comment, let alone when it's several commenters jumping in. Zorral took the fact that I mentioned that comment threads sometimes lead to rough-and-ready commenting as some indication that I was uniquely sloppy or unserious compared to the rest of the forum, and so I pointed out how silly such an accusation is.

I have said before, and have demonstrated, that when someone asks for clarity or pushes back on a point, I am happy to try to clarify or consider the point. Two examples: Rippoet's comments about what I had written on Critical Theory, and Weeks' questions about defining diversity. And if you do the same, I will try to respond to what you're asking. Isn't that simple enough?

Just as a commenter can be as rude as they wish to be without listening to my requests to be more civil, I can decide not to engage in someone I find uncivil. And if you don't like my commenting about commenting, and would like me to answer questions...why are you spending so much space here commenting about my commenting? You could instead be posing questions about the topic of the thread, or asking for clarity on specific points.

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What's more effective at pruning out the discord amongst us?  The guillotine or committees?  A guillotine committee?  Fuck it, drag me up to the front of the line.  Can someone hold my phone up though, on this page?  I want the last thing I see to be this page jumping around as it reloads.

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On 6/12/2023 at 7:48 PM, Varysblackfyre321 said:

I’ve also gotten no solid argument  for the different groups on the left and liberals to consolidate or work together if not to maximize harm-reduction.

It's a good point. Harm reduction is one of the major foundations of liberal society. Clearly it needs to be cultivated, strengthened, and expanded in many avenues of life. But the reason I wrote it out as "maximizing" is because I do think that they are ways to take this good and valuable thing too far.

Both Jonathan Haidt and Jeannie Suk Gersen have written about how harm reduction policies are counterproductive at best and harmful at worst. Haidt in his book The Coddling of the American Mind, and Suk Gersen in a New Yorker article:

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-if-trigger-warnings-dont-work

Both of them also sat on a discussion panel at NYU about harm reduction policies, where the school apparently found it appropriate to include a student who typifies just how silly this stuff can get when taken too far.

Now, an argument could be made that the too-far version isn't so pervasive as some people say it is, and hopefully that is the case. Maybe it was never much of a problem, or maybe things have changed for the better. But that's different from saying there's no such thing as taking it too far. There definitely is in my book.

Beyond the silliness that is definitely there in the excessive cases, there is the serious problem of flattening our language as it relates to harm, which is not just corrosive intellectually, impeding our ability to have real discussions about difficult topics, but also emotionally, as it fosters catastrophic thinking. It thus makes conflict resolution less likely, both within individuals and within groups, and thus makes us all less resilient.

On 6/12/2023 at 7:48 PM, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Yeah I’ll say not every attempt to promote equity(fairness), diversity, or harm reduction is wise, some are flat out counterproductive.

See marvel’s black Thor comic series or the constant op-Ed’s on manspreading in 2015.
should be noted some on the right often times use the concern of people not doing enough for any of this to engender attacks on entities who do anything

Oh yes. The right wing tends to be good at finding nuggets of truth about the left that they can use as breadcrumbs to lure more-or-less normal people down a path of distortion, paranoia, and then outright bigotry. Or use a similar dynamic as a strategy to impose some radical new law or policy.

It's important to keep in mind both aspects of that process though: the nuggets of truth, and the distortion/overextension. We need to own up to the bits that are true, and separate them from the distortions and spin.

I wasn't following the Mulvaney story beyond an article or two, but the right wing fervor seems to be less about persuading people into a more radical stance, and more about openly bigoted people telling themselves that "the powers that be are making the culture less like you and me." If anything, it's the later stage of the seduction dynamic: the point at which the lack of an actual good faith premise is transparently obvious if not outright acknowledged. Like a lot of MAGA frothing that's been happening recently, they seem less concerned with the very notion of persuasion, and more about getting nonstop hits of hate-crack amongst themselves and getting more and more deranged.

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2 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

I wasn't following the Mulvaney story beyond an article or two, but the right wing fervor seems to be less about persuading people into a more radical stance, and more about openly bigoted people telling themselves that "the powers that be are making the culture less like you and me." If anything, it's the later stage of the seduction dynamic: the point at which the lack of an actual good faith premise is transparently obvious if not outright acknowledged. Like a lot of MAGA frothing that's been happening recently, they seem less concerned with the very notion of persuasion, and more about getting nonstop hits of hate-crack amongst themselves and getting more and more deranged.

By recently, do you mean since 1/6, the Trump administration, the Tea Party, the islamophobic War on Terror, Southern Strategy, or further back?

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