Donald Trump and US politics
" Wow, that sounds like a fantastic idea that just never had an opportunity to succeed. Don't worry, we can try it again and next time it's sure to work! /sarcasm |
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The not-so-funny part is, with current surveillance and information technology, it might very well work. At least the total state control part. Although, in terms of dystopian societies, Brave New World's predictions seem to be more on point.
The Wheel of Nerfs turns, and builds come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the build that gave it birth comes again. Last edited by Bars on Feb 8, 2017, 8:33:08 AM
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" From my experience, there are two schools of thought on the left about this. The first is pretty much what I just said - don't violate his right to free speech. This contains, from my experience, the vast majority of liberals I've heard of, and virtually every liberal in any position of power or influence. They'll protest the university giving him a platform in an attempt to get them to retract that platform (would you agree that this is a reasonable thing to do?), but find that, assuming he has been given that platform, he shouldn't be stopped from speaking, least of all by violence. The second, considerably more marginal position is that certain types of speech cannot be tolerated, and should be prevented from spreading. I've seen this position on Tumblr. Once. You're not going to find a lot of liberals willing to take or defend this position. The hardline AntiFa crowd, in essence. I disagree with these people - freedom of speech is more important, and perhaps more important to the AntiFa crowd, all that actions like this do is give the fascists more opportunities to present themselves as martyrs. " Gonna have to clear up some semantics here, otherwise we'll probably end up talking past each other. What do you mean by verbal aggression, shaming, and ridicule? Physical aggression is pretty clear, and pretty clearly not okay, but saying that a "significant portion" of democrats in the USA are using that one... I don't buy it. The women's march featured millions of angry citizens, and there was virtually no violence in the entire event. But shaming? If you make an incredibly stupid decision as an adult, you can expect to be shamed and ridiculed for it. There are other elements involved in bullying, and while criticism of political views can bleed over into bullying (if you feel unsafe or unwelcome in your workplace or school because of your political views in your workplace, that's probably bullying, but if you want to claim this is predominately the purview of the left, I'd like to see some data), shaming and ridiculing someone for their political beliefs is not inherently akin to bullying. (And of course, if we're talking about citizens in the public eye, like Trump himself, then issues of shaming and ridicule take on entirely different rules.) Luna's Blackguards - a guild of bronies - is now recruiting! If you're a fan of our favourite chromatic marshmallow equines, hit me up with an add or whisper, and I'll invite you!
IGN: HopeYouAreFireProof |
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Shaming and ridiculing is not akin to bullying? This makes me think you've never experienced bullying in your life. Some of the worst bullying out there is done with words, not fists. I've done it, and I didn't realize it at the time, and I'm not proud of it, but it is what it is.
When someone does something stupid, you can explain why it is stupid, you can even laugh at them, but when you aggressively mock them, that's nasty, vicious behavior, and it's bullying. That's the difference between, say, John Oliver and the feminazis. They often speak about similar issues, and they might even say more or less the same thing, but one does it with a smile, the others do it with a nasty gleam in their eyes. If you think this is trivial, think about the rule that 90% of communication is nonverbal. What you say isn't as important as how you're saying it. Delivery matters.
Spoiler
 This is to a large extent what lost the presidential election. Many Hilary supporters were so fucking smug, vicious and unpleasant, they were impossible to watch or listen to. I said this earlier in this thread to another user: Assuming the point of a debate is to convince the other party of your view, the moment you start throwing insults and names around, you've lost. The Wheel of Nerfs turns, and builds come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the build that gave it birth comes again. Last edited by Bars on Feb 8, 2017, 9:06:08 AM
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" " Valued poster. And nice source you chose there. Awesome job. Again. The Sirus fight is a disgrace.
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" It can be, it doesn't have to be. " See, this is exactly what I'm worried about - I think we're really not that far off from each other's positions, we're just talking past each other. Bullying is not just one event. It's made up of a pattern of events. If I call someone a moron for, say, buying a used car from a dealership that is known to sell a lot of lemons, the worst you could say about me is that I'm kind of a jerk. If I regularly run into them and constantly ride them on that fact at any given opportunity, and they can't get away from it, especially if I hold a position of power over them, I'm probably either harassing or bullying them. https://www.stopbullying.gov/what-is-bullying/definition/
Spoiler
In order to be considered bullying, the behavior must be aggressive and include:
An Imbalance of Power: Kids who bully use their power—such as physical strength, access to embarrassing information, or popularity—to control or harm others. Power imbalances can change over time and in different situations, even if they involve the same people. Repetition: Bullying behaviors happen more than once or have the potential to happen more than once. This is more a personal pet peeve than anything else, tbh. Let's not dilute "bullying" the same way we've diluted "liar" and "fake news". (Remember when that phrase used to mean something, and concretely referred to a real, problematic phenomenon, and not just "whatever news source Trump doesn't like at the moment"? That was a good couple of hours.) You are right that delivery matters, and getting in someone's face and calling them a cunt about something isn't going to make you very many friends and is often not very useful in forming a dialog. Then again, a lot of people aren't looking for a dialog. Which I consider a bad thing. From my experience, you're a lot more likely to find them on the right than the left - just ask /r/The_Donald. Luna's Blackguards - a guild of bronies - is now recruiting! If you're a fan of our favourite chromatic marshmallow equines, hit me up with an add or whisper, and I'll invite you! IGN: HopeYouAreFireProof Last edited by Budget_player_cadet on Feb 8, 2017, 9:15:30 AM
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" From my experience, you're more or less equally likely to find them on both sides, but the Democrats seem more aggressive and unpleasant to me lately. I'm saying this as someone who doesn't live in the US and generally doesn't have more than a passing and impersonal interest in the political developments there. It might be different when you actually live in the country, but it looks like that to someone who gets their information online. See, I'm not a Trump fan - not by a long shot - but the more I read and listen to Democrats, the more I'm starting to like the man. Assuming you're a Democrat, you're one of just a few exceptions, by the way. p.s. I'm more than half convinced Hilary would've won easily if she and all her supporters hadn't ever uttered a single word about Trump. Devoid of all this hysterical shouting, we would've been able to concentrate and listen more closely to Trump and his supporters, and they would've done a great job of convincing anyone doubtful to vote for Hilary. The Wheel of Nerfs turns, and builds come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the build that gave it birth comes again. Last edited by Bars on Feb 8, 2017, 9:25:48 AM
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mhmmmm I stopped watching TV long ago because I was done having to listen to people who would tell me how I should think and what I should do. Now it's the same on every social media. I get a huge spam of "Hillary Clinton is soooooo cooooool, we love her alllll" and..... "OMG TRUMP IS A NAZI"
It's like if we didn't have any rights to think freely. | |
"The issue here is that some people, particularly on the left, have exchanged the definition of "hate crime" to mean the expression of opinions they find unsavory. For example, wearing a Hitler costume might be considered a hate crime now, and thus "justify" "self-defense" in the form of a beating. To combat this notion, I've seen many right-wing commentators — such as Stefan Molyneux — argue that the dichotomy is simple: language or physical violence, "words or swords." As Bars was saying earlier regarding bullying, I believe this is an overly simplistic evaluation; I consider some forms of speech to fall under the category of incitement to violence, and I think incitements to violence should be prohibited as well. Direct violence AND the threatening of violence should both be seen as assault. (There's a certain cognitive dissonance with the Right between "all words are okay" and "this celebrity is a criminal for tweeting 'kill Trump.'") Unfortunately, this creates a gray area of disagreement of interpretion. I think Bars really understands the key component, at least as far as "brick-and-motor speech" is concerned: body language and the 90% of communication that is non-verbal. There are clear nonverbal indicators in non-written language that indicate whether "go kill yourself" is a harmless mockery or a horrifically oppressive threat. The issue with this is: Social media has vastly increased the ratio of our written language relative to non-written, distancing us from the more universal, pseudo-feral elements of our language and creating more of a focus on framing the definition of incitement in written terms. Ultimately, I think such attempts are a dead end. For example, Poe's Law states that the sarcastic and non-sarcastic are indistinguishable in written communication. Even in ghamadvar's post quoted above, irony would be undetectable outside the context of the obviously contradictory subquote. I think we should focus our efforts against incitement of violence entirely on audio, video and especially in-person speech; I would be just fine with written speech (with the possible exception of sign-holders on video or in person) to be completely immune from categorization as incitement. I don't really believe in cyber-bullying; I think whoever invented the term has never encountered brick-and-mortor bullying... and that without pre-existance of the brick-and-mortor type, cyber-bullying has no teeth, no threat, no harm. When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted. Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Feb 8, 2017, 11:34:14 AM
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" Part of the problem here is that to many democrats (and, I might add, most people I interact with in and around Munich, where I currently live, as well as in most of the rest of the western world), electing Donald Trump is such a terrible, utterly senseless idea that to do so would seem to indicate mental illness on the part of his supporters. The way they all-too-often seemed utterly impervious to facts, and were willing to defend even his most egregious lies, didn't help. And given the polls, given how Clinton seemed ahead in the race the entire time, it seemed like there was little to no point to reaching out to those people, and treating them like idiots for their incredibly poor decisions was cathartic and fun. But of course, this is what happens when you try to shame people out of a position. They hear the tone, ignore the message, and dig their heels in. Forgive me for assuming, but I think the problem here is that while you're hearing them, you're not listening to them. You hear the scared, angry tone, but you don't listen to the reasons why they're so angry and terrified. It's a psychological thing; most people do it to partisan sources they disagree with. But the reasons they disliked Trump were important, and they said it loud and clear for the entire election. Trump is unqualified. He's a sexist and misogynist, who has openly bragged about committing sexual assault. He's more than a little bit racist, and even his own party called him on it. He has absolutely no concrete policies, and the few goals he has brought up are utterly lacking in comprehension or depth. He doesn't understand economic policy. He doesn't understand foreign policy. He has no idea what he's doing. Betsy DeVos, the reason I wanted to get into this subject in the first place, is just the latest extension of that. No experience in administration, no experience in public schooling (didn't teach, administrate, or even go to one), considers public schooling a place for a crusade for god, favors an extreme free-market approach to schooling which utterly failed her home state of Michigan and several others, and didn't even know the difference between proficiency and growth when measuring a school's merit. This is like a nominee for Secretary of Energy not knowing that the Department of Energy handles our nuclear weapons! Oh wait. Oops. Luna's Blackguards - a guild of bronies - is now recruiting! If you're a fan of our favourite chromatic marshmallow equines, hit me up with an add or whisper, and I'll invite you!
IGN: HopeYouAreFireProof |
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