Politics 2: Electric Boogaloo — Page 750

TV’s Frink said:

Jay said:

some folks who binge-watched The Handmaid’s Tale and were looking for stuff to be angry about

Sheesh.

I have no idea what that show is about.

http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/23/media/judge-rules-trump-cant-block-twitter-users/index.html

Makes some legal sense but still dumb.

Jay said:

moviefreakedmind said:

Jay said:

moviefreakedmind said:

Even if Peterson is right that makeup brings more sexual harassment

He never said that.

It’s the obvious implication. It’s easy to tell what he means.

(and he justifies the harassment by claiming that men are too stupid to know the rules)

He didn’t do this. He never at any point says harassment is justified, only that we shouldn’t be surprised that it happens given the lack of a clear rulebook.

I think we’re never going to see eye to eye on what his statements mean, but I don’t understand this idea that there isn’t a “clear rulebook.” Like I said, not sexually harassing someone is incredibly easy. Here’s how the rules work. If a person’s behavior makes someone uncomfortable, and they continue to do it even after being told that it makes a coworker uncomfortable, then it gets turned over to HR to deal with, and the HR department decides if any disciplinary action needs to take place. That’s a very simple rulebook that anyone at any level of the career ladder can easily understand. There’s no epidemic of people getting fired over completely asexual compliments, especially since businesses can easily get sued for wrongful termination.

I think you need to read some corporate policy manuals and some case law. “Here’s how the rules work…” followed by how you think the rules work doesn’t mean that’s how the rules work.

It’s the basic outline of how the rules work. I’ve never read any policy manuals because typically I quit jobs about a month after getting them, but each time the rules are spelled out for me and it’s more or less that. Keep sexual talk out of the workplace and if people continuously make advances on you or inappropriate comments then go to HR. I know that’s not a PHD-level analysis of the workplace, but that’s pretty much how it’s handled.

moviefreakedmind said:

Jay said:

Also, just a bit more about the enforced monogamy thing (trigger warning for the squeamish: JP video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=185&v=gNwIYOBpvLg

This doesn’t address the notion that violence from men is the result of a lack of enforced monogamy, which was a part of his original statement. He also is incredibly prudish, which goes against my ethics, and anti-casual sex, which is something I condone. It also ignores the fact that most people that are married are miserable and a huge percentage of marriages end in divorce. It’s that 1950s notion that marriage and family are inherently meaningful and are the cornerstone to a happy life.

My point is that left-leaning media intentionally misrepresented what he meant by “enforced monogamy”, a term that Peterson didn’t invent and was considered completely benign until some folks who binge-watched The Handmaid’s Tale and were looking for stuff to be angry about got their hands on it.

I am not getting my criticisms of Peterson from left-leaning media and I’m not responsible for what they say about him, I’m getting my criticisms from my own philosophical objections to everything that he stands for. The world Jordan Peterson wants is one that I don’t want to live in. That’s why I’m opposed to him. As for the Handmaid’s Tale, I’d rather people watch that than binge-watch whatever crap is on reality TV these days. People need to expose themselves to good art.

Enforced monogamy has absolutely nothing to do with the idea of women being forced to provide sex or men being entitled to sex.

Not literally, but it has to do with the notion that men need sex from women and the consequences of not getting it in a totally traditional, monogamous, marital sense can be as severe as mass-shootings. That’s what I disagree with. And I think it’s a distraction from the actual reason that these shootings happen, which is insane people having easy access to guns. The idea that these people wouldn’t do what they did if they had a wife just doesn’t satisfy me as an intellectual argument. It also implies that there wouldn’t still be just as many of these sexless men. There are always going to be men, and women for that matter, that are just sexually undesirable for whatever reason and will never achieve a longterm monogamous relationship. Enforced monogamy won’t change that.

And I don’t think he’s terribly off target by suggesting that guys who aren’t successful with women and aren’t getting laid are more likely to exhibit aberrant behavior, parochial solutions notwithstanding.

I think the fact that they’re aberrant has more to do with their failure to get laid. As for aggression, it’s usually the “alpha” guys that are more aggressive and violent. My solution, which is to reject the cosmic significance that we put on sex and societally reject the notion that sex is linked to marriage and a lifetime of commitment and instead embrace sexual liberation, would solve a lot of the misery that these involuntarily celibate people have. That’s not Peterson’s solution, though. His idea of enforced monogamy actually makes it worse for the unsuccessful-with-sex men because no woman would want to be monogamous with them for the same reasons that they can’t get laid now.

Disagree with him all you want; it sounds like you have plenty of valid reasons to do so. But don’t be intellectually dishonest by putting words in his mouth.

I’ve not put any words into his mouth. I don’t need to. I disagree so adamantly with him that there is no need for me to change what he actually said in order to make it seem more objectionable. And enforced monogamy and the makeup stuff isn’t the only crazy and antagonistic gender talk that he’s guilty of. I could make a huge list of everything he says about the genders that I find completely wrong and retrograde. And that’s only one segment of what I find objectionable about Peterson. His religious talk is totally backwards to me and completely intellectually dishonest and incompatible with reality. He also has totally misrepresented the Donald Trump issue in America. I loathe the way he sets himself up as a creepy father figure to his fans. My point is, I’m not one of these people that supposedly hates Jordan Peterson because the “media” has told me to. I hate Jordan Peterson because I exposed myself to what he has to say and it all runs counter to everything that I hold dear. I don’t understand why people are so quick to assume that the reason people don’t like Peterson is because they’ve been tricked into not liking him rather than because his philosophies are unlikable.

Mrebo said:

http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/23/media/judge-rules-trump-cant-block-twitter-users/index.html

Makes some legal sense but still dumb.

It’s not dumb at all, actually. I’m glad our President can’t be a snowflake and block the people he presides over.

moviefreakedmind said:

snowflake

I’m getting really sick of the use of that word in general. It’s just a new epithet for wimp instead of saying pussy or pansy or whatever else.

Really starting to grind my gears.

Jay said:

Mrebo said:

TV’s Frink said:

Jay said:

some folks who binge-watched The Handmaid’s Tale and were looking for stuff to be angry about

Sheesh.

I have no idea what that show is about.

It’s a warning about a future that will never happen, but gets people riled up anyway.

By that logic, 1984 is just fear-mongering rather than an incredibly intelligent allegorical depiction of how potentially dystopian the future can be.

chyron8472 said:

moviefreakedmind said:

snowflake

I’m getting really sick of the use of that word in general. It’s just a new epithet for wimp instead of saying pussy or pansy or whatever else.

Really starting to grind my gears.

I use it to describe Trump and right-wingers because Trump supporters use it. Would you rather I say pussy? I would, but I thought that would grind significantly more gears than snowflake.

Jay said:

moviefreakedmind said:

I don’t understand why people are so quick to assume that the reason people don’t like Peterson is because they’ve been tricked into not liking him rather than because his philosophies are unlikable.

If you parrot what the mainstream media says about him, I don’t see why I should come to any other conclusion. It sounds to me like you made your mind up about him based on listening to him speak, which is great, but then were happy to incorporate negative reporting that reinforced your conclusions, like the enforced monogamy topic, rather than investigating it further.

I posted that article because I didn’t want everyone to just take my word for what he said. I haven’t parroted anything, either. I just complained about some guy that I don’t like. The reason I brought this up is because every single person that criticizes Peterson are just accused of not understanding him. Well I do understand him, and I’ve yet to hear a single cogent defense of his positions on anything from anyone. All I’ve heard is that I don’t understand him. I think Peterson is incredibly slippery and likes to word his statements in ways that he can duck out of them and just claim that everyone misunderstands him so that he doesn’t actually have to defend them.

Jay said:

moviefreakedmind said:

Jay said:

Mrebo said:

TV’s Frink said:

Jay said:

some folks who binge-watched The Handmaid’s Tale and were looking for stuff to be angry about

Sheesh.

I have no idea what that show is about.

It’s a warning about a future that will never happen, but gets people riled up anyway.

By that logic, 1984 is just fear-mongering rather than an incredibly intelligent allegorical depiction of how potentially dystopian the future can be.

I didn’t say The Handmaid’s Tale was fear-mongering. I said it was a fictional future dystopia and made fun of people for binge-watching it and getting riled up over its contents.

If someone read 1984 and then smashed their smart TV because it was “watching” them, I’d laugh at them, too.

I’ll need a citation of a similar reaction to The Handmaid’s Tale.

Jay said:

TV’s Frink said:

I know you said you’re no longer hard left, but you sure sound hard right when you go on about the mainstream media like this.

I can be center-left in my beliefs (having single-payer healthcare, providing a social safety net, enacting sensible gun control, etc.) and also call out liars.

But the right wing in America is opposed to all three of those things.

When what is reported in the media directly contradicts, or at the very least, actively omits, observable fact, I have to wonder what the hell is going on. I think the mainstream media has done us a terrible disservice with its 24-hour news cycle consisting of endless panels populated by “experts” and “analysts” who editorialize everything and provide little actual reporting. When the NYT tells me a person is one thing and actually listening to that person tells me they’re something else, I naturally question the rest of the NYT’s reporting and the filter through which it’s being run. I think we’ve passed the point where we can trust the big media companies to give us a fair representation of reality. Nobody wants to be a mere reporter anymore; they want to be an influencer, gain followers, and spread their message.

How is this unique to the left? Fox News, Breitbart, Infowars, the Rebel, and pretty much all of talk radio along with vast segments of YouTube are right-wing examples of exactly this.

There’s tons of content out there that never makes it into the popular discourse because it’s not covered by the major media outlets. The danger is separating fact from fiction/conspiracy and not allowing yourself to fall into a very deep, dark place.

This is very vague. You’re generally right on this particular concept but I’m curious, what are you referring to?

The reason I defend people like Peterson, aside from agreeing with some of his views (certainly not all), is that he was the same guy saying the same things before he got famous. If I felt he was modifying his message to suit a particular audience in order to gain followers and make more money, I’d lump him in with the rest of the opportunists and set him aside. And now that he is famous, people have a lot to say about him and his ideas. Some of it is justified, and some of it is patently dishonest.

I can’t speak to who he was before, but he definitely tailors his message to an audience. And it worked big time. I don’t know if there’s ever been a more immediately successful self-help guru. He became a millionaire in just a couple years from it. And he definitely frames his religious arguments in a way to appeal to potentially secular people in order to win them over to his Christian philosophy, and is outright dishonest in doing so. For example, his argument that lacking an inherently Christian worldview leads to criminality is not true. The more secular a state, the less violent crime there is.

As far as me moving more to the right, I’ve tried to be more honest with myself about the hypocrisy I see on the left. I told myself for a long time that the left was “better” than the right, but I no longer believe that. Both sides have their virtuous members and their loons. The Rs still probably have more loons, but the left’s loons are starting to catch up. I’d like to see a strong center that pushes outward and squeezes the loons on both sides.

The great irony here is that there was a centrist in the 2016 election, and her name was Hillary Clinton. I was and am opposed to her because she was a centrist, but ultimately the right-wing loon won over the centrist. Of course he did lose the popular vote by millions, so obviously the nation at large is more centrist than the electoral map would imply. The loons on one side are in power right now and control all three branches of government. So in terms of loons on the federal level one side has a near monopoly on lunacy.

Also, if you’re gay then the left certainly is better than the right. That’s just a fact for gay or lesbian people. They have their interests more in mind than the right does. If you’re a poor person with a sickly kid that you can’t afford to take care of, then the left is better than the right. It’s subjective, of course, but the whole notion that all sides are equally bad is not an idea that most people will or even should accept.

TV’s Frink said:

I know you said you’re no longer hard left, but you sure sound hard right when you go on about the mainstream media like this.

Why should it be seen as hard right to go after the media for misrepresentation?

I’m very familiar with the accusation that standing up for a conservative viewpoint (even just to object to its mischaracterization) renders one hard right. It just doesn’t make any sense.

Mrebo said:

I’m very familiar with the accusation that standing up for a conservative viewpoint (even just to object to its mischaracterization) renders one hard right. It just doesn’t make any sense.

That’s never happened to you. I think the confusion has more to do with going extremely hard on the fringiest elements of the left whilst ignoring the mainstream crazy of the right.

The conspiratorial idea that the mainstream media is against the right is also an invention of the right. There’s plenty of “mainstream” far-right outlets and I listed a few of them in my post.