No that’s not it. It’s that once it’s over I remember that that tiny amount of time where I escaped isolation, and escaped from my own mind, is over and it only constituted a fraction of a percent of my entire week or even month.
MAGA moron trolls the Santa Fe shooting with a gun.
I know. You already told me you can’t.
Won’t.
I can’t productively debate that mindset.
I can’t debate it productively. I mean, I can debate it unproductively as I have been, but I’ve elected not to engage any further.
I see. But the stuff you’re refusing to respond to has nothing to do with the inference that you found so offensive. Why couldn’t you productively explain your stance on the fact that about 15% of the killed people in Gaza were children, and obviously not Hamas? That has nothing to do with any inferences that I made. You never even told me if my inference was wrong, by the way. I guess I could infer that you think it’s wrong based on your statements, but I’m not supposed to infer anything even if it would make sense to do so, so I won’t.
Despite all its problems, one of the good things about social media is interacting with people who have different views . . .
By the way, what happened to this?
I know. You already told me you can’t.
Won’t.
I can’t productively debate that mindset.
I know. You already told me you can’t.
Now I’m picturing a Craigslist ad for 20th Century Fox.
You respond to what you infer rather than what you read. I can’t productively debate that mindset.
I’m going to take my own advice that I’ve often handed out to others here and not respond further.
That’s unfortunate. My post was totally reasonable though, so I’m disappointed that you can’t address what I said, especially since only one small part of it was commenting on your defense of the right. I really wanted to hear your comments on the deaths of the supposedly Hamas children that made up 15% of the death toll in the Israel killings, but I guess that isn’t worth responding to either because I made a rational inference about your political leanings. As for that inference, when the only thing you’ve done in all of my interactions with you in this thread is defend the right and attack the left while using conservative talkings about the media and socialism, I can assume that you are more opposed to the left than the right. There’s nothing irrational about that inference. It’s totally reasonable and I actually would argue that I’d be incredibly imperceptive to not see or comment on that obvious implication. You also made several inferences about me that were far less linear when you were defending Jordan Peterson and I didn’t walk away from the conversation.
I also would’ve liked to hear you address my point on why the Democrats will not continue to lose in future elections, but I guess I won’t get an answer to that either.
https://sports.yahoo.com/nfls-new-policy-national-anthem-players-can-fined-dont-stand-162017626.html
Following a year of hand-wringing and disagreement inside the league’s ownership ranks, team owners approved a new measure on Wednesday that gives players the option of staying in the locker room during the national anthem if they don’t wish to stand during the ceremonies. Under the new rule, players who choose to be on the field during the anthem will be required to stand. If a player or team employee is on the field during the anthem and chooses not to stand, that player’s franchise will be fined by the NFL. In turn, players and employees who choose to attend the anthem ceremonies but do not stand will also be eligible for a fine by their franchise, if the team chooses to levy one.
So much for free expression. You’re compelled to worship the flag in the NFL.
Surely our free-speech friends on the right will come to our aid on this one.
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.
Did I say I was right wing?
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.
Did I say it only applied to the left?
Read what’s there man. Please don’t infer something and then base your arguments upon it as if your inference is fact.
You obviously find the left more objectionable than the right. That seems pretty clear based on what you’ve said.
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?
I’ve mostly been focusing on trying to get the full story. If I see something in the news that interests me, I’ll dig beyond the 5-second video clip we’re shown and see if I can find the complete video or accounts from people who were there. Doesn’t sound like much, but when we’re being told Israeli soldiers are killing scores of “protestors”, it didn’t take much digging to find out most of the Palestinians at the border were actually Hamas — basically because Hamas admitted it, but I never saw that followup reported in the US. Or you’ll see a clip on the news of a Palestinian woman being dragged from her home in the middle of the night and arrested like it’s some police state type stuff, when a separate video from a day earlier clearly shows her slapping and kicking Israeli soldiers in an attempt to get a reaction out of them. (Please don’t turn this into an Israel vs. Palestine discussion, because I won’t claim any kind of expertise on that mess of problems and won’t engage in a debate. It’s just an example of a tiny part of a story vs. a more complete story.)
Are the eight dead children members of Hamas? That’s almost 15% of the fatalities. Killing 55 and injuring 1200, when at least a sizable percentage are not Hamas, is horrifyingly lopsided given that the targets did not even inflict anywhere near that amount of damage.
Maybe I’m still not necessarily getting the complete story, who knows. My point is that the garbage that passes for news today isn’t cutting it. We get a brief clip or a quote taken out of context, and then an hour of analysis from people who weren’t there talking about what it may or may not mean. Just absurd. If we’re going to reference anything in the news and defend it, we have an obligation to do our research first.
There’s plenty of extensive coverage on that mass killing that happened at the border that day.
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
He has lectures online from way before he achieved any notoriety. Not hard to watch and formulate an opinion.
It is hard when he’s among the most boring men in existence.
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 know. I voted for her. Certainly not my first choice, but I chose from the options I was given.
Okay, so obviously one of the main sides chose a centrist and the other chose a loon. That kind of debunks the notion that both sides have their loons to a similar degree.
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.
I used to see things similarly, but there are more conservative and libertarian gay and trans folks than you think.
I’m aware that they exist, but the right-wing as it works in the Republican Party and the Trump Administration is not in favor of their interests. To put it bluntly, I’d say they’re incredibly unwise and ignorant to think that the Christian right, which is what our mainstream right still is in America, is their ally. We have a gay-conversion Christian as our Vice President, and the cabinet is full of anti-gay types. Trump himself has pandered to them extensively, like the trans ban in the military.
Despite all its problems, one of the good things about social media is interacting with people who have different views and recognizing that identifying people as voting blocks based on gender, race, age, sexual orientation, etc. is counterproductive. I believe it’s one of the primary reasons the Democrats will continue to lose.
The right wing engages in its own identity politics. Trump pandered to evangelicals and the “America-first” anti-immigrant crowd far more than Hillary pandered to gay or black people. Gay people are a negligible voting block anyway. Unfortunately LGBTs have to rely on straight voters to vote in their interests too. The primary reason the Democrats may continue to lose is actually gerrymandering and the electoral college, but soon the identity politics that the right plays won’t work anymore. You can only pander to eighty year-old fundamentalists for so long before that demographic isn’t viable anymore. Texas has a growing hispanic population and some Southern states have growing black and hispanic populations and the Republican party can’t treat them the way they have and expect them to ever support them. By 2032, the Republican strategy that worked in 2016 won’t work again.
You just have to take my word for it.
I think it looks better than anything I could ever hope to draw.
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.
I don’t think I’ve gotten that accusation here. Elsewhere I have but I’m not talking about just me/here. I also don’t talk much about the fringiest Left either. Frink offers the supposed justification but it doesn’t explain his response to Jay. The problem is calling mainstream conservatives ideas crazy as if that makes it so.
The Trump Administration is crazy and it seems to represent mainstream conservatism at point. It definitely represents the Republican party, that’s for sure.
I don’t drink much water. So in a literal sense, probably not.
I’m not insane.
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.
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.
chyron8472 said:
Of course, then there are people who wouldn’t see it but now might…
I guarantee that’s not the case.
I personally tend to feel worse mentally after having positive interactions with others. It’s strange.
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.
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.
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.
I think it’s just a corporate way to throw a bone to people asking for real stories involving sexuality while simultaneously not actually doing that.
More like the screenwriters trying to be “subversive” and get some street cred, while the suits pat them on the head and let them get away with it as long as it doesn’t cost them money.
It’s actually their way of pretending to be subversive. We also don’t know if it’s even the screenwriters or not. For all we know it isn’t even in the film. I don’t know how it would cost any money, though.
I think it’s just a corporate way to throw a bone to people asking for real stories involving sexuality while simultaneously not actually doing that.
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.
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.
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.