> Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents.
For me personally, the echo chamber on both sides is enough to keep me far away from both /r/politics and /r/The_Donald.
For example, you cannot say anything positive about Trump on /r/politics. Nothing. There was a screenshot showing that there were 231 negative articles posted and zero positive articles. It's literally propaganda, but from the other direction.
Now, you can argue that you should fight the good fight and that it's immoral to say anything positive about him. Sure, I sort of buy that: If Trump was equivalent to nazis, then we should resist that from becoming a reality.
And yet he's not. From what I've studied of history, the climate today is similar-ish to 1920's Germany. But if you examine the details of how the Nazi party seized power, you'll find they held guns up to people's heads in order to get various statesmen to vote a certain way. The German political institutions were captured by popular vote, then by force. And as long as we avoid the latter, the former isn't necessarily an indication that fascism is on the rise.
But it's hard to make that argument in this climate. If you try, you're shouted down or misinterpreted or outright framed. And that's the central issue here: When you become a zealot, you lose the ability to take advantage of the opposition's good ideas. Are you sure it's true that Trump's entire political franchise has had zero good ideas?
I'm worried that in the process of fighting Trump, we'll lose reason and rationality.
You're not wrong in that its important to hear both sides, but its also important to hear an appropriate amount from each side corresponding to the acceptableness of the ideas. Minority voices are important. When we find ourselves in the majority, we should be responsible for ensuring that those minority voices have a way to be heard. But not that they should automatically be heard equally to majority voices in all spaces.
Trump is a minority voice. The election results and polling are clear on that. So the question becomes more about how much weight we, as the majority, should give to those ideas. And like, I hate to be that guy, but... not much. He doesn't actually seem to have any substantive policies to debate, its just slogans and ideas. The substantive stuff either gets mentioned and then forgotten by the next news cycle (what happened to the national emergency on opioids?), changes on a whim, or is just him talking and other people in his administration (or party) ignoring him and doing whatever they wanted.
I just don't see the value in spending a lot of time/cognitive load considering that perspective on a regular basis, though I do venture into T_D sometimes to see what they are thinking. The current dichotomy of /r/politics vs /r/the_donald seems to have balanced itself out pretty well, I think.
I think this is actually irrelevant; it doesn't matter whether someone's ideas are in a minority, only whether they are good ideas, bad ideas, and the proponent is interested in constructive engagement.
I always try to make sure I give a politician as much credit for their intent as possible not just those I agree with but everyone.
No one is just a bag of evil or only good. Yet when we discuss politics we always end up there as this thread is a good example of.
Whatever legacy Trump will end up leaving we don't know yet. It might lead to something amazing even if it wasn't on purpose (certainly happened to Reagan) or it might be that just the right kind of irrationality is actually quite rational in hindsight.
Political decisions often have decades of decay. It's impossible to say what Trumps (the few he has actually made) are going to mean.
It's never that simple.
3 top post from /r/politics (right now):
* 17 women have accused Donald Trump of sexual misconduct. It’s time to revisit those stories * South Carolina women’s hoops team decline invite to White House * Nobody knows where Trump's leftover inauguration funds went, causing outrage and change in Washington
One sided: yes. Something that is problematic for advertisers: probably not.
On r/the_donald:
* Raise your hand if you're the greatest shitposter of all time! GOD-EMPEROR * MRW I wake up to GEOTUS shitpostsGOD-EMPEROR * Stand, Never Kneel! They Deserve Our Respect #fucktheNFL#StandForOurAnthem
Now try to be impartial. Is that advertiser friendly? Is that quality content?
It's something of a myth that T_D needs to be banned in order to appease advertisers. They keep to themselves.
Fortunately spez is smart. Bringing down the hammer on T_D could very well start a civil war. He seems to be wary of this.
If there's enough eyeballs. Probably.
To imply that those two are equal, is disingenuous.
Spiteful trolling usually gets down-voted to hell as well (thankfully).
A little too often I see hyperbolic vitriol and shitposting persist, and though I don't mind the odd gag, it's not warranted. It clogs the thread as much as anything else.
That subreddit is impartial in itself. It's consensus of the participants, not censorship, if unpopular ideas aren't promoted whichever way they lean.
edit: It would actually be kind of interesting to pull those kinds of statistics and display them — for various subreddits.
>though you may be disagreed right to the bottom.
Is there a difference?
Both actions basically say "this speech is not worthy of consideration around here". The difference between making it still available to serve as a warning or removing it entirely is not meaningful IMO.
There is a difference. You are being obtuse.
As is required to maintain what I would call a "democracy" with "individual rights". We have to be vehemently intolerant of intolerance and marginalization (in general), and this is more important than free speech. Free speech is an artefact of-, not a requirement for democracy. Tolerance is required, however. Some people get this backwards, usually the kind of people who can't keep their foot out of their mouth.
That seems like a pretty grand statement to make offhand and pretend like it's objective.
Free speech is in the very first amendment. #1. Yet you feel so comfortable hand-waving it away.
Freedom of Association implies just the opposite of your argument, that intolerence is specifically protected.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/20...
Democracy was nearly a foreign concept to them and it very gradually evolved in the US after the Bill of Rights passed.
"The Founding Fathers rejected 'democracy' as defined by the Greeks, preferring instead 'a natural aristocracy', whereby only the landed gentry were entitled to a place in Congress."
Democracy was nearly a foreign concept to them and it very gradually evolved in the US after the Bill of Rights passed.
"The Founding Fathers rejected 'democracy' as defined by the Greeks, preferring instead 'a natural aristocracy', whereby only the landed gentry were entitled to a place in Congress."
Being intolerant isn't always a bad thing either.
Everything is not black or white. Move the pieces around and the minority become the majority in different contexts.
I realize that "intolerance of intolerance" is paradoxical in nature, but common sense and a little charity in interpretation goes a long way.
It just happens that on these little internet message boards, the consensus shifts in another favour, and the same seems to be [mainly] true in North American societies, amongst others.
You won't get consensus out of me for that.
> Racism and misogyny are terrible enough that if you hate it, you must be correct.
This isn't about correctness.
The viewpoint is:
Racism and misogyny are terrible enough that if you support them, you must be evil and desire harm to others, at very least indirectly.
Even if the racists/misogynists of the world were 'correct' I wouldn't want to live in world where we legitimize that. And that's why a lot of us reject him and his policies wholesale.
Saying "well he's right about free trade" (I don't believe this, but as an example) undermines the rhetorical context of fighting something much worse than bad economic policy.
Also because someone in your view is misguided about race or gender does that mean you should treat them as I am assuming you believe they treat people of other race or gender?
Why is it a better world to live in where you ban one view rather than the other when the result is more less the same. Someone is getting oppressed.
I think these are pretty well defined.
Racism: Prejudice against others based on race.
Misogyny: Prejudice against women.
> It's easy to say that others are and forgetting that most people are to some extent.
There's a difference between having a normal level of in-group selection bias and realizing it is wrong, and spouting racist/sexist rhetoric.
> Also because someone in your view is misguided about race or gender does that mean you should treat them as I am assuming you believe they treat people of other race or gender?
No. You still let them speak and vote but you don't listen, and if asked, you tell other people they shouldn't listen. You can refuse to let them use your company to spread their hate.
You have a right to free speech, you don't have a right to someone else's bully pulpit.
The concern that racists are getting oppressed is laughable. I don't understand the mental gymnastics required to justify that thought process.
Trump is a good example of a person who has said some racist things but even more things that were interpreted as racist.
We are all racist even if we don't want to be, we cannot help ourselves the question then becomes how do we let that affect us and how we act on that.
And so if it only takes one example to show someone is racist then we all are.
It's much less well defined once you look at the entirety and doesn't just take a sentence out of its context.
Language is tricky and defining something well does not mean it's easy to put things into these boxes.
You are right there is a difference and to the extent, it easy to identify this racist/sexist rhetorics we should obviously object to it.
But it's not much different when liberals paint all Trump voters racist. Very often do we see comments that were not meant racist suddenly be attacked simply because of the person who said it.
You are not a better person just because you are against racism if you base your judgment of what constitutes a racist or a racist remark on who said it and we shouldn't listen to you more by your own definition.
You can very easily be a Trump voter and not a racist and you can eve be a Trump voter and against racism or misogyny as that exist on both sides. Yet listening to the public debate one should think it only happens on one side.
Two wrongs don't make a right and yet it seems like most liberals (and I count myself amongst the liberal crowd) basically justify the sentiment you seem to be supporting with something along the lines of "well he/she started".
There are (luckily) very few racist in the Hitler sense of racist.
Not true. There was positive commentary about Trump's speech in South Korea. I think you just misestimate how often the thing he does is perceived by the general public as bad.
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/7bldfo/trump_mad...
on /r/the_donald accepting criticism of Donald Trump.
In what respects? As far as I can recall, the US did not just move from a monarchy to a democratic republic 15 years ago as a result of a revolution after loosing a world war.
I think the populist discontent behind Trump is real and concerning, but Pre-WWII Germany and current day US are very, very, different places. I think its fair to request that if you wish to make a parallel with Nazi Germany, you substantiate the claim with specific historic evidence.
there was dropping the tpp... maybe. that's probably good, but i have mixed feelings. anything else?
I'm contrasting that with (my) Canada who has been actively signing with China since the first rumblings of trade discord with the US.
Not saying it's impossible or not true, but I'm wary. That weird angry screaming he did at his bizarre presser the other day was not overly convincing. If it was anybody else, I would have sworn they were on uppers of some kind...
Some of the stuff he said on the campaign sounded great - in fact enough to get him elected. It appears he has no intention of implementing it. Does that make it worth discussing? No.
As we say about startups, ideas are cheap and execution is everything.
It says more about Trump's fans that they're willing to overlook his egregious failings and attack and undermine quasi-impartial institutions just to point score than it does about bias.
Travel ban targeting Islamic countries
Withdrawal of Paris Agreement
Fired head of FBI when Comey wouldn't declare personal loyalty
Issued a directive to the department of health agencies "waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay" portions of the ACA
Soon to be pretty closely tied to:
Tax bill making graduate school significantly more expensive
FCC votes to kill net neutrality next month
These are, in my opinion, the worst offenses. There are many other things that he is either responsible for or closely related to. A simple google search yields list after list of things he's done both large and small.
Is it worse than Bush administration who started a war?
It's claimed that somehow Trump is the worst of them all. From what you have stated here do you personally think they are worse things than Bush starting a war?
Anyway - yes, I do think that conspiring with hostile foreign entities to manipulate voters and undermine American democracy is worse.
The purpose is to test whether the claim that Trump is somehow worse than everyone else based on the mentioned examples of his bad deeds really holds up to a sanity check.
I think your last sentence much better illustrates who of us are in good faith here though.
The later is interesting the former is boring.
Simple failure to do the job: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics...
Which of his actions shows that he is that bad.
You don't have to be a Trump supporter to see that you are proving the parents' point.
Your hypocritical hivemind tends to overlook that your queen bee accepted tens of millions from the KSA/Qatar in campaign contributions with the knowledge that, in her OWN words, they provide clandestine and logistic support to ISIL. It's OK to be white, it's OK to be American, and it's OK to love your country.
Subreddits are reflective of the moderators and readers. There is no objectively higher criteria to determine whether a subreddit is or should be "free from bias", only that they should reflect the makeup their membership, which they do.
I think it absolutely does.
"unbiased" is, if hearing is given to a position, it is either not represented with favor or disfavor, or any expressions of favor and disfavor are combined in such quantity that there is no obvious position with respect to (un)favor.
"objective" is, if hearing is given to a position, it is discussed in terms of empirical data that persists regardless of subjective views or interpretations.
"balance" coverage is giving hearing to all positions, no matter how idiotic or inane. "balance" is giving nazis and jews equal airtime to argue their views on whether the holocaust is a good idea. "balance" is rapists and rape victims debating the merits of rape.
Especially since in most accounts, Trump is more alike with Obama than not. Obama send home hundreds of thousands of immigrants, both back a shameless war machine (in fact Trump was more reluctant about that and more isolationist until the republican establishment forced his hand -- and then press found him instantly, if temporarily, more "presidential"), both have advanced the interests of corporatists, etc. If you didn't have the Obamacare repeal (which I'd call bad) they'd be 99% alike in their results.
One had better table manners and is a better (still ho-hum and totally fake) actor (in the kind of low quality populist soft-PR video like "the President interviewed by Zach Galifianakis" and "Another day at the office", etc that presidents feels obliged to put out post Clinton who popularized that BS to show us how funny and/or everyday people they are) compared to the vulgar billionaire, but that's more or less it.
There's a fundamental imbalance in how the standard is applied, and it's clearly ideological.
If the people that liberals want thrown from helicopters ( fascists ), are only in that group because they want to throw people from helicopters....
Isn't that the same logic as "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun"? The liberal subs HATE, HATE groups. They aren't calling for random white people, religious people, or fiscally responsible people to be thrown from helicopters.
Both sides of that fight seem to have legitimate cause to claim self-defense.
>They aren't calling for random white people, religious people, or fiscally responsible people to be thrown from helicopters.
No, but they do seem to be a hair away from actively endorsing subjugation. A lot of them seem to have already taken steps to make sure that that demographic can't have a voice in their movement. They also seem to have set the precedent that any criticism of their activism from outside their movement makes you an enemy. I get the feeling that a lot of them would do all those terrible things, if they could. There are fundamental tenets of the movement that give people an excellent excuse to do horrible things.
Instead, we could just, not? I liked the "judge people by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin" thing we had going on. That's an easy rule to enforce, but less so when you start carving out special exceptions that mostly benefit your voter base.
In line with the original top comment, why don't you publicly declare that you you'll treat discrimination/slander of whites/men/conservatives/scientists/free-speech-advocates on this platform just as harshly as you would any other group instead of asking me to send you a dozen emails per day.
FWIW, I hate the left and the right movements in equal strides, the left want me to feel terrible for being born a straight white male in a western post-colonial society, the right want the poor and under-priviliged to suffer and horde things like medical care.
Understanding that there is a grey-scale and that ideologies are not absolute is the only way to proceed in my opinion. Being polarised only turns into fighting because nobodies view gets represented properly instead both sides put up strawmen.
Ironically to me, your second paragraph illustrates why your first paragraph matters: As someone belonging firmly on "the left" your description does not fit me at all, at least not in my view.
The problem, then, when someone wants to go to extremes in treating anyone over their perceived ideology is defining what it means to belong to or support said ideology sufficiently strongly to warrant that extreme action.
And hence I do agree with your last paragraph.
Twitter is rife with absolute venom if you even suggest a term such as "mansplaining" is sexist.
I think it may be time for Reddit to experiment with removing the downvote button, or maybe give it 25% of the power it has now, or something along those lines.
13 out of 25 of the front page of /r/politics right now (sorted by hot) are Trump news. 16 out of 25 if sorting by top.
That doesn't seem excessive, considering how vocal Trump is.
When /r/anarchism (left leaning sub about anarchism, antifa, communism, ...) mods refused to enforce reddit's rules relating to the incitement to violence, reddit only removed the mods in question instead of closing the sub.
When /r/physical_removal (right leaning sub about pinochet 'memes') mods refused to enforce reddit's rules relating to the incitement to violence, the sub was removed.
When /r/nazi (third position leaning sub about national socialism) - well, I don't actually know whether the mods there refused to enforce reddit's rules. It's been removed.
How does your speculation or the fact that you simply have heard these things make your argument any persuasive? What is the actual ground reality?
/r/anarchism is a slightly more complicated case. They do advocate violence in a "bash the fash" way. But their intended victims are often those who advocate for genocide, ethnic cleansing, and other racist or misogynistic methods. Their violent earnestness is also often mocked by the rest of political Reddit.
/r/LeftWithoutEdge was a sub formed for serious discussion for lefties without resorting to violent speech. It doesn't get enough traffic so I urge any leftists / anarchists here to visit it occasionally.
Edit: I should add that one reason /r/anarchism and /r/socialism are still on Reddit is because they took the warnings of the admins seriously. /r/anarchism dialed their rhetoric back after being told they were on the verge of being banned. Most of the banned right wing subs ignored the warnings, and often doubled-down.
/r/strikeaction
/r/militant
are some of the more obvious choices.
Of modern left is too sensitive and too unable to accept that other have different opinions. Point of view depends on point of sitting...
I'm not going to blame those nasty subreddits on the left; I'm going to blame those & all other nasty subreddits on the general nastiness of people, no matter what their philosophy or politics.
"Anti-conservative hatred" as equivalent is ridiculous on its face and whatever "misandry" the SRS guys promote should probably be understood in a context where there is no country on Earth where men are oppressed in comparison to women.
I'm not even saying any of those subs are good, but nobody in their right mind is going to equate them with people advocating genocide or "incels" advocating rape.
Libertarians can be left-wing, so the premise seems irrelevant to the conclusion.
Had I been familiar with /r/atheism, I might have been able to guess which of those was correct.
But thanks for your “help”.