How can we break our addiction to contempt?
freakonomics.com
freakonomics.com
Once you begin looking for it, you can see it more and more. On a rather left-leaning forum, an article appeared discussing authoritarianism and how pervasive it is in society. One commenter, without a hint of irony or self-awareness, wondered if there were some way to hook into this tendency to get people to get behind gun control or get vaccinated.
I will at least take naked, open contempt over that sort of thing.
Or like, the notion of real Americams and those who live on cost as not counting as real.
Judging an un-nuanced, possibly straw-man version of another's views. Without any effort to check that they truly understand what the other person believes, let alone what reasons that person has for holding those views.
I've seen this from both conservatives and liberals, and especially from those with mass-media audiences.
Let's say Alice holds some internalized ideal of traditional family values, and Bob holds some internalized ideal of tolerance and inclusion of LGBT people. When Alice looks at Bob's views, all she sees is that it's an affront to an ideal that she cares about, and when Bob looks at Alice's views, all he sees is that it's an affront to an ideal that he cares about.
But how can Alice possibly understand Bob's point of view, unless she's able to tentatively drop her concern for traditional family values? I expect that even with effort to understand the other's perspective, unless that other perspective is internalized, Alice's thoughts on Bob's views will be centered around what she cares about: "I guess I understand what motivates Bob to hate family values", "I guess I understand what motivates Alice's bigoted views on LGBT issues", etc.
Remember when Biden claimed that COVID-19 was invented by the Republicans to make his presidency look bad?
Remember when Obama refused to acknowledge that Trump won the presidency and when CNN aired nonstop coverage from conspiracy theorists claiming that the entire election was fraudulent?
Remember when Obama claimed months in advance that any election in which a Democrat lost was necessarily fraudulent, and then incited a mob to take over the US Capitol building during the electoral vote count? And then when Obama refused to authorize the national guard to prevent US senators and house representatives from being taken hostage?
You're damn right -- they're both totally the same.
Even if you think the investigation into Trump's ties to Russian influence was unjustified, it relied on democratically-elected representatives to impeach him, and it never undermined the rule of law itself.
I'm sure you can find examples with lesser consequences, but given the stakes, are those really relevant here?
It's easy to dismiss all such disagreements as being boiled down to partisanship, which is why it's more useful to look past the actions and focus on the outcome.
Violent rhetoric from politicians and their supporting news outlets has real consequences, and in this case the actions of one side are resulting in the potential for mass vigilante violence:
From Ethnic antagonism erodes Republicans’ commitment to democracy[1]
About half of all surveyed Republicans agreed with these points:
1. The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it.
2. A time will come when patriotic Americans have to take the law into their own hands.
3. Strong leaders sometimes have to bend the rules in order to get things done.
4. It is hard to trust the results of elections when so many people will vote for anyone who offers a handout.
So the counter to your claim that the right is undermining democracy is that the left is undermining civil liberties.
I think most people agree that Afghanistan And Iraq was a terrible idea. At least all the young conservatives do.
And I honestly think we shouldn't read too much into foreign policy. Both parties are happy to support all kinds of regimes that follow all kinds of anti democratic or anti individual rights ideologies, so long as it's in their perceived best interest of America.
That's a good point, but consider the following:
Civil liberties don't exist in a vacuum -- their definitions arise out of conflict among members of society. I.e., the individual, alone in nature, has no need for them. One of the functions of a government is to protect those liberties, especially among those in the minority.
Without trusted elections and therefore a sound democracy, elected officials have no legitimacy. Without a legitimate claim to power, they become tyrants, and the state loses its moral authority to uphold one person's civil liberties against another's. There is no longer any social consensus backing those decisions.
Protests summer 2020? There was a huge surge covid a month after those protests everywhere in USA, even though it was summer and covid should have been low as everywhere else in the world during summers. All of the left wing politicians and news outlets scrambled to try to discredit this or hide it or find any flaws in that connection, but the connection is crystal clear. Those protests lead to hundreds of thousands of deaths.
This sounds like an opinion disguised as fact. If that wasn’t your intention then you’ll need to show peer-reviewed evidence of at the very least a strong association between those two outcomes.
Moreover, we’re specifically talking about lies perpetrated by the media that led to mass violence. The George Floyd protests weren’t fomented by media lies — you can go ask a poor black American if you want to know what’s going on.
What does this even mean? This is way too vague and nebulous to ever get a grip on. I'm guessing you're talking about members of House/Senate contesting the results of the election, which they had a right to do, and followed the constitutional procedure for. You could also say this relied on democratically-elected representatives and wasn't undermining the rule of law.
>"and incited mass violence?"
Again, what qualifies as "mass violence"? I assume you're alluding to January 6th, which I hardly consider "mass violence" as it was very much localized and was over within a few hours. Surely the summer riots are more deserving of a term like "mass violence", no?
If we're talking about vigilante violence / decentralized intimidation, Maxine Waters told people to harass Trump staffers: "“They’re not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they’re not going to be able to stop at a gas station, they’re not going to be able to shop at a department store... The people are going to turn on them, they’re going to protest, they’re going to absolutely harass them.”"
As for your four bullet points, I am confident you can get the same kind of result (eroded faith in Democracy) by tweaking the questions to appeal to the sensibilities of people on the left. Just imagine flipping a few them by asking if a liberal agrees with "The rights of women and minorities are disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save them" and "It is hard to trust the results of elections when so many people have been victims of voter suppression".
This attitude is part of the reason why I didn't feel the need to paste a bunch of links. Not only am I certain you'd dismiss them as biased interpretations, you didn't even pick up on the fact that I was disagreeing with his premise. And, that I did provide an example with Maxine Waters calling for Trump Administration staffers to be harassed in public.
No, the idea that democracy is undermined when citizens are told that their elections are no longer valid or trustworthy, and when politicians no longer respect the results of those elections, is actually very clear and straightforward. The legitimacy of those in power is upheld by the legitimacy of elections. Take away the latter, and what remains is tyranny.
>Surely the summer riots are more deserving of a term like "mass violence", no?
We're talking specifically about lies told by the media that resulted in mass violence. So, no.
>Maxine Waters told people to harass Trump staffers
Remember, we're speaking now in terms of actual outcomes. You'd need to point to demonstrable mass violence that resulted from her comments.
>I am confident you can get the same kind of result (eroded faith in Democracy) by tweaking the questions to appeal to the sensibilities of people on the left
I'm sure you've got a great imagination, but what counts is evidence. Given your confidence, surely you can find a study or poll somewhere to support that hypothesis. And given the vast sums of money behind right-wing think tanks and PACs, I would not expect such studies to be wanting for funding.
https://twitter.com/existentialfish/status/14530202894077952...
“When do we get to use the guns? ... That's not a joke. I'm not saying it like that. I mean, literally, where's the line? How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”
> I was ready to cite examples of the left playing fast and loose with the truth but I sense it will just create hostility.
I mean, sounds like an excuse to not participate.
The question seems quite black and white.
We have a few classic lies:
* Obama is a Muslim from Kenya * His wife is transgender * Climate change is a hoax * COVID is a hoax * Climate change is a hoax * There is not enough pollution in the world * The Democrats are Communists * The Democrats run an occult pederasty wing through Twitter * Trump won the 2020 election
All of these are widely believed by Conservatives and all of these have been widely spread by Conservative speakers.
Can you find even one comparable lie to any of these spread by prominent Democrats (not some random Twitter account)?
Trump is is in a category of his own.
* Here he is claiming to be the best at all these fields he knows nothing about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GqJna9hpTE * Here are his lies about COVID: https://doggett.house.gov/media-center/blog-posts/timeline-t... * Here's an approximate count of his lies over 4 years - https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-fa...
All of his lies have been strongly supported by Republicans
Can you find one Democrat a fraction as mendacious as Donald Trump?
I mean, sounds like an excuse to not participate."
Actually, I was exactly right. I'm sensing some hostility from you right now and I'm making the mistake of engaging when I should just let it go.
>"Can you find even one comparable lie to any of these spread by prominent Democrats (not some random Twitter account)?"
So on the one hand, the laundry list you gave is acceptable as "widely believed by Conservatives", but I have to provide counterexamples that are only restricted to "prominent democrats"? You also don't qualify what 'widely believed' means, so I can just as easily claim that people on the left widely believe other falsehoods. If it is so bad that some conservatives agree with the idea that "Democrats are Communists", is it not exactly the same thing as Democrats believing that "Republicans as Fascists"? This is a widely believed view by Progressives.
I'm not here to chuck a laundry list of "lies" at you. Quite frankly I see something like "Trump’s false or misleading claims total 30,573 over 4 years" and I roll my eyes. Am I seriously expected to believe that number is anywhere close to accurate? I dare say the majority of those are subject to interpretation, which we will not be doing here.
These are well-known...
> and Rachel Maddow
I couldn't find any such thing in the news. Source for that one?
The specific details are Maddow was talking about a journalist from another network(OAN), and said something like "This person is literally paid by the Russian government to produce news stories". Maddow's team argued that it isn't slander because no reasonable viewer of her show would take that statement to be truthful despite the confident/clear language it is expressed in.
Quoting the appeals decision, The challenged statement was an obvious exaggeration, cushioned within an undisputed news story.
Equating Maddow’s exaggeration with Jones and Carlson is just rank bothsiderism.
The question for you, the original question, is why would you consider her shorthand argument based on fact equivalent to what Alex Jones does?
[1] https://timesofsandiego.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/MADDO...
Polls have shown that Fox News viewers believe more incorrect facts about current events than people who don't follow the news at all.
For example:
http://publicmind.fdu.edu/2011/knowless/
After we spend decades hearing about how Iraq has WMD's and was involved with Al-Qaeda, Obama's secretly a non-American Muslim, Anthropogenic Climate Change is fake, COVID is just a bad cold, vaccines are an evil conspiracy, publicly funded healthcare for Americans will result in "death panels" and so on and so forth... is it not reasonable for American progressives to accept that their political opponents are generally either malevolent or suckers?
At some point it's time to stop assuming good faith.
On the contrary. The title is from the 19th century, from an editorial asking why the populists in Kansas were so left wing, something the book goes into detail about in the second chapter.
[1] Though I have to say that some of the "build the wall" rhetoric around immigrants has made me question this.
It seems like people have been losing their pride in their selves that now they're invested in their "football teqm" winning in the arena of politics.
Almost all evil comes from the over-application of morality. "My team is good, and their team is bad, and it is good to hurt bad people."
The problem is that democracy depends on cooperation. If you insist on winning at all costs, the other side adopts your tactics and it becomes a no-holds barred power struggle.
Democracy is in short a system where people can struggle for power without killing or unjustly imprisoning each other.
It seems like the perspective gets taken to - as I write above - justify, after-the-fact, "why I've decided the same way my herd decided". There is a lot of grasping for easy answers ("Yeah, he must be being controlled by China, that's a good enough answer for me!") and cognitive dissonnace when challenged, that usually ends with people being angry so the challenger stops..
Full moral consistency is almost impossible: you're always balancing self-interests with other higher ideals, etc., and there's always some dissonance. This is just a more problematic example of people striking that kind of moral balance.
Message was that due to globalization, a 20/80 split in the job market was inevitable. So there needs to he work done on placating and nursing unrest by distracting people with movies, sports etc..
This was during the 1995 World State Forum. I tried to look up any more material whether that any concrete actions were taken place but couldn’t.
This reminds me of the "entertainers" in the Civilization series, where you can convert some workers into professional entertainers who help alleviate discontent that would otherwise throw a city into civil disorder.
https://scholars-stage.org/xi-jinpings-war-on-spontaneous-or...
Interesting how "the market" has seemingly spontaneously created things like YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagram influencers, etc. Wherever there is money to be made, someone's there. Political news is hot in the attention economy? Macedonians make fake news sites with Google ads: https://money.cnn.com/interactive/media/the-macedonia-story/
Some remedies:
(1) Actually talk to those voters and get to know them at a human level, don't just group them as an undefined mass of "people who vote badly".
(2) Try a mental game where you imagine your side has the wrong arguments or is talking from privilege, etc., and study what the other side is saying (even the naive people there, but even more so the smarter and less naive people there), trying to see how they are right. Find arguments why your (current) position is wrong.
(3) Then try for a month, to see all those sides (voters for R or D for example), as an outsider, who doesn't agree with either side. Check what people not belonging to either side have to say - e.g. political outsiders, academics doing a critique of both parties, pundits, commenters, and philosophers from a previous century not giving a damn for today's politics.
(4) Finally, see the ideas of today as from 2121, the same way we see the ideas of 1921 today. Then as from 3021 B.C. Don't assume a monotonic increase in agreement of the future with your current ideas, or the prevalent ideas of today, but that history goes back and forth in ideological fashions (including what's "good").
>[1] Though I have to say that some of the "build the wall" rhetoric around immigrants has made me question this.
Here are some examples of (2) in this case:
(1) Note that the idea of borders and citizenship is already the idea of a wall. And nobody, not even the "good guys" you voted for, ever challenged those.
(2) Note that the wall is defensive (we don't want no any more to come) and not actively harmful, then see how the good guy politicians that are feigning the idea unacceptable and inhuman, often advocate for foreign wars and interventions that actively harm millions.
(3) Note that those in favor of "building the wall" might have issues in their communities or work that e.g. a FAANG engineer might never experience as problems because they have different job prospects. Consider if your private interests were directly harmed by immigration (e.g. you are living in close quarters with poverty striken immigrants, taking to petty crime and so on, or because your low skill job industry prefers immigrants to lower costs and you're either out of a job or have your wages slashed).
And inversely, if you're say a Republican:
(1) Note that your family doesn't have very deep roots here. Just 400-200 years ago they passed some other people's non-wall (and killed a lot of them) to grap the land. If, say, you're a Kowalski or a Smith, you're not fooling anyone that you're the rightful owner of this land. B...tc please, your ancestors didn't come traversing the Bering Strait, you're not Clovis. If you're, like, second generation, your parents were bona-fide wall climbers. Perhaps they did it legaly through Ellis Island for example, but do you think they'd stopped if they were denied there, but had some other way in?
(2) Note that the Wall is established on land (TX, NM, FL, AZ, CA) stolen from the very country its people tries to keep out. It's even in the names of the states, all Spanish. Who are you fooling?
(3) Note that if you're out of a job, it might have more to do with clean shaven, suit wearing anglosaxon bosses preffering cheap immigrant labor, and less about the immigrants themselves. Plus, if those immigrants were legitimised, and given an easy way to citizenship, would they still be a cheaper option to undercut your wage?
The thing I was referring to (and this is my bad for not being more clear) in regards to the "build the wall" rhetoric wasn't actually specifically about the wall exactly, but more of the surrounding anti-immigrant sentiment that followed. My wife (a Mexican immigrant) had to deal with an increased level of horrible stuff being said to her after the "build the wall" stuff started, and it did seem to correlate as a dogwhistle. That's why I said it gave me a bit of pause about the intentions of some voters: it really seemed to bring out the worst of people, and it did seem like there were a lot more "worst of people" than I thought. It didn't seem like a lot of them really cared about "a wall", they just didn't like people who didn't look like them.
Well without the Gadsden purchase, Yuma and Tucson would still be in Mexico.
I appreciate when institutions (such as universities) ceremonially acknowledge the indigenous people whose land they occupy and never intend to return or pay rent on (often while running their own housing and office rental businesses on top of it.)
Can you give some sort of reason why you have this impression?
I don’t agree with either of those statements, and I think their actions as a result of these beliefs are bad, but I do think they want things to be best for America, though I think they have a different definition of “best”
Obviously this is anecdata, but you asked why I believed this.
We want to avoid people who are bad for us. If you treat them as dangerous, scary, or 'below you' it's fairly emotionally cheap for you to avoid everything about them, not just the badness. But ignoring 'dangerous' problems can just make them more dangerous.
They need to compromise, they need to calm down, they need to love. And as long as they don't, we don't have to.
Not to mention those that equate compromise, civility, and love with getting their way without any sort of criticism. Then there's the issues where compromise isn't an option. If you want to kill everyone on the planet, and I don't want you to kill anyone. Killing half the planet isn't really a compromise I'm willing to entertain.
So sweet, I'm sure if we all loved each other and treated each other with respect, we'd all ride rainbows and shit ponies or whatever. But when we can't even agree on what love and respect even means, it's just kind of abstract, philosophical masturbation.
... in other words, we're all doomed.
The contempt issue begins at the roots of identity, I think. When we're adolescents, we're a part of the world or society, but without the responsibility or authority of an adult. This makes us subject to it and a bit helpless (but for the benevolence of adults) until we find a way to become adults ourselves. Until then, we often assert ourselves though revolt and rebellion as victims of the forces we are subject to. Our adolescent mind exists as an island protected by its own defensive resentment and contempt against the forces it is only subject to, until it acquires the responsibility and resultant confidence to act directly on the world. We all emerge from it differently, if at all.
I'm saying the contempt is an adolscent urge that originates from believing we are a subject or victim of our circumstances. There are many situations where you really are a target, but I'd say there is no contempt without identifying first as a victim, and that necessary identity is a remnant of adolescence. The way to mitigate those adolescent remnants is by taking responsibility and ownership of your life, which coincidentally, happens to be a value at the core of conservative ethos Brooks advocates.
Treating people as undeveloped adolescents because they use disgust and contempt as an organizing social signal could seem to merely respond to contempt with sincere, even heartfelt condescention (the most insulting kind), and that would be all the more alienating and enraging, but it's toward discovering what the fundamental divide in the very axioms that inform our values is. When Brooks says we need "love," I think what he means is we need to feel loved, and by this, that there is some force in the world (or universe) that is invested in our growth and happiness, and believing we can both recieve and achieve it.
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
"Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
COVID doesn't care about your feelings, and the very real impact of higher infection rates and lower vaccination coverage is demonstrating who exactly has so dug-in on their position so far that they've become utterly disconnected from reality.
I have my own hypothesis about the COVID vaccine denialism in particular, but I am afraid that it might come off as a bit too political for HN and Dang would lock the thread :).
As a reaction to this problem you see the basic approach that the social justice wing has basically declared that intent doesn't matter. No more excuses.
And I'm getting to agree with them. If somebody is doing something destructive and the stakes are high, wasting time being nice about their feelings seems thoroughly counterproductive. COVID has made this problem deafeningly loud - whether the bad actors are crazy or grifters or misguided, polite deference to them on grave matters gets people killed.
I actually think we might agree on a bit more than you might think. I actually am in that social-justice camp that says "intent mostly doesn't matter". I don't have the ability to read minds yet, so I can't possibly really know anyone's intent, so I have to look at the reasonable consequences of their actions and judge from there.
That said, whether or not people are secretly klansmen or good deep down, they still exist, and they're still humans who deserve to have their voices heard at some level. While I don't think we should automatically assume good faith on every person speaking, I also don't think we should immediately discount it either. A lot of voters are just victims of bad publications, and I don't think any of us are fully immune to that. I'm sure there's a million dumb things that I believe; I try and catch them when I spot them, but I would hope that most people would give me the benefit of the doubt in assuming that my beliefs were honest, if dumb.
edit: Added a "don't" because my point was wrong without it.
They don't believe this of us, and this is why they win, and we lose.
Playing devil's advocate here let's imagine that someone from a political party that is probably not yours (just guessing!) might use your same logic and apply it.
Abortions. They're killing people. High stakes? Check.
Abortions. They're killing defenseless humans. Destructive? Check?
You don't have to agree with these definitions for people on the political right to define things this way. And were they to take their definitions and use your logical template and then react in the way you're suggesting might be OK with your definitions, what you're left with is something that looks an awful lot like the Texas abortion ban right now.
The point I'm trying to make isn't that you're wrong and bad and should feel bad. The point I'm trying to make is that a person needs to think very long and very hard about situations in which polite deference isn't warranted.
Because with the team sports politics we've got going on right now it's super easy for one side to look at the template the other side is using and reappropriate it for their pet issues and then things which are "settled" suddenly get very exciting indeed.
I know two anti-vaxxers.
One is not political at all but isn't that smart. Very nice and generous person. Bit prone to conspiracy thinking and bought into fake news on Rumble or something.
The other is very conservative and it's a team/tribe issue with him. He has a strong distrust of institutions that he thinks are run by leftists and would distrust anything they say.
-------
Basically, I think that rabid anti-vax sentiment is a natural conclusion to roughly ~40 years of near-constant levels of conspiratorial thinking from conservative circles. I think folks like Jerry Fallwell started it, and subsequently Ronald Reagan and most of the conservative politicians after him followed. People like Jerry Fallwell more or less started the "satanic panic", and it started to become somewhat politically acceptable to just say that "the devil" was doing anything that they don't like. This went largely unchallenged in evangelical circles and the evangelicals took a huge turn towards the Republican party.
Fast forward to 2012, and now it's a debate about where Barack Obama was born. A "conspiracy" was just fabricated out of nowhere, and the president is required to show his birth certificate. This was somewhat made fun of, even Bill OReilly disputed it, but it was the first conspiracy that I had heard in my lifetime being taken seriously by at least some politicians.
Fast forward to 2016, and suddenly it seems that idiots like Alex Jones, who had previously been a goofball I would turn on to get a laugh, is being taken seriously by semi-prominent conservatives. PizzaGate was still somewhat of a fringe thing, but it was the first outright debunkable conspiracy that I could think of that people I actually knew who actually believed it.
Fast forward to ~2019, and a sizeable chunk of conservatives (to be clear, NOT a majority) were starting to take the QAnon nonsense seriously, setting the way for 2020, which allowed a basic stream of perpetual lies about COVID to be spread (and accepted) on 8kun. Suddenly, despite overwhelming evidence, we have to have debates on whether we should be taking COVID seriously. Any time Fauchi contradicted Trump, it was because Fauchi was an agent of Satan or something absurd.
I think anti-vaxxing is just the natural progression. There's been an entire generation who has been more-or-less unchallenged in their conspiratorial thinking, and basically anything can be a conspiracy theory. Since they already think that COVID was overblown to make Trump look bad, they subsequently have to think that anything that addresses covid must also be bad.
The left has its share of dumb things that it believes, but it's not nearly at the same level of what is predominant in conservative culture today.
While schools definitely do have a lefty-bent, the idea that it's some hyper-organized society designed to destroy the conservative parties in America is absurd to anyone who isn't predisposed to conspiratorial thinking.
Given that adversarial dynamic between business and policy, I can't bring myself to fault even a single person for refusing the vaccine (I can still fault someone for publicly speaking against vaccinating others on invariably shaky arguments though). There is no public institution that I would trust to act towards any common good, that's how much public trust has been eroded in the name of "good business".
I believe policies like vaccine mandate and the overzealous anti-anti-vax crew are paradoxically aggravating the issue. Making it a partisan issue also seems to force people on the defensive and harden their (potentially unfounded) beliefs, forcing them into the "other camp."
EDIT: My hypothesis on why it comes more from right-wing rather than left-wing people is exactly that right-wing is anti-government power (or more freedom of individuals, usually).
That's the problem with "reality" - the reality you see is driven by the media that reports the reality to you. Presumably the media you read likes to run stories like "lots of cases in Florida" to score points against the "other team", while ignoring deeper analysis like the paper I linked.
The infection rate is unreliable because it requires people allowing themselves to be tested when sick, and I would expect people that refuse to be vaccinated also refuse to be tested, on the same grounds.
Your suggested confounder is plausible, but I find the possible confounders in the other direction even more plausible:
- Many places have policies like "proof of vaccination /or/ positive test required", which would inflate the number of confirmed cases in less vaccinated areas.
- Someone with reduced symptoms due to vaccination is less likely to notice them and thus decide to get a test, or to have symptoms severe enough to be hospitalized and thus definitely get a test.
And then the really scary one:
- If vaccines hide symptoms but don't significantly reduce transmission, a vaccinated person is less likely to stay at home during an infection, increasing community transmission.
Further evidence for that hypothesis comes from comparisons of viral load in confirmed cases between vaccinated and unvaccinated people, which finds no significant difference: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.31.21261387v...
He does mention that there are systemic issues with the status quo, so I'm sure if you asked him if he was happy with how things are running I'm sure he'd have quite a list of things that he thinks could make the world better for everyone -- even if you might disagree with some of his solutions.
In the interview he says that democracy is the political version of capitalism/a market economy and I think that's key to interpreting him charitably. In his worldview many of the good things about democracy are the good things about capitalism, but they also share many of the same flaws. In systems that emphasises individual agency and are incentive based, his view is that contempt locks us into a vicious cycle that de-incentivizes leaders from actually providing a realistic way forward. I tend to agree, and I can hardly fault someone for trying to argue for the best version of their vision for society.
Frankly self proclaimed leftists have a terrible habit of consent manufacturing - both from their own natural bubbles and echo chambers and ad nausuem rhetoric. There is tbe "implicit identity and support" which assumes that universal support of the working class is the natural status quo and any who disagree are puppets of the rich. This abstraction spares them from having to consider the actual opinions of the people who compose it. Their poor electoral performance in even their strongholds highlights that they are a noisy minority operating under the pretense of being a majority.
Instead in Europe the democrats would just be a typical right wing party. Meaning they are pro immigration to stimulate economic growth, pro healthcare for all etc.
There is no such thing as a decoupled “fiscal” conservatism. Politics in practice are inseparable from their historical context and Democratic politicians know that. Their virtue appeals in the media are not supported by their politics but rather serve to distract from their politics. Their politics, in fact, are a conservative politics.
Maybe even more importanly, the way Democrat representatives seem to be able to enrich themselves from lobbying money etc, would be totally unacceptable most places in Europe. It would place them more in the class of Plutocrats than conservatives. Democrats tend to have far closer ties to Big Capital than even the most business-friendly conservatives where I live.
It seems to me that their focus on identity politics is a cover for doing very little to actually help the unprivileged, but instead doing the biddings of their donors.
Its mostly a center-right / center-left coalition with the center-right currently slightly stronger (until very recently much stronger). While it leans right, it isn't coherently conservative, even by international standards.
I mean, I would hardly argue that the Democrats are "against" a level playing field, but it wouldn't be a stretch to say that they are opposed to such a premise. The fact is though, just because we both strongly dislike progressive ideology does not mean that we need to harp on their shortcomings at every opportunity.
In my mind, it is the constant put downs and negativity that breeds contempt. The thing of itself need not be the act, but merely foster such a stance.
The infamous "New World Order" conspiracy theorist archetype tends to be negative and full of put downs to their target de jure as the cause of all the world's evils. Even when it is horrifying it draws more of a watching a trainwreck style reaction.
Negativity and putdowns I would classify more as a breeder of disengagement. This is reflected by the impact of negative campaign ads being more reduced total votes than drawing more votes by looking good in comparison.
He is not just random conservative with unknown politics within spectrum of conservative voices. He is active player in politics and economy.
Follow the Prince of Peace.
> Living the New Life
> Therefore, I say this and testify in the Lord: You should no longer walk as the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their thoughts. They are darkened in their understanding, excluded from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them and because of the hardness of their hearts. They became callous and gave themselves over to promiscuity for the practice of every kind of impurity with a desire for more and more.
> But that is not how you learned about the Messiah, assuming you heard about Him and were taught by Him, because the truth is in Jesus. You took off your former way of life, the old self that is corrupted by deceitful desires; you are being renewed in the spirit of your minds; you put on the new self, the one created according to God’s likeness in righteousness and purity of the truth.
> Since you put away lying, Speak the truth, each one to his neighbor, because we are members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, and don’t give the Devil an opportunity. The thief must no longer steal. Instead, he must do honest work with his own hands, so that he has something to share with anyone in need. No foul language is to come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear. And don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit. You were sealed by Him for the day of redemption. All bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.
- Ephesians 4:17-32 (HCSB)
I realize some of the people who might see this have had bad experiences with so-called Christians. I was a staunch Atheist for the vast, VAST majority of my life, specifically because of how some so-called "believers" had treated me when I was very young. I hated Christians so much I scared a preacher half to death, threatened to beat him up, and got him to run away in tears.
My own contempt, my rage, my unbridled hatred for people was off the charts. Anyone who didn't agree with me 100% on everything was an idiot, and I was not afraid to tell them so.
I'm saying all of this to say, if you resent me writing all of this, I get it. I really do. On a fundamental level, I understand that anger. But if you feel like you want to know the only answer to how to turn away from letting those controlling, destructive emotions from ruling your life; this anger that we all seem to be under the thumb of, then there is a very clear, obvious answer: God
Not just mere acknowledgement, or even a reverence for Him, but a stout willingness to obey His commandments and follow His teachings.
There's only one religion that tells you not just that it's wrong to murder, but that to hate someone in your heart is murder, and worthy of the same punishment. There is only one that holds everyone to that level of accountability.
Think it over.
Oh my, what a silly way to pitch a possible reader on your book.
There is a (VERY conservative) town in my state where every single employee of the local department of transportation has quit over the vaccine mandate. Now the former employees and their conservative allies are gleefully posting about how “the libs” won’t be able to use the nearby freeways due to lack of maintenance, and how “the libs” will have trouble driving around town because there will be no snow plow operators come winter.
Here’s the funny part: The conservative:liberal ratio there is about 50:1. This rural town is gleefully destroying its own infrastructure over some perceived culture war, fully knowingly. These people are willing to cripple their ability to leave their houses in order to “own the libs” even if they’re not even existent.
I do not think I could be convinced by some old guy that his newly-invented form of conservative Kumbaya will actually make it possible for these people to go to the pharmacy when it snows, or get fresh food from the grocery store.
I mean, maybe that's right but it seems unlikely when there are other much more obvious things to explain the reasons for the actions in question. That they then post hoc express schadenfreude for the party who they perceive to be responsible for the situation is evidence of the addiction to contempt the article refers to, sure. But I find it difficult to imagine they wouldn't prefer not to be coerced into experimental gene therapy even if it means they don't get the opportunity to "own the libs" in response.
To elaborate: You can consider work vaccine mandates to be similar to any other job requirement. The COVID vaccines have received a huge amount of studies and trials. And "gene therapy" usually refers to use of things like CRISPR-Cas9 or other methods of delivering DNA into the cell which are able to modify genes. mRNA vaccines do not modify genes. (I'm not a biologist so you should ask one if you want more information on this)
Wait, hold on. That's an actual argument you are making and not satire?
"Mandates are not coercive", that's a thought that actually went through your head and you thought, "Hmm, that sounds like a reasonable argument"?
"Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community."
"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Mandates are coercive by definition, that's the entire point of them, putting whatever magical word in front of them you like doesn't change that.
The medication to which the "Vaccine mandates" refer is not the same as traditional inactivated virus vaccines, and before this whole fiasco started, was always referred to as what it actually is which is gene therapy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4817894/
It doesn't matter how great or how well tested these things are, or how reasonable it is to take them, and that I will acknowledge goes into the realm of opinion and given how polluted that discussion is with political barracking yeah I'm not interested in having it at all, the simple underlying fact that they are actually coercive experimental gene therapy is exactly that, pure fact, not opinion at all.
Also that paper seems to suggest that mRNA could generally be used as a component in gene therapy. It does not say that mRNA vaccines are gene therapy. You're getting several things mixed up. Let me know if you want clarification, or if you want some helping finding a biologist or doctor who could answer more of your questions. But mRNA vaccines are probably not "coercive experimental gene therapy" unless you really want to stretch that definition.
Your objection basically boils down to "I don't like the way 'coercive experimental gene therapy' makes what my team is presently doing sound like". That's not an argument, it's just an attempt to force people not to use accurate language you disapprove of. Maybe coercive experimental gene therapy is exactly what's needed, just like coercive physical restraint is just what's needed when it comes to dealing with violent psychopaths. But in both cases, refusing to call a spade a spade doesn't change it from being a spade.
When you respond with stuff like "I wouldn't say any of that is a fact, merely incorrect statements" then you're begging your opposition to simply make the exact same statement back to you.
I am sympathetic to people who can't get vaccines for medical reasons but there are companies that simply are not equipped to employ those people safely. There's nothing coercive about that, everything else you're saying about that is not related to what I'm saying. For a lot of these companies it's a matter of either they require the vaccine, or they go back to having long lines, reduced hours, occupancy limits, strict mask requirements, and other things that are inconvenient and cost money and hurt the business. This stuff is unfortunate because it also applies to immunocompromised people with whom the vaccine is not effective, I don't really know a solution that could work for them on a large scale.
Yes we are, you are continuously making the argument that if you can give good reasons for coercion, it is no longer accurate to refer to it as coercion. This is false.
Examples;
> For a lot of these companies it's a matter of either they require the vaccine, or they go back to having long lines, reduced hours, occupancy limits, strict mask requirements, and other things that are inconvenient and cost money and hurt the business.
> there are companies that simply are not equipped to employ those people safely.
And many other times.
Further, you're refusing to acknowledge that the vaccines under the vaccine mandates are experimental gene therapy, with the justification;
> Also that paper seems to suggest that mRNA could generally be used as a component in gene therapy. It does not say that mRNA vaccines are gene therapy.
The paper is from 2015, the "mRNA vaccines" were not a thing at the time and thus this paper discussing what mRNA gene therapy is would of course not refer to things not released for six years to come/ "mRNA vaccines" is just a new label on the underlying technology discussed in the paper, which they clearly point out is actually gene therapy.
It's coercive experimental gene therapy. Maybe it's good, maybe it's necessary, whatever. It's still coercive experimental gene therapy.
Otherwise I'll try to use an analogy. Would you call it coercion if a construction company had all its welding equipment malfunction, break, and become unsafe, and as a result had to let all its welders go? Or would you call it coercion if a trucking company refused to hire people that didn't have trucking licenses, on the basis that it wouldn't be safe for them to drive a truck that they weren't trained for? Or if you're a nurse and you get let go for not being vaccinated, in a hospital where the entire job description is that you can't infect the patients with more diseases?
On your comment about gene therapy, AFAIK mRNA vaccines are not a new label on the underlying technology there. They are a different technology from the purpose described in that paper. Please see my other comment for what is generally referred to as gene therapy. Again we can contact a biologist or doctor for more information about this if you'd like to do that.
Edit: The paper you posted has a good citation that explains it better. https://www.nature.com/articles/nrd4278
"The FDA definition of gene therapy is as follows: '... modification of the genetic material of living cells. Cells may be modified ex vivo for subsequent administration to humans, or may be altered in vivo by gene therapy given directly to the subject. When the genetic manipulation is performed ex vivo on cells which are then administered to the patient, this is also a form of somatic cell therapy ... Recombinant DNA materials used to transfer genetic material for such therapy are considered components of gene therapy.' As RNA does not result in 'modification of the genetic material of living cells', one would anticipate that its administration will not be classified as a gene therapy in the United States."
For gene therapy I think typically the goal of that is the opposite of vaccines. Similar vectors can be used (in this case mRNA encased in lipids) but everything else is different. With vaccines you're intentionally trying to provoke an immune response, but one that's weak enough so it doesn't harm the patient. In gene therapy, you usually want to avoid generating an immune response at all, so the body doesn't start attacking the modified cells.
What I did bring up is the fact that people are willing to deny themselves, their families and neighbors the ability to leave their own homes to get food and medicine in order to “own the libs.”
While this sort of Markov-chain sounding word salad about… whatever, must indicate that people are passionate about… whatever, the fact of the matter is that sabotaging your own infrastructure out of ideology sounds kind of suicidal.
I honestly don’t get how I could personally rally behind people that would celebrate my righteous death from being stranded in the snow because I’d died owning the libs because uh… my ideology will have prevented theoretical vaccine deaths in the future? My actual, concrete, current life is literally worth less than… what? Some bogeyman that I read about on Facebook?
If I were genuinely that concerned about all these conspiracies and thought that my thoughtless death would make a difference, I’d self-immolate like the monks during Vietnam. Somehow curiously, these folks rather than doing that are taking the mighty stand of keeping kids from going to school, their neighbors going to work or their doctors, local business owners from opening etc.
Ironically, not plowing the streets creates the exact same (if not considerably worse) lockdown situation that these people have been mad about for 18 months. Ironically, it’s not the reduction of peoples freedoms that matter to these conservatives, it’s who gets to be the ones taking the freedoms away.
People will literally kill themselves and everyone around them in order to feel Right About Stuff.
“Love” isn’t an answer here. It’s a completely meaningless word put in a context to sound nice on a podcast to sell books to people who will never change their minds about any of this.
Look, let's say we observe an employee and employer undertaking a discussion that goes something like this.
"Take this medicine"
"No I don't want to"
"Take it or else you're fired"
"I'm not going to take it, fire me if you have to."
"OK, you're fired"
"That's going to turn out poorly for the people who must now suffer the consequences of not having people available to do my job"
I don't understand how you jump to the conclusion that the reason the employee refuses to take the medicine is so they can have that last line of dialogue, rather than that they don't want to take the medicine.
Enlighten me?
My criticism of your argument is that it’s silly to decide that nobody in town can leave their houses during the winter because you don’t want to get a shot. Furthermore, it’s downright ghastly to gloat about the upcoming, totally avoidable, suffering that they’ll be imparting on people that _AGREE WITH THEM_ in order make their point and own the libs.
Pro tip: We might actually be having a two way conversation if your next response included words like “snow” or “plow” or “stranded in your house by no fault of your own.” But please go on with your regurgitated Facebook nonsense about experiments or whatever.
The only thing that’s important is that you’re right!
Once again, that's not what they're doing. "I'm not going to take the medicine so everybody has to stay inside" you will note was not part of the dialogue.
> Furthermore, it’s downright ghastly to gloat about the upcoming, totally avoidable, suffering that they’ll be imparting on people that _AGREE WITH THEM_ in order make their point and own the libs.
People have a history of hostility to those they perceive, whether rightly or wrongly, as unnecessarily depriving them of their livelihood.
> We might actually be having a two way conversation if your next response included words like “snow” or “plow” or “stranded in your house by no fault of your own.” But please go on with your regurgitated Facebook nonsense about experiments or whatever.
Sure, It doesn't matter what tasks the people under discussion are saddled with, up to and including dealing with snow, plowing, etc, and it doesn't matter what consequences the absence of their actions will result in, up to and including leaving people stranded in their house by no fault of their own. The logic still applies.
Not wanting to take medication is not the same as actively wanting to inflict misery on other parties, and equating the two as you are continuously trying to do is false.
Displaying hostility to parties responsible for hostile actions is about as newsworthy as "sun rises in morning". In fact the hostility you're displaying to them here is just as unsurprising and not the problem at all.
The issue is purely one of logic; you're equating motivation to refuse a medicine with wanting to provoke misery for an opposing party. Clearly no such motivation exists. If it did exist, they would not have needed to say "I don't want to take this medicine, fire me if you have to." they could just jump straight to the end and go on strike to "own the libs" and no other reason.
Did you see the part where I was talking about gloating about the harm they’re planning on causing? It includes (as the majority of folks) people that share their political views. I get that it didn’t jive with your narrative but it’s a reality that I’m describing, so sorry about that.
Good job using the word “snow” in the middle of hand waving away actual material suffering while trying to accomplish… whatever.
Are you personally willing to be unable to leave your house because it’s important to you that the municipal workers won’t be vaccinated?
Refusing to take medicine is not the same thing as "planning on causing harm" no matter how many times you attempt to falsely equate the two things.
> I get that it didn’t jive with your narrative
Narrative has nothing to do with it, you can still believe what they're doing by refusing to take the medicine is the wrong choice and simultaneously acknowledge that their incorrect choice is not the same thing as the consequence levied upon them by a third party when they refuse to take the medicine.
> but it’s a reality that I’m describing, so sorry about that.
If you really think that's the case, then the inability to separate cause and effect is an enormous blind spot you should work on.
> Good job using the word “snow” in the middle of hand waving away actual material suffering while trying to accomplish
You were the one that insisted the word would change the underlying logical structure of the question, unsurprisingly it did not. That was my entire point all along.
> Are you personally willing to be unable to leave your house because it’s important to you that the municipal workers won’t be vaccinated?
That has absolutely nothing to do with the logical structure of coerced action resulting in a refusal and dismissal and the second order effects of that chain of events. But for the record, I am willing to suffer whatever consequences are necessary in order that the aggressive violation of individual bodily integrity and autonomy of peaceful people is unacceptable, up to and including the immediate destruction of the entire universe.
A universe where peaceful people minding their own business are not free to make their own choices is not worthy of existence. Cross that line and you've gone most of the way down the road of justifying the worst excesses of authoritarian abuse throughout history. There's a very good reason it's in the Nuremberg codes, it wasn't an accident to be revoked next time there's some "catastrophic emergency" going on. There are certain lines you do not cross and that is one of them.
This is the most psychotic take I’ve read on this topic. Not only are you willing to get stuck in your home so some stranger doesn’t have to get a vaccine, you’re willing to inflict that same suffering on an infinite number of people in order to get your way.
Considering “destruction of the universe” would include a lot of innocent deaths, your weird moralizing sounds even more like schizophrenic word salad. You literally advocate for murdering both those that agree with you and those that don’t, as well as yourself, because things aren’t the way you want them to be.
Let me guess, you’re in your mid teens and recently read The Fountainhead?
The opposing position is ironically that of those who inflicted hundreds of millions of deaths, the largest cause of non natural death in fact, on the entire species in the previous century, so you'll excuse me if I take your view with several solar masses of sodium chloride.
> you’re willing to inflict that same suffering on an infinite number of people in order to get your way.
Exactly the opposite, I'm not willing to inflict any aggression on any number of peaceful people minding their own business, period.
> Considering “destruction of the universe” would include a lot of innocent deaths
Better dead than enslaved.
> You literally advocate for murdering both those that agree with you and those that don’t, as well as yourself, because things aren’t the way you want them to be.
I advocate for nothing, I merely do not accept that slavery is a valid institution, and it doesn't matter what you put in the alternative column against it. The alternative of violating the autonomy and integrity of peaceful people doing me no harm is once again, the worst possible outcome.
> Let me guess, you’re in your mid teens and recently read The Fountainhead?
Over 40, read it a long, long time ago, has nothing to do with my position on live free or die. Slavery is outright unacceptable. If you do not have the right to choose which drugs you must take, you are a slave. It cannot get more simple than that. That has nothing at all to do with the sensibility of taking the drugs in question, it has nothing to do with whether the drugs in question are good or bad. It could be the most obvious choice in the world, and the drugs in question could be a panacea that brings about a world utopia, and the logic of enslaving people would still be utterly unacceptable.
The ends do not justify the means. Multiple world changing extremely violent wars were fought over just these issues. Your side always lost.
This was not a controversial position for the past half century plus, the fact that it is now should make you very cautious. Although with bloody-handed "for the greater good" communism by another name in such vogue these days, I expect that it won't at all.
I'm sorry, I find this conversation extremely depressing and I'm going to leave it at that, you have a nice life.
EDIT; for the record, the disgusting strawmen in response to this message do not warrant their own response regardless of how idiotic they are. And I will not be providing one.
and
>I advocate for nothing…
are incompatible statements. Either you are stating that you would prefer that people (other than yourself) die rather than being “enslaved” (having an employer exercise at-will employment) or you’re not.
The irony of literally calling for the deaths of people that don’t adhere to your specific set of beliefs while decrying “slavery” is genuinely hilarious.
What other bits of “slavery” do you think justify murdering people over? Seat belt laws? Age of consent laws? Prohibition of trading human organs?
Edit: I literally laughed out loud when I read the implication that I’m a communist because uh, I don’t think it’s a moral good to indiscriminately harm people as some sort of temper tantrum over a vaccine.
I genuinely hope that every person that chose to become unemployed because of their Facebook-informed selective definition of inflammatory words like “slavery” remain unemployed indefinitely. This will create more positions for vaccinated people.
Ironically, the “live free or die” folks really seem to think that the state owes them jobs and money, and the average citizen is obligated to suffer under their arbitrary rules that they make up on the fly. While you feel righteous, that feeling doesn’t actually mean that anybody has to listen to you or your ridiculous opinions, let alone act on them.
I understand that only Big Brain Geniuses ever arrive at fascinating unique positions like “everything I don’t like is slavery”, but even that caliber of dazzling wit doesn’t actually mean logical people will naturally agree with your Completely Objective Philosophy.
Real slavery is when I can’t force somebody to give me a job!
It's not the employees that are destroying the aforementioned rural town, it's the DOT doing blatantly undemocratic things that their employees won't approve.
I dont have any hard proof of course, but this is how it is. No one cares if you're right if the opponent can be witty.
As proof Ill try to leave you with 2 videos, hopefully they are bipartisan enough:
1. https://youtube.com/watch?v=ErZCMcoC8X8 2. https://youtube.com/watch?v=aFQFB5YpDZE
Politicians are disagreeing and failing to use nonsensical phrases like "my good friend from <insert location here>?" Anybody want to recite Alexander Hamilton's memoirs of his genial political disputes with Aaron Burr?
Sweeping generalizations such as "people like him" are bad, seems both contemptuous & a shallow examination.