> You will not get an interesting conversation on these topics on an American discussion board. These topics are a minefield.
That's a problem. Why have people become so afraid to speak their minds? We live in a democracy or not?
That's a problem. Why have people become so afraid to speak their minds? We live in a democracy or not?
A sufficiently large group of people have realized that they can function legally as a social lynch mob.
A person can stand by their ideals all they want, but if their livelihood and/or social standing have been taken from them, then expressing those ideals doesn’t serve them very well.
Many people just find it easier not to engage.
History will not reflect kindly on these groups — they will be mocked (“crazy things people actually believed in the 2020s!”).
> We live in a democracy or not?
Regarding democracy, the most vocal zealots on both extremes of the political spectrum support decidedly undemocratic positions.
Many/most of the folks I know who speak out loudest about “freedom” are also the most willing to restrict it… for others.
What’s the saying… freedom for me but not for thee?
Before I come across as overly cynical, let me just add that most Americans I’m around have a very laissez faire attitude about most things. They are just very quiet about it, living their lives peacefully.
I’m a believer in the very moderate silent majority in the US. It’s just hard to notice that it exists when pretty much all mainstream media and social media are designed to favor the promotion of extremist stances.
My experience in the US is the opposite. It's only at the extremes that you'll find people concerned about our civil liberties slipping away, wanting to give everyone a voice, and accepting that there are opinions unlike their own and that's ok.
Probably because people on both ends are threatened by the middle party duopoly. The middle only allows conversation about wedge issues and nothing different or more substantive. The middle both decide for whom we can vote because they're corporations, not democratic entities. They collaborate only to make sure viable 3rd parties cannot exist and to ensure their donors' demands are met. Otherwise, they return to squabbling over wedge issues that neither party actually ever solves because the wedges are too useful to be solved. Our two middle parties are fundamentally anti-democratic - maybe that's why most Americans are independent.
And doing that while you created that topic in the first place.
Always was, IMO what you're experiencing with this is just the Overton window shifting around you.
Goes both ways: People hardly ever discussed trans topics when I was a teenager and I don't know if that was a taboo or merely lack of awareness, but I do know that lesbian gay and bisexual topics were tabooed.
Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but I put the blame on those afraid to speak their minds.
I try always to speak my mind — whether it flies in the face of popular opinion or no. I take the downvotes — I sort of like that they have me pause and reconsider my opinion. But if in the end I feel I am still justified the downvotes just become a kind of war-wound or something that I take some small amount of pride in.
I'm not sure why everyone doesn't do the same.
But denying me the possibility to provide food for my two kids, my wife and me, is another thing. And there are just two possible responses: either I won't talk anything meaningful to strangers, or, having calculated my chances, I would aggressively defend my right and my children's rights to speak our minds. And by aggressively I mean very, as in revolutionary very. You threaten my very existence, and then all bets are loose and anything that will let me and my people win over you is permitted.
Arguing these is pointless, because they are violate dogmas that underpin our modern ideology. They are not up for argument. If another ideology suggests that racism is actually a-ok, then we consider it clearly flawed, because dogmatically, ideologies that come to that conclusion must be flawed. And not just flawed, because these fundamental dogmas are what shapes our notions of "good" and "evil". Not adhering to these dogmas makes you evil.
I must add, this is not a fallacy of some sort. If I were thrown into another society where everyone approves of racism, I am still attached to my personal dogmas. I would consider such a society unjust and warped. As a matter of fact, there's plenty of personal dogmas our current society violates, and I consider our current society and its ideology unjust and flawed.
Which raises another point, which is that our society does not have a monolithical ideology. It has an emergent ideology that arises from common agreement, but there's plenty of people in our society these days who disagree with several of the dogmas. And that's what makes them "bad" or "evil".
The only way to argue someone out of a personal dogma is to convince them that whatever your dogmas are is reflective of absolute good, evil, and/or truth. This is the subject of what is likely one of the oldest philosophical debates and has spawned several religions.
This is not a two sided discussion where each camps agree in block with a set list of propositions. It's also not manichean with things being either completely true or false, right or wrong or, good or evil. You are not either for or against. If you believe that, you are the problem.
We should be able to explore these subjects in their full complexity with the disagreement that entails. It's not even possible anymore in academia.
We almost universally agree that racism is not ok but what's racism? Some think affirmative action is racist.
The society is far greater than you. Different people have (and have the right to have) different opinions.
I mean it is a fad just a centuries old one.
My opinion is that morality is essentially a tips and trick of how to survive passed in a game of generational telephone.
E.g. ancient Greek hated cannibalism but practiced pederasty. Cannibalism can lead to catching prions and going crazy. For them it was god's punishment. Pederasty probably didn't have as many negative side effects at that time.
Proclaiming superiority over our predecessors is short lived. Imagine if there were two races of butterflies, one gray one white. The white blend better on trees and thus survive more, so white butterflies start arguing they are morally superior (favorite of God, etc.) to the gray ones, but that quickly changes once pollution grays the trees making now white butterflies the more visible prey.
So killing, cannibalism and pederasty are obviously imoral.
Die-off from lack of breeding? Sexually transmissible diseases? In both cases you could also construct homosexuality as immoral
Actually cannibalism is just eating of people, there is no requirement that said people get butchered for it. Someone might ritualistically eat an elder in their community to gain part of their wisdom for example, but there is not a requirement that they slay that elder first - they may just wait for them to die
Not really, no.
Setting aside pedantry about the US being a republic and not a pure democracy, the fact is that wealthy elites decide election outcomes now. You ended up with Trump because elites in Russia wanted him elected more than elites in the US wanted Clinton. You got rid of him because elites in the US had woken up to the fact that they weren't the only player in that game anymore.
Culture wars are a proxy battlefield in much the same way that Ukraine is.
Sadly, we can't wait for the train to stop at next station and get out, because it's the only train we have.
This is so detached from reality, that is not even trying to understand why trump happened and why it may happens again.
On a similar note, you can absolutely point to America for using the international monetary system in its favor, and that wouldn't be the same a blaming regular americans.
Some of them, like Israel and China, push pretty hard, albeit with different goals.
Also worth noting that in many cases they're just co-opting the system set up by US powerbrokers, e.g. Tucker Carlson of Fox News talking about how great Putin is.
Actually political scientists routinely refer to the US as a democracy. You're splitting a hair that experts do not. The word "democracy" does not only mean direct democracy. Mentioning this non-issue at all is a signal, but maybe not the one you hoped for.
In day-to-day life it certainly doesn't matter - but when you are attempting to discuss the nature of that political system itself, I don't think it is at all unreasonable to call out the distinction and decide whether to discuss it further. No need for snide jabs.