Are we breeding civil, substantive racists and misogynists?

Lots of replies while I went off to make and have dinner. I’ll answer a few minor things and then the one that seams to be the biggest

@RichVR - yeah, probably true. I wrote something yesterday that I am passionate about and Nesrie has consistantly twisted my wording and attacked positions that I do not hold. My bad, I should have dropped it early and treated it as just failed communication no harm done but I had time due to sitting around half watching the world cup.

@Wumpus - your examples don’t match the things I am passionate about. So I’ve been agreeing with them because I see nothing earthshaking in what you are posting.

@arrendek - Thank you. You have hit on the key issue (other than the fact that I had time on my hands for once I guess). I’ll put that in a separate post.

Yes, it really bothers me when discussion is shut down especially in a space that feels open to discussion. I’m also frustrated with politics right now because, as a moderate centrist, I’m forced to chose the lesser of two evils. Actually in the last election it wasn’t hard at all and I shouldn’t say two evils but generally its the same.

I didn’t really care about this topic until I clicked through to the NY Times article. At with a couple of articles recently Wumpus picked it for one quote but it was something else that resonated with me.

To me that is a huge deal. Not only are groups becoming more polarized but these polarized groups are then further self policing. And it is pervasive enough that the Times is posting on it. There was a lot of discussion i the Venezuela thread a while ago on whether socialize or pure capitalism was worse but the answer seemed to be authoritarianism. We know that the Trump side was authoritarian but it looks like any other possible is is authoritarianism based on groupthink. Or perhaps mob rule from the French Revolution. I should have stopped there since that was what triggered me.

Arrendek hit it on the head though. To me this forum is still a salon. It isn’t an outward facing activist space. It’s a group of semi-friends who, from previous examples, already share very similar beliefs. In this space I saw no need to preach to the choir. So I focused on the biggest thing I think is getting ignored online (badly) to segue into a discussion about what to do with the 15-25 (very rough guess) percent of the country that “supported” Trump or other non-Hillary but seem, according to recent polls, to be wavering because Trump is bad.

You did it again. I did not mention Trump in my argument. You mentioned it in yours. You’re having a phantom argument with someone else.

And you’re damn right I believe in shutting down conversations that suggest Hitler was a nice guy, racism is good, and women are property. There are absolutely some topics not worth discussing.

You’re right. When I re-wrote things I said Trump voters. I don’t think there is a significant difference between the word conservative that you used the Trump voters in this discussion. Or, slightly more accurately, I think that there is a distinction but I don’t think you care. You already asked once about labels and now you have chosen to respond without mentioning them.

Stop trying to score point and paint me with implications. Be as open as I have been and actually address my points or don’t respond to me.

  1. If we have moved to an enforced groupthink who gets to be the authoritarian leader? As I have said multiple times this point isn’t about any specific discussion - I’ve seen the effect in online discussions about personal finance and teacher’s issues also.

  2. What is your idea for dealing with the fact that 45+ of this country voted for Trump. Shoot them all? Jail them all? Ignore them all? Clearly it seems you won’t be having a discussion trying to figure out because that is going to have to get into messy areas of what to do about people who never really grokked that what racism is has changed, who knew Trump was racist but were swayed because at least someone finally seemed to address them, or any number of other reasons.

All liberals want is conservatives to admit when they’re wrong. Conservatives, by and large as a group, seem unable to admit they’re wrong. And it’s that dysfunction that’s causing most of our political problems today.

Imagine you’re a moderate German when Hitler is sending the tanks into Poland. “Wait!” you say. “Sure this is bad but this doesn’t mean we can’t have a debate about the Interest Rate!”. Isn’t that guy kind of missing the point? Isn’t his “moderation” just servicing a greater evil?

Or imagine you have Stalin starving millions of Ukrainians by deliberate policy. “Wait!” you say. “Of course this is bad, but what’s really important is the gains to be made if we dam the Volga!” Isn’t that guy missing the point? Is his “moderation” just enabling and normalizing evil?

Today we have lifelong Republicans and Conservative commentators publicly disavowing the Republican party and telling voters to do anything to vote Republicans out. Trump literally lies between his teeth so much, every day, it’s not longer newsworthy.

“Wait!” you say. “I’m uncomfortable with this conversation. I don’t think every Trump voter is evil! I think we need more moderates in power! Both sides are equally bad!”.

Can you see why your sort of argument really flies in the face of the times? It’s the arguments of my parents or grandparents, it’s the way things used to be. But that world is gone now. We live in a scary world that is uncomfortable to “moderates” that want to go back in time before Trump was elected, where both sides are equally bad, where Her Emails and Whitewater made sense, where we could safely wrap ourselves in the warm blanket of Whataboutism and think that both sides are exactly the same and what we need is moderation.

But it’s hard to take a moderate stand when the tanks are rolling into Poland. Sometimes there are fair weathers and sometimes there are storms, and it seems out of touch to stand against the hurricane blowing in your face and say you feel a warm spring breeze.

Then you don’t know shit about me, and you certainly didn’t draw those conclusions from this topic since I literally didn’t talk about Trump voters, and I’ve spent most the time here telling you that the topic of racism, sexism and bigots are NOT partisan.

What are you talking about? Try two minutes reading things without being triggered. I am not attributing those topics to you. I’ve said it before, but not everything is about you. Do I need to give you the Tilda Swinton speech? I am giving you examples of why not every topic under the moon is open for discussion nor should it be. It’s not a thing. So this idea that somehow discussions are shutdown because maybe someone wants to talk about how great slavery is… is ridiculous.

WTF? I am not talking about Trump or his goddamn supporters.

As someone who is watching this from the sidelines, you are the pot calling the kettle black.

Timex screw-off. Your every couple of months trying to be my thought police… go find someone else to fix. You’re literally contributing nothing to this topic.

Because every couple of months you are a total asshole.

If I look at your posting history, will i see your little thought police chasing you around and the list of others you hound? Jesus, back-off.

Not worth it.

The problem with women and non-white people claiming that white men are privileged and on "easy mode’ is that it dismisses wealth and class as a privilege rather than race and gender.

Let’s say that for example, the Fortune 500 has 99% white male CEOs. It’s incredibly easy for non white, non males to point at that at say “see! Racism and privilege!”.

The problem is, this dismisses the hundred million white males in America that will never see the inside of a boardroom. They don’t know anyone who has seen the inside of a boardroom. They have no chance of every seeing the inside of a Fortune 500 company not from the warehouse or call center. They have as much in common with that CEO as their counterpart living in the poor black neighborhood. They struggle and work and get shit on by their corporate masters just like everyone else. And then they are told how easy they have it by minority and women college students and professors who have more privledge and advantages than they ever had or will have.

What does that have to do with whether or not Internet forums and places we converse online are training racists and misogynists to spread the same messages that used to get them banned in a more civil way so they now get people to back-up their point-of-view and defend it instead?

And then they vote for a billionaire who promises to shit on minorities and lock up the woman who is daring to try to run the country without a Y chromosome, because when you’re struggling at home and at work, the most important thing is to show someone else the back of your hand.

I proposed a system where people decide for themselves which things are no longer worth discussing, and the group and moderators attempt to police discussions to the extent that specific topics stay together to help people make that choice. I don’t think any of your examples would be ones I would choose to shut down discussion about - the answer to the question you posed in each case (“is it racist to…”) is “not necessarily, but often the reasoning is implicitly or explicitly racist.” Each of those cases might have substantive, non-racist, non-sexist points to be made on both sides, but one side is far more likely to bust out a “No woman could possibly do X”. These “insights” just reveal an unproductive desire to rehash settled issues.

Also, I’d like to see someone thread a needle where it’s OK to discriminate against Asian applicants to Harvard, but not OK to have affirmative action for African-American applicants.

I think, unfortunately, that this is a poor hope. I fully expect the good side is going to win but I think it will be closer to the end of physical wars; right after WWII how many random German soldiers or civilians said “I was wrong. I was supporting evil.” I know some did but there was also a lot of “I did what I had to do to protect my family.” On a less total physical war note - how many people stood up after the passing of any civil rights legislation you want to name and said “I supported the losing side; I was wrong.” Years later, sure. Privately, sure.

My dad was a climate change denier when it first become an issue. This caused some friction because I tried to hit him head on. But I learned. I dropped any discussion of human caused because it wasn’t important. He might still bristle and fuss if you bring up the idea that it is human caused but he’s now acting like he’s firm believer in the idea that climate is changing and it is going to take human action.

Now I fully understand that racism is a more immediate issue. Arrendek mentioned a key point when he said that getting lasting real change is going to take changing peoples views more or less one on one. Keeping it strictly to my lived experience, my dad and brother in law are both bothered by the employment facts that Wumpus posted (well, similar one’s we’ve talked about not those specific articles). They are not going to change if you constantly tell them the conservatives/Republicans are evil and racist. But oppose the actions without demonizing the people and I think minds can change.

To go back to the war time analogy you see this as the rise of an evil. I see this as more of a last gasp because Trump is turning out even more bumbling and racist than expected. .The Supreme Court hurts but overall I everything looks like a Battle of the Bulge type deal that looks bad, delays things, and hurts but ultimately can’t stop anything. I guess we’ll see in 4 to 6 years.

Timex, thanks but no thanks. Nesrie read something into my posts that wasn’t there. I read something into her’s that wasn’t there. It happens.

Sorry Nesrie, not everything is about you either. I didn’t enter this thread to talk about Trump supporters, or conservatives but it seems that’s where the conversation has gone.

You mean those guys who owned slaves and wouldn’t let women vote? Those guys?

My response is about me.

Because you made it about my views, without knowing what they actually are. Your view of my views is simply not correct.

Yes, those guys. They owned slaves and wouldn’t let women vote? Oh my goodness, mind blown!