"Why do you waste time, your own and your readers’, debating morons like this?"
Sun Tzu:
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in…
"Why do you waste time, your own and your readers’, debating morons like this?"
Sun Tzu:
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
I don't see Julia as my enemy, but she's certainly on the other side of this debate. And to be clear, the side of sanity and rationality is losing. The balance of laws at the moment support treating "gender identity" as if it's more important than sex. They support self ID. They support treating correct pronoun usage as hate speech.
Yes, there are signs that the tide is turning, but there's a long way to go before sanity is restored. And even if it is, we're seeing similar insanity in many other social issues.
Understanding why people like Julia are willing to abandon reality and common sense is essential in persuading them. Calling them stupid isn't going to cut it. Just as them calling people "nazis" or "fascists" or "transphobes" doesn't cut it.
In the spirit of Sun Tzu's Art of War I subscribed to Medium. I think that extreme partisanship puts you in an echo chamber and I try to avoid it and hope to not see people with different views as enemies.
While I hold some views that have inspired people to call me a libtard I must admit that today's political left terrifies me. Not because of what the political right says about them, but because of what I read them saying on Medium. It's as if they want me to see them as enemies.
When I speak of the political left I am thinking of the useful idiots of Marxism. Their open disdain for America, white people, men, and a desire to "fundamentally change America." Fundamental change requires destruction and replacement. To what? There are certainly things that need improvement, but when they openly declare me to be their enemy, how should I perceive them?
When trying to understand the opposing views of others leads to tribalistic othering of enemies it is worrisome.
Yes, me too. I found quite a few people on Medium who feel the same as I do, i.e., classically liberal but now politically homeless. I would have likely stayed on Medium even writing my own articles if they hadn't suddenly kicked me off for defending JK Rowling.
I lean alot harder left than you and today's left terrifies me as well. They are nothing so much as fundamentalists. They are so convicted they have the right answers that they excuse all poor and destructive behavior. They literally are an inquisition in every way excepting the bloodshed. They won't kill. But they will maim and destroy people's reputations and livelihoods and familial relationships. They are are out for revenge and rectification of past social injustices and are employing a horrible black hole of self-righteousness along with language policing as their main weapon.
I fear them as I never feared the right. At least Xtianity has the concept of tolerance (turn the other cheek) and redemption (love thine enemy as thyself), both of which tend to soften most of the extreme behavior - not all - they have their nutcases as well - but not in the numbers we are seeing with the current regressive left - so they aren't quite so destructive.
I am deeply angry about this turn of events, but I try to just focus on creating my own reality and maintaining benefit of the doubt for the individuals I interact with so I don't get too bitter.
I don't retreat from calling the trans fad my enemies. They are nothing else. Their goal of replacing biological sex with jenner idennidy is abhorrent. When they say things like "men can bear children" I just think they're insane. And they are as intensely intolerant in their orthodoxy as MAGA.
I don't want to spar anymore with you on our differences of opinion in finding common ground. When I read something like Julia opened with, that sex is not binary, it's like when I read Thomas Kuhn on scientific discovery and snapped the book shut. Life is too short and I have too little of it left to waste another millisecond on lunacy, or on fanatics of any stripe. I feel about science like some faith people feel about their god and I am ashamed that so many scientists have bought into gender ideology.
I admire your writing and I have stayed on your substack even as I have dropped most others I was on. But we are never going to agree on this. I feel no obligation to find common ground with fools, and I think you are wasting your fine mind and your eloquence with people liek Julia.
Though I find it refreshing when you just flatly deny something one of these people says.
"I don't want to spar anymore with you on our differences of opinion in finding common ground."
Yep, I've long since stopped expecting to change your mind on this particular point. But while you (occasionally with good reason) accuse me of engaging with people for too long, I think you're far too quick to disengage.
If you take every incorrect or inaccurate statement as an immediate sign to dismiss people as idiots, you risk placing yourself in an echo chamber every bit as tight as the people you criticise. And you waste an opportunity to understand how this mind virus works and stop it.
The fact that trans ideology (and MAGA for that matter) have gotten so far is proof of the painful truth that simply being correct isn't enough.
So I'd much rather carefully refute some claim that the people who have been indoctrinated by this nonsense make, citing the evidence, and hopefully express myself in a way that they can hear and think more deeply about later, than call them idiots, give them one more excuse to claim that everybody who disagrees with them is a "meany" and encourage them to shut their eyes and ears that bit more tightly to the truth.
I've actually been thinking of digging up my own copy of Sun Tzu for a new read. The last time I read it was because I learned a lot of corporate types read it. Now I want to know how to handle our virtue-signalling, scientifically illiterate adversaries.
scientifically illiterate - yes. But they are very linguistically gifted - which is the problem. They are glib and know how to spin language and confuse people.
No, William F. Buckley was linguistically gifted. So was Rudolf Nabokov. So is Barack Obama. The wokies are good at obfuscation and smokescreening - and manipulation. We've been too permissive allowing them to erase the edges and boundaries around words. I intend to drag them kicking and screaming back to the Enlightenment - with facts, evidence, and original intentions of words, particularly critically important ones like violence, white supremacy, rape culture, and of course their favourite word victims, man & woman. What our adversaries are especially gifted at is spouting academic jargonbabble to sound more educated and intelligent than thou, when I'm convinced they don't even themselves know what they're saying - nor do they care. "That's just the sort of stochastic reductive hegemonic polemic I would expect from Jordan Peterson. His socio-political liminal praxis empowers the heteronormative metacognition, ontologically speaking, which plays right into the hands of dynamically cartesian prevarications wielded solely by phallocentric right-wing constructivists hell-bent on genociding the infant non-binaries equivocating their interdisciplinary queered false dichotomous perspectives!"
Same title, different book, and the original figures highly in the story. Australian SF writer Peter Cawdron, and a friend, I am one of his beta readers and you'll see my name in the credits at the end. I found quite a few corrections in this one.
This is maybe his 30th book about first contact between humans and aliens, and he keeps getting better. This one is a real page-turner.
"Wherever Seeds May Fall" is another really good one, and his only book with a sequel.
I suspect that the payback will be a huge effort to make the Palestinians in Gaza wish that Hamas didn't exist. The suffering will be horrific for people who didn't ask for that shit.
Yeah, there's plenty of blame on the Palestinians as well. What no one remembers is how their ancestors invaded 1300 years ago and pushed out a lot of the Jews. Their religion has a hate-on for Judaism as well as Christianity in their holy book. It's a religious community that clearly accepts terrorism to some degree although I know #NotAllMuslims. Hamas has sworn to destroy the Jewish state and so far, a fuckuva lot of Palies are cheering the attack on Israel. So they shouldn't be surprised that many of their own will die, and I'm sure plenty of war crimes will be committed against them too. I hope they enjoy it, they asked for it.
It's a centuries-long tit-for-tat that will go on long after we're dead. Hamas knew what would happen when they did what they did, and they're backed by israel-hating Iran. I imagine the carnage against the Palies won't be so bad that they'll rethink their love affair with violence and anti-Semitism.
I'm no fan of Israel either, BTW. I know how brutal they've been to the Palies. I have to hold my nose whenever I say anything supportive of either side, because frankly I wish they'd ALL fuck off to another planet. They're both brutal shits.
As a Marine I learned that in war there are no good guys and bad guys, just our guys and their guys. I also saw the suffering of the non-combatants who wanted no part of any of it. Not everyone in Palestine supports Hamas.
I knew a Palestinian who moved to the US at the age of 18. He said that as a child he wondered why the Israelis frequently shut off the water and/or electricity. The children now must be wondering why they are being bombed.
"Why do you waste time, your own and your readers’, debating morons like this?"
Sun Tzu:
"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."
I don't see Julia as my enemy, but she's certainly on the other side of this debate. And to be clear, the side of sanity and rationality is losing. The balance of laws at the moment support treating "gender identity" as if it's more important than sex. They support self ID. They support treating correct pronoun usage as hate speech.
Yes, there are signs that the tide is turning, but there's a long way to go before sanity is restored. And even if it is, we're seeing similar insanity in many other social issues.
Understanding why people like Julia are willing to abandon reality and common sense is essential in persuading them. Calling them stupid isn't going to cut it. Just as them calling people "nazis" or "fascists" or "transphobes" doesn't cut it.
In the spirit of Sun Tzu's Art of War I subscribed to Medium. I think that extreme partisanship puts you in an echo chamber and I try to avoid it and hope to not see people with different views as enemies.
While I hold some views that have inspired people to call me a libtard I must admit that today's political left terrifies me. Not because of what the political right says about them, but because of what I read them saying on Medium. It's as if they want me to see them as enemies.
When I speak of the political left I am thinking of the useful idiots of Marxism. Their open disdain for America, white people, men, and a desire to "fundamentally change America." Fundamental change requires destruction and replacement. To what? There are certainly things that need improvement, but when they openly declare me to be their enemy, how should I perceive them?
When trying to understand the opposing views of others leads to tribalistic othering of enemies it is worrisome.
Yes, me too. I found quite a few people on Medium who feel the same as I do, i.e., classically liberal but now politically homeless. I would have likely stayed on Medium even writing my own articles if they hadn't suddenly kicked me off for defending JK Rowling.
I lean alot harder left than you and today's left terrifies me as well. They are nothing so much as fundamentalists. They are so convicted they have the right answers that they excuse all poor and destructive behavior. They literally are an inquisition in every way excepting the bloodshed. They won't kill. But they will maim and destroy people's reputations and livelihoods and familial relationships. They are are out for revenge and rectification of past social injustices and are employing a horrible black hole of self-righteousness along with language policing as their main weapon.
I fear them as I never feared the right. At least Xtianity has the concept of tolerance (turn the other cheek) and redemption (love thine enemy as thyself), both of which tend to soften most of the extreme behavior - not all - they have their nutcases as well - but not in the numbers we are seeing with the current regressive left - so they aren't quite so destructive.
I am deeply angry about this turn of events, but I try to just focus on creating my own reality and maintaining benefit of the doubt for the individuals I interact with so I don't get too bitter.
Scary how well and how often you write my thoughts better than I can.
Thanks Miguelitro. I often have the same thought pertaining to you.
I don't retreat from calling the trans fad my enemies. They are nothing else. Their goal of replacing biological sex with jenner idennidy is abhorrent. When they say things like "men can bear children" I just think they're insane. And they are as intensely intolerant in their orthodoxy as MAGA.
I don't want to spar anymore with you on our differences of opinion in finding common ground. When I read something like Julia opened with, that sex is not binary, it's like when I read Thomas Kuhn on scientific discovery and snapped the book shut. Life is too short and I have too little of it left to waste another millisecond on lunacy, or on fanatics of any stripe. I feel about science like some faith people feel about their god and I am ashamed that so many scientists have bought into gender ideology.
I admire your writing and I have stayed on your substack even as I have dropped most others I was on. But we are never going to agree on this. I feel no obligation to find common ground with fools, and I think you are wasting your fine mind and your eloquence with people liek Julia.
Though I find it refreshing when you just flatly deny something one of these people says.
"I don't want to spar anymore with you on our differences of opinion in finding common ground."
Yep, I've long since stopped expecting to change your mind on this particular point. But while you (occasionally with good reason) accuse me of engaging with people for too long, I think you're far too quick to disengage.
If you take every incorrect or inaccurate statement as an immediate sign to dismiss people as idiots, you risk placing yourself in an echo chamber every bit as tight as the people you criticise. And you waste an opportunity to understand how this mind virus works and stop it.
The fact that trans ideology (and MAGA for that matter) have gotten so far is proof of the painful truth that simply being correct isn't enough.
So I'd much rather carefully refute some claim that the people who have been indoctrinated by this nonsense make, citing the evidence, and hopefully express myself in a way that they can hear and think more deeply about later, than call them idiots, give them one more excuse to claim that everybody who disagrees with them is a "meany" and encourage them to shut their eyes and ears that bit more tightly to the truth.
I've actually been thinking of digging up my own copy of Sun Tzu for a new read. The last time I read it was because I learned a lot of corporate types read it. Now I want to know how to handle our virtue-signalling, scientifically illiterate adversaries.
scientifically illiterate - yes. But they are very linguistically gifted - which is the problem. They are glib and know how to spin language and confuse people.
"They are glib and know how to spin language and confuse people."
Absolutely. They have that in common with Trump actually.
No, William F. Buckley was linguistically gifted. So was Rudolf Nabokov. So is Barack Obama. The wokies are good at obfuscation and smokescreening - and manipulation. We've been too permissive allowing them to erase the edges and boundaries around words. I intend to drag them kicking and screaming back to the Enlightenment - with facts, evidence, and original intentions of words, particularly critically important ones like violence, white supremacy, rape culture, and of course their favourite word victims, man & woman. What our adversaries are especially gifted at is spouting academic jargonbabble to sound more educated and intelligent than thou, when I'm convinced they don't even themselves know what they're saying - nor do they care. "That's just the sort of stochastic reductive hegemonic polemic I would expect from Jordan Peterson. His socio-political liminal praxis empowers the heteronormative metacognition, ontologically speaking, which plays right into the hands of dynamically cartesian prevarications wielded solely by phallocentric right-wing constructivists hell-bent on genociding the infant non-binaries equivocating their interdisciplinary queered false dichotomous perspectives!"
See? Now I'm so much smarter than you! ;)
It took just a moment to see what you did there ;0)
You had me at “phallocentric right-wing constructivists.” 🤣🤣
https://www.amazon.com/Art-War-First-Contact-ebook/dp/B0C47ZT9QM/ref=sr_1_1
Same title, different book, and the original figures highly in the story. Australian SF writer Peter Cawdron, and a friend, I am one of his beta readers and you'll see my name in the credits at the end. I found quite a few corrections in this one.
This is maybe his 30th book about first contact between humans and aliens, and he keeps getting better. This one is a real page-turner.
"Wherever Seeds May Fall" is another really good one, and his only book with a sequel.
This one isn't my thing, but thanks for the rec.
Interesting.
He's a very good writer. You would love the military detail.
"All warfare is based on deception" is the most foundational idea.
Well it sure worked for Hamas.
I suspect that the payback will be a huge effort to make the Palestinians in Gaza wish that Hamas didn't exist. The suffering will be horrific for people who didn't ask for that shit.
And Israel is again bombing hospitals.
“We do not target civilians,” they always say.
As they continue their slow-motion Holocaust in the West Bank.
And the settlers do a Hamas every few weeks. EVERY few weeks.
Yeah, there's plenty of blame on the Palestinians as well. What no one remembers is how their ancestors invaded 1300 years ago and pushed out a lot of the Jews. Their religion has a hate-on for Judaism as well as Christianity in their holy book. It's a religious community that clearly accepts terrorism to some degree although I know #NotAllMuslims. Hamas has sworn to destroy the Jewish state and so far, a fuckuva lot of Palies are cheering the attack on Israel. So they shouldn't be surprised that many of their own will die, and I'm sure plenty of war crimes will be committed against them too. I hope they enjoy it, they asked for it.
It's a centuries-long tit-for-tat that will go on long after we're dead. Hamas knew what would happen when they did what they did, and they're backed by israel-hating Iran. I imagine the carnage against the Palies won't be so bad that they'll rethink their love affair with violence and anti-Semitism.
I'm no fan of Israel either, BTW. I know how brutal they've been to the Palies. I have to hold my nose whenever I say anything supportive of either side, because frankly I wish they'd ALL fuck off to another planet. They're both brutal shits.
As a Marine I learned that in war there are no good guys and bad guys, just our guys and their guys. I also saw the suffering of the non-combatants who wanted no part of any of it. Not everyone in Palestine supports Hamas.
I knew a Palestinian who moved to the US at the age of 18. He said that as a child he wondered why the Israelis frequently shut off the water and/or electricity. The children now must be wondering why they are being bombed.
Today I wonder whether Israeli children are wondering why they got kidnapped, or their brothers and sisters slaughtered in a kibbutz.
Or why their uncle was blown up at a Sbarro's years ago.
Israeli schoolchildren must wonder why the Palestinians vowed many decades ago to 'drive all the Jews into the sea'.
Tit-for-tat is a very ugly game in which everyone loses, every single time.
https://youtu.be/5y2FuDY6Q4M?si=6Qmb0wiHJ4PUwM_m