“maybe we can fix the culture war with some culture diplomacy.” And maybe the horse will learn to sing. You have a good heart Steve but this sow’s ear will make no silk purse. You do yourself harm on twitter. No I am not calling people cockroaches. A lot of people on Twitter are truly sick. Engaging is futile. Remember that Daryl Davis worked in person, not on Twitter.
“maybe we can fix the culture war with some culture diplomacy.”
And maybe the horse will learn to sing.
You have a good heart Steve but this sow’s ear will make no silk purse. You do yourself harm on twitter.
No I am not calling people cockroaches. A lot of people on Twitter are truly sick. Engaging is futile. Remember that Daryl Davis worked in person, not on Twitter.
Haha, somehow I had a feeling this would be your take. But ask yourself this; as the culture wars have been ramping up over the last few years, as the rhetoric has become more extreme and the arguments have become more vicious, what's been your sense of the potential for progress?
Do you look at the rollback on abortion rights or the incoming attacks on gay/interracial/interpolitical marriage and think we need more absolutism and to spend less time listening to each other?
Do you look at the "racial reckoning" and all the toxicity that created for and between white people *and* black people, and think "what we needed there was less diplomacy and more of a warlike mentality"?
I should repeat, Twitter, and really the internet in general, is almost perfectly designed to make communication difficult. I wish there were better channels to increase understanding. But ultimately, the problem isn't the means of communication, it's us. It's how we choose to communicate. It's whether we have the maturity to ignore/laugh off the idiots (usually children) who block and insult like children throwing a tantrum.
The comments on Medium can get just as toxic as the comments on Twitter, they're just longer. And while I agree that in person conversations are infinitely better for civil discourse, people are more honest online (for better and worse). And you can also, obviously, reach exponentially more people.
"Do you look at the rollback on abortion rights or the incoming attacks on gay/interracial/interpolitical marriage and think we need more absolutism and to spend less time listening to each other?"
No. I look at our lost progress and see what listening to each other is not working.
Edit: I need to be honest here. I think the idea that decisive majorities on the right can be reached and persuaded is just plain starry-eyed. Yeah it would be great if people listened to each other but it's the Trump trash who are managing to conscript the decent people, not the other way around. I have run into too many people I used to know who I don't know anymore, including some of the very last I would have expected to become so vile.
"No. I look at our lost progress and see what listening to each other is not working."
Do you really see this as a result of having listened to each other too much?! Trump, at least as far as I see, is a symptom of years of, particularly poor white people in middle America, not being listened to.
A nice big wall to keep immigrants out, magical clean coal that would bring prosperity back to mining towns, making America number one again in a world where China and India will clearly soon dominate, plus the "tell it like it is" populism and misogyny that's popular amongst a certain type.
I'm always amazed when people point to his hypocrisy or womanising as reasons why they can't believe people voted for him. First, some of his voters share those qualities, but also, how many other politicians have shared those qualities throughout history? JFK and Bill Clinton just to name two presidential examples. Were these failings disqualifying for them? Nope. Because most people don't vote in support of "their guy" anymore. They vote to keep the other guy out.
People have become so extreme precisely because the idea that we can reach each other and compromise with each other has fallen so far out of fashion. We aren't even listening to what "the other side" is saying anymore. Each side is convinced that the other is evil or sick and wants to destroy society. And worse, each side gets manipulated by anyone unscrupulous enough to maintain this lie.
Imaginary condescension pushed by the Republicans who wouldn’t let their wages rise. Blame illegal immigrants. Watch TV and do nothing to improve their skills.
But “Hillary” called them “deplorables.” So that explains everything.
Offered retraining into better jobs, they’d rather go back down into the mines even though coal was dying.
Trump, McCarthy, Cruz, Paul, Greene, Palin, Boebert, Lake, CPAC, what am I supposed to respect?
There was once a set of frankly disagreeable values that served as a legitimate foil for liberals’ tendency to throw money at problems. That’s gone. The core value of contemporary conservatism is cruelty. And it’s become an ignorance cult.
I don’t apologize for having contempt for that. I feel no need to stake out some middle ground for its own sake.
The most reasonable and rational conservative I’ve spoken with in the last five years told me that yes he had reservations about Trump but that he admired him for getting the world to fear America again.
Not respect. Fear.
Some story about the Chinese showing Obama some petty disrespect, which Obama, being an adult, probably laughed about.
Ok, anecdote.
But I repeat: why should I not be contemptuous? Should I lean on those who aren’t MAGA? Maybe they’re even the majority. But they’re still aboard. Hell, even that troglodyte George Will left.
"Each side is convinced that the other is evil or sick and wants to destroy society."
Yeah, each side claims to believe this.
Please don't tell me you believe that both have equally valid points.
Are both left and right trying to destroy democracy?
"the idea that we can reach each other and compromise with each other has fallen so far out of fashion. "
It is not that it has fallen out of fashion. Rather, it has become absurd. I sure as hell don't want anything conservatives are selling because it's all vile, and for them, there is no distinction between compromise and betrayal, See "RINO."
"Please don't tell me you believe that both have equally valid points."
I think they both have points. I don't think it's in the interests of the sane people in the middle to quibble about whether they're equal but rather to oppose *all* the insanity whoever it's coming from.
The left: The sexualisation of children, trans surgeries for minors, male rapists in female prisons, lying about racial history, majority control of the mainstream media leading to skewed or outright incorrect public information (see certain aspects of COVID response, ignorance about police brutality and its impact on black people)...
The right: The sexualisation of children, rollback of abortion rights, gay marriage, interracial marriage, lying about racial history, total rejection of anything in the "mainstream media" leading to absolute insanity (see people who truly believe the election was stolen, that COVID was a hoax)...
I could go on and on.
The point is, both the left and the right point to these insanities and criticise them. And both the left and the right are correct in doing so. The only problem is they wilfully ignore the problems on their side of the aisle.
I like to think I'm sane but I don't have any attraction to the middle, that's for roadkill.
Call it a copout but as you're read before, I don't think the "trans" shit has anything to do with the actual political left. And to be fair I could say the same for MAGA and the right. Both are founded on lies, though I think that a lot of people who call themselves Republicans are on board with MAGA; I see some, but not much, repudiation of the swastika-flag right. OTOH I read a lot of opposition to surgery on kids.
But. I also see one hell of a lot of denial among what I will provisionally call Democrats, people who think that nobody under 18 has had surgery, that the barriers to transitioning from 30 years ago are still in place, angry denial that parents' rights are being overruled if their kid gets on TikTok and decides she's "trans." I've even forwarded some of the links from your backlash article and I get responses that they are printed in biased sources. Anyway.
What you're saying up there is exactly what I've been saying: MAGA and "woke" are mirror images.
I was talking about the "contempt for conservatives" thing. I think they get as least as much contempt from the scoundrels they vote for as from (probably largely fictitious) "leftist elites." I admit I've used phrases like "trailer trash" though not lately but I've used "SJW lunatic" a lot more lately.
Edit: I actually doubt that as many believe the election was stolen as say it; I think it's a qualification for membership and they just say it to belong. Since honesty isn't even a tertiary priority among conservatives now they don't mind knowingly speaking a lie if it makes them feel like they have a group.
The corresponding utterance on the other side is the "trans woman" shit. I don't know how many actually believe that but don't forget how few people know anything about science, any more than those who do know some and insist that biological sex is a continuum.
"I actually doubt that as many believe the election was stolen as say it; I think it's a qualification for membership and they just say it to belong."
Yeah, exactly. Same for the liberals claiming that men can transubstantiate into women. They don't believe it. I've seen them caught out countless times in conversation. But they'll pretend they do until their dying breath. The overwhelming majority of vocal opposition to trans surgery on kids or men in women's spaces is coming from the political right. I've lost count of the num per of times I've been labelled "right wing" whenever I speak about trans issues.
And while you might argue that trans ideology has nothing to do with the actual political left, and while yyou're technically correct, its rhetoric is found exclusively on the political left. Just as MAGA, while nothing to do with genuine political conservatism (and sometimes in direct opposition to it) is nonetheless found exclusively on the political right.
"And while you might argue that trans ideology has nothing to do with the actual political left, and while yyou're technically correct, its rhetoric is found exclusively on the political left. Just as MAGA, while nothing to do with genuine political conservatism (and sometimes in direct opposition to it) is nonetheless found exclusively on the political right."
I think the whole left-right formulation has broken down. Neither extreme is about ideology, both are about belonging, about membership in what we have come to call tribes.
Trump lost; a "trans" woman is a man.
There. I just excluded myself from both.
But this is really bad because when truth is no longer a value then we are in a lot of trouble, and the timing could not be worse. Both tribes are getting crazier and now craziness has bcome a competition.
There is nothing in Das Kapital about gender ideology and nothing in Mein Kampf about it either.
But I still deny the symmetry. A huge percentage of Republicans want Trump back, and even the ones who don't are still party members. A huge number of Democrats don't want children mutilated but a distressing number of them don't even believe it's happening.
We inna heapa trubble no matter how you look at it.
I don't think the symmetry between MAGA and the "trans" cult is any more incidental that both are coming at the same time.
Maybe it's as simple as the harmfulness of social media but I see it as something more frightening, a breakdown of our fundamental concepts of truth and falsehood. That First Amendment garbage won't allow us to shut down social media, though there is talk of banning TikTok for national security reasons, but while I think that would help, both movements would find ways to keep the propaganda flowing.
No, I think we are seeing the beginning of a global crackup. Everyone knows that the future is looking very grim, maybe they feel the approach of some Omega Point.
I could understand if those falling for the extremities were already unbalanced people, but a lot of them arent. Some of the people who've gone MAGA were decent human beings before and a lot of people buying into "trans" are educated enough to know better.
During the "bug-givers" craze when HIV+ men were infecting others, lying about their status, showing someone else's test results, putting on a condom but then perforating it (yes all this really happened) I once cornered someone in a gay club and tried to get him to concede that these men were murderers.
It didn't go very well.
He kept babbling some nonsense about "personal responsibility" and when I tore that up he actually broke out into a sweat, a gush of perspiration, breathing hard and scared to death of making a value judgment. I wasn't intimidating him, I wasn't blocking him.
But he broke out and ran away so fast he tripped.
And this was from me demanding that he admit the trivially obvious.
Parts of the gay culture built a mysticism around HIV; they would get an HIV- tattoo with the goal of having it extended with a vertical crossbar to HIV+. It became a rite of passage.
We live in a truth and validity free world where belief filtered perception is a person's belief in what is truth.
When President Obama said that he wanted to fundamentally change America, it gave me pause. Fundamental change requires destruction of the old. How could someone who loves America as it exists in their perception not view him, and people with the same wish, as wanting to destroy America? It would be illogical for them to not think that.
When the far right wants to nullify the changes that have made the nation more humane, how can people who see these much-needed changes as improvement not view them as wanting to destroy the improved America of their vision? It would be illogical for them to not think that.
A conflict of visions in what is truth and virtue. I could quote the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, "We both have truths, are mine the same as yours?"
This is well-expressed but it distresses me that you leave it at symmetry.
America needs transformation to survive, beginning with getting away from hydrocarbon fuels. The past means inequality, small wondere that some go so far as to say that slavery wasn't so bad. You got three hots and a cot, so what if the master got to sodomize your daughter.
Asymmetry is not a binary yes/no. That does not imply that I see equality in asymmetry. I agree with you in defining better value to one side of an asymmetric ratio, but sometimes "they" have it right. You grudgingly acknowledge it with the conservative view of trans radicalism. I admit that am a bit obsessive in trying to not become too ridged and dogmatic.
“maybe we can fix the culture war with some culture diplomacy.”
And maybe the horse will learn to sing.
You have a good heart Steve but this sow’s ear will make no silk purse. You do yourself harm on twitter.
No I am not calling people cockroaches. A lot of people on Twitter are truly sick. Engaging is futile. Remember that Daryl Davis worked in person, not on Twitter.
"And maybe the horse will learn to sing."
Haha, somehow I had a feeling this would be your take. But ask yourself this; as the culture wars have been ramping up over the last few years, as the rhetoric has become more extreme and the arguments have become more vicious, what's been your sense of the potential for progress?
Do you look at the rollback on abortion rights or the incoming attacks on gay/interracial/interpolitical marriage and think we need more absolutism and to spend less time listening to each other?
Do you look at the "racial reckoning" and all the toxicity that created for and between white people *and* black people, and think "what we needed there was less diplomacy and more of a warlike mentality"?
I should repeat, Twitter, and really the internet in general, is almost perfectly designed to make communication difficult. I wish there were better channels to increase understanding. But ultimately, the problem isn't the means of communication, it's us. It's how we choose to communicate. It's whether we have the maturity to ignore/laugh off the idiots (usually children) who block and insult like children throwing a tantrum.
The comments on Medium can get just as toxic as the comments on Twitter, they're just longer. And while I agree that in person conversations are infinitely better for civil discourse, people are more honest online (for better and worse). And you can also, obviously, reach exponentially more people.
"Do you look at the rollback on abortion rights or the incoming attacks on gay/interracial/interpolitical marriage and think we need more absolutism and to spend less time listening to each other?"
No. I look at our lost progress and see what listening to each other is not working.
Edit: I need to be honest here. I think the idea that decisive majorities on the right can be reached and persuaded is just plain starry-eyed. Yeah it would be great if people listened to each other but it's the Trump trash who are managing to conscript the decent people, not the other way around. I have run into too many people I used to know who I don't know anymore, including some of the very last I would have expected to become so vile.
"No. I look at our lost progress and see what listening to each other is not working."
Do you really see this as a result of having listened to each other too much?! Trump, at least as far as I see, is a symptom of years of, particularly poor white people in middle America, not being listened to.
A nice big wall to keep immigrants out, magical clean coal that would bring prosperity back to mining towns, making America number one again in a world where China and India will clearly soon dominate, plus the "tell it like it is" populism and misogyny that's popular amongst a certain type.
I'm always amazed when people point to his hypocrisy or womanising as reasons why they can't believe people voted for him. First, some of his voters share those qualities, but also, how many other politicians have shared those qualities throughout history? JFK and Bill Clinton just to name two presidential examples. Were these failings disqualifying for them? Nope. Because most people don't vote in support of "their guy" anymore. They vote to keep the other guy out.
People have become so extreme precisely because the idea that we can reach each other and compromise with each other has fallen so far out of fashion. We aren't even listening to what "the other side" is saying anymore. Each side is convinced that the other is evil or sick and wants to destroy society. And worse, each side gets manipulated by anyone unscrupulous enough to maintain this lie.
"Trump ... A symptom of years of, particularly poor white people in middle America, not being listened to."
Exactly, and exacerbated by the contempt expressed for them by the elitist left.
https://youtu.be/nWfQCDaAa6s
I think you have it backwards.
How so?
Imaginary condescension pushed by the Republicans who wouldn’t let their wages rise. Blame illegal immigrants. Watch TV and do nothing to improve their skills.
But “Hillary” called them “deplorables.” So that explains everything.
Offered retraining into better jobs, they’d rather go back down into the mines even though coal was dying.
Is your frequent expression of contempt for conservatives an imaginary perception on my part?
Trump, McCarthy, Cruz, Paul, Greene, Palin, Boebert, Lake, CPAC, what am I supposed to respect?
There was once a set of frankly disagreeable values that served as a legitimate foil for liberals’ tendency to throw money at problems. That’s gone. The core value of contemporary conservatism is cruelty. And it’s become an ignorance cult.
I don’t apologize for having contempt for that. I feel no need to stake out some middle ground for its own sake.
The most reasonable and rational conservative I’ve spoken with in the last five years told me that yes he had reservations about Trump but that he admired him for getting the world to fear America again.
Not respect. Fear.
Some story about the Chinese showing Obama some petty disrespect, which Obama, being an adult, probably laughed about.
Ok, anecdote.
But I repeat: why should I not be contemptuous? Should I lean on those who aren’t MAGA? Maybe they’re even the majority. But they’re still aboard. Hell, even that troglodyte George Will left.
"Each side is convinced that the other is evil or sick and wants to destroy society."
Yeah, each side claims to believe this.
Please don't tell me you believe that both have equally valid points.
Are both left and right trying to destroy democracy?
"the idea that we can reach each other and compromise with each other has fallen so far out of fashion. "
It is not that it has fallen out of fashion. Rather, it has become absurd. I sure as hell don't want anything conservatives are selling because it's all vile, and for them, there is no distinction between compromise and betrayal, See "RINO."
"Please don't tell me you believe that both have equally valid points."
I think they both have points. I don't think it's in the interests of the sane people in the middle to quibble about whether they're equal but rather to oppose *all* the insanity whoever it's coming from.
The left: The sexualisation of children, trans surgeries for minors, male rapists in female prisons, lying about racial history, majority control of the mainstream media leading to skewed or outright incorrect public information (see certain aspects of COVID response, ignorance about police brutality and its impact on black people)...
The right: The sexualisation of children, rollback of abortion rights, gay marriage, interracial marriage, lying about racial history, total rejection of anything in the "mainstream media" leading to absolute insanity (see people who truly believe the election was stolen, that COVID was a hoax)...
I could go on and on.
The point is, both the left and the right point to these insanities and criticise them. And both the left and the right are correct in doing so. The only problem is they wilfully ignore the problems on their side of the aisle.
"sane people in the middle"
I like to think I'm sane but I don't have any attraction to the middle, that's for roadkill.
Call it a copout but as you're read before, I don't think the "trans" shit has anything to do with the actual political left. And to be fair I could say the same for MAGA and the right. Both are founded on lies, though I think that a lot of people who call themselves Republicans are on board with MAGA; I see some, but not much, repudiation of the swastika-flag right. OTOH I read a lot of opposition to surgery on kids.
But. I also see one hell of a lot of denial among what I will provisionally call Democrats, people who think that nobody under 18 has had surgery, that the barriers to transitioning from 30 years ago are still in place, angry denial that parents' rights are being overruled if their kid gets on TikTok and decides she's "trans." I've even forwarded some of the links from your backlash article and I get responses that they are printed in biased sources. Anyway.
What you're saying up there is exactly what I've been saying: MAGA and "woke" are mirror images.
I was talking about the "contempt for conservatives" thing. I think they get as least as much contempt from the scoundrels they vote for as from (probably largely fictitious) "leftist elites." I admit I've used phrases like "trailer trash" though not lately but I've used "SJW lunatic" a lot more lately.
Edit: I actually doubt that as many believe the election was stolen as say it; I think it's a qualification for membership and they just say it to belong. Since honesty isn't even a tertiary priority among conservatives now they don't mind knowingly speaking a lie if it makes them feel like they have a group.
The corresponding utterance on the other side is the "trans woman" shit. I don't know how many actually believe that but don't forget how few people know anything about science, any more than those who do know some and insist that biological sex is a continuum.
It's like global ergotism.
"I actually doubt that as many believe the election was stolen as say it; I think it's a qualification for membership and they just say it to belong."
Yeah, exactly. Same for the liberals claiming that men can transubstantiate into women. They don't believe it. I've seen them caught out countless times in conversation. But they'll pretend they do until their dying breath. The overwhelming majority of vocal opposition to trans surgery on kids or men in women's spaces is coming from the political right. I've lost count of the num per of times I've been labelled "right wing" whenever I speak about trans issues.
And while you might argue that trans ideology has nothing to do with the actual political left, and while yyou're technically correct, its rhetoric is found exclusively on the political left. Just as MAGA, while nothing to do with genuine political conservatism (and sometimes in direct opposition to it) is nonetheless found exclusively on the political right.
"And while you might argue that trans ideology has nothing to do with the actual political left, and while yyou're technically correct, its rhetoric is found exclusively on the political left. Just as MAGA, while nothing to do with genuine political conservatism (and sometimes in direct opposition to it) is nonetheless found exclusively on the political right."
I think the whole left-right formulation has broken down. Neither extreme is about ideology, both are about belonging, about membership in what we have come to call tribes.
Trump lost; a "trans" woman is a man.
There. I just excluded myself from both.
But this is really bad because when truth is no longer a value then we are in a lot of trouble, and the timing could not be worse. Both tribes are getting crazier and now craziness has bcome a competition.
There is nothing in Das Kapital about gender ideology and nothing in Mein Kampf about it either.
But I still deny the symmetry. A huge percentage of Republicans want Trump back, and even the ones who don't are still party members. A huge number of Democrats don't want children mutilated but a distressing number of them don't even believe it's happening.
We inna heapa trubble no matter how you look at it.
I don't think the symmetry between MAGA and the "trans" cult is any more incidental that both are coming at the same time.
Maybe it's as simple as the harmfulness of social media but I see it as something more frightening, a breakdown of our fundamental concepts of truth and falsehood. That First Amendment garbage won't allow us to shut down social media, though there is talk of banning TikTok for national security reasons, but while I think that would help, both movements would find ways to keep the propaganda flowing.
No, I think we are seeing the beginning of a global crackup. Everyone knows that the future is looking very grim, maybe they feel the approach of some Omega Point.
I could understand if those falling for the extremities were already unbalanced people, but a lot of them arent. Some of the people who've gone MAGA were decent human beings before and a lot of people buying into "trans" are educated enough to know better.
During the "bug-givers" craze when HIV+ men were infecting others, lying about their status, showing someone else's test results, putting on a condom but then perforating it (yes all this really happened) I once cornered someone in a gay club and tried to get him to concede that these men were murderers.
It didn't go very well.
He kept babbling some nonsense about "personal responsibility" and when I tore that up he actually broke out into a sweat, a gush of perspiration, breathing hard and scared to death of making a value judgment. I wasn't intimidating him, I wasn't blocking him.
But he broke out and ran away so fast he tripped.
And this was from me demanding that he admit the trivially obvious.
Parts of the gay culture built a mysticism around HIV; they would get an HIV- tattoo with the goal of having it extended with a vertical crossbar to HIV+. It became a rite of passage.
We live in a truth and validity free world where belief filtered perception is a person's belief in what is truth.
When President Obama said that he wanted to fundamentally change America, it gave me pause. Fundamental change requires destruction of the old. How could someone who loves America as it exists in their perception not view him, and people with the same wish, as wanting to destroy America? It would be illogical for them to not think that.
When the far right wants to nullify the changes that have made the nation more humane, how can people who see these much-needed changes as improvement not view them as wanting to destroy the improved America of their vision? It would be illogical for them to not think that.
A conflict of visions in what is truth and virtue. I could quote the rock opera, Jesus Christ Superstar, "We both have truths, are mine the same as yours?"
This is well-expressed but it distresses me that you leave it at symmetry.
America needs transformation to survive, beginning with getting away from hydrocarbon fuels. The past means inequality, small wondere that some go so far as to say that slavery wasn't so bad. You got three hots and a cot, so what if the master got to sodomize your daughter.
we must not shy away from convictions.
We're better than they are.
Asymmetry is not a binary yes/no. That does not imply that I see equality in asymmetry. I agree with you in defining better value to one side of an asymmetric ratio, but sometimes "they" have it right. You grudgingly acknowledge it with the conservative view of trans radicalism. I admit that am a bit obsessive in trying to not become too ridged and dogmatic.
“Rigid.”
I think my credentials as a non-mindless progressive are established. I hope so.
I’ll bite. No mockery.
What do conservatives get right, aside from the gender horseshit?