"I find arguments based on 'not one or de udder budda liddle bidda both' to be every bit as irritating as 'who gets to decide.'"
I don't think the issue is whether they're irritating, the issue is whether they're true. And of course, "not one or the other" is true in most cases (who gets to decide is a different problem).
"I find arguments based on 'not one or de udder budda liddle bidda both' to be every bit as irritating as 'who gets to decide.'"
I don't think the issue is whether they're irritating, the issue is whether they're true. And of course, "not one or the other" is true in most cases (who gets to decide is a different problem).
Male/female is one of the very few genuine binaries I can think of (I'm pretty sure we agree that quibbling over the 0.02% of people with ambiguous intersex conditions is asinine). Black and white is far from a meaningful binary. And while male and female is a binary, man and woman (or let's say masculine and feminine) is far less clear-cut in this day and age (which I personally think is a good thing).
And I know we disagree, but liberal/conservative isn't nearly as clear-cut as you seem to think it is either. Not least because there's a great deal of diversity of opinion among conservatives.
I mean, just consider the left. It spans from communists to post modernists to the centre left. I suspect close to 100% of the "attention-craving fad movement" would call themselves liberals (and most conservatives definitely would). Yet you disagree with them extraordinarily strongly.
So yes, the complexity of humans can certainly be irritating. It requires far more energy than thinking of them as "them and the rest of us". But I'm going to keep pointing out how limiting a way to look at the world the latter is.
I didn't express myself very well. I had news yesterday that one of my best and oldest friends just died; I've known her over 20 years and spoke to her only a few weeks ago, She had told me she was back in treatment but not that death was imminent. My thoughts are all disorganized. Cancer.
The point I absolutely failed to make: your opening article in this thread is about people being externally forced into binary formulations. As one parent sneered to me after I asked him to stop using "they" so confusingly, "society's little boxes." Yeah that his child has a twibby and not a putz is a "social construct." His nastiness was legendary.
My point, barely alluded to in my response, is how stridently people strive to fit into one little box or another. An INTERNAL force. Both ends of the political spectrum do this. And while conservatives ae as a whole more orthodoxy-policing (see Cheney, Liz), the social justice warriors on our side are every bit as rigid; 99% agreements casts one as a hardened enemy for the 1%.
The word thus far unmentioned is conformity, the desire to "belong," and both sides have it. I've been kicked off Medium twice for refusing to refer to Those People in the singular they. Banned, all my writing erased, losing over a grand in MPP money due me. This is as bad as the worst RW forums.
Overall, yes, those we call liberals embrace more of a diversity of views since that is one of our values but I see no difference in orthodoxy-policing between the SJWs and the propagators of the Big Lie. In fact I think the SJWs are dragging us because making a forefront issue of who can use which bathroom is not helping at all.
"one or de udder budda liddle bidda both" is not an argument for polarization, my beef is that it's used almost exactly like "who gets to decide," to stop debate. Of course most of our polarities are at least partially continua. But most of them are very bimodal.
But. Anyone who is still a Republican may not be a rabid bigot himself but he knows that he is allied with people most of whom ARE rabid bigots, who support violence against PoC, who blame Tamir Rice for his murder, who yearn for a Gileadean society, who are OK with caged children .. and these are not deal-breakers for them. They remain Republicans. OK, compartmentalization; they all have the same justifications on cerebral macro keys;
* fiscally conservative and socially liberal
*small government, strong defense
* porous borders.
They compartmentalize away raw cruelty and evil, and compartmentalization is the illness of our time. Sorry but I can't pardon them. And distinguishing them from the openly racist is hair-splitting in my view.
"I didn't express myself very well. I had news yesterday that one of my best and oldest friends just died; I've known her over 20 years and spoke to her only a few weeks ago,"
Oh, I'm really sorry for your loss Chris.
No, my opening line isn't about being "externally forced" into binaries. It's simply noting that people like them and that they're almost always a terrible (or at least limited and inaccurate) way of looking at the world. One of the reasons why discourse is in such a mess is that some people can't (or won't) think outside of them. But nuance and complexity and intelligent discourse requires recognising that very few things are "black and white".
Again, I disagree that *most* Republicans are rabid bigots. I think that this is an incredibly simplistic and sensationalist way of looking at millions of people that doesn't do your intelligence justice. But one thing I have noticed, both on the left and the right, is that people's willingness to express empathy for somebody depends on what concessions they think that empathy might require to their political or philosophical position.
Sitting behind a screen, behind some anonymous avatar, it's easy to say thoughtless, callous things about, say, Tamir Rice, that they wouldn't dream of saying about a boy in their community that they knew. And they're especially motivated to do that if the implications of their empathy would be that they should have a sane conversation about the Second Amendment, say. It's easy to talk about human life in a heartless, mechanical way when separated from the implications.
Consider even how we talk about war or COVID or human rights violations on the other side of the world. Even those of us who care about these things talk in a way that doesn't truly respect the lives of the people affected. Because it can't. Would the people who supported the Afghanistan withdrawal be willing look at an Afghan women in the eye and say that enough money and time has been spent trying to help her? Would those who thought Allied forces should stay be willing to look a young soldier in the eyes and tell them to go risk their life?
It's impossible to give each side the weight it deserves. So these conversations become philosophical debates that would sound monstrous to the people actually living with the consequences. This is just one example of why it's not a simple black/white, right/wrong issue.
So yes, I know that some people use "who gets to decide" or "it's not one or the other" to stifle debate. But I don't. So I'm not sure why you keep reminding me of what these people do. The fact that people arguing in bad-faith use an argument doesn't necessarily mean that the argument itself is rotten to its core.
"I find arguments based on 'not one or de udder budda liddle bidda both' to be every bit as irritating as 'who gets to decide.'"
I don't think the issue is whether they're irritating, the issue is whether they're true. And of course, "not one or the other" is true in most cases (who gets to decide is a different problem).
Male/female is one of the very few genuine binaries I can think of (I'm pretty sure we agree that quibbling over the 0.02% of people with ambiguous intersex conditions is asinine). Black and white is far from a meaningful binary. And while male and female is a binary, man and woman (or let's say masculine and feminine) is far less clear-cut in this day and age (which I personally think is a good thing).
And I know we disagree, but liberal/conservative isn't nearly as clear-cut as you seem to think it is either. Not least because there's a great deal of diversity of opinion among conservatives.
I mean, just consider the left. It spans from communists to post modernists to the centre left. I suspect close to 100% of the "attention-craving fad movement" would call themselves liberals (and most conservatives definitely would). Yet you disagree with them extraordinarily strongly.
So yes, the complexity of humans can certainly be irritating. It requires far more energy than thinking of them as "them and the rest of us". But I'm going to keep pointing out how limiting a way to look at the world the latter is.
I didn't express myself very well. I had news yesterday that one of my best and oldest friends just died; I've known her over 20 years and spoke to her only a few weeks ago, She had told me she was back in treatment but not that death was imminent. My thoughts are all disorganized. Cancer.
The point I absolutely failed to make: your opening article in this thread is about people being externally forced into binary formulations. As one parent sneered to me after I asked him to stop using "they" so confusingly, "society's little boxes." Yeah that his child has a twibby and not a putz is a "social construct." His nastiness was legendary.
My point, barely alluded to in my response, is how stridently people strive to fit into one little box or another. An INTERNAL force. Both ends of the political spectrum do this. And while conservatives ae as a whole more orthodoxy-policing (see Cheney, Liz), the social justice warriors on our side are every bit as rigid; 99% agreements casts one as a hardened enemy for the 1%.
The word thus far unmentioned is conformity, the desire to "belong," and both sides have it. I've been kicked off Medium twice for refusing to refer to Those People in the singular they. Banned, all my writing erased, losing over a grand in MPP money due me. This is as bad as the worst RW forums.
Overall, yes, those we call liberals embrace more of a diversity of views since that is one of our values but I see no difference in orthodoxy-policing between the SJWs and the propagators of the Big Lie. In fact I think the SJWs are dragging us because making a forefront issue of who can use which bathroom is not helping at all.
"one or de udder budda liddle bidda both" is not an argument for polarization, my beef is that it's used almost exactly like "who gets to decide," to stop debate. Of course most of our polarities are at least partially continua. But most of them are very bimodal.
But. Anyone who is still a Republican may not be a rabid bigot himself but he knows that he is allied with people most of whom ARE rabid bigots, who support violence against PoC, who blame Tamir Rice for his murder, who yearn for a Gileadean society, who are OK with caged children .. and these are not deal-breakers for them. They remain Republicans. OK, compartmentalization; they all have the same justifications on cerebral macro keys;
* fiscally conservative and socially liberal
*small government, strong defense
* porous borders.
They compartmentalize away raw cruelty and evil, and compartmentalization is the illness of our time. Sorry but I can't pardon them. And distinguishing them from the openly racist is hair-splitting in my view.
"I didn't express myself very well. I had news yesterday that one of my best and oldest friends just died; I've known her over 20 years and spoke to her only a few weeks ago,"
Oh, I'm really sorry for your loss Chris.
No, my opening line isn't about being "externally forced" into binaries. It's simply noting that people like them and that they're almost always a terrible (or at least limited and inaccurate) way of looking at the world. One of the reasons why discourse is in such a mess is that some people can't (or won't) think outside of them. But nuance and complexity and intelligent discourse requires recognising that very few things are "black and white".
Again, I disagree that *most* Republicans are rabid bigots. I think that this is an incredibly simplistic and sensationalist way of looking at millions of people that doesn't do your intelligence justice. But one thing I have noticed, both on the left and the right, is that people's willingness to express empathy for somebody depends on what concessions they think that empathy might require to their political or philosophical position.
Sitting behind a screen, behind some anonymous avatar, it's easy to say thoughtless, callous things about, say, Tamir Rice, that they wouldn't dream of saying about a boy in their community that they knew. And they're especially motivated to do that if the implications of their empathy would be that they should have a sane conversation about the Second Amendment, say. It's easy to talk about human life in a heartless, mechanical way when separated from the implications.
Consider even how we talk about war or COVID or human rights violations on the other side of the world. Even those of us who care about these things talk in a way that doesn't truly respect the lives of the people affected. Because it can't. Would the people who supported the Afghanistan withdrawal be willing look at an Afghan women in the eye and say that enough money and time has been spent trying to help her? Would those who thought Allied forces should stay be willing to look a young soldier in the eyes and tell them to go risk their life?
It's impossible to give each side the weight it deserves. So these conversations become philosophical debates that would sound monstrous to the people actually living with the consequences. This is just one example of why it's not a simple black/white, right/wrong issue.
So yes, I know that some people use "who gets to decide" or "it's not one or the other" to stifle debate. But I don't. So I'm not sure why you keep reminding me of what these people do. The fact that people arguing in bad-faith use an argument doesn't necessarily mean that the argument itself is rotten to its core.