Maybe the Right should just come up with better arguments? Since they're in control over most of the planet, it shouldn't be that difficult to point to policy successes steered by Right-wing political theory.
Now that is naive Doc.
Why do we need better arguments when the ones we have seem to be good enough. I would suggest it is the left that needs better arguments because the ones you have don't seem to be working (at least over most of the planet we control).
I gave you an open goal, and still you missed.
And yes, of course, the left need better arguments, that's a given. The embarrassment on the Right is that (as exemplified here) they don't appear to have any arguments. What they have is power and wealth and inertia, and it doesn't matter that the tanker is heading for the rocks: they see no reason to change course.
Yes, since the right wing are doing such a good job with poverty, the pandemic, corruption, inequality, racism, why change?
Indeed! Glad you see things our way.
But I have to correct you one one small point if I may. It wasn't the right that launched the pandemic, it was Chinese Communists. You have them to thank for that.
If only he'd referred to launching the pandemic, rather than handling it, you might just have scored a completely fantastical point instead of missing a real one.
Maybe the Right should just come up with better arguments? Since they're in control over most of the planet, it shouldn't be that difficult to point to policy successes steered by Right-wing political theory.
Now that is naive Doc.
Why do we need better arguments when the ones we have seem to be good enough. I would suggest it is the left that needs better arguments because the ones you have don't seem to be working (at least over most of the planet we control).
I gave you an open goal, and still you missed.
And yes, of course, the left need better arguments, that's a given. The embarrassment on the Right is that (as exemplified here) they don't appear to have any arguments. What they have is power and wealth and inertia, and it doesn't matter that the tanker is heading for the rocks: they see no reason to change course.
Yes, since the right wing are doing such a good job with poverty, the pandemic, corruption, inequality, racism, why change?
Indeed! Glad you see things our way.
But I have to correct you one one small point if I may. It wasn't the right that launched the pandemic, it was Chinese Communists. You have them to thank for that.
No, surely, it was Bill Gates using 5G, in order to indoctrinate people, so that they don't see the lizard people among us. You couldn't make it up.
The Ship does seem to have an issue where not fully liking a particular societal grouping when everyone else on here does, is immediately labelled as a full on genocide-supporting x-phobe, where x is the group in question.
Because when our Lord told the parable of the Samaritan, what he actually meant was "well, some of them are OK, but you wouldn't want one in your house, would you?"
The trouble is that some people on both sides of the political spectrum seem to have lost the ability to use words with precision and are spraying epithets around like lunatics armed with AK-47s. To take an example, Thacheright (who I'm sure won't mind me mentioning it) says that the Chinese Communists 'launched the pandemic'. 'Launched' implies a conscious, deliberate act, rather than negligence or covering up to avoid blame or save face. 'Were responsible for' might have been more accurate; but at the moment there is a lack of evidence. And, before anyone opens fire, no, I am not a trendy leftie. Just someone who likes language to be used with precision, and thinks a lot of unpleasantness could be avoided if people would only keep their tempers and watch their language.
As ever, the problem with this (not directing at @Eirenist in particular, but liberals and 'centrists' in general) is that I'm expected to be polite to people who are calling for my extermination. Politely, of course, but that's what they're doing.
Likewise, when Austerity was introduced by the Tory/LibDem coalition, and it killed (continues to kill) a great many people by reducing them to starvation, homelessness and suicide, I'm expected to react with what, precisely? My temper is not the problem. What is, is others' equanimity in the face of obvious injustice.
The Ship does seem to have an issue where not fully liking a particular societal grouping when everyone else on here does, is immediately labelled as a full on genocide-supporting x-phobe, where x is the group in question.
Because when our Lord told the parable of the Samaritan, what he actually meant was "well, some of them are OK, but you wouldn't want one in your house, would you?"
Well, seeing as one group I don't like are the Chinese, no I wouldn't. In case they pass on another virus from their laboratories.
Same with Russians. I don't like them and I wouldn't like one of them in my house in case they spill some nerve agent.
But I wouldn't want to commit genocide against either of them (it's not as if they are French now is it?). Economic carnage is fine though.
Of course, playing the game of trying to stay just inside the Ship's legal limits with respect to outright trolling and personal attacks really shores up credibility both for one's political views and one's online persona.
The Ship does seem to have an issue where not fully liking a particular societal grouping when everyone else on here does, is immediately labelled as a full on genocide-supporting x-phobe, where x is the group in question.
Because when our Lord told the parable of the Samaritan, what he actually meant was "well, some of them are OK, but you wouldn't want one in your house, would you?"
Well, seeing as one group I don't like are the Chinese, no I wouldn't. In case they pass on another virus from their laboratories.
Same with Russians. I don't like them and I wouldn't like one of them in my house in case they spill some nerve agent.
But I wouldn't want to commit genocide against either of them (it's not as if they are French now is it?). Economic carnage is fine though.
Asserting that the Chinese released a virus from their laboratories just reduced your credibility to nil. The novel coronavirus is not engineered. There is all sorts of science to explain how scientists know it’s not engineered, though I suspect attempting to explain the details to you would be a waste of my time.
Because believing that it was engineered is a matter of political faith rather than of listening to microbiologists. And part of a mindset that refuses to believe that the natural world could possibly throw up something that humans would have difficulty coping with.
<snip> Well, seeing as one group I don't like are the Chinese, no I wouldn't. In case they pass on another virus from their laboratories.
Same with Russians. <snip>
Host hat on
This may have been intended to be humour, but it looks too much like racism to pass as funny, and racism is not tolerated on the Ship (see the Ten Commandments). Given the limitations of the text based medium I strongly suggest you don’t repeat the experiment. Host hat off
BroJames Purgatory Host
It wasn't the right that launched the pandemic, it was Chinese Communists. You have them to thank for that.
Wait, I thought they were Chinese capitalist wealth creators who are lifting millions of people out of poverty?
It is much easier for the right to win the argument in venues where they have the Barclay brothers and Rupert Murdoch and Johnson's porn magnate mate cheerleading for them.
When has China been a race? I would imagine the people of Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan and other countries in that region don't particularly care for the Chinese right now.
Especially those with interests in the Spratley Islands and other regions in the South Chine Sea.
But accusing someone of nationalism doesn't have the same emotional impact as accusing someone of racism does it?
Widening the definition of racism to include things which are not remotely races, and to include things which are not remotely hateful, it is a woke, left-leaning tactic of long-standing.
If someone indicates they don't particularly like Islam (note it is a dislike, not a hatred, nor a call for genocide of Muslims) then an accusation of Islamophobia is not good enough for the woke left. So they extend the quality so that even a mild dislike is called racist, and they also extend the quantity so that a religion is called racist.
Religions are not races.
Nationalities are not races.
Expressing dislike is not a call for genocide.
Expressing a dislike of China is not ractst. The woke left try to force it to be because that fits their narrative, but it is not.
I am happy that racism is not tolerated on the Ship, but I have yet to see any. I have seen a dislike of a religion, and of a country in Asia which is disliked by other countries in Asia both for the deaths of their own citizens by the virus and its damage to their economies, and for the bullying behaviour expressed by building artificial islands in the South China Sea in other Asian countries territorial waters.
The woke left really are trying to define racism to a point where it can be used to denounce someone in order to impose a controlling fear on that person in a way that really hasn't been seen since the Stalinist Soviet Union.
Host hat on
Styx is the only place where you can raise your concerns about a host’s ruling, and is the only place where a host will (or at least should) discuss it. Host hat off
BroJames Purgatory Host
Of course, playing the game of trying to stay just inside the Ship's legal limits with respect to outright trolling and personal attacks really shores up credibility both for one's political views and one's online persona.
The Ship undoubtedly gets some right-wing folk who do little more than clown around and say things that they know a lot of Shipmates will think are outrageous.
However, the Ship also has its share of people who drag every conversation to the left with polemics that are depressingly predictable and often don't have much to do with the core of the issue at hand. It might be slightly more sophisticated, but it's essentially the same tactic of just throwing a bit of weight around.
And with repeat performances I'm not sure it's any less dispiriting. Since returning to the Ship I've had a few phases where I've wondered whether it's worth it. I'm currently in one of them. There are some very intelligent, thoughtful and perceptive people here, including people who've definitely challenged me on my views and made me justify their thinking. But there are also people who are completely impervious to actual debate on anything whose role in a conversation you can map out before it's happened, and who make me deflate a little when I see they've turned up. And who have reminded me of why I left.
When has China been a race? I would imagine the people of Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Japan and other countries in that region don't particularly care for the Chinese right now.
Especially those with interests in the Spratley Islands and other regions in the South Chine Sea.
But accusing someone of nationalism doesn't have the same emotional impact as accusing someone of racism does it?
Widening the definition of racism to include things which are not remotely races, and to include things which are not remotely hateful, it is a woke, left-leaning tactic of long-standing.
If someone indicates they don't particularly like Islam (note it is a dislike, not a hatred, nor a call for genocide of Muslims) then an accusation of Islamophobia is not good enough for the woke left. So they extend the quality so that even a mild dislike is called racist, and they also extend the quantity so that a religion is called racist.
Religions are not races.
Nationalities are not races.
Expressing dislike is not a call for genocide.
Expressing a dislike of China is not ractst. The woke left try to force it to be because that fits their narrative, but it is not.
I am happy that racism is not tolerated on the Ship, but I have yet to see any. I have seen a dislike of a religion, and of a country in Asia which is disliked by other countries in Asia both for the deaths of their own citizens by the virus and its damage to their economies, and for the bullying behaviour expressed by building artificial islands in the South China Sea in other Asian countries territorial waters.
The woke left really are trying to define racism to a point where it can be used to denounce someone in order to impose a controlling fear on that person in a way that really hasn't been seen since the Stalinist Soviet Union.
Host hat on
Styx is the only place where you can raise your concerns about a host’s ruling, and is the only place where a host will (or at least should) discuss it. Host hat off
BroJames Purgatory Host
The woke left (and thus the overwhelming majority of the Ship) has redefined the word "racist" beyond what it can stand, in order to give them a process where they can "denounce" people in a modern variant of the Stalin'esque process of denunciation that was part of the fbric of life in the old Soviet Union.
Given this tactic is used to drive people away from the Ship who have views at variance with most of the Ship, it seems appropriate to debate it in this thread.
The fact that a host made the denunciation using the newly-minted, wider definition of the word "racist" is a reflection that the whole Ship is geared to maintaining the purity of its political worldview.
It highlights that the real answer to the OP's original question is that the Ship doesn't really want people with right-of-centre opinions. They are neither welcomed nor tolerated. They are quickly denounced using the definitions of word unique to the woke left, enforced by virtually every member of the Ship including the hosts, so why should they stick around?
The hosts are part of the problem which drive people away, setting the direction of the Ship as a whole - and thus part of the debate that is taking place in this very thread. They have become the guardians of the purity of the Ship, stepping in to add the coup de grace once enough of the Ship's faithful have made their denunciations at the show trial.
Do we split off the role of the hosts in driving right-of-centre Ship'ites away to a thread in Styx, leaving this thread to discuss everything except the hosts role in setting the direction of the Ship, or do we have a joined-up conversation? In my opinion, if we split the thread into two, the debate as a whole will be compromised, forcing us to refer back-and-forth between two threads in different fora.
The fact that a host made the denunciation using the newly-minted, wider definition of the word "racist" is a reflection that the whole Ship is geared to maintaining the purity of its political worldview.
On the face of it, the question of whether moderation practices here reflect a built-in political bias is an entirely legitimate one.
What is unacceptable is you failing to obey this part of the hostly ruling:
Styx is the only place where you can raise your concerns about a host’s ruling
You don't get to dictate the terms of where discussions happen, and you don't get to dictate where discussions about where discussions should happen, happen either. Continuing to dispute the ruling in-thread is an unequivocal breach of Commandment 6 and has nothing to do with your political persuasions.
If you want a good-faith debate on the matter, take it to the Styx. If you carry on in this vein here, you can expect sanctions.
FFS, this is so predictable. Right winger produces nonsensical ideas, then denounces everyone, and refuses to take it to Styx. Are there any right wing people with original ideas?
FWIW I don't think using the definition as given in the UK's 50ish year old race relations acts, which group together "race, colour, nationality, ethnic and national origin" rather than quibble about the boundaries of "race" constitutes a new redefinition, whatever Enoch Powel might think.
FWIW I don't think using the definition as given in the UK's 50ish year old race relations acts, which group together "race, colour, nationality, ethnic and national origin" rather than quibble about the boundaries of "race" constitutes a new redefinition, whatever Enoch Powel might think.
Interesting that the UK one does that. Australian law quite definitely does not, treatment of race is completely separate from treatment of nationality and citizenship.
I think the U.K. Act may have had the Irish particularly in mind.
Which Irish? Because surely it's fairly fundamental to the whole notion of citizenship that (putting aside the EU for a few decades...) people from the Republic of Ireland don't have all the same rights in the UK as people from Northern Ireland.
Wikipedia tells me that the 1965 Act referred to "grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins". No mention of nationality. Whereas the 1976 Act did mention nationality. I find that very interesting. I'm wondering whether joining the EU in between was actually a factor.
As ever, the problem with this (not directing at @Eirenist in particular, but liberals and 'centrists' in general) is that I'm expected to be polite to people who are calling for my extermination. Politely, of course, but that's what they're doing.
I recall that you indicated previously, Doc, that you have Jewish roots.
As someone who self-identifies as liberal with centrist tendencies, I don't recall having read anyone on the Ship calling for your extermination. And if that were the prevailing culture here, I probably wouldn't stick around.
That such people exist elsewhere I don't doubt. I personally wouldn't require you to be polite to them, only to those people you meet here on board.
One of the accusations that Thatcheright is making is that saying anything even slightly negative about someone wearing a Victim T-shirt gets conflated with calling for their genocide.
The Ship does seem to have an issue where not fully liking a particular societal grouping when everyone else on here does, is immediately labelled as a full on genocide-supporting x-phobe, where x is the group in question.
Which Irish? Because surely it's fairly fundamental to the whole notion of citizenship that (putting aside the EU for a few decades...) people from the Republic of Ireland don't have all the same rights in the UK as people from Northern Ireland.
Sure, but what does that have to do with, for example, whether it's OK to deny a citizen of the Republic entry to your pub, or have the police harass an Irish citizen for the crime of being Irish in public, or refusing to employ an Irish citizen who has the right to work in the UK, or ...
As someone who is socially liberal but economically slightly centre-right I have consequently been branded by people on here a supporter of Nazis, which I find highly amusing and slightly sad.
I find threads like this rather pointless, and am not going to bother to engage on these forums with anything to do with politics or economics - that's certainly no one's loss so we're all good.
As ever, the problem with this (not directing at @Eirenist in particular, but liberals and 'centrists' in general) is that I'm expected to be polite to people who are calling for my extermination. Politely, of course, but that's what they're doing.
I recall that you indicated previously, Doc, that you have Jewish roots.
As someone who self-identifies as liberal with centrist tendencies, I don't recall having read anyone on the Ship calling for your extermination. And if that were the prevailing culture here, I probably wouldn't stick around.
That such people exist elsewhere I don't doubt. I personally wouldn't require you to be polite to them, only to those people you meet here on board.
One of the accusations that Thatcheright is making is that saying anything even slightly negative about someone wearing a Victim T-shirt gets conflated with calling for their genocide.
The Ship does seem to have an issue where not fully liking a particular societal grouping when everyone else on here does, is immediately labelled as a full on genocide-supporting x-phobe, where x is the group in question.
So good of you to illustrate the point....
Well, it's a good point I was making a general point, rather than specifically applying it to the Ship. As I literally said in the first line of the post you quoted.
And the point stands. Liberals and centrists expect civility over justice, even when the stakes are matter of life and death - as the Black Lives Matter movement have discovered: MLK (a socialist) made the same observation in his era.
@Doc Tor -- Please define what you mean by "liberals". In the US this tends to mean lefties. Lefties are far more interested in justice than civility. The right doesn't use the insult "social civility warriors" to tar the left, but "social justice warriors".
@mousethief - I appreciate that 'liberal' is difficult to pin down, especially in a US context - generally I take it to mean those who would (economically) identify as social democrats who support social welfare programs to ameliorate the worst effects of capitalism, and (socially) embrace equality before the law while doing little about the inequalities that precede it. The Democratic Party in the US have a social democratic wing in the same way that the Conservatives in the UK do, but generally the Dems plotted (until recently) to the right of most Conservative economic and social policy. That the Republicans call the Democrats 'Left' leaves my household boggled.
When I say Left, I mean democratic socialists. Liberals are on the right of the Labour party and the left of the Liberal Democrats (who are a centre right party trying to convince people they're centre left). There are some in the Conservative party who may scrape through as liberals (Chris Patten, Ken Clarke) but their voting record is just as rotten as the rest of the Tories, so it's moot.
I would agree that centrists Democrats do sound rather like what @Doc Tor describes. Those of us who call ourselves leftists in the US general are rather further left in my opinion. I'm not sure how Abolish the Police compares to labor slogans, but I don't imagine it's far to the right of them.
As ever, the problem with this (not directing at @Eirenist in particular, but liberals and 'centrists' in general) is that I'm expected to be polite to people who are calling for my extermination. Politely, of course, but that's what they're doing.
I recall that you indicated previously, Doc, that you have Jewish roots.
As someone who self-identifies as liberal with centrist tendencies, I don't recall having read anyone on the Ship calling for your extermination. And if that were the prevailing culture here, I probably wouldn't stick around.
That such people exist elsewhere I don't doubt. I personally wouldn't require you to be polite to them, only to those people you meet here on board.
One of the accusations that Thatcheright is making is that saying anything even slightly negative about someone wearing a Victim T-shirt gets conflated with calling for their genocide.
The Ship does seem to have an issue where not fully liking a particular societal grouping when everyone else on here does, is immediately labelled as a full on genocide-supporting x-phobe, where x is the group in question.
So good of you to illustrate the point....
Well, it's a good point I was making a general point, rather than specifically applying it to the Ship. As I literally said in the first line of the post you quoted.
And the point stands. Liberals and centrists expect civility over justice, even when the stakes are matter of life and death - as the Black Lives Matter movement have discovered: MLK (a socialist) made the same observation in his era.
I'm not sure how Abolish the Police compares to labor slogans, but I don't imagine it's far to the right of them.
I don't know - which direction is stupid?
Most people campaigning to "abolish the police" or "defund the police" don't actually want to do either thing. They want less police, they want a more appropriate response to people in crisis than a couple of cops showing up to shout at them and escalate from there, and generally want to have sensible police.
In almost no cases do they actually mean "we don't want there to be any police".
If you have to flood social media with things saying "When we say "abolish the police" we don't mean that we want to abolish the police", then it's probably a clue that you don't have a very good slogan.
As ever, the problem with this (not directing at @Eirenist in particular, but liberals and 'centrists' in general) is that I'm expected to be polite to people who are calling for my extermination. Politely, of course, but that's what they're doing.
I recall that you indicated previously, Doc, that you have Jewish roots.
As someone who self-identifies as liberal with centrist tendencies, I don't recall having read anyone on the Ship calling for your extermination. And if that were the prevailing culture here, I probably wouldn't stick around.
That such people exist elsewhere I don't doubt. I personally wouldn't require you to be polite to them, only to those people you meet here on board.
One of the accusations that Thatcheright is making is that saying anything even slightly negative about someone wearing a Victim T-shirt gets conflated with calling for their genocide.
The Ship does seem to have an issue where not fully liking a particular societal grouping when everyone else on here does, is immediately labelled as a full on genocide-supporting x-phobe, where x is the group in question.
So good of you to illustrate the point....
Well, it's a good point I was making a general point, rather than specifically applying it to the Ship. As I literally said in the first line of the post you quoted.
And the point stands. Liberals and centrists expect civility over justice, even when the stakes are matter of life and death - as the Black Lives Matter movement have discovered: MLK (a socialist) made the same observation in his era.
Good manners cost nothing Doc.
They could literally cost me my life, and my family's lives, as it would have done in 1930s Germany. So, no, I won't be following your advice, like these good people didn't.
To the broader point, getting angry and burning shit down does usually happen when politeness (almost inevitably) fails to bring about change. Pretty much everything good about this country has been wrested from the hands of the wealthy and powerful, physically and sometimes violently.
I'm not sure how Abolish the Police compares to labor slogans, but I don't imagine it's far to the right of them.
I don't know - which direction is stupid?
...
If you have to flood social media with things saying "When we say "abolish the police" we don't mean that we want to abolish the police", then it's probably a clue that you don't have a very good slogan.
Or it means that we actually want to abolish the police. Feel free to think my views are stupid, but don't tell me I don't mean what I say. My point was to discuss the broad range of Democratic views in America. Some of us have wanted to defund and abolish the police for years. This is not new, only newly discussed in the mainstream.
Or it means that we actually want to abolish the police.
If you wish to have no police, then "Abolish the Police" is a perfectly reasonable slogan. If you wanted to start a new thread, I'd be interested in that discussion.
But I've been seeing an awful lot of people saying "when we say "Abolish the Police" we don't mean that we don't want police to exist" and similar things. For people in this group, it's a stupid slogan, because the words have a clear meaning, and then they're having to roll back and say "well, no, the plain English meaning of those words isn't what I mean at all". Which makes it a bad slogan, regardless of the merit of the underlying idea.
It's even worse if people in both groups are using the same slogan at the same time to mean different things.
Yes, yes, I'm sure you're just trying to warn us about this Yellow Peril, such as the danger represented in this fine and not-at-all racist nineteenth century caricature.
Or it means that we actually want to abolish the police.
If you wish to have no police, then "Abolish the Police" is a perfectly reasonable slogan. If you wanted to start a new thread, I'd be interested in that discussion.
But I've been seeing an awful lot of people saying "when we say "Abolish the Police" we don't mean that we don't want police to exist" and similar things. For people in this group, it's a stupid slogan, because the words have a clear meaning, and then they're having to roll back and say "well, no, the plain English meaning of those words isn't what I mean at all". Which makes it a bad slogan, regardless of the merit of the underlying idea.
It's even worse if people in both groups are using the same slogan at the same time to mean different things.
See, now we're going to have to figure out which people want to abolish an organisation, and which people want to abolish policing.
And I honestly don't know from Gwai's short answers which category Gwai belongs in.
If you wish to have no police, then "Abolish the Police" is a perfectly reasonable slogan. If you wanted to start a new thread, I'd be interested in that discussion.
It is not about "Abolish the Police," it is about "Defunding the Police," or actually reducing police funding. The American police forces since 9/11 have been heavily militarized. The military was selling things like Bradley Fighting Vehicles to police forces at a cheap discount. They really don't need that type of equipment. Moreover, the police have used tear gas as a form of crowd control when it is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. If the military can't use it, why should the police be allowed to use it?
We have also expected our police to be emergency mental health counselors, school monitors, dispute arbitrators when they are not trained for those tasks. Over 40% of our
Therefore, it is about taking around 1/3 of police of the police budget and putting that money into social programs that do work in reducing the need for a bloated police force. I know it can be done because I headed up one of those programs in Spokane County. I ended up saving the county $30 million dollars in the first year which was then funneled back into other social programs.
If you wish to have no police, then "Abolish the Police" is a perfectly reasonable slogan. If you wanted to start a new thread, I'd be interested in that discussion.
It is not about "Abolish the Police," it is about "Defunding the Police," or actually reducing police funding.
It might be about that for you, but the previous discussion demonstrates the problem with assuming that it's about that for everyone.
All of what you're saying after that seems entirely reasonable to me, but then I'm centre-left on the Australian political spectrum and frankly it's quite hard to work out these days whether that means to Americans that I'm some kind of communist and/or whether I'm some kind of apologist for white supremacy. Possibly both depending on who you ask.
If you wish to have no police, then "Abolish the Police" is a perfectly reasonable slogan. If you wanted to start a new thread, I'd be interested in that discussion.
It is not about "Abolish the Police," it is about "Defunding the Police," or actually reducing police funding.
It might be about that for you, but the previous discussion demonstrates the problem with assuming that it's about that for everyone.
All of what you're saying after that seems entirely reasonable to me, but then I'm centre-left on the Australian political spectrum and frankly it's quite hard to work out these days whether that means to Americans that I'm some kind of communist and/or whether I'm some kind of apologist for white supremacy. Possibly both depending on who you ask.
Not commenting on you personally but historically the White Australia policy was popular with both left and right.
If you wish to have no police, then "Abolish the Police" is a perfectly reasonable slogan. If you wanted to start a new thread, I'd be interested in that discussion.
It is not about "Abolish the Police," it is about "Defunding the Police," or actually reducing police funding.
It might be about that for you, but the previous discussion demonstrates the problem with assuming that it's about that for everyone.
All of what you're saying after that seems entirely reasonable to me, but then I'm centre-left on the Australian political spectrum and frankly it's quite hard to work out these days whether that means to Americans that I'm some kind of communist and/or whether I'm some kind of apologist for white supremacy. Possibly both depending on who you ask.
Not commenting on you personally but historically the White Australia policy was popular with both left and right.
And historically Dixiecrats did all sorts of interesting things in America. But historically you couldn't hop on the internet and have a conversation about these things, and even if you could have you would framed someone by reference to what was happening at the time of the conversation, not by reference to the political environment that was in place before they were born.
Seriously, what was the point of that remark? Even with "not commenting on you personally", you're failing to comment on any Australian who might wander onto the Ship in 2020. I can just about cope with someone making assumptions about me based on my own voting patterns as to what policy platforms I have accepted, but the voting patterns of my grandparents and the policy platforms that political parties presented to them would be irrelevant even if I knew them.
If you wish to have no police, then "Abolish the Police" is a perfectly reasonable slogan. If you wanted to start a new thread, I'd be interested in that discussion.
It is not about "Abolish the Police," it is about "Defunding the Police," or actually reducing police funding.
It might be about that for you, but the previous discussion demonstrates the problem with assuming that it's about that for everyone.
All of what you're saying after that seems entirely reasonable to me, but then I'm centre-left on the Australian political spectrum and frankly it's quite hard to work out these days whether that means to Americans that I'm some kind of communist and/or whether I'm some kind of apologist for white supremacy. Possibly both depending on who you ask.
Not commenting on you personally but historically the White Australia policy was popular with both left and right.
And historically Dixiecrats did all sorts of interesting things in America. But historically you couldn't hop on the internet and have a conversation about these things, and even if you could have you would framed someone by reference to what was happening at the time of the conversation, not by reference to the political environment that was in place before they were born.
Seriously, what was the point of that remark? Even with "not commenting on you personally", you're failing to comment on any Australian who might wander onto the Ship in 2020. I can just about cope with someone making assumptions about me based on my own voting patterns as to what policy platforms I have accepted, but the voting patterns of my grandparents and the policy platforms that political parties presented to them would be irrelevant even if I knew them.
I was musing on the fact that being left wing on economic issues does not preclude being a white supremacist and using Australia's history as an example. The cultural and social drivers of the White Australia policy haven't entirely vanished, as I understand it.
What is lacking, ISTM, is, for want of a better term, is a theological framework within which discuss social issues on the ship, and an over- reliance on an essentially secular economically-based political spectrum. Does Christianity not have something to say about the moral nature of human beings and their societies, the unity or not of the human race, the possibilities of humanity for good and evil, questions of objectivity and relativity, freedom (or not) of choice, the possibilities and limitations of social renewal, crime and punishment etc. etc.? I would suggest that a more (controversial) theological consciousness would offer a more inclusive approach that respects the expression of different points of view that some shipmates feel is currently lacking.
My theological framework re social issues is pretty much out there and has been since I joined the Ship. Amos 5, Isaiah 40. the Magnificat, the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 23 and 25, for example. All about the response to the oppression meted out to the oppressed by the powerful and the indifferent.
Which of course puts me in bed with secular humanists who seek a fairer world. But I don’t follow a secular humanist agenda per se.
Nor does it mean that I lay aside issues of personal responsibility for the sake of any group. There’s plenty of that around in Christian theology.
What is lacking, ISTM, is, for want of a better term, is a theological framework within which discuss social issues on the ship, and an over- reliance on an essentially secular economically-based political spectrum. Does Christianity not have something to say about the moral nature of human beings and their societies, the unity or not of the human race, the possibilities of humanity for good and evil, questions of objectivity and relativity, freedom (or not) of choice, the possibilities and limitations of social renewal, crime and punishment etc. etc.? I would suggest that a more (controversial) theological consciousness would offer a more inclusive approach that respects the expression of different points of view that some shipmates feel is currently lacking.
Can you unpick that? I think I have an idea what you mean but can't imagine how it would look in practice.
What is lacking, ISTM, is, for want of a better term, is a theological framework within which discuss social issues on the ship, and an over- reliance on an essentially secular economically-based political spectrum. Does Christianity not have something to say about the moral nature of human beings and their societies, the unity or not of the human race, the possibilities of humanity for good and evil, questions of objectivity and relativity, freedom (or not) of choice, the possibilities and limitations of social renewal, crime and punishment etc. etc.? I would suggest that a more (controversial) theological consciousness would offer a more inclusive approach that respects the expression of different points of view that some shipmates feel is currently lacking.
But why single out Christianity?
I believe all the world major religions implore their followers to help the poor, demand justice, and be good people in general.
Some people do it less well than others. Some people have different views on how these things should be done.
Even those nominally atheist countries such as North Korea, China, Vietnam et al have political system founded on the Marxist notion of making the poor wealthier.
None of them work. They have all failed. Both left and right political systems, Christian, Judaism, Islam, Hindu, Buddhism and so on, have all failed to eradicate poverty.
There are only theories - whether political, secular, or theological - that look good on paper but fail when they hit the real world, where sinful, greedy, nasty human nature tears the paper and the theory into shreds.
To eradicate poverty, crime, and injustice you need to change human nature. Faiths of all kinds have been attempting this for millennia and have failed.
A faith can call for people to feed the poor and human nature will say "Great idea, but I'm busy with work. If I remember I'll slip a tenner into the poor box next time I'm passing. No worries."
Good intentions don't fix anything and human nature will cause the masses to have good intentions followed by self-justifying excuses as to why they can't do more.
A political system can run a country using systems designed to feed the poor, and human nature will cause people in the bureaucracy to demand a back-hander before they sign the papers to move the food from the warehouse.
How can human nature be changed to enable the great theories to be put into place, and once they are in place how can human nature be changed so the great theories are not warped, dooing them to fail?
Cynical? Perhaps, but cynicism is just another word for realism, for facing the world and recognising it for what it is. Only when you do that do you recognise that human nature en mass is responsible for the ills of the world.
Can you change human nature en mass, or is it the case that we are forever doomed to highlighting the most egregious injustices but knowing that one is "preaching to the choir"?
Most people will recognise the injustices faced by black americans. Most people will say "It's terrible what they do to them and something ought to be done!", and those same people will look at the demonstrators and say "Look at that lot! They need a good bath and get a bloody job! When I was there age I was working shifts in a factory. Lazy sods. I'd shove the lot of them up against a wall."
Human nature in action; something should be done - but I'm busy so find somebody else - and shooting the messenger.
Most people will recognise the injustices faced by black americans. Most people will say "It's terrible what they do to them and something ought to be done!", and those same people will look at the demonstrators and say "Look at that lot! They need a good bath and get a bloody job! When I was there age I was working shifts in a factory. Lazy sods. I'd shove the lot of them up against a wall."
Human nature in action; something should be done - but I'm busy so find somebody else - and shooting the messenger.
I think you're confusing what you and your mates do with human nature.
And while poverty hasn't been eliminated great strides were made against Beveridge's "Five Giants" in the 1950s and 60s in the UK. There is still great poverty in the UK, made deliberately worse since the 1980s in the name of "flexibility", but it is not as extensive or as acute as it was in, say, 1930s Glasgow. To give up trying to improve matters is an abrogation of responsibility. I think it was Chesterton who said that Christianity had not been tried and found wanting, but found hard and not tried. And things that are considered "human nature" in one century can miraculously turn out not to be in future ones. 200 years ago a great many people were convinced it was utterly natural that the black man was subordinate to the white, and indeed such an arrangement was divinely ordained. You can also go back 150 years and find people saying that democracy is contrary to "natural" hierarchies and/or divine ordinance. No. Appeal to "human nature" to justify the status quo is a cop-out as old as the hills, and contrary to the evidence of changes in how people treat each other over time.
Comments
If only he'd referred to launching the pandemic, rather than handling it, you might just have scored a completely fantastical point instead of missing a real one.
No, surely, it was Bill Gates using 5G, in order to indoctrinate people, so that they don't see the lizard people among us. You couldn't make it up.
Because when our Lord told the parable of the Samaritan, what he actually meant was "well, some of them are OK, but you wouldn't want one in your house, would you?"
Likewise, when Austerity was introduced by the Tory/LibDem coalition, and it killed (continues to kill) a great many people by reducing them to starvation, homelessness and suicide, I'm expected to react with what, precisely? My temper is not the problem. What is, is others' equanimity in the face of obvious injustice.
Well, seeing as one group I don't like are the Chinese, no I wouldn't. In case they pass on another virus from their laboratories.
Same with Russians. I don't like them and I wouldn't like one of them in my house in case they spill some nerve agent.
But I wouldn't want to commit genocide against either of them (it's not as if they are French now is it?). Economic carnage is fine though.
As it is, you're just racist.
Asserting that the Chinese released a virus from their laboratories just reduced your credibility to nil. The novel coronavirus is not engineered. There is all sorts of science to explain how scientists know it’s not engineered, though I suspect attempting to explain the details to you would be a waste of my time.
Because believing that it was engineered is a matter of political faith rather than of listening to microbiologists. And part of a mindset that refuses to believe that the natural world could possibly throw up something that humans would have difficulty coping with.
Host hat on
This may have been intended to be humour, but it looks too much like racism to pass as funny, and racism is not tolerated on the Ship (see the Ten Commandments). Given the limitations of the text based medium I strongly suggest you don’t repeat the experiment.
Host hat off
BroJames Purgatory Host
It is much easier for the right to win the argument in venues where they have the Barclay brothers and Rupert Murdoch and Johnson's porn magnate mate cheerleading for them.
Especially those with interests in the Spratley Islands and other regions in the South Chine Sea.
But accusing someone of nationalism doesn't have the same emotional impact as accusing someone of racism does it?
Widening the definition of racism to include things which are not remotely races, and to include things which are not remotely hateful, it is a woke, left-leaning tactic of long-standing.
If someone indicates they don't particularly like Islam (note it is a dislike, not a hatred, nor a call for genocide of Muslims) then an accusation of Islamophobia is not good enough for the woke left. So they extend the quality so that even a mild dislike is called racist, and they also extend the quantity so that a religion is called racist.
Religions are not races.
Nationalities are not races.
Expressing dislike is not a call for genocide.
Expressing a dislike of China is not ractst. The woke left try to force it to be because that fits their narrative, but it is not.
I am happy that racism is not tolerated on the Ship, but I have yet to see any. I have seen a dislike of a religion, and of a country in Asia which is disliked by other countries in Asia both for the deaths of their own citizens by the virus and its damage to their economies, and for the bullying behaviour expressed by building artificial islands in the South China Sea in other Asian countries territorial waters.
The woke left really are trying to define racism to a point where it can be used to denounce someone in order to impose a controlling fear on that person in a way that really hasn't been seen since the Stalinist Soviet Union.
Styx is the only place where you can raise your concerns about a host’s ruling, and is the only place where a host will (or at least should) discuss it.
Host hat off
BroJames Purgatory Host
The Ship undoubtedly gets some right-wing folk who do little more than clown around and say things that they know a lot of Shipmates will think are outrageous.
However, the Ship also has its share of people who drag every conversation to the left with polemics that are depressingly predictable and often don't have much to do with the core of the issue at hand. It might be slightly more sophisticated, but it's essentially the same tactic of just throwing a bit of weight around.
And with repeat performances I'm not sure it's any less dispiriting. Since returning to the Ship I've had a few phases where I've wondered whether it's worth it. I'm currently in one of them. There are some very intelligent, thoughtful and perceptive people here, including people who've definitely challenged me on my views and made me justify their thinking. But there are also people who are completely impervious to actual debate on anything whose role in a conversation you can map out before it's happened, and who make me deflate a little when I see they've turned up. And who have reminded me of why I left.
tl/dr = I’m not racist, I’m xenophobic
The woke left (and thus the overwhelming majority of the Ship) has redefined the word "racist" beyond what it can stand, in order to give them a process where they can "denounce" people in a modern variant of the Stalin'esque process of denunciation that was part of the fbric of life in the old Soviet Union.
Given this tactic is used to drive people away from the Ship who have views at variance with most of the Ship, it seems appropriate to debate it in this thread.
The fact that a host made the denunciation using the newly-minted, wider definition of the word "racist" is a reflection that the whole Ship is geared to maintaining the purity of its political worldview.
It highlights that the real answer to the OP's original question is that the Ship doesn't really want people with right-of-centre opinions. They are neither welcomed nor tolerated. They are quickly denounced using the definitions of word unique to the woke left, enforced by virtually every member of the Ship including the hosts, so why should they stick around?
The hosts are part of the problem which drive people away, setting the direction of the Ship as a whole - and thus part of the debate that is taking place in this very thread. They have become the guardians of the purity of the Ship, stepping in to add the coup de grace once enough of the Ship's faithful have made their denunciations at the show trial.
Do we split off the role of the hosts in driving right-of-centre Ship'ites away to a thread in Styx, leaving this thread to discuss everything except the hosts role in setting the direction of the Ship, or do we have a joined-up conversation? In my opinion, if we split the thread into two, the debate as a whole will be compromised, forcing us to refer back-and-forth between two threads in different fora.
What is unacceptable is you failing to obey this part of the hostly ruling: You don't get to dictate the terms of where discussions happen, and you don't get to dictate where discussions about where discussions should happen, happen either. Continuing to dispute the ruling in-thread is an unequivocal breach of Commandment 6 and has nothing to do with your political persuasions.
If you want a good-faith debate on the matter, take it to the Styx. If you carry on in this vein here, you can expect sanctions.
/admin mode
Interesting that the UK one does that. Australian law quite definitely does not, treatment of race is completely separate from treatment of nationality and citizenship.
Which Irish? Because surely it's fairly fundamental to the whole notion of citizenship that (putting aside the EU for a few decades...) people from the Republic of Ireland don't have all the same rights in the UK as people from Northern Ireland.
Wikipedia tells me that the 1965 Act referred to "grounds of colour, race, or ethnic or national origins". No mention of nationality. Whereas the 1976 Act did mention nationality. I find that very interesting. I'm wondering whether joining the EU in between was actually a factor.
I recall that you indicated previously, Doc, that you have Jewish roots.
As someone who self-identifies as liberal with centrist tendencies, I don't recall having read anyone on the Ship calling for your extermination. And if that were the prevailing culture here, I probably wouldn't stick around.
That such people exist elsewhere I don't doubt. I personally wouldn't require you to be polite to them, only to those people you meet here on board.
One of the accusations that Thatcheright is making is that saying anything even slightly negative about someone wearing a Victim T-shirt gets conflated with calling for their genocide.
So good of you to illustrate the point....
Sure, but what does that have to do with, for example, whether it's OK to deny a citizen of the Republic entry to your pub, or have the police harass an Irish citizen for the crime of being Irish in public, or refusing to employ an Irish citizen who has the right to work in the UK, or ...
I find threads like this rather pointless, and am not going to bother to engage on these forums with anything to do with politics or economics - that's certainly no one's loss so we're all good.
Well, it's a good point I was making a general point, rather than specifically applying it to the Ship. As I literally said in the first line of the post you quoted.
And the point stands. Liberals and centrists expect civility over justice, even when the stakes are matter of life and death - as the Black Lives Matter movement have discovered: MLK (a socialist) made the same observation in his era.
When I say Left, I mean democratic socialists. Liberals are on the right of the Labour party and the left of the Liberal Democrats (who are a centre right party trying to convince people they're centre left). There are some in the Conservative party who may scrape through as liberals (Chris Patten, Ken Clarke) but their voting record is just as rotten as the rest of the Tories, so it's moot.
Good manners cost nothing Doc.
I don't know - which direction is stupid?
Most people campaigning to "abolish the police" or "defund the police" don't actually want to do either thing. They want less police, they want a more appropriate response to people in crisis than a couple of cops showing up to shout at them and escalate from there, and generally want to have sensible police.
In almost no cases do they actually mean "we don't want there to be any police".
If you have to flood social media with things saying "When we say "abolish the police" we don't mean that we want to abolish the police", then it's probably a clue that you don't have a very good slogan.
They could literally cost me my life, and my family's lives, as it would have done in 1930s Germany. So, no, I won't be following your advice, like these good people didn't.
To the broader point, getting angry and burning shit down does usually happen when politeness (almost inevitably) fails to bring about change. Pretty much everything good about this country has been wrested from the hands of the wealthy and powerful, physically and sometimes violently.
Or it means that we actually want to abolish the police. Feel free to think my views are stupid, but don't tell me I don't mean what I say. My point was to discuss the broad range of Democratic views in America. Some of us have wanted to defund and abolish the police for years. This is not new, only newly discussed in the mainstream.
If you wish to have no police, then "Abolish the Police" is a perfectly reasonable slogan. If you wanted to start a new thread, I'd be interested in that discussion.
But I've been seeing an awful lot of people saying "when we say "Abolish the Police" we don't mean that we don't want police to exist" and similar things. For people in this group, it's a stupid slogan, because the words have a clear meaning, and then they're having to roll back and say "well, no, the plain English meaning of those words isn't what I mean at all". Which makes it a bad slogan, regardless of the merit of the underlying idea.
It's even worse if people in both groups are using the same slogan at the same time to mean different things.
Yes, yes, I'm sure you're just trying to warn us about this Yellow Peril, such as the danger represented in this fine and not-at-all racist nineteenth century caricature.
See, now we're going to have to figure out which people want to abolish an organisation, and which people want to abolish policing.
And I honestly don't know from Gwai's short answers which category Gwai belongs in.
It is not about "Abolish the Police," it is about "Defunding the Police," or actually reducing police funding. The American police forces since 9/11 have been heavily militarized. The military was selling things like Bradley Fighting Vehicles to police forces at a cheap discount. They really don't need that type of equipment. Moreover, the police have used tear gas as a form of crowd control when it is prohibited by the Geneva Conventions. If the military can't use it, why should the police be allowed to use it?
We have also expected our police to be emergency mental health counselors, school monitors, dispute arbitrators when they are not trained for those tasks. Over 40% of our
Therefore, it is about taking around 1/3 of police of the police budget and putting that money into social programs that do work in reducing the need for a bloated police force. I know it can be done because I headed up one of those programs in Spokane County. I ended up saving the county $30 million dollars in the first year which was then funneled back into other social programs.
It might be about that for you, but the previous discussion demonstrates the problem with assuming that it's about that for everyone.
All of what you're saying after that seems entirely reasonable to me, but then I'm centre-left on the Australian political spectrum and frankly it's quite hard to work out these days whether that means to Americans that I'm some kind of communist and/or whether I'm some kind of apologist for white supremacy. Possibly both depending on who you ask.
Not commenting on you personally but historically the White Australia policy was popular with both left and right.
And historically Dixiecrats did all sorts of interesting things in America. But historically you couldn't hop on the internet and have a conversation about these things, and even if you could have you would framed someone by reference to what was happening at the time of the conversation, not by reference to the political environment that was in place before they were born.
Seriously, what was the point of that remark? Even with "not commenting on you personally", you're failing to comment on any Australian who might wander onto the Ship in 2020. I can just about cope with someone making assumptions about me based on my own voting patterns as to what policy platforms I have accepted, but the voting patterns of my grandparents and the policy platforms that political parties presented to them would be irrelevant even if I knew them.
I was musing on the fact that being left wing on economic issues does not preclude being a white supremacist and using Australia's history as an example. The cultural and social drivers of the White Australia policy haven't entirely vanished, as I understand it.
Which of course puts me in bed with secular humanists who seek a fairer world. But I don’t follow a secular humanist agenda per se.
Nor does it mean that I lay aside issues of personal responsibility for the sake of any group. There’s plenty of that around in Christian theology.
Can you unpick that? I think I have an idea what you mean but can't imagine how it would look in practice.
But why single out Christianity?
I believe all the world major religions implore their followers to help the poor, demand justice, and be good people in general.
Some people do it less well than others. Some people have different views on how these things should be done.
Even those nominally atheist countries such as North Korea, China, Vietnam et al have political system founded on the Marxist notion of making the poor wealthier.
None of them work. They have all failed. Both left and right political systems, Christian, Judaism, Islam, Hindu, Buddhism and so on, have all failed to eradicate poverty.
There are only theories - whether political, secular, or theological - that look good on paper but fail when they hit the real world, where sinful, greedy, nasty human nature tears the paper and the theory into shreds.
To eradicate poverty, crime, and injustice you need to change human nature. Faiths of all kinds have been attempting this for millennia and have failed.
A faith can call for people to feed the poor and human nature will say "Great idea, but I'm busy with work. If I remember I'll slip a tenner into the poor box next time I'm passing. No worries."
Good intentions don't fix anything and human nature will cause the masses to have good intentions followed by self-justifying excuses as to why they can't do more.
A political system can run a country using systems designed to feed the poor, and human nature will cause people in the bureaucracy to demand a back-hander before they sign the papers to move the food from the warehouse.
How can human nature be changed to enable the great theories to be put into place, and once they are in place how can human nature be changed so the great theories are not warped, dooing them to fail?
Cynical? Perhaps, but cynicism is just another word for realism, for facing the world and recognising it for what it is. Only when you do that do you recognise that human nature en mass is responsible for the ills of the world.
Can you change human nature en mass, or is it the case that we are forever doomed to highlighting the most egregious injustices but knowing that one is "preaching to the choir"?
Most people will recognise the injustices faced by black americans. Most people will say "It's terrible what they do to them and something ought to be done!", and those same people will look at the demonstrators and say "Look at that lot! They need a good bath and get a bloody job! When I was there age I was working shifts in a factory. Lazy sods. I'd shove the lot of them up against a wall."
Human nature in action; something should be done - but I'm busy so find somebody else - and shooting the messenger.
I think you're confusing what you and your mates do with human nature.
And while poverty hasn't been eliminated great strides were made against Beveridge's "Five Giants" in the 1950s and 60s in the UK. There is still great poverty in the UK, made deliberately worse since the 1980s in the name of "flexibility", but it is not as extensive or as acute as it was in, say, 1930s Glasgow. To give up trying to improve matters is an abrogation of responsibility. I think it was Chesterton who said that Christianity had not been tried and found wanting, but found hard and not tried. And things that are considered "human nature" in one century can miraculously turn out not to be in future ones. 200 years ago a great many people were convinced it was utterly natural that the black man was subordinate to the white, and indeed such an arrangement was divinely ordained. You can also go back 150 years and find people saying that democracy is contrary to "natural" hierarchies and/or divine ordinance. No. Appeal to "human nature" to justify the status quo is a cop-out as old as the hills, and contrary to the evidence of changes in how people treat each other over time.