Quote:
Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
I think there were some others on the board who reacted pretty strongly to the Maher/Harris display with Ben Affleck. I'd dismissed both Maher and Harris as rabid racists long before that - I mean, they've both kind of made it their calling card. So don't think that show interrupted my "narrative" in any way - it was just the clowns doing their usual performance.
Harris was on the show because he was one of Maher's Islamaphobic bros. He was on because he is openly a racist shithead. The whole point of was to get a couple of racist haters together with a prominent liberal to get attention for them. Usually, my reaction to such things is to ignore them, but in this case they were sufficiently over the top so a lot of people finally came to the conclusion I'd come to years before with respect to Maher.
I'm eager to engage with a wide range of intelligent opinions. Please don't mistake these clowns for that; if you do, you'll be down the Trumpian twitterhole pretty quickly. Soon you'll start telling me about how we're going to win this trade war, or explaining how Hilary sold uranium to the Russians.
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This is an example of generalizing run amuck. What you've done here is dangerous, and demonstrates a lot of what is fucking up our national discourse.
I'll have to unpack it, because there's a lot wrong here.
First, you cannot call someone racist because he's an alleged Islamaphobe. A racist hates people of a certain race, not of a certain religion. I suspect you are using racist where "xenophobe" or "religious bigot" is appropriate because it confers more moral authority. "Racist" has bite those terms do not. (But not for much longer, if people keep intentionally misusing it as you have here. Recklessly throwing any hyperbole around desensitizes people to it.)
Second, Harris is not an Islamaphobe. Nor is Maher. Both men look down their noses at all religions. The only reason they're labeled Islamaphobes is because they have stated that Islam is the most violent religion currently, the "problem child" of religions of the moment. That's fact. You cannot dispute that. Citing a fact does not make one a religious bigot.
That Maher brought Harris on to make a fool of Affleck is immaterial to this discussion. But since you raise it, I'd say it was a public service. Affleck should be mocked for being ludicrous and illogical, and for offering hyperbole in service of sophomoric virtue signalling.
Your last comment is truly dangerous generalizing. There, you take all of these disparate issues and lump them under the Trump banner. Trump has nothing to do with Harris or Maher (both of whom detest Trump, by the way). This is you conflating issues to confuse the discussion.
Everyone hates Trump, so I shall link all these things to Trump and that will be my winning closer! Nevermind that Harris and Maher were critiquing religion long before Trump was on the campaign trail.
I do not agree with tariffs, or the trade war. I do agree that Islam is the most violent religion of the moment. I think Trump is a disaster, a national embarrassment. But I do not think that banning Muslims is a "racist" policy. It is a stupid religiously-bigoted and xenophobic policy. These are unique issues, unique offenses, and unique positions. There is no credible way to lump them under one umbrella, and your attempt to do so is transparent and comes off as disingenuous.
You have to stop with the generalizations and start looking at things on an issue by issue basis to have intelligent discussions about this stuff.
