We are all Slave now.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

You realize that to bring mood affiliation into a discussion here basically blows up the place. Seventy percent of what people put here is cherry picked to suit their narrative of the world.

I could cite an article by Ta Nehisi Coates or Krugman in which they advocated cannibalism and it'd be lauded here. There are darlings of this place, exclusively progressive or liberal, whose works are treated with reverence. Murray deserves no quarter, but Harris? I think Harris' body of work on varied topics, most of which I've read, evidences a strong, open-minded intellect. And yet because he offended GGG's sensibilities (er, narrative) in his exchange with a buffoon like Ben Affleck, and chose to touch the third rail of censorship of Murray, he's a "bigot," a "racist."

Who's observing mood affiliation there?

Somebody needs to be the skeptic here. Because from what I see, there's an enormous amount of mood affiliation on this board.

Not so much from you. You're a son of a bitch to debate with, but you don't seem to have a strong ideology (or at least not one that isn't subject to change). So this is not in any way aimed in your direction.

"Don't you dare take shots at a view that I hold sacred" is never a wise posture. That's passion eclipsing clinical examination of issues. Klein would support this by the way, as he believes we should consider feelings. I'm not unsympathetic to that view. But facts are facts, and however deeply held a position might be, if there are holes in it, it should be criticized. I think identity politics is one of those areas. Generalizations are like abortion. Needed, but best avoided, and used rarely.

It's telling so many people here would happily call themselves progressive, as they have. Maybe you think you're one (your affection for free markets renders this impossible, by the way). I think myself one in some regards. But I'm conservative in other regards (like you). I know I'm socially liberal. But on fiscal policies, I go policy by policy. Sometimes, I like liberal ideas, sometimes conservative. My mind changes from day to day.

With the exception of a few bedrock concepts regarding individual freedom, I'm pretty much a relativist on everything, viewing theories and policies like a buffet. I think everyone is secretly the same. And yet here, to disagree with often doctrinaire liberal sacred cows earns one a massive pile-on.

I'd be careful discussing mood affiliation here. You are correct that I have knee jerk impulse to want to tell Klein to shut up. And that's perhaps unfair. But it's the same knee jerk reaction one receives here when questioning certain strident liberal or progressive opinions, or the darlings who offer them -- "I'm right, dammit... You're trolling!" Neither is true.

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. The whole point of was to get a couple of racist haters who like trashing Islam but know jack-shit about it together with a prominent liberal to get attention for their little hissy-fits. 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 in particular.

Everyone here is eager to engage with people with a wide range of intelligent opinions. Please don't mistake these clowns for that, though; 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. And how Obama shouldn't be able to buy groceries without a long-form birth certificate.