We are all Slave now.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall

Tell me which issues I should side with the right on.

Oat milk is not milk.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

There's the magic in your skewed view of yourself. You think you're continually poking holes. Maybe sometimes you are. But most of time you're just stating the opposite position as if that in and of itself is somehow meaningful.

It is. How else do you test a position's credibility?

Again, sowing skepticism isn't what you think it is. Poking holes in both sides is meaningless, especially because you really don't stand for fucking anything (other than your wallet, which is the only consistent position on policy I've seen you take).

It's true I cannot get what I want from either party. But again, weakness in positions should be exposed.

Good question. But surely you understand that if I say absolutely none, it's not because I am a brainwashed partisan who just follows whatever Democrats say. It's because I have thought about each issue and disagree with the opinions on the right.

I don't think you're brainwashed. But when someone cites a person like Harris on the issue of censorship on controversial issues, and the reaction is a knee jerk "Harris is fucking racist!," without even considering what Harris said, am I wrong to sense some tribalism? GGG and Adder have taken the position Harris is invalid on all things, without even considering the conversation.

What's funny about you is when I criticize the left--like I did when Hillary and Bill played those bullshit racist games with Obama--it doesn't mean a thing to you because you've already put me in a category that helps you with your tired ass tribal narrative. Obama's drone policy was bullshit. He was way too aggressive with immigration. None of that matters because I haven't agreed with Ted Cruz one time!

And when I criticize the right, it's all good. But when I criticize the left, I'm in bed with the alt right! (Not your criticism, but Adder's.)

Tell me which issues I should side with the right on. If I tell you why I don't, will you actually believe what I say or is it just more evidence that I am in my tribe and incapable of independent thought? That's why this is a stupid exercise.

I don't think you have an obligation to side with any. I only think you have an obligation not to pre-judge. The standard on assessing Trump voters is not, "They're all racists except the extent someone proves some of them are not."

But I'll tell you this much: The right too often welcomes racists with open arms (or at least doesn't denounce them). While this is a minor point on your long issues list, it is of vital importance to me because racism permeates every single aspect of politics. Hell, on almost every single policy position I can think of, the only time the right seems to care about race (read: protected classes) is when a white person might have been impacted by a policy.*

I don't know what I'm supposed to do with this. I agree with it. 2?

Again, does that mean that I always agree with Democrats when it comes to race? Absolutely not. Are they almost always better than Republicans when it comes to actual policy? Hell yes.

Forget parties for a moment. This isn't really about parties at all. It's about bias. When someone pokes a hole in a position I hold, I don't immediately call the person a racist or a xenophobe or alt-right. Nor do you (this isn't really directed to you).

I grasp that you're annoyed that I think you've tribal sensibilities. I unfairly failed to distinguish you from those who knee jerked to use or "racist!" or "alt right!" (I should probably have this battle exclusively with GGG and Adder, who engage in that stuff.)

In this regard, I have generalized inaccurately, and lazily. I'll try to explicitly carve you out of this category as much as possible. But I can't drop the "tribal" criticism in regard to anyone who reflexively hurls an insult in response to skepticism. There's a certain "don't dare question what I believe" ring to that.

TM

*Of course this is all you'll hear from this post, but I don't really care.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

I'm old enough to remember you being a big advocate of "starve the beast."

How is that trickle down economics?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

No one with a brain should be watching any cable news, or even any TV news.

That said, out in the "print" media, you absolutely 100% saw a ton of left-leaning writing about the role of economic insecurity. Yeah, anyone who has looked closely has concluded that it wasn't about economic insecurity, or, at bare factual minimum, the two things correlated really strongly.

But that's wholly different than what happens in the right wing medium bubble, where there's no discussion at all.

I don't watch cable news as a rule, but have you been in any waiting room lately? Watched any news stories online?

For the record, the only station I watch when there's some serious story to be seen is CNN.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

But just like Fox, it selectively presents and emphasizes certain facts over others.

For the kids out there, this was once called "editing."

And like Fox, but not as dishonestly, it crafts a subtle narrative of the facts.

I'm not sure why you think selection and narrative are so damning. There are an awful lot of facts out there, so selection is a fact of human life. The same is true with narrative. When the news on the radio at the top of the hour tells you that the Dow is up 7, you're experiencing selection and narrative.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm hugely skeptical of attacks on environmental regulation. I also have expressed the view that unions are an economic positive (and that labor and capital are arbitrary distinctions) endless times.

And where have I advocated trickle down economics? The tax cuts were stupid. I said exactly as much.

You've a selective memory.

(You're also notably silent when my criticisms match yours. But when they don't, I'm suborning racism and Islamaphobia.)

If I picked the wrong issues, I picked the wrong issues, but you are fooling yourself if you think you are equally skeptical of all sides of all issues.

All of us are noticeably silent here when we agree with each other. Nobody here has self-esteem issues that would prompt me to post that they're doing a good job when they say something I agree with, with the possible exception of patentparanyc.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

For the kids out there, this was once called "editing."

Editing to craft an ideological narrative is not editing. This was once called "editorializing."

I'm not sure why you think selection and narrative are so damning. There are an awful lot of facts out there, so selection is a fact of human life. The same is true with narrative. When the news on the radio at the top of the hour tells you that the Dow is up 7, you're experiencing selection and narrative.

If you edit to present the facts in a manner that suits your political views, you've editorialized.

That it also happens randomly is immaterial. I'm not talking about benign selection or quirks of timing. I'm talking about intentionally editing facts to create a story that attempts to put a certain conclusion in the viewers' minds.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

If I picked the wrong issues, I picked the wrong issues, but you are fooling yourself if you think you are equally skeptical of all sides of all issues.

All of us are noticeably silent here when we agree with each other. Nobody here has self-esteem issues that would prompt me to post that they're doing a good job when they say something I agree with, with the possible exception of patentparanyc.

I'm pretty close to it. I have a lean against regulation and govt growth generally, but other than that, I'm equally skeptical of just about everything.

The last person I gave a pass on everything was Bill Clinton in the 90s.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Thurgreed Marshall

Tell me which issues I should side with the right on. If I tell you why I don't, will you actually believe what I say or is it just more evidence that I am in my tribe and incapable of independent thought?
TM

Real Americans don’t drink Red Ale?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Oat milk is not milk.

Which is why we call it oat milk.

Next issue.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Editing to craft an ideological narrative is not editing. This was once called "editorializing."

If you edit to present the facts in a manner that suits your political views, you've editorialized.

That it also happens randomly is immaterial. I'm not talking about benign selection or quirks of timing. I'm talking about intentionally editing facts to create a story that attempts to put a certain conclusion in the viewers' minds.

I can only respond to what you have posted, not to the way that you shift your views in the next post. You accused MSNBC of being selective and of pushing narrative, two things that are inherent in reporting the news, but not of being ideological.

Reporters love a simple narrative, because they must select a few facts from all of the stuff that is happening and then turn into into a short story that will grab audience attention. Trying doing that without a strong narrative thrust. That's one reason that reporters love a good horse race.

You are maybe implying that MSNBC and Fox News are essentially alike in pushing an ideological narrative. If so, that's nuts. First, and tangentially, we have seen in recent years that Fox is willing to abandon ideas and positions to carry water for the conservative movement, which lately means that it basically serves Trump.

But setting that aside, the idea that mainstream institutions and their conservative alternatives are somehow flip sides of the same coin is an idea you love and is fundamentally wrong, as I said here, which you may have missed in today's back and forth. That doesn't mean that MSNBC is neutral. It means we have mainstream institutions, with their associated self-interests and biases, and we have minority conservative alternatives, formed in reaction to and out of grievance with the mainstream, with their own self-interests and biases. If you want to call the mainstream institutions "ideological," let's not get into a semantic discussion about what the word means (because that would be censoring me, bro) -- just admit that Fox and MSNBC are very different in significantly important ways, per my earlier post.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

GGG and Adder have taken the position Harris is invalid on all things, without even considering the conversation.

I have? I've taken the position that "don't you think context is necessary here so that your audience is not misled?" is not censorship. And the position that I have no interest in learning who Harris is.

But when I criticize the left, I'm in bed with the alt right! (Not your criticism, but Adder's.)

You didn't "criticize the left" you said "that's not racism" which I suggested was a comment that was completely unnecessary outside the bounds of alt right discourse. There's no meaningful distinction between racial animus and religious animus and to the extent that you feel the semantics matter, the context made completely clear what which was being discussed. In alt right discourse, the distinction matters to (1) attempt to make the religious animus appear relatively not that bad, and (2) narrow the scope of "real racism" out of existence. Outside that discourse, there's no point.

And I said you clearly are reading some alt right stuff, whether you know it or not.

For the record, I do not care at all who you are in bed with.

The standard on assessing Trump voters is not, "They're all racists except the extent someone proves some of them are not."

Racism is everywhere. It permeates American policy and politics. You have this notion that it's some limited set of malevolent beliefs held by the unwashed few, when, in fact, it is how and why many of our institutions were set up and intended to function. Those stridently insisting on the status quo (or worse, going back to how things used to be), are pretty fairly assumed to be either okay with that fact or ignorant of it, which isn't really any better unless they're willing to learn.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Which is why we call it oat milk.

Next issue.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=8zB4ItYcX4I

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It is. How else do you test a position's credibility?

It's true I cannot get what I want from either party. But again, weakness in positions should be exposed.

I think you think you are poking holes when you are quite often just stating an opposing position. The blinders you have on keep you from seeing that when you do that, you think you're pointing out a weakness and you haven't considered the fact that what you're saying has been considered and discarded before you even brought it up. In fact, whenever you do play the Sebby Advocate, you are convinced that you are revealing some insight just because it's coming from (often) the right. And when it gets rejected you go into the "if only you guys could escape your tribalism!" bit.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I don't think you're brainwashed. But when someone cites a person like Harris on the issue of censorship on controversial issues, and the reaction is a knee jerk "Harris is fucking racist!," without even considering what Harris said, am I wrong to sense some tribalism? GGG and Adder have taken the position Harris is invalid on all things, without even considering the conversation.

I skipped most of this conversation. But from what I did see, people seemed to also be arguing that what he was actually saying was racist. Not saying there wasn't a bit of both. But you seem overly focused on the part that confirms your "everyone is a brain-dead tribalist" theory.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

And when I criticize the right, it's all good. But when I criticize the left, I'm in bed with the alt right! (Not your criticism, but Adder's.)

Again, didn't follow. But if you agree with someone, of course it's all good. What kind of response are you looking for?

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I don't think you have an obligation to side with any. I only think you have an obligation not to pre-judge. The standard on assessing Trump voters is not, "They're all racists except the extent someone proves some of them are not."

This is not the standard I think anyone applies. I think it's fair to say that Trump voters are okay enough with Trump's racism (statements and policy) that it doesn't affect their support of him.

I also think that you think you have Trump voters figured out and it's all about the economy as far as you're concerned. You've been presented with studies that you have chosen to ignore in favor of your own conclusion. These studies have found that racism, sexism and status absolutely was what drove Trump voters. See:

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/04/18/1718155115
https://psmag.com/social-justice/mor...-trump-victory

Obviously there were a number of factors. But, unless we're arguing over exactly how much of a factor racism, sexism, and xenophobia played, then we're back in realm of the article I posted last week about white fragility and the need to deny and get defensive whenever the topic is broached.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I grasp that you're annoyed that I think you've tribal sensibilities. I unfairly failed to distinguish you from those who knee jerked to use or "racist!" or "alt right!" (I should probably have this battle exclusively with GGG and Adder, who engage in that stuff.)

I think you're not picking up what I'm putting down. I just want you to consider that people have actually thought about both sides to a position before taking a stance. And that when you think you're poking holes, you're often just stating the other side.

"Poking holes" connotes the discovery of flaws. The act of discovering you disagree does not mean (i) you have discovered a flaw or (ii) you are revealing something that hasn't already been considered. When you get pushback, you throw the tribal accusation around, tell everyone they live in a bubble, and bring up your latest pretend cocktail party conversation. That's what's annoying.

TM

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by Hank Chinaski

Real Americans don’t drink Red Ale?

Which tribe does this make me a part of though (although, right now I'm drinking no beer at all)? Sometimes it feels like I'm the only one.

TM