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On March 22 2023 18:43 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2023 18:25 FeatherPlanes wrote:On March 22 2023 16:50 BlackJack wrote:On March 22 2023 14:22 Simberto wrote:On March 22 2023 13:52 BlackJack wrote:
We don’t have a single word or term that refers to the ideas of teaching black children they are oppressed in grade school. I don’t care what you call it. Do you want to make up a term for it so we can all be on the same page and move past the semantics? Or I suspect the entire point is to say “well if you don’t have a term for it then it’s not real and your grievances aren’t legitimate.”
Then create one. That would solve the whole problem of taking a word, using it to mean something completely different then it actually means, and then being mad at people telling you that the word doesn't mean what you think it does or getting confused that people misunderstand what you are saying because you are misusing words. I am a physics teacher. It is incredibly annoying how much of my work is getting people to realize that they are misusing terms. Surprising amounts of physics and maths terms are completely misused by the greater public, which makes teaching physics a lot harder than it would need to be. This is a slightly different variation of this problem, because here everyone but physicists are abusing those terms, while in your case only the red half of the population does. The solution is the same. Use words to mean what they actually mean, not something else entirely. It is also problematic when people of different political standings use a different vocabulary with different definitions. Because that means that at some point, they basically cannot talk to each other anymore, because their words mean different things to each of them, and they no longer understand what the other is saying. Which i tend to assume is by design, a lot of people in the US profit greatly from increasing the split in your society. The actual word for a white gay dad being denied placement on a parent school committee because of his skin color would be racism. But people object to the use of that word as well. Reading Seth Brenzel's (the gay dad) op-ed for the Bay Area Reporter, together with Heather Knight's article for the San Francisco Chronicles' (who actually talked to Brenzel on Twitter regarding the SF Board of Education conducting political malpractice on a different issue), race was actually seems to be the least of the issues here. They might have pointed out he doesn't meet their diversity criteria - something that Brenzel and LGBTQ Democrats noticed as stupid since all of the chosen parents were hetrosexual and LGBTQ kids at SF schools were suffering from a wave of bullying so could really use a voice - but the real reason appears to be that Brenzel was an hyperqualified candidate (i.e. can actually influence people) who strongly advocated for reopening schools at the time and the Board just did not want to address that quesiton at all. To quote from the San Fransisco Chronicle: She knew Brenzel’s advocacy for reopening schools safely might be an issue. But any normal board would have at least tabled the appointment, quietly, rather than publicly humiliate him for two hours, said PAC chair Naomi Laguana. After all, hundreds of parents were waiting to speak about opening schools, a topic that, as usual, didn’t come up for seven hours.
“There were 500 parents along for this roller-coaster ride of insanity, and I felt responsible,” said Laguana, who had recruited Brenzel. So the situation really seems like a rorschach test. The Daily Mail sees anti-white racism, LGBTQ groups see discrimination against the LGBTQ community. The reality doesn't seem to be either of this, the SF Board of Education appeared to be playing politics, playing politics very poorly, and just pissing everyone off because they just wanted to dodge a pressing issue regarding reopening schools for disadvantaged children. So although they said they rejected him for his lack of diversity the real reason is they wanted to dodge the question on school reopening? The idea that anti-white racism is so tolerated that it can be used as a palatable made-up reason to reject a candidate is an even better punchline.
The reasoning is pretty buried in the op-eds but they actually don't seem to specifically reject him on the basis of his race. They mention that they'll contemplate letting him volunteer if he comes back with a more diverse group of volunteers that represents the community better. Basically giving him Hercules' 12 labors with the expectation that he goes away and leaves them alone.
In fact, Brenzel doesn't really directly mention his race being an issue at all in his op-ed because he knows what the issue is here. The woke agenda is clearly not the problem here because every stereotypical woke mob would love to have the company of an overqualified gay parent who is on the board of a local LGBTQ Democratic Party club and runs a music education non-profit. Brenzel is practically a liberal unicorn with deep connections to liberal political and cultural institutions ranging from the Democratic Party to the San Francisco Symphony.
The SF Board of Education 100% knows who this guy is, which is why he got singled out. What they did for everyone else is spin the wheels for 7 hours until everyone gave up and logged off Zoom. When everyone left, they then started to address the issue of school openings.
Like the LGBTQ Democrats said, what they did was clear political and educational malpractice by giving everyone a free rorschach test. They just pissed everyone off because they didn't want to actually take the heat.
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United States42255 Posts
If I’m tasked with forming a group that represents the demographics of a population then matching those demographics isn’t racism or sexism etc.
Rejecting a qualified applicant on the basis of their race would be racism but in this instance race was a qualifier, a white man is not a qualified applicant for the position of black woman.
Obviously.
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On March 22 2023 19:08 KwarK wrote:
If I’m tasked with forming a group that represents the demographics of a population then matching those demographics isn’t racism or sexism etc.
Rejecting a qualified applicant on the basis of their race would be racism but in this instance race was a qualifier, a white man is not a qualified applicant for the position of black woman.
Obviously.
Where are you getting that the demographics of the committee have to match the demographics of the students? You wouldn’t be inventing stipulations that didn’t actually exist here, would you?
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On March 22 2023 11:29 GreenHorizons wrote:
Just so folks know, "woke" came out of Black communities (technically ~100 years ago referencing general racialized violence against Black people and other systems of oppression) referring to police brutality and faux remedies for it (the usage most people became familiar with sometime after ~2014) and was coopted by social democrats several years later. As a result, now it more frequently acts as a pejorative for Democrats whether from their left or their right.
To their left it's seen as a bastardized/coopted intersectionality, to their right, whatever BJ and Intro are saying.
Similar to "abolish/defund the police", Democrats coopted something and now they argue with Republicans about what something they bastardized actually means and whether it's good or bad.
EDIT: Basically, "wokeism" is a Republican caricature, of a coopted/bastardized Democrat interpretation, of socialist intersectionality.
The fascists are so fucking good at this unfortunately.
Christopher Rufo kinda gave out the playbook when he successfuly demonized CRT, what was once just a field of study got completely poisoned because Republicans are top notch at regurgitated their chants.
"We have successfully frozen their brand—"critical race theory"—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category...
The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think "critical race theory." We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans."
They're basically doing the same thing to woke.
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On March 22 2023 19:29 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2023 19:08 KwarK wrote:
If I’m tasked with forming a group that represents the demographics of a population then matching those demographics isn’t racism or sexism etc.
Rejecting a qualified applicant on the basis of their race would be racism but in this instance race was a qualifier, a white man is not a qualified applicant for the position of black woman.
Obviously. Where are you getting that the demographics of the committee have to match the demographics of the students? You wouldn’t be inventing stipulations that didn’t actually exist here, would you?
Probably from your very first post on this subject, where you yourself wrote that?
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On March 22 2023 16:00 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2023 14:22 Simberto wrote:On March 22 2023 13:52 BlackJack wrote:
We don’t have a single word or term that refers to the ideas of teaching black children they are oppressed in grade school. I don’t care what you call it. Do you want to make up a term for it so we can all be on the same page and move past the semantics? Or I suspect the entire point is to say “well if you don’t have a term for it then it’s not real and your grievances aren’t legitimate.”
Then create one. That would solve the whole problem of taking a word, using it to mean something completely different then it actually means, and then being mad at people telling you that the word doesn't mean what you think it does or getting confused that people misunderstand what you are saying because you are misusing words. I am a physics teacher. It is incredibly annoying how much of my work is getting people to realize that they are misusing terms. Surprising amounts of physics and maths terms are completely misused by the greater public, which makes teaching physics a lot harder than it would need to be. This is a slightly different variation of this problem, because here everyone but physicists are abusing those terms, while in your case only the red half of the population does. The solution is the same. Use words to mean what they actually mean, not something else entirely. It is also problematic when people of different political standings use a different vocabulary with different definitions. Because that means that at some point, they basically cannot talk to each other anymore, because their words mean different things to each of them, and they no longer understand what the other is saying. Which i tend to assume is by design, a lot of people in the US profit greatly from increasing the split in your society. I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation here. The uncertainty around the meaning of wokeness is causing inertia in the discussion. It'll take a lot of force to break through this negative energy.
If your life goal is to be murdered by a physics teacher, then you are on a good path.
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On March 22 2023 20:21 Mikau313 wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2023 19:29 BlackJack wrote:On March 22 2023 19:08 KwarK wrote:
If I’m tasked with forming a group that represents the demographics of a population then matching those demographics isn’t racism or sexism etc.
Rejecting a qualified applicant on the basis of their race would be racism but in this instance race was a qualifier, a white man is not a qualified applicant for the position of black woman.
Obviously. Where are you getting that the demographics of the committee have to match the demographics of the students? You wouldn’t be inventing stipulations that didn’t actually exist here, would you? Probably from your very first post on this subject, where you yourself wrote that?
I’m not sure what you’re referring to, can you quote it?
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The seven school board members talk for two hours about whether the dad brings enough diversity. Yes, he’d be the only man. And the only LGBTQ representative. But he’d be the fourth white person in a district where 15% of students are white.
The gay dad never utters a single word. The board members do not ask the dad a single question before declining to approve him for the committee. They say they’ll consider allowing him to volunteer if he comes back with a slate of more diverse candidates, ideally including an Arab parent, a Native American parent, a Vietnamese parent and a Chinese parent who doesn’t speak English.
Sounds like it was pretty clear that they were looking to match the demographics of the student base to you when you first commented on this.
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On March 22 2023 20:30 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2023 16:00 Acrofales wrote:On March 22 2023 14:22 Simberto wrote:On March 22 2023 13:52 BlackJack wrote:
We don’t have a single word or term that refers to the ideas of teaching black children they are oppressed in grade school. I don’t care what you call it. Do you want to make up a term for it so we can all be on the same page and move past the semantics? Or I suspect the entire point is to say “well if you don’t have a term for it then it’s not real and your grievances aren’t legitimate.”
Then create one. That would solve the whole problem of taking a word, using it to mean something completely different then it actually means, and then being mad at people telling you that the word doesn't mean what you think it does or getting confused that people misunderstand what you are saying because you are misusing words. I am a physics teacher. It is incredibly annoying how much of my work is getting people to realize that they are misusing terms. Surprising amounts of physics and maths terms are completely misused by the greater public, which makes teaching physics a lot harder than it would need to be. This is a slightly different variation of this problem, because here everyone but physicists are abusing those terms, while in your case only the red half of the population does. The solution is the same. Use words to mean what they actually mean, not something else entirely. It is also problematic when people of different political standings use a different vocabulary with different definitions. Because that means that at some point, they basically cannot talk to each other anymore, because their words mean different things to each of them, and they no longer understand what the other is saying. Which i tend to assume is by design, a lot of people in the US profit greatly from increasing the split in your society. I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation here. The uncertainty around the meaning of wokeness is causing inertia in the discussion. It'll take a lot of force to break through this negative energy. If your life goal is to be murdered by a physics teacher, then you are on a good path.
I think there's a lot of potential there. It'll make for a hell of a moment.
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On March 22 2023 22:16 NewSunshine wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2023 20:30 Simberto wrote:On March 22 2023 16:00 Acrofales wrote:On March 22 2023 14:22 Simberto wrote:On March 22 2023 13:52 BlackJack wrote:
We don’t have a single word or term that refers to the ideas of teaching black children they are oppressed in grade school. I don’t care what you call it. Do you want to make up a term for it so we can all be on the same page and move past the semantics? Or I suspect the entire point is to say “well if you don’t have a term for it then it’s not real and your grievances aren’t legitimate.”
Then create one. That would solve the whole problem of taking a word, using it to mean something completely different then it actually means, and then being mad at people telling you that the word doesn't mean what you think it does or getting confused that people misunderstand what you are saying because you are misusing words. I am a physics teacher. It is incredibly annoying how much of my work is getting people to realize that they are misusing terms. Surprising amounts of physics and maths terms are completely misused by the greater public, which makes teaching physics a lot harder than it would need to be. This is a slightly different variation of this problem, because here everyone but physicists are abusing those terms, while in your case only the red half of the population does. The solution is the same. Use words to mean what they actually mean, not something else entirely. It is also problematic when people of different political standings use a different vocabulary with different definitions. Because that means that at some point, they basically cannot talk to each other anymore, because their words mean different things to each of them, and they no longer understand what the other is saying. Which i tend to assume is by design, a lot of people in the US profit greatly from increasing the split in your society. I don't think you understand the gravity of the situation here. The uncertainty around the meaning of wokeness is causing inertia in the discussion. It'll take a lot of force to break through this negative energy. If your life goal is to be murdered by a physics teacher, then you are on a good path. I think there's a lot of potential there. It'll make for a hell of a moment.
Nah, that's just a theory.
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Trump continues to be the leader of the party. Pretty crazy seeing where we're at. He always comes out on top. He is the perfect embodiment of what conservatives value.
DeSantis, who has not entered the GOP primary but is expected to do so, trailed former President Trump, who won 54 percent, by 28 percentage points in the new poll published on Tuesday.
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3910294-desantis-sees-lowest-level-of-support-since-december-in-new-poll-trails-trump-by-28-points/
I think Desantis will just not ever officially actually run. I think he wanted to see if Trump implodes or gets arrested. If Trump gets actually in deep legal trouble, maybe Desantis announces. But I think at this point he's best off waiting it out.
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On March 22 2023 21:50 Mikau313 wrote:Show nested quote +
The seven school board members talk for two hours about whether the dad brings enough diversity. Yes, he’d be the only man. And the only LGBTQ representative. But he’d be the fourth white person in a district where 15% of students are white.
The gay dad never utters a single word. The board members do not ask the dad a single question before declining to approve him for the committee. They say they’ll consider allowing him to volunteer if he comes back with a slate of more diverse candidates, ideally including an Arab parent, a Native American parent, a Vietnamese parent and a Chinese parent who doesn’t speak English.
Sounds like it was pretty clear that they were looking to match the demographics of the student base to you when you first commented on this.
That says nothing about the school board being “tasked with matching the demographics of the students.” At best that would be something they decided to take upon themselves. But even if that were the case the fact that the committee has 0 men and 0 white men would still make the rejection nonsensical.
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On March 22 2023 19:08 KwarK wrote:
If I’m tasked with forming a group that represents the demographics of a population then matching those demographics isn’t racism or sexism etc.
Rejecting a qualified applicant on the basis of their race would be racism but in this instance race was a qualifier, a white man is not a qualified applicant for the position of black woman.
Obviously.
If you are tasked to form a group that represents the demographics of a population and you place ethnic makeup on a pedestal while ignoring other demographic dimensions, then you would be a race essentialist.
I don't know this story beyond what was said here, but if what FeatherPlanes and BlackJack wrote about it is factual then that's what the board's stated reasoning and suggestions amount to.
While I could hardly be further from BlackJack politically, I do take issue with essentialism of any flavor creeping up in supposedly progressive circles.
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On March 23 2023 03:48 BlackJack wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2023 21:50 Mikau313 wrote:
The seven school board members talk for two hours about whether the dad brings enough diversity. Yes, he’d be the only man. And the only LGBTQ representative. But he’d be the fourth white person in a district where 15% of students are white.
The gay dad never utters a single word. The board members do not ask the dad a single question before declining to approve him for the committee. They say they’ll consider allowing him to volunteer if he comes back with a slate of more diverse candidates, ideally including an Arab parent, a Native American parent, a Vietnamese parent and a Chinese parent who doesn’t speak English.
Sounds like it was pretty clear that they were looking to match the demographics of the student base to you when you first commented on this. That says nothing about the school board being “tasked with matching the demographics of the students.” At best that would be something they decided to take upon themselves. But even if that were the case the fact that the committee has 0 men and 0 white men would still make the rejection nonsensical.
The rejection is absolutely sensical because anyone with a brain knows the reason why it happened.
Which is why Brenzel isn't being a huge pussy and claiming he was seriously discrimainated against. Because he wasn't, he wasn't rejected because he was a man or white. The fact that a group looking for diversity rejected a gay parent amongst a group of volunteers who were all hetrosexual tells you that. Which is the only time he even mentions the Board clearly not taking diversity seriously in a throwaway statement.
The rest of his op-ed is focused on the truth of the matter and that's the Board conducting political and educational malpractice.
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On March 23 2023 05:40 FeatherPlanes wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2023 03:48 BlackJack wrote:On March 22 2023 21:50 Mikau313 wrote:
The seven school board members talk for two hours about whether the dad brings enough diversity. Yes, he’d be the only man. And the only LGBTQ representative. But he’d be the fourth white person in a district where 15% of students are white.
The gay dad never utters a single word. The board members do not ask the dad a single question before declining to approve him for the committee. They say they’ll consider allowing him to volunteer if he comes back with a slate of more diverse candidates, ideally including an Arab parent, a Native American parent, a Vietnamese parent and a Chinese parent who doesn’t speak English.
Sounds like it was pretty clear that they were looking to match the demographics of the student base to you when you first commented on this. That says nothing about the school board being “tasked with matching the demographics of the students.” At best that would be something they decided to take upon themselves. But even if that were the case the fact that the committee has 0 men and 0 white men would still make the rejection nonsensical. The rejection is absolutely sensical because anyone with a brain knows the reason why it happened. Which is why Brenzel isn't being a huge pussy and claiming he was seriously discrimainated against. Because he wasn't, he wasn't rejected because he was a man or white. The fact that a group looking for diversity rejected a gay parent amongst a group of volunteers who were all hetrosexual tells you that. Which is the only time he even mentions the Board clearly not taking diversity seriously in a throwaway statement. The rest of his op-ed is focused on the truth of the matter and that's the Board conducting political and educational malpractice.
You say that as if there exists any scenario in which you could complain about being discriminated against for being a white man in progressive circles of San Francisco. You would either have to be remarkably stupid or just not care about your reputation to go around saying you were discriminated against for being a white man. You might as well start walking around with a MAGA hat on.
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Norway28598 Posts
Is that all that different from complaining about being discriminated against for being too covid-lax? 
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Norway28598 Posts
Longer post coming, trying to address some different issues.
1: I agree that words and definitions matter and that clarifying them is useful.
But I don't believe it's actually hard to understand what is meant by 'some school board rejecting an otherwise very suitable candidate because he was white is an example of wokeism gone too far' (I’m not saying that’s what happened and I appreciate the clarifying posts by FeatherPlanes!) or 'police refusing to police because they're afraid of backlash following complains that they're racist is wokeism gone too far'. The notion that it 'has gone too far' is where the conflict arises imo - both of these examples fit in with 'consequences of adopting what can colloquially, and not just in bad faith, be considered 'wokeism''. This isn't the real point of contention. The real point of contention is whether these examples constitute a broader 'rampant woke ideology threatening to destroy all that is good and wonderful about Murca'.
And there, I'm pretty certain I'm not on the same page as BJ. While I'm not sure to what degree BJ thinks it is a grand problem - I'm sure he thinks it is a bigger problem than what I do. My own opinion is that it's silly to worry about 'too much wokeism', even if I can also acknowledge that there are multiple examples where the consequences are silly, or downright bad. While I think diversifying the work place and various institutions is great, I think being overly focused on hitting certain diversity percentages will yield some negative results, too, and in those cases, it'll be stupid.
Similarly, while I think the American police seems like a pretty rotten institution in need of dire reform, I also think many of your cities are sufficiently crime- and violence-ridden where the absence of police might actually make things worse, not better. However, I also think the overarching goal of creating a more tolerant and understanding society is an admirable goal we should strive towards. Accepting that there are instances where it doesn't pan out in a good way doesn't make me abandon that goal or agree that it's not a fruitful endeavor or that this ideology is threatening to destroy america, in the vein certain right wingers feel. But I think refusing to debate (Hey - I'm actually totally fine with a GHesque 'good riddance to the police'-response) or acknowledge these examples actually makes me / us look unreasonable to a decent chunk of people, people who might easily be on board with 'climate change is real and must be prioritized' or 'wealth inequality is completely out of whack and must be reined in'.
I can make these arguments without pretending not to understand what he means. And that's the thing, Sermo, I don't think you guys are idiots. I think you do understand what BJ means - which is why the insistence that he must define woke so that you don't end up 'talking past each other' doesn't strike me as genuine, because I think you're actually capable of understanding his point without time spent on semantics.
2: Some people are disingenuous, but not everyone who in some shape or form opposes some degree of 'wokeism' are. (To be clear: From my perspective, being woke essentially means 'being aware of social injustice / fighting for social justice'. However, while I agree with the goal, it does not mean I always agree with the methods, and I certainly think being opposed to some forms of attempting to achieve social justice can be legitimate without it meaning that you are opposed to the goal of social justice.)
To be fair, most of the 'stupid' stuff doesn't happen on a policy level, but individually. (From my perspective, this is stuff like insulting a white lady because she wore a Chinese themed dress to a prom. I think being opposed to that on the grounds of 'cultural appropriation' (which is one area where the fight for social justice can take place) is stupid. Fair if people disagree!)
The one area, however, where I myself find most reason to be critical, is in terms of the discourse that happens. Not necessarily here (although also here sometimes), but in all forms of social media, in printed media, and also among politicians. Here, I think a climate has been cultivated where a lot of people get unreasonably offended by opinions people share that aren't even meant to be offensive. In some cases, it also leads to people deflecting legitimate arguments, and it makes it seem like certain topics are impossible to engage with because uttering an opinion that deviates from the ‘accepted’ point of view gets you branded as some type of hate-mongerer by association. It’s not that I don’t understand the mechanism of hiding sinister thoughts behind potentially innocent statements – but it shouldn’t be the default response to assume that’s the case.
3: What am I worried about here?
Essentially, I think the reason for the culture war is largely as a distraction from more pressing issues. And then, I think there are certain points of view that are held by parts of the left, or perhaps more accurately, certain forms of messaging by certain parts of the left, that do actively push people away. Yes, some are irredeemable fascists who won't accept a message of increased tolerance no matter how you phrase or argue for it, but the amount of fascist-leaning people isn't constant in a given society, which necessarily implies that some people can actually be moved one way or the other.
I see some parallels to Sweden in what is happening with the discourse, with the exception that in the US, the right wing has their own media universe which is even more flawed than what the mainstream Swedish media used to be. Essentially (and this is very simplified and shortened), Sweden was, for the longest period of time, one of the most tolerant and progressive countries in Europe, and thus arguably also in the world. When the Syrian civil war happened, for example, they insisted that they had limitless housing and opened their borders, and accepted like 80k refugees in a two month timespan, taking the most per capita besides Turkey (a neighboring country).
A significant number of Swedes, leftists alike, have shared stories of a rather.. unwelcoming debate climate, where expressing opinions critical of immigration would – regardless of what or how you phrased the opinion – result in a ‘you’re racist’ retort. Even a statement like ‘people from Muslim countries are on average less tolerant of homosexuals than what the case is for people from Scandinavia’ could result in such a response. (This is well backed up by studies, anyway, shouldn’t be controversial.) The thing is, that statement can be followed by either ‘so we shouldn’t allow them to migrate here’, OR, ‘so we need to make sure migrants from Islamic countries understand how Swedish culture differs in this regard’ – but it seems like very often, people hear the initial statement and then immediately jump to assume that the former is the implied follow-up, but many times, it is not.
And this, that media and politicians would always deflect any type of critique (and there’s plenty of legitimate critique of badly handled immigration that can be more severe than ‘they’re not as progressive as we are’), created a climate where suddenly, the guys who are saying ‘guys, stop bullshitting, we can all observe that not everything is as fine and dandy as you pretend it is’, end up getting a following (even if those people themselves are also full of shit, which would be my own opinion on Sweden). Notably, the party ‘Swedish Democrats’ – a party with some of the more extreme far-right history of Europe’s anti-immigration parties (granted, I understand there’s been significant cleaning of house), has gone from: 1.4% in 2002, to 2.9% in 2006, to 5.7% in 2010, to 12.9% in 2014, to 17.5% in 2018, to 20.5% - and suddenly, the party which used to be untouchable by all other parties is the largest right-wing party, and a support party for the coalition government.
I see a strong relationship between their growth, and the previous decades of rhetoric and deflection of all critique of Sweden’s liberal immigration laws. (And again, to be clear – I myself very much favor liberal immigration laws! I just think it must be possible to discuss topics without the ‘assumed guilt by association’ that happens.) And I also see – granted, anecdotally, I don’t have data here – examples of people who are in many ways sympathetic to many leftist ideals but who feel alienated by people who berate and insult them for making statements that aren’t up to date in terms of what language is appropriate, or even, what opinions are actually palatable, and I’m obviously not talking about some nazi bullshit, but about stuff that has to be possible to bring up in an open and honest discourse about difficult or controversial topics.
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Drone, I think you are right about how certain kinds of rhetoric — morally righteous criticism without any nuance or much benefit of the doubt for the interlocutor — can drive people away.
What could be the reason for that sort of rhetoric to be prevalent enough in Sweden to push people rightward?
- Is it overcorrection from people who are trying, for the first time, to reckon with bias against certain groups? (In this case, against Muslims?)
- Is it just that being nuanced and giving benefit of the doubt is hard?
- Is it that being nuanced and giving benefit of the doubt doesn’t play well on TV — or on the tech platforms where things can go viral?
- Is it that right-wing media is getting better at picking out the worst arguments from the left and holding them up for mockery?
- Is it that anti-democratic powers (basically Russia and China) are using troll farms to amplify the worst arguments?
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On March 23 2023 07:32 Djabanete wrote:
Drone, I think you are right about how certain kinds of rhetoric — morally righteous criticism without any nuance or much benefit of the doubt for the interlocutor — can drive people away.
What could be the reason for that sort of rhetoric to be prevalent enough in Sweden to push people rightward?
- Is it overcorrection from people who are trying, for the first time, to reckon with bias against certain groups? (In this case, against Muslims?)
- Is it just that being nuanced and giving benefit of the doubt is hard?
- Is it that being nuanced and giving benefit of the doubt doesn’t play well on TV — or on the tech platforms where things can go viral?
- Is it that right-wing media is getting better at picking out the worst arguments from the left and holding them up for mockery?
- Is it that anti-democratic powers (basically Russia and China) are using troll farms to amplify the worst arguments?
Im not Drone but I think its a combination of these 3 in the US. Probably more 1st and 2nd one than the 3rd one.
Right wing media is a cancer (and has been for decades) and I think tech company algorithms are to blame.
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On March 23 2023 01:45 Mohdoo wrote:Trump continues to be the leader of the party. Pretty crazy seeing where we're at. He always comes out on top. He is the perfect embodiment of what conservatives value. Show nested quote +DeSantis, who has not entered the GOP primary but is expected to do so, trailed former President Trump, who won 54 percent, by 28 percentage points in the new poll published on Tuesday. https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/3910294-desantis-sees-lowest-level-of-support-since-december-in-new-poll-trails-trump-by-28-points/I think Desantis will just not ever officially actually run. I think he wanted to see if Trump implodes or gets arrested. If Trump gets actually in deep legal trouble, maybe Desantis announces. But I think at this point he's best off waiting it out.
I'm pretty sure he will run, there just isn't any benefit to announcing this early.
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EPT
