US Politics Mega-thread - Page 85

On April 08 2018 02:54 Kickboxer wrote:
It's funny to see Peterson discussed by people who clearly have no idea what he's about, and also clearly get their distilled second-hand information on his (enormously profound to say the least) belief system from apartchik media like the Guardian and other partisan rags that keep producing - for reasons that should appear suspicious to any sensible person - wildly satirical, stumbling, fumbling hit pieces on the man . . . while asking for money in their site banners lol.

In the grand scheme of things, you're just adding fire to the cultural shift you don't see happening (though looking acutely into its more concerning ill symptoms, such as MGTOW, alt-right, pua, the apparent existential impotence of millenials in the real world etc., should have been obvious red flags) because eventually, many legitimately curious people are so shockingly surprised to learn how much sense is made by someone so reviled and misrepresented by the cultural establishment, they begin to suspect, like Sam Harris recently said, that the left has gone batshit insane on its "de-platforming" and shaming enforcement of the "golden path" - or whatever it's calling its ing-soc project nowadays - to a degree it can no longer even be talked to without employing misrepresentations and hysteria.

Get at least moderately informed, really. Please. I don't even know how he gets brought up in this discussion? I was stating my opinion on democracy, which let's be honest produced President Trump so ... you can't hate one with a passion and pedestal the other. There are some emerging problems, clearly.

The below brief & enlightening article is a handy wormhole to a more nuanced (dare we say "diverse"?) understanding of the world. You can thank me later.
https://medium.com/rebel-wisdom/how-to-join-the-intellectual-dark-web-a-users-guide-b60ae0b12b86


Also, opening (for what seems like the first time ever because hey, you need massive balls) the discussion of women constantly passively flaunting their sexual attraction in the workplace, where it really has no business participating as a human trait since we're supposedly looking for a sexuality-free - you know, professional, meritocratic and so on - environment where men are expected to not only keep their own sexual impulses in check (...doh!) but also off their bias radar etc, etc, etc seems like a rather reasonable issue in a time demonstrably obsessed with talking about issues of sexuality. It's just not something anyone would expect since 1) you need to raise the entire problem to a higher conceptual plane of inquiry 2) womyn are apparently the only sex

User was warned for this post (not an acceptable way to start the post)

On April 08 2018 06:15 Kickboxer wrote:


by "dirty" I mean deceptively manipulative and not ridiculous or outright false like an Alex Jones. I mean dirty in the machiavelian sense, i.e. intellectually dishonest due to a political agenda. Insincere with some calculating brain behind it. The fact it was published under what fronts as a highly legitimate banner was part of my resentment. The author you can look up. The article too, and then compare it to the article I posted and make your own conclusions. There are far more than two sides to this particular debate, and it goes far beyond Peterson as a martyr or guru or whatever

I see myself on the right because I'm more triggered by leftist ideology and sentiment in 2018 than I am by rightist ones. My beliefs are all over the place, I'm anti-gun pro-abortion anti-government pro-wealth redistribution anti-immigration pro-drugs&prostitution anti-islam pro-labour anti-Church, consider myself to be religious (i.e. not an atheist) and am a fan of capitalism, so classify me as you will, but I've decided that free speech / thought, and freedom in general, especially in the intellectual and individual-economic sense, as well as the stability, functionality and sanity of society and daily life as a separate issue, are my core concerns at the moment. Both these push me further away from the mainstream progressive left on a yearly basis, and I'm not alone in this tendency.

On April 08 2018 06:15 Kickboxer wrote:


by "dirty" I mean deceptively manipulative and not ridiculous or outright false like an Alex Jones. I mean dirty in the machiavelian sense, i.e. intellectually dishonest due to a political agenda. Insincere with some calculating brain behind it. The fact it was published under what fronts as a highly legitimate banner was part of my resentment. The author you can look up. The article too, and then compare it to the article I posted and make your own conclusions. There are far more than two sides to this particular debate, and it goes far beyond Peterson as a martyr or guru or whatever

I see myself on the right because I'm more triggered by leftist ideology and sentiment in 2018 than I am by rightist ones. My beliefs are all over the place, I'm anti-gun pro-abortion anti-government pro-wealth redistribution anti-immigration pro-drugs&prostitution anti-islam pro-labour anti-Church, consider myself to be religious (i.e. not an atheist) and am a fan of capitalism, so classify me as you will, but I've decided that free speech / thought, and freedom in general, especially in the intellectual and individual-economic sense, as well as the stability, functionality and sanity of society and daily life as a separate issue, are my core concerns at the moment. Both these push me further away from the mainstream progressive left on a yearly basis, and I'm not alone in this tendency.

On April 08 2018 06:31 Dangermousecatdog wrote:

Just curious, what are these "leftist ideology" that triggers you so? I see no need for anyone to peg themselves down a left/right divide, especially when the meaning of such is murky and changes from place to place, from time to time, and even from person to person. It's also probably unhealthy for people to so take pro and anti positions on political issues, as if politics and political views are nothing more than taking sides of a football team, especially when most your your views appear to be contradicting each other depending on how people would define them. Anti-government, but pro wealth distribution. Anti church and anti Islam, but religious. Pro-capatilism, but pro-wealth distribution. Pro freedom, but anti-gun. Pro freedom, but anti- church/Islam, all are incompatible depending on how people would define these words and concepts.

If you are triggered but "leftist ideology" perhaps it is what you think is the nebulous concept of "left" that is in error, and you aren't the nebulous concept of "right", you are just simply triggered by certainly ideology, that you just simply associate as on the left for whatever reason. Heck we have no idea what exactly constitutes mainstream progressive left in Slovenia. I can't even tell you what that constitutes in the UK. Of course, in the end, we still have no idea what exactly causes your selective ire so.

On April 08 2018 06:43 Kickboxer wrote:
If you have time to reply to forum posts, you have time to read an article.

Also, positing he's unimportant is rather crazy. He's the most visible public intellectual since Zizek and a current best-selling author, as well as a watercooler topic in 2nd world countries like Slovenia

On April 08 2018 06:47 zlefin wrote:

I have time to read an article; but you said "find"; I don' feel like hunting around to find some particular article on someone who must have many articles about them.
sounds unimportant to me, he's just a talking head, he doesn' thave real power. and I don't think he's the most visible intellectual, maybe the most visible rightist intellectual, but most visible in general? I doubt it; especially as there's some intellectuals who aren' treally into the politics scene and are just known for their intellectual work. and at any rate, there's no answer to the question of what would they gain by smearing him?

On April 08 2018 06:50 Jockmcplop wrote:


He's incredibly influential at the moment, with his C4 interview getting over 8 million Youtube views (for an 'intellectual' this is absolutely huge).
The Guardian has an awful lot to gain by smearing him. They are obviously putting forward their own agenda, which is leftist and heavy on identity politics, two things that Peterson is rallying people against.

On April 08 2018 05:25 zlefin wrote:

are those articles in the oped section or the journalism section?
at any rate, it sounds like you're making an overly vigorous conclusion based on a very small and highly curated sample size. "comes to your attention" introduces many sources of possible bias; and there's a whole apparatus that exists to magnify any errors on the "other" side because it's profitable to do so.

I'm sure a great many publications could look bad if you look at only one article a month out of thousands and those ones are chosen specifically because they're likely to enrage you.

On April 08 2018 06:53 zlefin wrote:


if that's huge for an intellectual, that, plus the other allegations aginst him, makes me more inclined to believe he's a pseudo-intellectual peddling the typical nonsense such people do, which would hence explain his viewership size.
but what does the guardian gain from that agenda? we're talking machiavellianism here; where's the money/power at the root of it?

I also rather doubt peterson is actually rallying people against "identity politics" as few people are; mostly they just use that term to derogatorily refer to some politics they disagree with/don' care about to delegitimize it.

On April 08 2018 06:27 IgnE wrote:


citation needed for when "postmodern" was first used

On April 08 2018 07:02 Jockmcplop wrote:


He's got his own thing going. I personally quite like him, but I understand why people wouldn't. He big into the idea that there's a massive leftist conspiracy to take over universities and force them not to be racist and sexist, and he thinks that would be awful. On the other hand, he also has some really useful and genuinely insightful self help advice from his years as a clinical psychologist. His output is a very weird combination of these things and it really has taken the internet of young men by storm.

And yeah, he's mostly against leftism, although he claims to be against all identity politics (while also believing that men are under political attack?!?)

re The Guardian, they are involved in a battle of ideas with the right, and Peterson has recently become a figurehead of their enemy, so of course they are going to smear and slander him. Its not self serving, but it is dishonest the way they have attacked him, constantly referring to him as right wing or far right, when in reality he is a traditionalist with fairly centrist political views. He's more anti-left than an right winger. I wouldn't even describe him a center right.
I've watched for a few months now as his popularity has exploded and instead of taking on his ideas one by one and exposing the bad ones (and he has some pretty bad ideas), most people just yell racist, sexist or right winger at him in the hope that this will make him go away.

On April 08 2018 07:15 iamthedave wrote:

Besides, 'traditionalist' isn't much of a jump from 'conservative'.

On April 08 2018 07:02 Jockmcplop wrote:


He's got his own thing going. I personally quite like him, but I understand why people wouldn't. He big into the idea that there's a massive leftist conspiracy to take over universities and force them not to be racist and sexist, and he thinks that would be awful. On the other hand, he also has some really useful and genuinely insightful self help advice from his years as a clinical psychologist. His output is a very weird combination of these things and it really has taken the internet of young men by storm.

And yeah, he's mostly against leftism, although he claims to be against all identity politics (while also believing that men are under political attack?!?)

re The Guardian, they are involved in a battle of ideas with the right, and Peterson has recently become a figurehead of their enemy, so of course they are going to smear and slander him. Its not self serving, but it is dishonest the way they have attacked him, constantly referring to him as right wing or far right, when in reality he is a traditionalist with fairly centrist political views. He's more anti-left than an right winger. I wouldn't even describe him a center right.
I've watched for a few months now as his popularity has exploded and instead of taking on his ideas one by one and exposing the bad ones (and he has some pretty bad ideas), most people just yell racist, sexist or right winger at him in the hope that this will make him go away.

On April 08 2018 07:38 zlefin wrote:
also, remember this is the US politics thread, so we use the US politics terminology; so right wing and conservative go together a great deal. and conservative does imply right wing in the US parlance.

On April 08 2018 07:45 Jockmcplop wrote:


This doesn't make sense to me.
Right wing is surely a subset of conservative that implies certain far-right beliefs, regardless of the country or setting. I can understand how a conservative could be a right winger, but they are not identical, even in the USA.
Peterson doesn't hold far-right or extreme views at all, not in any way.

On April 08 2018 07:49 zlefin wrote:

right wing doesn't imply far-right beliefs; it includes moderate-right beliefs.
they need not be extreme to qualify as "right wing" by the american parlance standards.
they may not be identical, but they're pretty overlapping in the way the terms are used here.
words mean different things in different places; so it needn't "surely" be that.

it makes perfect sense (insofar as anything in language does); it's just not the definitions you're used to; you're thinking using the british definitions rather than the american ones.

On April 08 2018 07:52 Jockmcplop wrote:


Fair enough.
Going back to the original point though, the article in question was written by the Guardian, a British media organization.

On April 08 2018 07:57 zlefin wrote:

yes, but a media organization, and hence familiar with international term usage and its variations. and it's being written about a canadian (i don't know what the standards are in canadian parlance). maybe they use the standards of the nation they're from; or are applying american standards given the amount of talking he does in america/to americans. and was it made more for international consumption on their website, or for offline purposes in britain?

and the point where you object to the article bein tagged alt-right, and clal that a smear job, reeks of you wanting to find an objection, rather than reasonably looking at the situation. because a) the tag could be because the article discusses alt-rigthness, and hence is about that topic, regardless of the conclusion as to whether he's in it; and b) tagging of stuff is often done sloppily anyways.