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Northern Ireland26326 Posts
On January 16 2024 19:43 Magic Powers wrote:
Regarding the pitfalls of democracy: democracy is internal, and the liberties provided by democracy (such as voting rights) are only moderately meaningful for its foreign policies. The US was a fairly liberal country prior to actively participating in various brutal and unjust wars (and if not the beginning, then the continuation of these wars certainly was brutal and unjust). Likewise, Israel's democracy may also not necessarily have a meaningful impact on the threatment of Palestinians. That is, in large part, due to how Israel was founded. It's a nationalist state and it has never turned away from that. Democracy, in and of itself, can't tame such an oppressive beast.
Can’t agree more, indeed I’d argue to some degree that non-democratic regimes can somewhat temper wider calls for vengeance. They certainly have their other pitfalls of course.
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On January 16 2024 19:24 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 00:06 Magic Powers wrote:
With questions like this the only thing you prove is how much of a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias you have. I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word. There’s a certain amount of abstraction when we get to a nation state so it’s not directly equivalent, but I mean who here if offered a Sophie’s choice between a loved one being taken away, or multiple strangers is actually picking the latter? As per my position on much of what Hamas does I don’t think this makes it a morally correct position, but at least a somewhat explicable one. The sentiment for security is a pretty reasonable one, although counter-intuitively often policies seeking that actually make said breaches more likely, as it can be with hardline criminal justice. And as it is in this case IMO.
Yes, it is reasonable - from a purely pro-Israel perspective that completely neglects the Palestinian perspective. That's exactly my point. The fact that one has to make an emotional plea in favor of only one side in the conflict (such as imagining oneself in the shoes of an Israeli family, resulting in a significant emotional and/or ideological bias) to come to the conclusion that it makes sense to prefer a thousand Palestinian deaths to ten Israeli ones is proof that the point is true. It is a bias that very strongly favors Israeli lives over Palestinian ones at a 100 : 1 ratio.
I could use much harsher language than what I've been using to describe such favoritism. I prefer to stick to less inflammatory terms such as "bias" so as to keep the discussion relatively civil. But I won't be mincing words beyond that.
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On January 16 2024 09:58 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 09:17 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 07:57 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 07:29 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:54 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 06:43 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:41 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 06:35 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:28 Nebuchad wrote:
Switzerland probably. Direct democracy is cool. Then Norway I would imagine. Is there any non-democracies in your top 20? Probably not, I can't think of one that would be in. I inserted "probably" because since I'm a normal person I have never made a top 20 of the countries I prefer politically. Probably is good enough. I wonder why you would generally hold all democracies at the top if democracies have no values? Are non democracies at the bottom? Well you don't have to wonder any more, I'll tell you: it's because I hold that social hierarchies are bad for humans, and the more rigid the social hierarchies are, the worse it is for humans. Democracy, as a political system, tends to have less rigid social hierarchies than authoritarian systems do, and therefore they easily rank higher. Direct democracy is less rigid than representative democracy and therefore it ranks higher. If you follow my logic to the end a stateless society is probably superior to a democracy, but we're living so far away from that today that it's hard for even me to picture that, so I'm still choosing to stick to democratic socialism even though I've been leaning anarchist for a few years now. All of that is political mechanisms, not values or principles. How can I tell? Well as I've been saying and you've been ignoring me saying, we have examples of democracies throughout history and today breaking every single value or principle that you can name, so clearly that can't be the relevant part. Yes you like to talk in debate form so you can win internet arguments, taking forever to pull anything out and giving as little as possible in return. As you should be able to tell that is not my preferred way of communication. I clearly understand that democracy alone can not have values, but I can also look at the world and see that for the most part every value I hold is more reflected in democracies than all the other forms of government. I can thereby conclude that there is something special about democracies that cause this. This is why I value democracies over all other forms of government. This does not mean I think they are perfect, just the best. To me democracy is the most important thing a country can be, far more important than left or right, or anything else. I also value the opinions of the countries I hold in high regard. They know things I do not, as the people throughout them are experts and many of them hold similar values to me. That does not mean they are perfect but I do trust them to do the best they can, and I trust in the checks and balances that exist within the system. My biggest issue with direct democracy is where is the line? When I worked in government and started to learn a little bit about the different areas, I learned that a lot of things that I thought were dumb actually made a lot of sense given the rules and constraints they were under. I also learned I know very little about a lot of topics, waste water comes to mind. Even in waste and recycling, before I worked there I would have told you that recycling was far more important than an organics program. Then I learned what happens to apples (and all organics) in the landfill (spoiler is they do not breakdown) and how much green washing there is in the recycling industry (not that it is not good at all, but that it is not nearly as valuable as organics and often decisions are made based on what "looks" like good for the environment and not what is good for it). So, ya when there is a extremely complicated situation like this is, I don't try to boil it down to good and evil or only two options. I also trust in experts, especially from those in countries or organizations I trust. And then I'll look at what countries are supporting what and who. If for example (like in this situation) I see that on one you have Canada and Germany, on the other Iran and Russia, I'm going to with a fair bit of confidence side with the Canadian and German side and it will take a lot of good reasoning for me to switch. Remember that we're talking about this because you said it makes sense for people to support Ukraine and Israel because they're democracies, and democracies (supposedly) have values and principles. If we're in a situation where a democracy isn't upholding those values and principles, it doesn't make sense to appeal to its status as a democracy as a reason to support it, because the problem is precisely that they haven't been living up to that standard. So I think this logic is backwards. Instead I would start with the principles that I like, and then look at the situations where those principles are materializing. If Switzerland suddenly invaded Liechtenstein and started killing a bunch of Liechtenstein...ese(?) people in an effort to annex Liechtenstein, I wouldn't go "Ah but I like direct democracy and Liechtenstein is only a parliamentary monarchy, therefore that's a good thing." I would go "Okay, in this case Switzerland is clearly in the wrong, so I oppose this shit." It's really not as sophisticated as the length of this conversation is making it appear. If you don't like my style of arguing you could always not start arguments with me, I'm sure most of the thread would be grateful (me included). Your analogies are useless because you do not use them to try to create understanding, you fill them with your biases. As to your other part I disagree. Israel has a lot more values in common with mine than Hamas. That they value democracy is one, women’s rights another, LGBTQ2+ rights is another. One of the major reasons we disagree on this is you frame this as a war of Israel vs Palestinians. I frame it as the IDF vs Hamas with the Palestinians and Israelis as victims. If I framed it as you do where you put Israel on a whole has one party I would have to than put all Palestinians in the Hamas bucket to be logically consistent. And if I did that I would definitely not agree with you, and I do not understand how you can. Other than being logically inconsistent. I've seen you talk about far right figures in the rest of the world, Trump, Le Pen, many others I'm sure... I don't remember you being so sure that they value democracy. What makes the far right of Israel so special that you now think they do? As for women's rights and LGBT rights, I'm sure a percentage of the Palestinians they've killed, since they're human beings, were also women and LGBT people. But you shouldn't need that to empathize with a minority being denied human rights, you should be able to empathize with Palestinians in the same way that you can empathize with women. It is weird to value treating Israeli minorities well more than you value treating Palestinians well. It would be like saying, okay Republicans are bad on trans rights, but you know a lot of them support gay marriage now, so that's good, we can give them a pass... No, we can't. It is very silly to frame this as the IDF vs Hamas given the facts on the ground. The offensive of Israel is very clearly targeted at the entirety of Gaza, not specifically at Hamas. But if you don't mind I'd rather focus on something broader that you're doing, which talking about IDF vs Hamas is a part of: presenting two different visions of the conflict that are contradictory. Very often you'll accept Israel's framing as true, for example when they say that they're only fighting Hamas, that they only kill civilians because the civilians are used as human shields, that they aren't engaged in ethnic cleansing or war crimes and all the statements that they've made that seem to indicate that they are are irrelevant (I still don't know why but ok), or that they're only defending themselves, and really what else can you do but defend yourself? This is okay on its own, you get to believe in Israeli propaganda if you want, you wouldn't be the first or the last. But at the same time that you're doing that, you also insist on saying that you're not a defender of Israel when people push you on that, talking about how Netanyahu is really bad as well and you wouldn't defend him. The issue is that, if all those arguments that you mention from time to time were true, then Israel wouldn't be doing anything wrong. In the version of the story that Israel is pushing, they're the good guys. So why do you at the same time push their story where they're the good guys, but also insist that you don't think they are?
I do get that the common interpretation/meaning of words can be subject to change over time and that linguistic warfare is a thing but still it is baffling to see people use Trump or le Pen as examples of far-right politicians — not long ago far-right meant Pinochet etc to most.
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On January 16 2024 19:55 SEB2610 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 09:58 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 09:17 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 07:57 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 07:29 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:54 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 06:43 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:41 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 06:35 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:28 Nebuchad wrote:
Switzerland probably. Direct democracy is cool. Then Norway I would imagine. Is there any non-democracies in your top 20? Probably not, I can't think of one that would be in. I inserted "probably" because since I'm a normal person I have never made a top 20 of the countries I prefer politically. Probably is good enough. I wonder why you would generally hold all democracies at the top if democracies have no values? Are non democracies at the bottom? Well you don't have to wonder any more, I'll tell you: it's because I hold that social hierarchies are bad for humans, and the more rigid the social hierarchies are, the worse it is for humans. Democracy, as a political system, tends to have less rigid social hierarchies than authoritarian systems do, and therefore they easily rank higher. Direct democracy is less rigid than representative democracy and therefore it ranks higher. If you follow my logic to the end a stateless society is probably superior to a democracy, but we're living so far away from that today that it's hard for even me to picture that, so I'm still choosing to stick to democratic socialism even though I've been leaning anarchist for a few years now. All of that is political mechanisms, not values or principles. How can I tell? Well as I've been saying and you've been ignoring me saying, we have examples of democracies throughout history and today breaking every single value or principle that you can name, so clearly that can't be the relevant part. Yes you like to talk in debate form so you can win internet arguments, taking forever to pull anything out and giving as little as possible in return. As you should be able to tell that is not my preferred way of communication. I clearly understand that democracy alone can not have values, but I can also look at the world and see that for the most part every value I hold is more reflected in democracies than all the other forms of government. I can thereby conclude that there is something special about democracies that cause this. This is why I value democracies over all other forms of government. This does not mean I think they are perfect, just the best. To me democracy is the most important thing a country can be, far more important than left or right, or anything else. I also value the opinions of the countries I hold in high regard. They know things I do not, as the people throughout them are experts and many of them hold similar values to me. That does not mean they are perfect but I do trust them to do the best they can, and I trust in the checks and balances that exist within the system. My biggest issue with direct democracy is where is the line? When I worked in government and started to learn a little bit about the different areas, I learned that a lot of things that I thought were dumb actually made a lot of sense given the rules and constraints they were under. I also learned I know very little about a lot of topics, waste water comes to mind. Even in waste and recycling, before I worked there I would have told you that recycling was far more important than an organics program. Then I learned what happens to apples (and all organics) in the landfill (spoiler is they do not breakdown) and how much green washing there is in the recycling industry (not that it is not good at all, but that it is not nearly as valuable as organics and often decisions are made based on what "looks" like good for the environment and not what is good for it). So, ya when there is a extremely complicated situation like this is, I don't try to boil it down to good and evil or only two options. I also trust in experts, especially from those in countries or organizations I trust. And then I'll look at what countries are supporting what and who. If for example (like in this situation) I see that on one you have Canada and Germany, on the other Iran and Russia, I'm going to with a fair bit of confidence side with the Canadian and German side and it will take a lot of good reasoning for me to switch. Remember that we're talking about this because you said it makes sense for people to support Ukraine and Israel because they're democracies, and democracies (supposedly) have values and principles. If we're in a situation where a democracy isn't upholding those values and principles, it doesn't make sense to appeal to its status as a democracy as a reason to support it, because the problem is precisely that they haven't been living up to that standard. So I think this logic is backwards. Instead I would start with the principles that I like, and then look at the situations where those principles are materializing. If Switzerland suddenly invaded Liechtenstein and started killing a bunch of Liechtenstein...ese(?) people in an effort to annex Liechtenstein, I wouldn't go "Ah but I like direct democracy and Liechtenstein is only a parliamentary monarchy, therefore that's a good thing." I would go "Okay, in this case Switzerland is clearly in the wrong, so I oppose this shit." It's really not as sophisticated as the length of this conversation is making it appear. If you don't like my style of arguing you could always not start arguments with me, I'm sure most of the thread would be grateful (me included). Your analogies are useless because you do not use them to try to create understanding, you fill them with your biases. As to your other part I disagree. Israel has a lot more values in common with mine than Hamas. That they value democracy is one, women’s rights another, LGBTQ2+ rights is another. One of the major reasons we disagree on this is you frame this as a war of Israel vs Palestinians. I frame it as the IDF vs Hamas with the Palestinians and Israelis as victims. If I framed it as you do where you put Israel on a whole has one party I would have to than put all Palestinians in the Hamas bucket to be logically consistent. And if I did that I would definitely not agree with you, and I do not understand how you can. Other than being logically inconsistent. I've seen you talk about far right figures in the rest of the world, Trump, Le Pen, many others I'm sure... I don't remember you being so sure that they value democracy. What makes the far right of Israel so special that you now think they do? As for women's rights and LGBT rights, I'm sure a percentage of the Palestinians they've killed, since they're human beings, were also women and LGBT people. But you shouldn't need that to empathize with a minority being denied human rights, you should be able to empathize with Palestinians in the same way that you can empathize with women. It is weird to value treating Israeli minorities well more than you value treating Palestinians well. It would be like saying, okay Republicans are bad on trans rights, but you know a lot of them support gay marriage now, so that's good, we can give them a pass... No, we can't. It is very silly to frame this as the IDF vs Hamas given the facts on the ground. The offensive of Israel is very clearly targeted at the entirety of Gaza, not specifically at Hamas. But if you don't mind I'd rather focus on something broader that you're doing, which talking about IDF vs Hamas is a part of: presenting two different visions of the conflict that are contradictory. Very often you'll accept Israel's framing as true, for example when they say that they're only fighting Hamas, that they only kill civilians because the civilians are used as human shields, that they aren't engaged in ethnic cleansing or war crimes and all the statements that they've made that seem to indicate that they are are irrelevant (I still don't know why but ok), or that they're only defending themselves, and really what else can you do but defend yourself? This is okay on its own, you get to believe in Israeli propaganda if you want, you wouldn't be the first or the last. But at the same time that you're doing that, you also insist on saying that you're not a defender of Israel when people push you on that, talking about how Netanyahu is really bad as well and you wouldn't defend him. The issue is that, if all those arguments that you mention from time to time were true, then Israel wouldn't be doing anything wrong. In the version of the story that Israel is pushing, they're the good guys. So why do you at the same time push their story where they're the good guys, but also insist that you don't think they are? I do get that the common interpretation/meaning of words can be subject to change over time and that linguistic warfare is a thing but still it is baffling to see people use Trump or le Pen as examples of far-right politicians — not long ago far-right meant Pinochet etc to most.
The term far right just describes politics that are radically conservative and nationalist. It tends to be associated to authoritarianism too, but authoritarianism is a method. You can only implement far right politics meaningfully through an authoritarian system.
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On January 16 2024 20:19 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 19:55 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 09:58 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 09:17 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 07:57 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 07:29 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:54 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 06:43 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:41 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 06:35 JimmiC wrote:
[quote]
Is there any non-democracies in your top 20? Probably not, I can't think of one that would be in. I inserted "probably" because since I'm a normal person I have never made a top 20 of the countries I prefer politically. Probably is good enough. I wonder why you would generally hold all democracies at the top if democracies have no values? Are non democracies at the bottom? Well you don't have to wonder any more, I'll tell you: it's because I hold that social hierarchies are bad for humans, and the more rigid the social hierarchies are, the worse it is for humans. Democracy, as a political system, tends to have less rigid social hierarchies than authoritarian systems do, and therefore they easily rank higher. Direct democracy is less rigid than representative democracy and therefore it ranks higher. If you follow my logic to the end a stateless society is probably superior to a democracy, but we're living so far away from that today that it's hard for even me to picture that, so I'm still choosing to stick to democratic socialism even though I've been leaning anarchist for a few years now. All of that is political mechanisms, not values or principles. How can I tell? Well as I've been saying and you've been ignoring me saying, we have examples of democracies throughout history and today breaking every single value or principle that you can name, so clearly that can't be the relevant part. Yes you like to talk in debate form so you can win internet arguments, taking forever to pull anything out and giving as little as possible in return. As you should be able to tell that is not my preferred way of communication. I clearly understand that democracy alone can not have values, but I can also look at the world and see that for the most part every value I hold is more reflected in democracies than all the other forms of government. I can thereby conclude that there is something special about democracies that cause this. This is why I value democracies over all other forms of government. This does not mean I think they are perfect, just the best. To me democracy is the most important thing a country can be, far more important than left or right, or anything else. I also value the opinions of the countries I hold in high regard. They know things I do not, as the people throughout them are experts and many of them hold similar values to me. That does not mean they are perfect but I do trust them to do the best they can, and I trust in the checks and balances that exist within the system. My biggest issue with direct democracy is where is the line? When I worked in government and started to learn a little bit about the different areas, I learned that a lot of things that I thought were dumb actually made a lot of sense given the rules and constraints they were under. I also learned I know very little about a lot of topics, waste water comes to mind. Even in waste and recycling, before I worked there I would have told you that recycling was far more important than an organics program. Then I learned what happens to apples (and all organics) in the landfill (spoiler is they do not breakdown) and how much green washing there is in the recycling industry (not that it is not good at all, but that it is not nearly as valuable as organics and often decisions are made based on what "looks" like good for the environment and not what is good for it). So, ya when there is a extremely complicated situation like this is, I don't try to boil it down to good and evil or only two options. I also trust in experts, especially from those in countries or organizations I trust. And then I'll look at what countries are supporting what and who. If for example (like in this situation) I see that on one you have Canada and Germany, on the other Iran and Russia, I'm going to with a fair bit of confidence side with the Canadian and German side and it will take a lot of good reasoning for me to switch. Remember that we're talking about this because you said it makes sense for people to support Ukraine and Israel because they're democracies, and democracies (supposedly) have values and principles. If we're in a situation where a democracy isn't upholding those values and principles, it doesn't make sense to appeal to its status as a democracy as a reason to support it, because the problem is precisely that they haven't been living up to that standard. So I think this logic is backwards. Instead I would start with the principles that I like, and then look at the situations where those principles are materializing. If Switzerland suddenly invaded Liechtenstein and started killing a bunch of Liechtenstein...ese(?) people in an effort to annex Liechtenstein, I wouldn't go "Ah but I like direct democracy and Liechtenstein is only a parliamentary monarchy, therefore that's a good thing." I would go "Okay, in this case Switzerland is clearly in the wrong, so I oppose this shit." It's really not as sophisticated as the length of this conversation is making it appear. If you don't like my style of arguing you could always not start arguments with me, I'm sure most of the thread would be grateful (me included). Your analogies are useless because you do not use them to try to create understanding, you fill them with your biases. As to your other part I disagree. Israel has a lot more values in common with mine than Hamas. That they value democracy is one, women’s rights another, LGBTQ2+ rights is another. One of the major reasons we disagree on this is you frame this as a war of Israel vs Palestinians. I frame it as the IDF vs Hamas with the Palestinians and Israelis as victims. If I framed it as you do where you put Israel on a whole has one party I would have to than put all Palestinians in the Hamas bucket to be logically consistent. And if I did that I would definitely not agree with you, and I do not understand how you can. Other than being logically inconsistent. I've seen you talk about far right figures in the rest of the world, Trump, Le Pen, many others I'm sure... I don't remember you being so sure that they value democracy. What makes the far right of Israel so special that you now think they do? As for women's rights and LGBT rights, I'm sure a percentage of the Palestinians they've killed, since they're human beings, were also women and LGBT people. But you shouldn't need that to empathize with a minority being denied human rights, you should be able to empathize with Palestinians in the same way that you can empathize with women. It is weird to value treating Israeli minorities well more than you value treating Palestinians well. It would be like saying, okay Republicans are bad on trans rights, but you know a lot of them support gay marriage now, so that's good, we can give them a pass... No, we can't. It is very silly to frame this as the IDF vs Hamas given the facts on the ground. The offensive of Israel is very clearly targeted at the entirety of Gaza, not specifically at Hamas. But if you don't mind I'd rather focus on something broader that you're doing, which talking about IDF vs Hamas is a part of: presenting two different visions of the conflict that are contradictory. Very often you'll accept Israel's framing as true, for example when they say that they're only fighting Hamas, that they only kill civilians because the civilians are used as human shields, that they aren't engaged in ethnic cleansing or war crimes and all the statements that they've made that seem to indicate that they are are irrelevant (I still don't know why but ok), or that they're only defending themselves, and really what else can you do but defend yourself? This is okay on its own, you get to believe in Israeli propaganda if you want, you wouldn't be the first or the last. But at the same time that you're doing that, you also insist on saying that you're not a defender of Israel when people push you on that, talking about how Netanyahu is really bad as well and you wouldn't defend him. The issue is that, if all those arguments that you mention from time to time were true, then Israel wouldn't be doing anything wrong. In the version of the story that Israel is pushing, they're the good guys. So why do you at the same time push their story where they're the good guys, but also insist that you don't think they are? I do get that the common interpretation/meaning of words can be subject to change over time and that linguistic warfare is a thing but still it is baffling to see people use Trump or le Pen as examples of far-right politicians — not long ago far-right meant Pinochet etc to most. The term far right just describes politics that are radically conservative and nationalist. It tends to be associated to authoritarianism too, but authoritarianism is a method. You can only implement far right politics meaningfully through an authoritarian system.
No disagreement there — my point is the novelty/absurdity of classifying what Trump and le Pen are up to as radically conservative; compare what they think to what the average person of yesteryear thought and you would be hard-pressed to even call them conservative.
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On January 16 2024 20:40 SEB2610 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 20:19 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 19:55 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 09:58 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 09:17 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 07:57 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 07:29 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:54 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 06:43 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:41 Nebuchad wrote:
[quote]
Probably not, I can't think of one that would be in. I inserted "probably" because since I'm a normal person I have never made a top 20 of the countries I prefer politically. Probably is good enough. I wonder why you would generally hold all democracies at the top if democracies have no values? Are non democracies at the bottom? Well you don't have to wonder any more, I'll tell you: it's because I hold that social hierarchies are bad for humans, and the more rigid the social hierarchies are, the worse it is for humans. Democracy, as a political system, tends to have less rigid social hierarchies than authoritarian systems do, and therefore they easily rank higher. Direct democracy is less rigid than representative democracy and therefore it ranks higher. If you follow my logic to the end a stateless society is probably superior to a democracy, but we're living so far away from that today that it's hard for even me to picture that, so I'm still choosing to stick to democratic socialism even though I've been leaning anarchist for a few years now. All of that is political mechanisms, not values or principles. How can I tell? Well as I've been saying and you've been ignoring me saying, we have examples of democracies throughout history and today breaking every single value or principle that you can name, so clearly that can't be the relevant part. Yes you like to talk in debate form so you can win internet arguments, taking forever to pull anything out and giving as little as possible in return. As you should be able to tell that is not my preferred way of communication. I clearly understand that democracy alone can not have values, but I can also look at the world and see that for the most part every value I hold is more reflected in democracies than all the other forms of government. I can thereby conclude that there is something special about democracies that cause this. This is why I value democracies over all other forms of government. This does not mean I think they are perfect, just the best. To me democracy is the most important thing a country can be, far more important than left or right, or anything else. I also value the opinions of the countries I hold in high regard. They know things I do not, as the people throughout them are experts and many of them hold similar values to me. That does not mean they are perfect but I do trust them to do the best they can, and I trust in the checks and balances that exist within the system. My biggest issue with direct democracy is where is the line? When I worked in government and started to learn a little bit about the different areas, I learned that a lot of things that I thought were dumb actually made a lot of sense given the rules and constraints they were under. I also learned I know very little about a lot of topics, waste water comes to mind. Even in waste and recycling, before I worked there I would have told you that recycling was far more important than an organics program. Then I learned what happens to apples (and all organics) in the landfill (spoiler is they do not breakdown) and how much green washing there is in the recycling industry (not that it is not good at all, but that it is not nearly as valuable as organics and often decisions are made based on what "looks" like good for the environment and not what is good for it). So, ya when there is a extremely complicated situation like this is, I don't try to boil it down to good and evil or only two options. I also trust in experts, especially from those in countries or organizations I trust. And then I'll look at what countries are supporting what and who. If for example (like in this situation) I see that on one you have Canada and Germany, on the other Iran and Russia, I'm going to with a fair bit of confidence side with the Canadian and German side and it will take a lot of good reasoning for me to switch. Remember that we're talking about this because you said it makes sense for people to support Ukraine and Israel because they're democracies, and democracies (supposedly) have values and principles. If we're in a situation where a democracy isn't upholding those values and principles, it doesn't make sense to appeal to its status as a democracy as a reason to support it, because the problem is precisely that they haven't been living up to that standard. So I think this logic is backwards. Instead I would start with the principles that I like, and then look at the situations where those principles are materializing. If Switzerland suddenly invaded Liechtenstein and started killing a bunch of Liechtenstein...ese(?) people in an effort to annex Liechtenstein, I wouldn't go "Ah but I like direct democracy and Liechtenstein is only a parliamentary monarchy, therefore that's a good thing." I would go "Okay, in this case Switzerland is clearly in the wrong, so I oppose this shit." It's really not as sophisticated as the length of this conversation is making it appear. If you don't like my style of arguing you could always not start arguments with me, I'm sure most of the thread would be grateful (me included). Your analogies are useless because you do not use them to try to create understanding, you fill them with your biases. As to your other part I disagree. Israel has a lot more values in common with mine than Hamas. That they value democracy is one, women’s rights another, LGBTQ2+ rights is another. One of the major reasons we disagree on this is you frame this as a war of Israel vs Palestinians. I frame it as the IDF vs Hamas with the Palestinians and Israelis as victims. If I framed it as you do where you put Israel on a whole has one party I would have to than put all Palestinians in the Hamas bucket to be logically consistent. And if I did that I would definitely not agree with you, and I do not understand how you can. Other than being logically inconsistent. I've seen you talk about far right figures in the rest of the world, Trump, Le Pen, many others I'm sure... I don't remember you being so sure that they value democracy. What makes the far right of Israel so special that you now think they do? As for women's rights and LGBT rights, I'm sure a percentage of the Palestinians they've killed, since they're human beings, were also women and LGBT people. But you shouldn't need that to empathize with a minority being denied human rights, you should be able to empathize with Palestinians in the same way that you can empathize with women. It is weird to value treating Israeli minorities well more than you value treating Palestinians well. It would be like saying, okay Republicans are bad on trans rights, but you know a lot of them support gay marriage now, so that's good, we can give them a pass... No, we can't. It is very silly to frame this as the IDF vs Hamas given the facts on the ground. The offensive of Israel is very clearly targeted at the entirety of Gaza, not specifically at Hamas. But if you don't mind I'd rather focus on something broader that you're doing, which talking about IDF vs Hamas is a part of: presenting two different visions of the conflict that are contradictory. Very often you'll accept Israel's framing as true, for example when they say that they're only fighting Hamas, that they only kill civilians because the civilians are used as human shields, that they aren't engaged in ethnic cleansing or war crimes and all the statements that they've made that seem to indicate that they are are irrelevant (I still don't know why but ok), or that they're only defending themselves, and really what else can you do but defend yourself? This is okay on its own, you get to believe in Israeli propaganda if you want, you wouldn't be the first or the last. But at the same time that you're doing that, you also insist on saying that you're not a defender of Israel when people push you on that, talking about how Netanyahu is really bad as well and you wouldn't defend him. The issue is that, if all those arguments that you mention from time to time were true, then Israel wouldn't be doing anything wrong. In the version of the story that Israel is pushing, they're the good guys. So why do you at the same time push their story where they're the good guys, but also insist that you don't think they are? I do get that the common interpretation/meaning of words can be subject to change over time and that linguistic warfare is a thing but still it is baffling to see people use Trump or le Pen as examples of far-right politicians — not long ago far-right meant Pinochet etc to most. The term far right just describes politics that are radically conservative and nationalist. It tends to be associated to authoritarianism too, but authoritarianism is a method. You can only implement far right politics meaningfully through an authoritarian system. No disagreement there — my point is the novelty/absurdity of classifying what Trump and le Pen are up to as radically conservative; compare what they think to what the average person of yesteryear thought and you would be hard-pressed to even call them conservative.
Well yeah? That makes sense. Radical means that you want something that is quite different from what's happening currently, so it is always measured in comparison to what's currently happening. It is currently radically conservative to not want gay people to be allowed to marry in the US, but thirty years ago it wasn't.
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On January 16 2024 20:43 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 20:40 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 20:19 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 19:55 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 09:58 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 09:17 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 07:57 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 07:29 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:54 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 06:43 JimmiC wrote:
[quote]
Probably is good enough. I wonder why you would generally hold all democracies at the top if democracies have no values?
Are non democracies at the bottom?
Well you don't have to wonder any more, I'll tell you: it's because I hold that social hierarchies are bad for humans, and the more rigid the social hierarchies are, the worse it is for humans. Democracy, as a political system, tends to have less rigid social hierarchies than authoritarian systems do, and therefore they easily rank higher. Direct democracy is less rigid than representative democracy and therefore it ranks higher. If you follow my logic to the end a stateless society is probably superior to a democracy, but we're living so far away from that today that it's hard for even me to picture that, so I'm still choosing to stick to democratic socialism even though I've been leaning anarchist for a few years now. All of that is political mechanisms, not values or principles. How can I tell? Well as I've been saying and you've been ignoring me saying, we have examples of democracies throughout history and today breaking every single value or principle that you can name, so clearly that can't be the relevant part. Yes you like to talk in debate form so you can win internet arguments, taking forever to pull anything out and giving as little as possible in return. As you should be able to tell that is not my preferred way of communication. I clearly understand that democracy alone can not have values, but I can also look at the world and see that for the most part every value I hold is more reflected in democracies than all the other forms of government. I can thereby conclude that there is something special about democracies that cause this. This is why I value democracies over all other forms of government. This does not mean I think they are perfect, just the best. To me democracy is the most important thing a country can be, far more important than left or right, or anything else. I also value the opinions of the countries I hold in high regard. They know things I do not, as the people throughout them are experts and many of them hold similar values to me. That does not mean they are perfect but I do trust them to do the best they can, and I trust in the checks and balances that exist within the system. My biggest issue with direct democracy is where is the line? When I worked in government and started to learn a little bit about the different areas, I learned that a lot of things that I thought were dumb actually made a lot of sense given the rules and constraints they were under. I also learned I know very little about a lot of topics, waste water comes to mind. Even in waste and recycling, before I worked there I would have told you that recycling was far more important than an organics program. Then I learned what happens to apples (and all organics) in the landfill (spoiler is they do not breakdown) and how much green washing there is in the recycling industry (not that it is not good at all, but that it is not nearly as valuable as organics and often decisions are made based on what "looks" like good for the environment and not what is good for it). So, ya when there is a extremely complicated situation like this is, I don't try to boil it down to good and evil or only two options. I also trust in experts, especially from those in countries or organizations I trust. And then I'll look at what countries are supporting what and who. If for example (like in this situation) I see that on one you have Canada and Germany, on the other Iran and Russia, I'm going to with a fair bit of confidence side with the Canadian and German side and it will take a lot of good reasoning for me to switch. Remember that we're talking about this because you said it makes sense for people to support Ukraine and Israel because they're democracies, and democracies (supposedly) have values and principles. If we're in a situation where a democracy isn't upholding those values and principles, it doesn't make sense to appeal to its status as a democracy as a reason to support it, because the problem is precisely that they haven't been living up to that standard. So I think this logic is backwards. Instead I would start with the principles that I like, and then look at the situations where those principles are materializing. If Switzerland suddenly invaded Liechtenstein and started killing a bunch of Liechtenstein...ese(?) people in an effort to annex Liechtenstein, I wouldn't go "Ah but I like direct democracy and Liechtenstein is only a parliamentary monarchy, therefore that's a good thing." I would go "Okay, in this case Switzerland is clearly in the wrong, so I oppose this shit." It's really not as sophisticated as the length of this conversation is making it appear. If you don't like my style of arguing you could always not start arguments with me, I'm sure most of the thread would be grateful (me included). Your analogies are useless because you do not use them to try to create understanding, you fill them with your biases. As to your other part I disagree. Israel has a lot more values in common with mine than Hamas. That they value democracy is one, women’s rights another, LGBTQ2+ rights is another. One of the major reasons we disagree on this is you frame this as a war of Israel vs Palestinians. I frame it as the IDF vs Hamas with the Palestinians and Israelis as victims. If I framed it as you do where you put Israel on a whole has one party I would have to than put all Palestinians in the Hamas bucket to be logically consistent. And if I did that I would definitely not agree with you, and I do not understand how you can. Other than being logically inconsistent. I've seen you talk about far right figures in the rest of the world, Trump, Le Pen, many others I'm sure... I don't remember you being so sure that they value democracy. What makes the far right of Israel so special that you now think they do? As for women's rights and LGBT rights, I'm sure a percentage of the Palestinians they've killed, since they're human beings, were also women and LGBT people. But you shouldn't need that to empathize with a minority being denied human rights, you should be able to empathize with Palestinians in the same way that you can empathize with women. It is weird to value treating Israeli minorities well more than you value treating Palestinians well. It would be like saying, okay Republicans are bad on trans rights, but you know a lot of them support gay marriage now, so that's good, we can give them a pass... No, we can't. It is very silly to frame this as the IDF vs Hamas given the facts on the ground. The offensive of Israel is very clearly targeted at the entirety of Gaza, not specifically at Hamas. But if you don't mind I'd rather focus on something broader that you're doing, which talking about IDF vs Hamas is a part of: presenting two different visions of the conflict that are contradictory. Very often you'll accept Israel's framing as true, for example when they say that they're only fighting Hamas, that they only kill civilians because the civilians are used as human shields, that they aren't engaged in ethnic cleansing or war crimes and all the statements that they've made that seem to indicate that they are are irrelevant (I still don't know why but ok), or that they're only defending themselves, and really what else can you do but defend yourself? This is okay on its own, you get to believe in Israeli propaganda if you want, you wouldn't be the first or the last. But at the same time that you're doing that, you also insist on saying that you're not a defender of Israel when people push you on that, talking about how Netanyahu is really bad as well and you wouldn't defend him. The issue is that, if all those arguments that you mention from time to time were true, then Israel wouldn't be doing anything wrong. In the version of the story that Israel is pushing, they're the good guys. So why do you at the same time push their story where they're the good guys, but also insist that you don't think they are? I do get that the common interpretation/meaning of words can be subject to change over time and that linguistic warfare is a thing but still it is baffling to see people use Trump or le Pen as examples of far-right politicians — not long ago far-right meant Pinochet etc to most. The term far right just describes politics that are radically conservative and nationalist. It tends to be associated to authoritarianism too, but authoritarianism is a method. You can only implement far right politics meaningfully through an authoritarian system. No disagreement there — my point is the novelty/absurdity of classifying what Trump and le Pen are up to as radically conservative; compare what they think to what the average person of yesteryear thought and you would be hard-pressed to even call them conservative. Well yeah? That makes sense. Radical means that you want something that is quite different from what's happening currently, so it is always measured in comparison to what's currently happening. It is currently radically conservative to not want gay people to be allowed to marry in the US, but thirty years ago it wasn't.
Obviously you cant avoid some elasticity and disagreement when it comes to classifications and definitions but current political discourse broadly speaking lacks historical perspective (if you ask me anyway).
In casu, if we were to agree to label Trump far-right, what then would we label Pinochet? Super-mega-giga far-right?
Seems silly to me
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I suppose this is fairly tangential to current tensions in the Levant
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On January 16 2024 20:50 SEB2610 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 20:43 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 20:40 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 20:19 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 19:55 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 09:58 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 09:17 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 07:57 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 07:29 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:54 Nebuchad wrote:
[quote]
Well you don't have to wonder any more, I'll tell you: it's because I hold that social hierarchies are bad for humans, and the more rigid the social hierarchies are, the worse it is for humans. Democracy, as a political system, tends to have less rigid social hierarchies than authoritarian systems do, and therefore they easily rank higher. Direct democracy is less rigid than representative democracy and therefore it ranks higher.
If you follow my logic to the end a stateless society is probably superior to a democracy, but we're living so far away from that today that it's hard for even me to picture that, so I'm still choosing to stick to democratic socialism even though I've been leaning anarchist for a few years now.
All of that is political mechanisms, not values or principles. How can I tell? Well as I've been saying and you've been ignoring me saying, we have examples of democracies throughout history and today breaking every single value or principle that you can name, so clearly that can't be the relevant part. Yes you like to talk in debate form so you can win internet arguments, taking forever to pull anything out and giving as little as possible in return. As you should be able to tell that is not my preferred way of communication. I clearly understand that democracy alone can not have values, but I can also look at the world and see that for the most part every value I hold is more reflected in democracies than all the other forms of government. I can thereby conclude that there is something special about democracies that cause this. This is why I value democracies over all other forms of government. This does not mean I think they are perfect, just the best. To me democracy is the most important thing a country can be, far more important than left or right, or anything else. I also value the opinions of the countries I hold in high regard. They know things I do not, as the people throughout them are experts and many of them hold similar values to me. That does not mean they are perfect but I do trust them to do the best they can, and I trust in the checks and balances that exist within the system. My biggest issue with direct democracy is where is the line? When I worked in government and started to learn a little bit about the different areas, I learned that a lot of things that I thought were dumb actually made a lot of sense given the rules and constraints they were under. I also learned I know very little about a lot of topics, waste water comes to mind. Even in waste and recycling, before I worked there I would have told you that recycling was far more important than an organics program. Then I learned what happens to apples (and all organics) in the landfill (spoiler is they do not breakdown) and how much green washing there is in the recycling industry (not that it is not good at all, but that it is not nearly as valuable as organics and often decisions are made based on what "looks" like good for the environment and not what is good for it). So, ya when there is a extremely complicated situation like this is, I don't try to boil it down to good and evil or only two options. I also trust in experts, especially from those in countries or organizations I trust. And then I'll look at what countries are supporting what and who. If for example (like in this situation) I see that on one you have Canada and Germany, on the other Iran and Russia, I'm going to with a fair bit of confidence side with the Canadian and German side and it will take a lot of good reasoning for me to switch. Remember that we're talking about this because you said it makes sense for people to support Ukraine and Israel because they're democracies, and democracies (supposedly) have values and principles. If we're in a situation where a democracy isn't upholding those values and principles, it doesn't make sense to appeal to its status as a democracy as a reason to support it, because the problem is precisely that they haven't been living up to that standard. So I think this logic is backwards. Instead I would start with the principles that I like, and then look at the situations where those principles are materializing. If Switzerland suddenly invaded Liechtenstein and started killing a bunch of Liechtenstein...ese(?) people in an effort to annex Liechtenstein, I wouldn't go "Ah but I like direct democracy and Liechtenstein is only a parliamentary monarchy, therefore that's a good thing." I would go "Okay, in this case Switzerland is clearly in the wrong, so I oppose this shit." It's really not as sophisticated as the length of this conversation is making it appear. If you don't like my style of arguing you could always not start arguments with me, I'm sure most of the thread would be grateful (me included). Your analogies are useless because you do not use them to try to create understanding, you fill them with your biases. As to your other part I disagree. Israel has a lot more values in common with mine than Hamas. That they value democracy is one, women’s rights another, LGBTQ2+ rights is another. One of the major reasons we disagree on this is you frame this as a war of Israel vs Palestinians. I frame it as the IDF vs Hamas with the Palestinians and Israelis as victims. If I framed it as you do where you put Israel on a whole has one party I would have to than put all Palestinians in the Hamas bucket to be logically consistent. And if I did that I would definitely not agree with you, and I do not understand how you can. Other than being logically inconsistent. I've seen you talk about far right figures in the rest of the world, Trump, Le Pen, many others I'm sure... I don't remember you being so sure that they value democracy. What makes the far right of Israel so special that you now think they do? As for women's rights and LGBT rights, I'm sure a percentage of the Palestinians they've killed, since they're human beings, were also women and LGBT people. But you shouldn't need that to empathize with a minority being denied human rights, you should be able to empathize with Palestinians in the same way that you can empathize with women. It is weird to value treating Israeli minorities well more than you value treating Palestinians well. It would be like saying, okay Republicans are bad on trans rights, but you know a lot of them support gay marriage now, so that's good, we can give them a pass... No, we can't. It is very silly to frame this as the IDF vs Hamas given the facts on the ground. The offensive of Israel is very clearly targeted at the entirety of Gaza, not specifically at Hamas. But if you don't mind I'd rather focus on something broader that you're doing, which talking about IDF vs Hamas is a part of: presenting two different visions of the conflict that are contradictory. Very often you'll accept Israel's framing as true, for example when they say that they're only fighting Hamas, that they only kill civilians because the civilians are used as human shields, that they aren't engaged in ethnic cleansing or war crimes and all the statements that they've made that seem to indicate that they are are irrelevant (I still don't know why but ok), or that they're only defending themselves, and really what else can you do but defend yourself? This is okay on its own, you get to believe in Israeli propaganda if you want, you wouldn't be the first or the last. But at the same time that you're doing that, you also insist on saying that you're not a defender of Israel when people push you on that, talking about how Netanyahu is really bad as well and you wouldn't defend him. The issue is that, if all those arguments that you mention from time to time were true, then Israel wouldn't be doing anything wrong. In the version of the story that Israel is pushing, they're the good guys. So why do you at the same time push their story where they're the good guys, but also insist that you don't think they are? I do get that the common interpretation/meaning of words can be subject to change over time and that linguistic warfare is a thing but still it is baffling to see people use Trump or le Pen as examples of far-right politicians — not long ago far-right meant Pinochet etc to most. The term far right just describes politics that are radically conservative and nationalist. It tends to be associated to authoritarianism too, but authoritarianism is a method. You can only implement far right politics meaningfully through an authoritarian system. No disagreement there — my point is the novelty/absurdity of classifying what Trump and le Pen are up to as radically conservative; compare what they think to what the average person of yesteryear thought and you would be hard-pressed to even call them conservative. Well yeah? That makes sense. Radical means that you want something that is quite different from what's happening currently, so it is always measured in comparison to what's currently happening. It is currently radically conservative to not want gay people to be allowed to marry in the US, but thirty years ago it wasn't. Obviously you cant avoid some elasticity and disagreement when it comes to classifications and definitions but current political discourse broadly speaking lacks historical perspective (if you ask me anyway). In casu, if we were to agree to label Trump far-right, what then would we label Pinochet? Super-mega-giga far-right? Seems silly to me
No you would just label him far right as well. In terms of conservatism and nationalism Pinochet wasn't very different from Republicans, he doesn't require a different term. It's in terms of his authoritarian methods that there is a large distinction.
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Norway28751 Posts
On January 16 2024 20:50 SEB2610 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 20:43 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 20:40 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 20:19 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 19:55 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 09:58 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 09:17 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 07:57 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 07:29 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 06:54 Nebuchad wrote:
[quote]
Well you don't have to wonder any more, I'll tell you: it's because I hold that social hierarchies are bad for humans, and the more rigid the social hierarchies are, the worse it is for humans. Democracy, as a political system, tends to have less rigid social hierarchies than authoritarian systems do, and therefore they easily rank higher. Direct democracy is less rigid than representative democracy and therefore it ranks higher.
If you follow my logic to the end a stateless society is probably superior to a democracy, but we're living so far away from that today that it's hard for even me to picture that, so I'm still choosing to stick to democratic socialism even though I've been leaning anarchist for a few years now.
All of that is political mechanisms, not values or principles. How can I tell? Well as I've been saying and you've been ignoring me saying, we have examples of democracies throughout history and today breaking every single value or principle that you can name, so clearly that can't be the relevant part. Yes you like to talk in debate form so you can win internet arguments, taking forever to pull anything out and giving as little as possible in return. As you should be able to tell that is not my preferred way of communication. I clearly understand that democracy alone can not have values, but I can also look at the world and see that for the most part every value I hold is more reflected in democracies than all the other forms of government. I can thereby conclude that there is something special about democracies that cause this. This is why I value democracies over all other forms of government. This does not mean I think they are perfect, just the best. To me democracy is the most important thing a country can be, far more important than left or right, or anything else. I also value the opinions of the countries I hold in high regard. They know things I do not, as the people throughout them are experts and many of them hold similar values to me. That does not mean they are perfect but I do trust them to do the best they can, and I trust in the checks and balances that exist within the system. My biggest issue with direct democracy is where is the line? When I worked in government and started to learn a little bit about the different areas, I learned that a lot of things that I thought were dumb actually made a lot of sense given the rules and constraints they were under. I also learned I know very little about a lot of topics, waste water comes to mind. Even in waste and recycling, before I worked there I would have told you that recycling was far more important than an organics program. Then I learned what happens to apples (and all organics) in the landfill (spoiler is they do not breakdown) and how much green washing there is in the recycling industry (not that it is not good at all, but that it is not nearly as valuable as organics and often decisions are made based on what "looks" like good for the environment and not what is good for it). So, ya when there is a extremely complicated situation like this is, I don't try to boil it down to good and evil or only two options. I also trust in experts, especially from those in countries or organizations I trust. And then I'll look at what countries are supporting what and who. If for example (like in this situation) I see that on one you have Canada and Germany, on the other Iran and Russia, I'm going to with a fair bit of confidence side with the Canadian and German side and it will take a lot of good reasoning for me to switch. Remember that we're talking about this because you said it makes sense for people to support Ukraine and Israel because they're democracies, and democracies (supposedly) have values and principles. If we're in a situation where a democracy isn't upholding those values and principles, it doesn't make sense to appeal to its status as a democracy as a reason to support it, because the problem is precisely that they haven't been living up to that standard. So I think this logic is backwards. Instead I would start with the principles that I like, and then look at the situations where those principles are materializing. If Switzerland suddenly invaded Liechtenstein and started killing a bunch of Liechtenstein...ese(?) people in an effort to annex Liechtenstein, I wouldn't go "Ah but I like direct democracy and Liechtenstein is only a parliamentary monarchy, therefore that's a good thing." I would go "Okay, in this case Switzerland is clearly in the wrong, so I oppose this shit." It's really not as sophisticated as the length of this conversation is making it appear. If you don't like my style of arguing you could always not start arguments with me, I'm sure most of the thread would be grateful (me included). Your analogies are useless because you do not use them to try to create understanding, you fill them with your biases. As to your other part I disagree. Israel has a lot more values in common with mine than Hamas. That they value democracy is one, women’s rights another, LGBTQ2+ rights is another. One of the major reasons we disagree on this is you frame this as a war of Israel vs Palestinians. I frame it as the IDF vs Hamas with the Palestinians and Israelis as victims. If I framed it as you do where you put Israel on a whole has one party I would have to than put all Palestinians in the Hamas bucket to be logically consistent. And if I did that I would definitely not agree with you, and I do not understand how you can. Other than being logically inconsistent. I've seen you talk about far right figures in the rest of the world, Trump, Le Pen, many others I'm sure... I don't remember you being so sure that they value democracy. What makes the far right of Israel so special that you now think they do? As for women's rights and LGBT rights, I'm sure a percentage of the Palestinians they've killed, since they're human beings, were also women and LGBT people. But you shouldn't need that to empathize with a minority being denied human rights, you should be able to empathize with Palestinians in the same way that you can empathize with women. It is weird to value treating Israeli minorities well more than you value treating Palestinians well. It would be like saying, okay Republicans are bad on trans rights, but you know a lot of them support gay marriage now, so that's good, we can give them a pass... No, we can't. It is very silly to frame this as the IDF vs Hamas given the facts on the ground. The offensive of Israel is very clearly targeted at the entirety of Gaza, not specifically at Hamas. But if you don't mind I'd rather focus on something broader that you're doing, which talking about IDF vs Hamas is a part of: presenting two different visions of the conflict that are contradictory. Very often you'll accept Israel's framing as true, for example when they say that they're only fighting Hamas, that they only kill civilians because the civilians are used as human shields, that they aren't engaged in ethnic cleansing or war crimes and all the statements that they've made that seem to indicate that they are are irrelevant (I still don't know why but ok), or that they're only defending themselves, and really what else can you do but defend yourself? This is okay on its own, you get to believe in Israeli propaganda if you want, you wouldn't be the first or the last. But at the same time that you're doing that, you also insist on saying that you're not a defender of Israel when people push you on that, talking about how Netanyahu is really bad as well and you wouldn't defend him. The issue is that, if all those arguments that you mention from time to time were true, then Israel wouldn't be doing anything wrong. In the version of the story that Israel is pushing, they're the good guys. So why do you at the same time push their story where they're the good guys, but also insist that you don't think they are? I do get that the common interpretation/meaning of words can be subject to change over time and that linguistic warfare is a thing but still it is baffling to see people use Trump or le Pen as examples of far-right politicians — not long ago far-right meant Pinochet etc to most. The term far right just describes politics that are radically conservative and nationalist. It tends to be associated to authoritarianism too, but authoritarianism is a method. You can only implement far right politics meaningfully through an authoritarian system. No disagreement there — my point is the novelty/absurdity of classifying what Trump and le Pen are up to as radically conservative; compare what they think to what the average person of yesteryear thought and you would be hard-pressed to even call them conservative. Well yeah? That makes sense. Radical means that you want something that is quite different from what's happening currently, so it is always measured in comparison to what's currently happening. It is currently radically conservative to not want gay people to be allowed to marry in the US, but thirty years ago it wasn't. Obviously you cant avoid some elasticity and disagreement when it comes to classifications and definitions but current political discourse broadly speaking lacks historical perspective (if you ask me anyway). In casu, if we were to agree to label Trump far-right, what then would we label Pinochet? Super-mega-giga far-right? Seems silly to me
I mean if the two words to describe people on the 'right' side of the political spectrum are 'right' and 'far right' then it makes sense that both words would describe very wide ranges of political opinions. If you describe 'Trump' as 'right-wing' then he'll get described the same way as the previous Norwegian Prime minister Erna Solberg, and I'd argue the gap between her and Trump is much wider than the gap between Trump and Pinochet.
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On January 16 2024 22:11 Liquid`Drone wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 20:50 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 20:43 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 20:40 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 20:19 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 19:55 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 09:58 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 09:17 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 07:57 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 07:29 JimmiC wrote:
[quote]
Yes you like to talk in debate form so you can win internet arguments, taking forever to pull anything out and giving as little as possible in return. As you should be able to tell that is not my preferred way of communication.
I clearly understand that democracy alone can not have values, but I can also look at the world and see that for the most part every value I hold is more reflected in democracies than all the other forms of government. I can thereby conclude that there is something special about democracies that cause this.
This is why I value democracies over all other forms of government. This does not mean I think they are perfect, just the best. To me democracy is the most important thing a country can be, far more important than left or right, or anything else.
I also value the opinions of the countries I hold in high regard. They know things I do not, as the people throughout them are experts and many of them hold similar values to me. That does not mean they are perfect but I do trust them to do the best they can, and I trust in the checks and balances that exist within the system.
My biggest issue with direct democracy is where is the line? When I worked in government and started to learn a little bit about the different areas, I learned that a lot of things that I thought were dumb actually made a lot of sense given the rules and constraints they were under. I also learned I know very little about a lot of topics, waste water comes to mind. Even in waste and recycling, before I worked there I would have told you that recycling was far more important than an organics program. Then I learned what happens to apples (and all organics) in the landfill (spoiler is they do not breakdown) and how much green washing there is in the recycling industry (not that it is not good at all, but that it is not nearly as valuable as organics and often decisions are made based on what "looks" like good for the environment and not what is good for it).
So, ya when there is a extremely complicated situation like this is, I don't try to boil it down to good and evil or only two options. I also trust in experts, especially from those in countries or organizations I trust. And then I'll look at what countries are supporting what and who. If for example (like in this situation) I see that on one you have Canada and Germany, on the other Iran and Russia, I'm going to with a fair bit of confidence side with the Canadian and German side and it will take a lot of good reasoning for me to switch.
Remember that we're talking about this because you said it makes sense for people to support Ukraine and Israel because they're democracies, and democracies (supposedly) have values and principles. If we're in a situation where a democracy isn't upholding those values and principles, it doesn't make sense to appeal to its status as a democracy as a reason to support it, because the problem is precisely that they haven't been living up to that standard. So I think this logic is backwards. Instead I would start with the principles that I like, and then look at the situations where those principles are materializing. If Switzerland suddenly invaded Liechtenstein and started killing a bunch of Liechtenstein...ese(?) people in an effort to annex Liechtenstein, I wouldn't go "Ah but I like direct democracy and Liechtenstein is only a parliamentary monarchy, therefore that's a good thing." I would go "Okay, in this case Switzerland is clearly in the wrong, so I oppose this shit." It's really not as sophisticated as the length of this conversation is making it appear. If you don't like my style of arguing you could always not start arguments with me, I'm sure most of the thread would be grateful (me included). Your analogies are useless because you do not use them to try to create understanding, you fill them with your biases. As to your other part I disagree. Israel has a lot more values in common with mine than Hamas. That they value democracy is one, women’s rights another, LGBTQ2+ rights is another. One of the major reasons we disagree on this is you frame this as a war of Israel vs Palestinians. I frame it as the IDF vs Hamas with the Palestinians and Israelis as victims. If I framed it as you do where you put Israel on a whole has one party I would have to than put all Palestinians in the Hamas bucket to be logically consistent. And if I did that I would definitely not agree with you, and I do not understand how you can. Other than being logically inconsistent. I've seen you talk about far right figures in the rest of the world, Trump, Le Pen, many others I'm sure... I don't remember you being so sure that they value democracy. What makes the far right of Israel so special that you now think they do? As for women's rights and LGBT rights, I'm sure a percentage of the Palestinians they've killed, since they're human beings, were also women and LGBT people. But you shouldn't need that to empathize with a minority being denied human rights, you should be able to empathize with Palestinians in the same way that you can empathize with women. It is weird to value treating Israeli minorities well more than you value treating Palestinians well. It would be like saying, okay Republicans are bad on trans rights, but you know a lot of them support gay marriage now, so that's good, we can give them a pass... No, we can't. It is very silly to frame this as the IDF vs Hamas given the facts on the ground. The offensive of Israel is very clearly targeted at the entirety of Gaza, not specifically at Hamas. But if you don't mind I'd rather focus on something broader that you're doing, which talking about IDF vs Hamas is a part of: presenting two different visions of the conflict that are contradictory. Very often you'll accept Israel's framing as true, for example when they say that they're only fighting Hamas, that they only kill civilians because the civilians are used as human shields, that they aren't engaged in ethnic cleansing or war crimes and all the statements that they've made that seem to indicate that they are are irrelevant (I still don't know why but ok), or that they're only defending themselves, and really what else can you do but defend yourself? This is okay on its own, you get to believe in Israeli propaganda if you want, you wouldn't be the first or the last. But at the same time that you're doing that, you also insist on saying that you're not a defender of Israel when people push you on that, talking about how Netanyahu is really bad as well and you wouldn't defend him. The issue is that, if all those arguments that you mention from time to time were true, then Israel wouldn't be doing anything wrong. In the version of the story that Israel is pushing, they're the good guys. So why do you at the same time push their story where they're the good guys, but also insist that you don't think they are? I do get that the common interpretation/meaning of words can be subject to change over time and that linguistic warfare is a thing but still it is baffling to see people use Trump or le Pen as examples of far-right politicians — not long ago far-right meant Pinochet etc to most. The term far right just describes politics that are radically conservative and nationalist. It tends to be associated to authoritarianism too, but authoritarianism is a method. You can only implement far right politics meaningfully through an authoritarian system. No disagreement there — my point is the novelty/absurdity of classifying what Trump and le Pen are up to as radically conservative; compare what they think to what the average person of yesteryear thought and you would be hard-pressed to even call them conservative. Well yeah? That makes sense. Radical means that you want something that is quite different from what's happening currently, so it is always measured in comparison to what's currently happening. It is currently radically conservative to not want gay people to be allowed to marry in the US, but thirty years ago it wasn't. Obviously you cant avoid some elasticity and disagreement when it comes to classifications and definitions but current political discourse broadly speaking lacks historical perspective (if you ask me anyway). In casu, if we were to agree to label Trump far-right, what then would we label Pinochet? Super-mega-giga far-right? Seems silly to me I mean if the two words to describe people on the 'right' side of the political spectrum are 'right' and 'far right' then it makes sense that both words would describe very wide ranges of political opinions. If you describe 'Trump' as 'right-wing' then he'll get described the same way as the previous Norwegian Prime minister Erna Solberg, and I'd argue the gap between her and Trump is much wider than the gap between Trump and Pinochet.
I know little to nothing about Solberg/Norwegian politics so can’t meaningfully comment on that part.
Would Pinochet or average person from decades ago think of Trump as conservative and nationalistic? Therein lies my objection.
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Norway28751 Posts
On January 16 2024 23:00 SEB2610 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 22:11 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 16 2024 20:50 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 20:43 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 20:40 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 20:19 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 19:55 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 09:58 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 09:17 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 07:57 Nebuchad wrote:
[quote]
Remember that we're talking about this because you said it makes sense for people to support Ukraine and Israel because they're democracies, and democracies (supposedly) have values and principles. If we're in a situation where a democracy isn't upholding those values and principles, it doesn't make sense to appeal to its status as a democracy as a reason to support it, because the problem is precisely that they haven't been living up to that standard.
So I think this logic is backwards. Instead I would start with the principles that I like, and then look at the situations where those principles are materializing. If Switzerland suddenly invaded Liechtenstein and started killing a bunch of Liechtenstein...ese(?) people in an effort to annex Liechtenstein, I wouldn't go "Ah but I like direct democracy and Liechtenstein is only a parliamentary monarchy, therefore that's a good thing." I would go "Okay, in this case Switzerland is clearly in the wrong, so I oppose this shit." It's really not as sophisticated as the length of this conversation is making it appear.
If you don't like my style of arguing you could always not start arguments with me, I'm sure most of the thread would be grateful (me included). Your analogies are useless because you do not use them to try to create understanding, you fill them with your biases. As to your other part I disagree. Israel has a lot more values in common with mine than Hamas. That they value democracy is one, women’s rights another, LGBTQ2+ rights is another. One of the major reasons we disagree on this is you frame this as a war of Israel vs Palestinians. I frame it as the IDF vs Hamas with the Palestinians and Israelis as victims. If I framed it as you do where you put Israel on a whole has one party I would have to than put all Palestinians in the Hamas bucket to be logically consistent. And if I did that I would definitely not agree with you, and I do not understand how you can. Other than being logically inconsistent. I've seen you talk about far right figures in the rest of the world, Trump, Le Pen, many others I'm sure... I don't remember you being so sure that they value democracy. What makes the far right of Israel so special that you now think they do? As for women's rights and LGBT rights, I'm sure a percentage of the Palestinians they've killed, since they're human beings, were also women and LGBT people. But you shouldn't need that to empathize with a minority being denied human rights, you should be able to empathize with Palestinians in the same way that you can empathize with women. It is weird to value treating Israeli minorities well more than you value treating Palestinians well. It would be like saying, okay Republicans are bad on trans rights, but you know a lot of them support gay marriage now, so that's good, we can give them a pass... No, we can't. It is very silly to frame this as the IDF vs Hamas given the facts on the ground. The offensive of Israel is very clearly targeted at the entirety of Gaza, not specifically at Hamas. But if you don't mind I'd rather focus on something broader that you're doing, which talking about IDF vs Hamas is a part of: presenting two different visions of the conflict that are contradictory. Very often you'll accept Israel's framing as true, for example when they say that they're only fighting Hamas, that they only kill civilians because the civilians are used as human shields, that they aren't engaged in ethnic cleansing or war crimes and all the statements that they've made that seem to indicate that they are are irrelevant (I still don't know why but ok), or that they're only defending themselves, and really what else can you do but defend yourself? This is okay on its own, you get to believe in Israeli propaganda if you want, you wouldn't be the first or the last. But at the same time that you're doing that, you also insist on saying that you're not a defender of Israel when people push you on that, talking about how Netanyahu is really bad as well and you wouldn't defend him. The issue is that, if all those arguments that you mention from time to time were true, then Israel wouldn't be doing anything wrong. In the version of the story that Israel is pushing, they're the good guys. So why do you at the same time push their story where they're the good guys, but also insist that you don't think they are? I do get that the common interpretation/meaning of words can be subject to change over time and that linguistic warfare is a thing but still it is baffling to see people use Trump or le Pen as examples of far-right politicians — not long ago far-right meant Pinochet etc to most. The term far right just describes politics that are radically conservative and nationalist. It tends to be associated to authoritarianism too, but authoritarianism is a method. You can only implement far right politics meaningfully through an authoritarian system. No disagreement there — my point is the novelty/absurdity of classifying what Trump and le Pen are up to as radically conservative; compare what they think to what the average person of yesteryear thought and you would be hard-pressed to even call them conservative. Well yeah? That makes sense. Radical means that you want something that is quite different from what's happening currently, so it is always measured in comparison to what's currently happening. It is currently radically conservative to not want gay people to be allowed to marry in the US, but thirty years ago it wasn't. Obviously you cant avoid some elasticity and disagreement when it comes to classifications and definitions but current political discourse broadly speaking lacks historical perspective (if you ask me anyway). In casu, if we were to agree to label Trump far-right, what then would we label Pinochet? Super-mega-giga far-right? Seems silly to me I mean if the two words to describe people on the 'right' side of the political spectrum are 'right' and 'far right' then it makes sense that both words would describe very wide ranges of political opinions. If you describe 'Trump' as 'right-wing' then he'll get described the same way as the previous Norwegian Prime minister Erna Solberg, and I'd argue the gap between her and Trump is much wider than the gap between Trump and Pinochet. I know little to nothing about Solberg/Norwegian politics so can’t meaningfully comment on that part. Would Pinochet or average person from decades ago think of Trump as conservative and nationalistic? Therein lies my objection.
She's the leader of a party named 'Right / Conservative'. 
All descriptions of political affiliations/ideologies are to some degree fluid so that a definition might differ from what it did decades ago isn't really an objection imo. 'Left' and 'Right' are comparative values, and 'to the contemporary center' would be the most reasonable comparison. There's a discussion to be had whether they should be compared to the global/larger regional center or the national center, and I think it's fair to argue that the 'global center' is too hard to define in any meaningful way, and in that context it might be hard to define any politician with ~50% support as far right or far left. But Trump isn't not far right because of the existence of politicians further to his right 50 years ago.
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Northern Ireland26326 Posts
On January 16 2024 23:00 SEB2610 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 22:11 Liquid`Drone wrote:On January 16 2024 20:50 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 20:43 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 20:40 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 20:19 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 19:55 SEB2610 wrote:On January 16 2024 09:58 Nebuchad wrote:On January 16 2024 09:17 JimmiC wrote:On January 16 2024 07:57 Nebuchad wrote:
[quote]
Remember that we're talking about this because you said it makes sense for people to support Ukraine and Israel because they're democracies, and democracies (supposedly) have values and principles. If we're in a situation where a democracy isn't upholding those values and principles, it doesn't make sense to appeal to its status as a democracy as a reason to support it, because the problem is precisely that they haven't been living up to that standard.
So I think this logic is backwards. Instead I would start with the principles that I like, and then look at the situations where those principles are materializing. If Switzerland suddenly invaded Liechtenstein and started killing a bunch of Liechtenstein...ese(?) people in an effort to annex Liechtenstein, I wouldn't go "Ah but I like direct democracy and Liechtenstein is only a parliamentary monarchy, therefore that's a good thing." I would go "Okay, in this case Switzerland is clearly in the wrong, so I oppose this shit." It's really not as sophisticated as the length of this conversation is making it appear.
If you don't like my style of arguing you could always not start arguments with me, I'm sure most of the thread would be grateful (me included). Your analogies are useless because you do not use them to try to create understanding, you fill them with your biases. As to your other part I disagree. Israel has a lot more values in common with mine than Hamas. That they value democracy is one, women’s rights another, LGBTQ2+ rights is another. One of the major reasons we disagree on this is you frame this as a war of Israel vs Palestinians. I frame it as the IDF vs Hamas with the Palestinians and Israelis as victims. If I framed it as you do where you put Israel on a whole has one party I would have to than put all Palestinians in the Hamas bucket to be logically consistent. And if I did that I would definitely not agree with you, and I do not understand how you can. Other than being logically inconsistent. I've seen you talk about far right figures in the rest of the world, Trump, Le Pen, many others I'm sure... I don't remember you being so sure that they value democracy. What makes the far right of Israel so special that you now think they do? As for women's rights and LGBT rights, I'm sure a percentage of the Palestinians they've killed, since they're human beings, were also women and LGBT people. But you shouldn't need that to empathize with a minority being denied human rights, you should be able to empathize with Palestinians in the same way that you can empathize with women. It is weird to value treating Israeli minorities well more than you value treating Palestinians well. It would be like saying, okay Republicans are bad on trans rights, but you know a lot of them support gay marriage now, so that's good, we can give them a pass... No, we can't. It is very silly to frame this as the IDF vs Hamas given the facts on the ground. The offensive of Israel is very clearly targeted at the entirety of Gaza, not specifically at Hamas. But if you don't mind I'd rather focus on something broader that you're doing, which talking about IDF vs Hamas is a part of: presenting two different visions of the conflict that are contradictory. Very often you'll accept Israel's framing as true, for example when they say that they're only fighting Hamas, that they only kill civilians because the civilians are used as human shields, that they aren't engaged in ethnic cleansing or war crimes and all the statements that they've made that seem to indicate that they are are irrelevant (I still don't know why but ok), or that they're only defending themselves, and really what else can you do but defend yourself? This is okay on its own, you get to believe in Israeli propaganda if you want, you wouldn't be the first or the last. But at the same time that you're doing that, you also insist on saying that you're not a defender of Israel when people push you on that, talking about how Netanyahu is really bad as well and you wouldn't defend him. The issue is that, if all those arguments that you mention from time to time were true, then Israel wouldn't be doing anything wrong. In the version of the story that Israel is pushing, they're the good guys. So why do you at the same time push their story where they're the good guys, but also insist that you don't think they are? I do get that the common interpretation/meaning of words can be subject to change over time and that linguistic warfare is a thing but still it is baffling to see people use Trump or le Pen as examples of far-right politicians — not long ago far-right meant Pinochet etc to most. The term far right just describes politics that are radically conservative and nationalist. It tends to be associated to authoritarianism too, but authoritarianism is a method. You can only implement far right politics meaningfully through an authoritarian system. No disagreement there — my point is the novelty/absurdity of classifying what Trump and le Pen are up to as radically conservative; compare what they think to what the average person of yesteryear thought and you would be hard-pressed to even call them conservative. Well yeah? That makes sense. Radical means that you want something that is quite different from what's happening currently, so it is always measured in comparison to what's currently happening. It is currently radically conservative to not want gay people to be allowed to marry in the US, but thirty years ago it wasn't. Obviously you cant avoid some elasticity and disagreement when it comes to classifications and definitions but current political discourse broadly speaking lacks historical perspective (if you ask me anyway). In casu, if we were to agree to label Trump far-right, what then would we label Pinochet? Super-mega-giga far-right? Seems silly to me I mean if the two words to describe people on the 'right' side of the political spectrum are 'right' and 'far right' then it makes sense that both words would describe very wide ranges of political opinions. If you describe 'Trump' as 'right-wing' then he'll get described the same way as the previous Norwegian Prime minister Erna Solberg, and I'd argue the gap between her and Trump is much wider than the gap between Trump and Pinochet. I know little to nothing about Solberg/Norwegian politics so can’t meaningfully comment on that part. Would Pinochet or average person from decades ago think of Trump as conservative and nationalistic? Therein lies my objection.
Is it really relevant for a descriptor that has always been used relativistically in not just a temporal but a cultural sense as well?
I mean you wouldn’t describe someone who’s a relentless church goer and politically motivated by their faith as actually not religious by virtue of comparison with someone from the Middle Ages
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On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 00:06 Magic Powers wrote:
With questions like this the only thing you prove is how much of a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias you have. I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word.
Cerebrate: Shouldn’t we empathize with the southern Israelis who were attacked?
Magic: How dare your question not mention Palestinians. You’re obviously biased.
Cerebrate: Uh…I’m not talking about Palestinians right now. I’m asking a question about southern Israelis.
Magic: There you go again, God what a biased person you are.
Cerebrate: …OK, look I get why someone might not care about southern Israelis given the circumstances, but that doesn’t change how they’d feel given the terrible things that happened to them. Do you get where I’m coming from?
Magic: Well duh what happened to them is terrible, and no it doesn’t change my mind because you still aren’t talking about Palestinians which means you obviously don’t care about them at all.
Does that sound about right?
Cerebrate, to appease Magic I’ll give you a chance to just answer flat out: do you care about the suffering of the Palestinian people?
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Major breakthrough. The longer this conflict goes on the more Qatar has to lose.
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On January 16 2024 19:51 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 19:24 WombaT wrote:On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 00:06 Magic Powers wrote:
With questions like this the only thing you prove is how much of a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias you have. I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word. There’s a certain amount of abstraction when we get to a nation state so it’s not directly equivalent, but I mean who here if offered a Sophie’s choice between a loved one being taken away, or multiple strangers is actually picking the latter? As per my position on much of what Hamas does I don’t think this makes it a morally correct position, but at least a somewhat explicable one. The sentiment for security is a pretty reasonable one, although counter-intuitively often policies seeking that actually make said breaches more likely, as it can be with hardline criminal justice. And as it is in this case IMO. Yes, it is reasonable - from a purely pro-Israel perspective that completely neglects the Palestinian perspective. That's exactly my point. The fact that one has to make an emotional plea in favor of only one side in the conflict (such as imagining oneself in the shoes of an Israeli family, resulting in a significant emotional and/or ideological bias) to come to the conclusion that it makes sense to prefer a thousand Palestinian deaths to ten Israeli ones is proof that the point is true. It is a bias that very strongly favors Israeli lives over Palestinian ones at a 100 : 1 ratio. I could use much harsher language than what I've been using to describe such favoritism. I prefer to stick to less inflammatory terms such as "bias" so as to keep the discussion relatively civil. But I won't be mincing words beyond that.
If you had the choice between saving 1 family member or 2 strangers, would you choose the 2 strangers?
I think a gigantic % of people would still choose 1 family member for 100:1 or even higher. I’ve had this back and forth with other members like Drone here, and in general everyone agrees they would choose for a ton of strangers to die rather than 1 of their children. Similar to arguments about what % of disposable income should be given to the poor and other “theoretically true” results, you could argue these conclusions are totally pointless because they don’t exist in real life.
If all lives are equal, someone would choose for their child to die rather than 2 strangers.
If you could spend $20 on going out for drinks with friends, but that $20 would save a starving child from dying from starvation, you would be immoral by spending it on drinks. If you chose to live in a more luxurious house rather than take that extra money and donate it to the homeless, you’d be entirely choosing your own selfishness over relieving others from their suffering.
In both of these instances, it’s always easy for people to say “duh, of course that’s the right thing to do. But that’s not reasonable. No one would do that”
Do you understand there are no nations in the world who would make the choice you’re saying Israel should make? Less than 0.001% of parents would allow their children to die to save 2 strangers. Do you see why these truths make the theoretical “right” answer not even real?
I don’t remember if I’ve gone over this specific point with you, so do you get what I’m saying? The idea is that we can analytically determine the logical answer to an ethical dilemma fairly easily in many cases. And yet this theoretical answer mostly does not exist at all. The answer is both trivial and meaningless. It doesn’t help anyone because it’s not a useful choice for someone to make. No one would choose it.
I know the family death question varies a bit because some people have no family or don’t have a good relationship or they’ve never had kids and whatnot. But when we assume a “normal and healthy relationship”, the moral dilemma is extremely well agreed on.
Am I wrong about nations never choosing what you’re describing? Do you have examples of this kind of self sacrifice? From where I’m standing, you are comparing Israel to an entirely fictitious scenario. It’s not a reasonable argument.
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On January 17 2024 04:42 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 19:51 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 19:24 WombaT wrote:On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 00:06 Magic Powers wrote:
With questions like this the only thing you prove is how much of a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias you have. I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word. There’s a certain amount of abstraction when we get to a nation state so it’s not directly equivalent, but I mean who here if offered a Sophie’s choice between a loved one being taken away, or multiple strangers is actually picking the latter? As per my position on much of what Hamas does I don’t think this makes it a morally correct position, but at least a somewhat explicable one. The sentiment for security is a pretty reasonable one, although counter-intuitively often policies seeking that actually make said breaches more likely, as it can be with hardline criminal justice. And as it is in this case IMO. Yes, it is reasonable - from a purely pro-Israel perspective that completely neglects the Palestinian perspective. That's exactly my point. The fact that one has to make an emotional plea in favor of only one side in the conflict (such as imagining oneself in the shoes of an Israeli family, resulting in a significant emotional and/or ideological bias) to come to the conclusion that it makes sense to prefer a thousand Palestinian deaths to ten Israeli ones is proof that the point is true. It is a bias that very strongly favors Israeli lives over Palestinian ones at a 100 : 1 ratio. I could use much harsher language than what I've been using to describe such favoritism. I prefer to stick to less inflammatory terms such as "bias" so as to keep the discussion relatively civil. But I won't be mincing words beyond that. If you had the choice between saving 1 family member or 2 strangers, would you choose the 2 strangers? I think a gigantic % of people would still choose 1 family member for 100:1 or even higher. I’ve had this back and forth with other members like Drone here, and in general everyone agrees they would choose for a ton of strangers to die rather than 1 of their children. Similar to arguments about what % of disposable income should be given to the poor and other “theoretically true” results, you could argue these conclusions are totally pointless because they don’t exist in real life. If all lives are equal, someone would choose for their child to die rather than 2 strangers. If you could spend $20 on going out for drinks with friends, but that $20 would save a starving child from dying from starvation, you would be immoral by spending it on drinks. If you chose to live in a more luxurious house rather than take that extra money and donate it to the homeless, you’d be entirely choosing your own selfishness over relieving others from their suffering. In both of these instances, it’s always easy for people to say “duh, of course that’s the right thing to do. But that’s not reasonable. No one would do that” Do you understand there are no nations in the world who would make the choice you’re saying Israel should make? Less than 0.001% of parents would allow their children to die to save 2 strangers. Do you see why these truths make the theoretical “right” answer not even real? I don’t remember if I’ve gone over this specific point with you, so do you get what I’m saying? The idea is that we can analytically determine the logical answer to an ethical dilemma fairly easily in many cases. And yet this theoretical answer mostly does not exist at all. The answer is both trivial and meaningless. It doesn’t help anyone because it’s not a useful choice for someone to make. No one would choose it. I know the family death question varies a bit because some people have no family or don’t have a good relationship or they’ve never had kids and whatnot. But when we assume a “normal and healthy relationship”, the moral dilemma is extremely well agreed on. Am I wrong about nations never choosing what you’re describing? Do you have examples of this kind of self sacrifice? From where I’m standing, you are comparing Israel to an entirely fictitious scenario. It’s not a reasonable argument.
Cerebrate can argue in favor of either all citizens or some citizens. He chooses to argue in favor of some. The distinction he makes is that they must be Israeli and not Palestinian. That is his bias. His bias isn't family over strangers, it's Israelis over Palestinians.
A bias in favor of one's own family is perfectly understandable. A bias in favor of people born in one country over another is understandable only if we're assuming a nationalist ideology. If Cerebrate has family in Israel, then he's right in worrying about them. However, he would be wrong in disregarding Palestinians, because they have family, too. So your hypothetical question has a fundamental problem because, instead of posing a new problem to my reasoning, it proves my reasoning right.
To be impartial requires to give equal weight to each party in a consistent manner. If there are distinctions between two parties, those must be unique to one party, i.e. not reflected in the other. Since all Palestinians are born into family and all Israelis are born into family, there is no distinction. Family first. On both sides. Your hypothetical question supports my accusation of bias.
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On January 17 2024 05:11 Magic Powers wrote:Show nested quote +On January 17 2024 04:42 Mohdoo wrote:On January 16 2024 19:51 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 19:24 WombaT wrote:On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 00:06 Magic Powers wrote:
With questions like this the only thing you prove is how much of a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias you have. I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word. There’s a certain amount of abstraction when we get to a nation state so it’s not directly equivalent, but I mean who here if offered a Sophie’s choice between a loved one being taken away, or multiple strangers is actually picking the latter? As per my position on much of what Hamas does I don’t think this makes it a morally correct position, but at least a somewhat explicable one. The sentiment for security is a pretty reasonable one, although counter-intuitively often policies seeking that actually make said breaches more likely, as it can be with hardline criminal justice. And as it is in this case IMO. Yes, it is reasonable - from a purely pro-Israel perspective that completely neglects the Palestinian perspective. That's exactly my point. The fact that one has to make an emotional plea in favor of only one side in the conflict (such as imagining oneself in the shoes of an Israeli family, resulting in a significant emotional and/or ideological bias) to come to the conclusion that it makes sense to prefer a thousand Palestinian deaths to ten Israeli ones is proof that the point is true. It is a bias that very strongly favors Israeli lives over Palestinian ones at a 100 : 1 ratio. I could use much harsher language than what I've been using to describe such favoritism. I prefer to stick to less inflammatory terms such as "bias" so as to keep the discussion relatively civil. But I won't be mincing words beyond that. If you had the choice between saving 1 family member or 2 strangers, would you choose the 2 strangers? I think a gigantic % of people would still choose 1 family member for 100:1 or even higher. I’ve had this back and forth with other members like Drone here, and in general everyone agrees they would choose for a ton of strangers to die rather than 1 of their children. Similar to arguments about what % of disposable income should be given to the poor and other “theoretically true” results, you could argue these conclusions are totally pointless because they don’t exist in real life. If all lives are equal, someone would choose for their child to die rather than 2 strangers. If you could spend $20 on going out for drinks with friends, but that $20 would save a starving child from dying from starvation, you would be immoral by spending it on drinks. If you chose to live in a more luxurious house rather than take that extra money and donate it to the homeless, you’d be entirely choosing your own selfishness over relieving others from their suffering. In both of these instances, it’s always easy for people to say “duh, of course that’s the right thing to do. But that’s not reasonable. No one would do that” Do you understand there are no nations in the world who would make the choice you’re saying Israel should make? Less than 0.001% of parents would allow their children to die to save 2 strangers. Do you see why these truths make the theoretical “right” answer not even real? I don’t remember if I’ve gone over this specific point with you, so do you get what I’m saying? The idea is that we can analytically determine the logical answer to an ethical dilemma fairly easily in many cases. And yet this theoretical answer mostly does not exist at all. The answer is both trivial and meaningless. It doesn’t help anyone because it’s not a useful choice for someone to make. No one would choose it. I know the family death question varies a bit because some people have no family or don’t have a good relationship or they’ve never had kids and whatnot. But when we assume a “normal and healthy relationship”, the moral dilemma is extremely well agreed on. Am I wrong about nations never choosing what you’re describing? Do you have examples of this kind of self sacrifice? From where I’m standing, you are comparing Israel to an entirely fictitious scenario. It’s not a reasonable argument. Cerebrate can argue in favor of either all citizens or some citizens. He chooses to argue in favor of some. The distinction he makes is that they must be Israeli and not Palestinian. That is his bias. His bias isn't family over strangers, it's Israelis over Palestinians. A bias in favor of one's own family is perfectly understandable. A bias in favor of people born in one country over another is understandable only if we're assuming a nationalist ideology. If Cerebrate has family in Israel, then he's right in worrying about them. However, he would be wrong in disregarding Palestinians, because they have family, too. So your hypothetical question has a fundamental problem because, instead of posing a new problem to my reasoning, it proves my reasoning right. To be impartial requires to give equal weight to each party in a consistent manner. If there are distinctions between two parties, those must be unique to one party, i.e. not reflected in the other. Since all Palestinians are born into family and all Israelis are born into family, there is no distinction. Family first. On both sides. Your hypothetical question supports my accusation of bias.
It’s not about having family or not having family. It’s that people will always choose their own over others. I am pointing out boiling it down to prioritizing some humans over others is technically a moral failing but not really a useful distinction.
I think a nation will always choose their own over others. All nations choose their own over others. Celebrate is not saying Palestinians have zero value. He is saying he is comfortable with Palestinians dying to protect Israelis. Even if more Palestinians die. That doesn’t mean he thinks Palestinian lives are useless. It means he think its still morally acceptable for Israel to kill Palestinians as participants in this war.
There is no shame in this bias. This is hard to even frame as a bias because it’s universal. All nations would make the same choice. I am not aware of any instance in history where a nation in Israel’s position, or similar, has made a different decision.
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On January 17 2024 04:42 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2024 19:51 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 19:24 WombaT wrote:On January 16 2024 19:13 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 10:55 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 05:04 Magic Powers wrote:On January 16 2024 04:11 Cerebrate1 wrote:On January 16 2024 00:06 Magic Powers wrote:
With questions like this the only thing you prove is how much of a pro-Israel and anti-Palestinian bias you have. I'm sorry. I thought that empathizing with the plight of Israeli townships that just faced one of the most barbaric atrocities in modern history would be a place where everyone here found common ground. Especially from you who are such an empath that you felt the need to empathize with and rationalize for foot soldiers of the Hamas militant wing. You asked about the safety of Israeli citizens. I explained that this question disregards the safety of Palestinians, which should be considered equally important. It doesn't surprise me that you still don't get the point despite me holding your nose right up to it. Your bias is clouding your judgement. Israeli citizens do not have a greater right to safety than Palestinians. I find it unfortunate that you keep falling back to ad hominems instead of focusing on the points of debate. I'm not sure if there are any moderation rules on this forum, but I assure you that it would be a more productive and enjoyable place for everyone if that were a less common theme here. More time could be spent discussing philosophy, world politics, and how we can make the world a better place and less on people yelling at each other about who is the bigger jerk. As for my "not getting" your point, you might not have read my original post carefully, because I brought up that very point there. There is therefore, of course, no need to "shove my nose" back into something I literally brought up myself. Here it is again: On January 15 2024 13:49 Cerebrate1 wrote:
As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"? You, as an outsider, are saying exactly as I said you might, that Israeli citizens should just accept upon themselves the occasional massacre rather than starting a war to attempt to stop it (you may disagree with the efficacy of that solution, but that's another topic and we'll lose the train of thought if we rehash that debate now) because less total people die in the short term. Israelis, on the other hand, would rather live, than die for your higher purpose. So yes, I understand where you are coming from. Do you understand the perspective of the people living in southern Israel? I've said nowhere that Israelis should accept getting massacred. I added an "/s" at the end of my remark specifically to let you know that your insinuation was absurd to begin with. Unlike you I care about both Israeli lives and Palestinian lives, while you only care about Israeli ones. And no, you did not address the point I made at all. Nothing in this quote addresses my point: "As an outsider, you may still prefer over a thousand Israelis dying in a massacre every once in a while to an all out war, but it's not reasonable to expect Israelis to feel that way. Imagine if the country next door to you invaded and slaughtered 1,000 of your countrymen. Would you say at that point "full country to country war is a lot more devastating than 1,000 deaths, so let's just let our neighbors remain with their current regime and move on"?" There's just nothing there about Palestinians. Literally not one word. There’s a certain amount of abstraction when we get to a nation state so it’s not directly equivalent, but I mean who here if offered a Sophie’s choice between a loved one being taken away, or multiple strangers is actually picking the latter? As per my position on much of what Hamas does I don’t think this makes it a morally correct position, but at least a somewhat explicable one. The sentiment for security is a pretty reasonable one, although counter-intuitively often policies seeking that actually make said breaches more likely, as it can be with hardline criminal justice. And as it is in this case IMO. Yes, it is reasonable - from a purely pro-Israel perspective that completely neglects the Palestinian perspective. That's exactly my point. The fact that one has to make an emotional plea in favor of only one side in the conflict (such as imagining oneself in the shoes of an Israeli family, resulting in a significant emotional and/or ideological bias) to come to the conclusion that it makes sense to prefer a thousand Palestinian deaths to ten Israeli ones is proof that the point is true. It is a bias that very strongly favors Israeli lives over Palestinian ones at a 100 : 1 ratio. I could use much harsher language than what I've been using to describe such favoritism. I prefer to stick to less inflammatory terms such as "bias" so as to keep the discussion relatively civil. But I won't be mincing words beyond that. If you had the choice between saving 1 family member or 2 strangers, would you choose the 2 strangers? I think a gigantic % of people would still choose 1 family member for 100:1 or even higher. I’ve had this back and forth with other members like Drone here, and in general everyone agrees they would choose for a ton of strangers to die rather than 1 of their children. Similar to arguments about what % of disposable income should be given to the poor and other “theoretically true” results, you could argue these conclusions are totally pointless because they don’t exist in real life. If all lives are equal, someone would choose for their child to die rather than 2 strangers. If you could spend $20 on going out for drinks with friends, but that $20 would save a starving child from dying from starvation, you would be immoral by spending it on drinks. If you chose to live in a more luxurious house rather than take that extra money and donate it to the homeless, you’d be entirely choosing your own selfishness over relieving others from their suffering. In both of these instances, it’s always easy for people to say “duh, of course that’s the right thing to do. But that’s not reasonable. No one would do that” Do you understand there are no nations in the world who would make the choice you’re saying Israel should make? Less than 0.001% of parents would allow their children to die to save 2 strangers. Do you see why these truths make the theoretical “right” answer not even real? I don’t remember if I’ve gone over this specific point with you, so do you get what I’m saying? The idea is that we can analytically determine the logical answer to an ethical dilemma fairly easily in many cases. And yet this theoretical answer mostly does not exist at all. The answer is both trivial and meaningless. It doesn’t help anyone because it’s not a useful choice for someone to make. No one would choose it. I know the family death question varies a bit because some people have no family or don’t have a good relationship or they’ve never had kids and whatnot. But when we assume a “normal and healthy relationship”, the moral dilemma is extremely well agreed on. Am I wrong about nations never choosing what you’re describing? Do you have examples of this kind of self sacrifice? From where I’m standing, you are comparing Israel to an entirely fictitious scenario. It’s not a reasonable argument.
Everyone is going to answer this the same way, which is why we entrust other bodies to deliver justice, not ourselves.
We can empathize with Israelis given how horrific Oct 7 was for them, doesn't mean they should be excused for an extremist reaction. I know 9/11 has been used as analogy here before. Yes the US was given a lot of support at the time and they proceeded to cause unnecessary war and death.
Crimes dealt unto you does not give you the right to bring about uncalled for devestation.
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EPT
