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Originally Posted by well named
Of course, I implied as much directly. My point is we have good reasons to prefer non-violent ways of enforcing those norms. That's why I mentioned advertiser boycotts, for example. It's not just even entirely a problem of violence, per se, it's the idea of socially sanctioned means of enforcing norms vs means which contribute to the further breakdown of the social order. I think it is a good thing for society to ostracize someone like Carlson. I'm just hesitant about the other consequences of using violence (or threats of violence) to do it. As I said, maybe the (literal) civil war is inevitable, but I don't think anyone should be glib about the idea.
As others have mentioned, it seems like you perhaps don't exist in the empirical world and maybe suffer from a wee bit of what the SJW call privilege.
Because the hyperventilating here appears to be that norms of non-violence might be eroded if the left engages in violence. FWIW you might want to pick up a newspaper or something, pretty sure like beating up political opposition, terrorizing immigrants, cops shooting unarmed black people as Trump winks in their direction about law and order, mass rampage shootings at synagogues and black churches are a thing, something like Google can help you out with that.
I mean less glib, less cynical, I'll repeat: this really is pretty basic game theory application. The worry that the norms are at risk ("the idea of socially sanctioned means of enforcing norms vs means which contribute to the further breakdown of the social order.") assumes you have a shared norm of cooperation to prevent political violence.
That seems a bit naive at this moment. You have the luxury, as many of us do, of assuming that for now we have this norm of non-violence to cherish.
And yet, despite my joke that you're privileged to not feel that the norm has been discarded (although I am sincere when I think it's a factor in your take here), you seem to get it a little bit?:
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right-wingers that their violent rhetoric towards liberals, immigrants, refugees, muslims, and so on is dangerous and already has had real-world consequences.
And so:
Why are you still insisting that the left hold to this social order? Repeat: you can rattle off right wingers and the literal half dozen category of people they regularly and violently threaten?!?!!?!?
OH BUT DVAUT OVERGENERALIZES, the **** bro?!?
"Hey this group of people and their millionaire TV pundits are regularly threatening lots of people with violence, broadcasting these views to millions of people, and look, we are seeing the dangerous results...
::furrows brow, strokes beard::
...and so the real problem here is this other group of people over generalizing and being overly broad in their response."
You're going to retort that you're above it all and that no, no, you're saying both are bad because they disrespect the norms and you don't let the right wingers off. Again, in a world where you sort of happily exist as the lone wolf iconoclast standing guard over the norms, you've tactically admitted you stand ready to defend an entirely empty castle.
There's nothing to defend, it's not a norm, by your own ****ing admission you have to constantly scold right-wingers about their violent rhetoric towards liberals, immigrants, refugees, muslims, and so on is dangerous and already has had real-world consequences.
Moving on:
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Part of the problem, IMO, with dvaut's argument is that it involves an over-generalization. He claims that the right is already being violent with us so we are justified to be violent back. But the overwhelming majority of people are not committing acts of violence, although I'm afraid that increasingly violent rhetoric will continue to contribute to an escalation in political violence. But I live in an overwhelmingly conservative location and I've literally never felt afraid for my safety. There are not roving gangs of conservatives looking to beat up SJWs. They are not "already [literally] beating us and shooting us". It's not reasonable to generalize from the acts of political terrorism which have occurred to the conclusion that violence is justified as a means to oppose people like Tucker Carlson.
Kind of an lol here, you seem to have bought into senorkeed's extremely dumb strawman that we're threatening to carpet bomb Fox News viewers. I said we were justified terrorizing Tucker Carlson. Would you agree, for instance, that right wingers and their violent rhetoric towards liberals, immigrants, refugees, muslims, and so on is dangerous and already has had real-world consequences and that Tucker Carlson is one of the primary vectors of that violent and often genocidal rhetoric?
If so, and yes, you do, why are you anxious about the threats of violence against the overwhelming majority of people?
I can't really square this. You sort of agree Tucker Carlson broadcasts endless streams of violent white power to a willing audience then ask us to cling to our norms of political pluralism because otherwise we won't have these norms of political pluralism anymore. If you're a normal person not threatening people with violence, I don't think you should be under duress.
It's like you exist in this opposite space time continuum where the left goaded Tucker Carlson onto a popular non partisan cable news network and morphed it into a space of violent fantasies against migrant caravans eagerly lapped up by an audience of eager participants then casually assign a lot of normalcy and fictional norms to the whole affair.
I'll grant, since you seem either desperate to simply hear it or so wrapped up in your strawman that you didn't assume, but I'll grant that if you're a passive Fox News watching drone with relative non-fascist anodyne political opinions then it goes without saying you're not in the category of people that should be wary about violent retribution. I trust that's actually a lot of Fox News viewers!
But then one wonders why you yourself admit you have to hector a lot of right wingers about their violent rhetoric against hundreds of millions of people.
You're sort of a walking contradiction here. Either we have norms of pluralism and non-violence that we should respect to preserve that social order, or right-wingers regularly engage or at the very least are a passive happy audience to violent rhetoric towards liberals, immigrants, refugees, muslims, and so on is dangerous and already has had real-world consequences. I don't think we can hold to a world in which the latter is true and we insist the left respect the former.
Last edited by DVaut1; 11-09-2018 at 04:08 AM.