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Ridingtosunsets ride into the sunset Meta thread of genius


Ridingtosunset

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This is a thread to discuss the obvious lack of tolerance we have now for opinions with which we don't agree. I have no delusions this will remain civil, thus the need for the discussion. 

I'm looking for discussion on how we got here, social media? politics? wealth inequality? mental health? How do we fix it and can it be fixed? 

My thoughts are we've been manipulated to this point by a) politicians who benefit from dividing and securing voting blocs b) media that feeds on division and hate c) social media that has desensitized and isolated us from real relationships with others d) our own vanity 

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Well, for one thing, what you are complaining of is incivility, or refusal to agree with or understand your opinions or arguments.  "Intolerance" is a better word for it than "freedom of expression."

No one is infringing your freedom to express them.  You haven't been banned, for example.  You're just getting shouted down, at worst.

Also, within the context of the First Amendment anyway (which is what I think we're referring to), "freedom of expression" is a broader interpretation of the First Amendment that extends its protections to non-speech, but nevertheless "expressive" conduct, like flag burning or nudie dancing or the like.

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5 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, for one thing, what you are complaining of is incivility, or refusal to agree with or understand your opinions or arguments.  "Intolerance" is a better word for it than "freedom of expression."

No one is infringing your freedom to express them.  You haven't been banned, for example.  You're just getting shouted down, at worst.

Also, within the context of the First Amendment anyway (which is what I think we're referring to), "freedom of expression" is a broader interpretation of the First Amendment that extends its protections to non-speech, but nevertheless "expressive" conduct, like flag burning or nudie dancing or the like.

All of this said, there is an annoying tendency here to extrapolate a poster's entire political and personal belief system, usually in a highly negative fashion, from one or two posts that challenge some of the orthodoxy here.

An example is that there are one or two posters who challenge the "all cops are bastards" orthodoxy and the majority assume that they are automagically alt-right, Qanon Trumpers.  I agree with that particular aspect of the "orthodoxy," and will challenge those posters, but I try not to assume that they hold other beliefs or opinions that they haven't expressed.

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27 minutes ago, Ridingtosunset said:

This is a thread to discuss the obvious lack of tolerance we have now for opinions with which we don't agree. I have no delusions this will remain civil, thus the need for the discussion. 

I'm looking for discussion on how we got here, social media? politics? wealth inequality? mental health? How do we fix it and can it be fixed? 

My thoughts are we've been manipulated to this point by a) politicians who benefit from dividing and securing voting blocs b) media that feeds on division and hate c) social media that has desensitized and isolated us from real relationships with others d) our own vanity 

Perhaps start by defining and/or separating "we." While 'we' is inclusive of all Americans, it might be helpful to separate out the electorate from the elected, the corporate realm (which is comprised of the electorate, both those who earn wages and those who employ them, and the elected who travel between the private and public), the appointed, and so on. For example, the topic of social media comprises all of those 'we' categories above but each play a different part with different aims, desires, objectives, etc. It would be easy for me to say 'social media bad,' but the individuals that comprise the total are not wholly responsible for its ills, nor can I necessarily point to one individual, like say Torba of Gab, and say 'it's all his fault.' Some individuals or small groups of individuals, however, through power or wealth or both have an outsize influence.

Just my opinion though.

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1 minute ago, David Dennison said:

OK boomer.

Oh I'm a boomer, which means I've seen a lot in my lifetime, and you're a one trick pony who can't see past the end of your nose about the reality of the situation in our country. It's so much more complex than your victim hood it's all republicans fault schtick.

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17 minutes ago, TwiceHorn said:

Well, for one thing, what you are complaining of is incivility, or refusal to agree with or understand your opinions or arguments.  "Intolerance" is a better word for it than "freedom of expression."

No one is infringing your freedom to express them.  You haven't been banned, for example.  You're just getting shouted down, at worst.

Also, within the context of the First Amendment anyway (which is what I think we're referring to), "freedom of expression" is a broader interpretation of the First Amendment that extends its protections to non-speech, but nevertheless "expressive" conduct, like flag burning or nudie dancing or the like.

With all due respect, not looking for the dissection of the thread title. Or the literal legal consequences. More of a discussion of how our tolerance of others has brought us to this place in 2021. 

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Newt’s revolution was a turning point:
 

But few figures in modern history have done more than Gingrich to lay the groundwork for Trump’s rise. During his two decades in Congress, he pioneered a style of partisan combat—replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism—that poisoned America’s political culture and plunged Washington into permanent dysfunction. Gingrich’s career can perhaps be best understood as a grand exercise in devolution—an effort to strip American politics of the civilizing traits it had developed over time and return it to its most primal essence...

... Twenty-five years after engineering the Republican Revolution, Gingrich can draw a direct line from his work in Congress to the upheaval now taking place around the globe. But as he surveys the wreckage of the modern political landscape, he is not regretful. He’s gleeful...

...“The old order is dying,” he tells me. “Almost everywhere you have freedom, you have a very deep discontent that the system isn’t working.”

And that’s a good thing? I ask.

“It’s essential,” he says, “if you want Western civilization to survive.”...

...On june 24, 1978, Gingrich stood to address a gathering of College Republicanat a Holiday Inn near the Atlanta airport. It was a natural audience for him. At 35, he was more youthful-looking than the average congressional candidate, with fashionably robust sideburns and a cool-professor charisma that had made him one of the more popular faculty members at West Georgia College.

But Gingrich had not come to deliver an academic lecture to the young activists before him—he had come to foment revolution.

One of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty,” he told the group. “We encourage you to be neat, obedient, and loyal, and faithful, and all those Boy Scout words, which would be great around the campfire but are lousy in politics

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/newt-gingrich-says-youre-welcome/570832/

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Pardon Onboard, but my perception of your posting trend/record tends to veer towards “Dem idea/policies/politicians” bad, full stop. So what’s so diff about your attitude that you have for someone like Dennison? 

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The Global Party Survey is a 2019 poll of nearly 2,000 experts on political parties from around the world. The survey asked respondents to rate political parties on two axes: the extent to which they are committed to basic democratic principles and their commitment to protecting rights for ethnic minorities. 

This chart shows the results of the survey for all political parties in the OECD, a group of wealthy democratic states, with the two major American parties highlighted in red. The GOP is an extreme outlier compared to mainstream conservative parties in other wealthy democracies, like Canada’s CPC or Germany’s CDU. Its closest peers are almost uniformly radical right and anti-democratic parties. This includes Turkey’s AKP (a regime that is one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists), and Poland’s PiS (which has threatened dissenting judges with criminal punishment). 
 

The verdict of these experts is clear: The Republican Party is one of the most anti-democratic political parties in the developed world.
 

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22274429/republicans-anti-democracy-13-charts

 

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1 minute ago, Neonmoon said:

 

Cross posting from the other thread

Step 1 - Fairness Doctrine revoked in 1987 

Step 1.5 - Rush Limbaugh debuts in 1988 

Step 2 - Fox News debuts in 1996 - 

Step 3 - Facebook debuts in  2004

Step 4 - DTJ gets elected 

Revocation of the fairness doctrine started it all. The other three events are just consequences of the first event. There is nothing wrong with conservative slanted news, but the Murdoch’s have no interest in providing news. There is nothing wrong with people connecting online and sharing pictures and stories, but Facebook has algorithms built specifically to keep you addicted in echo chambers. There is nothing wrong with DJT, okay, kidding, DJT is a monster. He lies with every breath he takes. The only reason he existed because the guardrails of truth protection were gutted in the 1980s. If someone says the sky is red when it’s really blue, that is a problem. If we cannot agree on a shared truth, then society crumbles. 
 

Going to edit to add Rush 

Come on man. Really coming with that? Not what the thread is about. Start one on how conservatives fucked everything up and I'll comment in it. 

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3 minutes ago, Ridingtosunset said:

@Onboard 2.0 @David Dennison Please stop that shit. Let's talk about how to fix things and explore if there's room to meet in the middle. 

Saw Climate Change mentioned. Let's discuss. I believe humans have been contributing, but realistic ways to respond to it? Haven't seen that yet. 

30 posts in and you're already trying to limit freedom of expression.. SEE: post #2.

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Just now, Satchel said:

The Global Party Survey is a 2019 poll of nearly 2,000 experts on political parties from around the world. The survey asked respondents to rate political parties on two axes: the extent to which they are committed to basic democratic principles and their commitment to protecting rights for ethnic minorities. 

This chart shows the results of the survey for all political parties in the OECD, a group of wealthy democratic states, with the two major American parties highlighted in red. The GOP is an extreme outlier compared to mainstream conservative parties in other wealthy democracies, like Canada’s CPC or Germany’s CDU. Its closest peers are almost uniformly radical right and anti-democratic parties. This includes Turkey’s AKP (a regime that is one of the world’s leading jailers of journalists), and Poland’s PiS (which has threatened dissenting judges with criminal punishment). 
 

The verdict of these experts is clear: The Republican Party is one of the most anti-democratic political parties in the developed world.
 

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22274429/republicans-anti-democracy-13-charts

 

Vox? No sir. Come with your own thoughts. 

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10 minutes ago, Ridingtosunset said:

 

Saw Climate Change mentioned. Let's discuss. I believe humans have been contributing, but realistic ways to respond to it? Haven't seen that yet. 

I don’t think there’s one idea that’s a panacea to fixing the problem. 

It should likely be a bunch of things, big & small. Conservation. Transitioning to more green energy. Carbon taxes. Carbon sequestration. Even better filters to capture Carbon etc...

Speaking for myself, it’s frustrating though to have for ex Green energy sources shouted down by some Republican politicians. 

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5 minutes ago, Ridingtosunset said:

@Onboard 2.0 @David Dennison Please stop that shit. Let's talk about how to fix things and explore if there's room to meet in the middle. 

Saw Climate Change mentioned. Let's discuss. I believe humans have been contributing, but realistic ways to respond to it? Haven't seen that yet. 

If you haven’t seen “realistic ways to stop it” you apparently pay lots of attention to partisan bullshit and don’t zero attention to energy generation technology discourse remediation technology discourse, or any actual climate  policy discourse.

and therein lies the answer to your question: you’re the problem. You’re focused on this narrow, isolating drama; the bipartisan conspiracy to keep you poor and stupid. And while one side is most assuredly worse than the other, because it opposes not just the other side but objective truth itself, you’re playing into it by trying to find some kind of “consensus” between suckers and fools. 

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No, it isn't. Republicans are apologists for insurrection. They are anti-American.
That in particular and at a meta level they push voter suppression and gerrymandering in order to effect minority rule. Their fundamental philosophy is ruling from the minority rather than persuading the electorate of their ideology.
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[mention=684]Onboard 2.0[/mention] [mention=2618]David Dennison[/mention] Please stop that shit. Let's talk about how to fix things and explore if there's room to meet in the middle. 
Saw Climate Change mentioned. Let's discuss. I believe humans have been contributing, but realistic ways to respond to it? Haven't seen that yet. 
Dude, there's no fucking compromise anymore. Republicans saw to that decades ago. There's only obtaining and maintaining power. Whoever has it wins.
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4 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

My wife is super fucking pregnant. Like, next week pregnant. She wants the house (already pretty spotless) to be perfect when she comes home. So, no problem. I will pay some people some money to clean our house while we're out having a baby. Lady came by to do the quote. I had talked to her on the phone and explained the whole deal and the context. Doorbell rings, I open the door with a mask on, she doesn't have one on, she stops for a second and says "Oh... do you... want me to have a mask on?" and I say "Oh yeah please if you could, my wife hasn't been vaccinated and is very pregnant", and she rattled off a few sentences about "Are they not letting pregnant people get vaccinated? Too new for me, no thank you. I don't trust it." before putting a mask on and we went on with it.

Obviously, this is not the problem. It's not the cause of the problem, it's not the primary horrible thing that is happening. But holy fucking shit it has been so long and it is so exhausting and years from now looking back on 2020-2021 (and.... beyond???) just the insanity of what we are living through and the toll it is taking on everyone. And for me, in that moment, I was so goddamn exhausted. I can't tell you to fuck off cleaning lady, I need to get this taken care of and I'm sure you'll be fine. I have no interest in talking to you about which kinds of facts and opinions you like the most about our current fucked reality. I don't want to be in a world where this even comes up, or comes up in a way that... I have to pause and check myself on "wait is it reasonable for me to be exhausted at this woman who visits lots of homes who is dragging her heels about putting a mask on before entering the home where my 9 months pregnant wife is breathing the air while we're in a pandemic that has killed well over half a million people with an airborne virus and whose long term effects are not super well understood and what kind of wrench will it throw if we show up at the hospital and either of us are positive and etc etc". I have to pause and think about that and just deal with coaxing her into being a decent person, and I'm sure she mostly is one and loves new life being brought into the world and wants mothers and babies to come home safely and etc etc etc and we live in this totally fucked world where I have to enforce the "we are definitely at least following the super easy painless precautions during this difficult time that will maybe soon be over" stance before letting her cross the threshold. It's a fucking beating.

Anyways, this is a thread fork from my thread fork from when I was complaining about people doing politics in the DT. And i called them right wingers, and it was in a cop thread, maybe that wasn't accurate, I don't know. Either way, from me directly, on the topic of "why is the discourse so bad", I think a not insignificant part of the deterioration of tone has to do with how much of an incredible beating it is just existing in a world where even the super fucking easy common ground is gone.

Assuming you or your loved one's did not get seriously ill during the pandemic, pandemic bullshit is going to pale compared to the first year of parenting bullshit.

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Climate change? It's tough because first we've got to convince people it's happening right?

I heard in the briefing today a discussion about the postal service and green vehicles. That is a start, no? I'm a big fan of the USPS. It is a service, a useful service (I won't go into all that and how that has been thwarted), and there are a lot of trucks on the road. Over 230,000 in every category, but the last blurb was that only 10% were going to be 'green.' Seems like that could be better, but apparently it adds over 4 Billion to the price tag to convert the whole fleet, plus there are charging issues perhaps with parts of America not having access?

I keep thinking about the wonderful gains we've made over the last hundred years with ingenuity and working together, but this divisiveness isn't helping, certainly. China is investing in science and 'green' solutions because as the climate changes, they want to be in the proverbial driver's seat. We need to get busy and build our own bus.

 

@Celery Man best wishes for a safe and healthy delivery and baby. Hang in there, you're in for a wild ride.

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6 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

You, as a partisan Republican, voted for a guy who literally tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power with support of a majority of Republican house members, even AFTER his supporters attacked your nation’s capital.

So you know, maybe your problem is with them. 

This is good one to discuss. Trump was a clown and a disgrace. But how is someone to vote that couldn't disagree more with the Dem platform? We were told not to worry about the crazies like AOC...now she has a little juice. We are heading full speed into the GND, which will be a disaster, but make Dem donors money. How are we supposed to vote? For a degenerate? Or for someone that is promising to do the opposite of what we believe is most important for the health of the country? Shit sandwich and Giant Douche. 

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3 minutes ago, Ridingtosunset said:

This is good one to discuss. Trump was a clown and a disgrace. But how is someone to vote that couldn't disagree more with the Dem platform? We were told not to worry about the crazies like AOC...now she has a little juice. We are heading full speed into the GND, which will be a disaster, but make Dem donors money. How are we supposed to vote? For a degenerate? Or for someone that is promising to do the opposite of what we believe is most important for the health of the country? Shit sandwich and Giant Douche. 

Let's hear your version of what is most important for the health of the country.

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  • immamac changed the title to Ridingtosunsets ride into the sunset Meta thread of genius


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