ur-Nanothnir wrote:Zarathustra wrote:
Not liking a particular President isn't the same as calling the opposing political party evil. We've made this distinction before: the Right tends to think the Left is incorrect, but the Left tends to think the Right is evil. You can have a debate with someone you think is incorrect, but you can't have a debate with someone who thinks you're evil. And that's why the Left simply shuts down speech they don't like. That's why they think riots are an appropriate response. When you are fighting "Evil," the ends justify the means. Even people who read Donaldson and pretend to think otherwise when discussing his works, tend to justify the means when coming back to the real world. Though Donaldson explicitly made the point that the ends don't justify the means, some of his fans can still be found excusing black people for rioting. I think there's a lot of cognitive dissonance on the Left . . . when there is cognition at all, and not mere feels.
Completely false. I frequently see GOP voters call Democrats evil, both on these forums and outside of it. "Demoncrats" is a popular slur used by Republicans. Someone put up a sign near my neighborhood that says "Silly Demoncrats!" I see it all the time on social media. I hear it uttered in real life. Yes, Republicans believe that Democrats are evil incarnate.
Not this again?
Nano, you have recently accused me of being a "bad faith actor" - apparently solely on the grounds that I just don't buy into the hyperpolarised, childishly simplistic and purely binary paradigm that you so fervently have. By refusing to pick a side, by taking a position that both sides are pretty crap, by attempting to look at the available evidence objectively rather than cherrypicking elements that are merely and obviously agenda-led, I am - according to you - being in some way duplicitous...
So let's look at your latest blinkered assertion...
"Yes, Republicans believe that Democrats are evil incarnate."
Now, I am sure that there exist some extremist fringe Pub voters who do believe such a ludicrously hyperpolarised thing - like the guys displaying those "Demoncrat" posters you mention. But that's hardly mainstream messaging from Republican High Command, is it? It's obviously as facile as it is fallacious to base such a sweeping generalisation upon the existence of non-representative outliers. As I said, claiming the existence of such idiotic moral polarisation is not the message being put out by mainstream Pubs.
Now let me do something that'll send you into a mouth-foaming rage - namely look at some available evidence. I've done this before, but you've clearly chosen to screw your eyes tight shut, jam your fingers in your ears and sing loudly at the top of your voice, rather than having to confront an inconvenient truth. How loyally zealous of you...
Joe Biden in his nomination acceptance speech wrote: I will be an ally of the light, not the darkness...
This campaign isn't just about winning votes. It's about winning the heart and, yes, the soul of America...
And light is more powerful than dark. This is our moment. This is our mission. May history be able to say that the end of this chapter of American darkness began here, tonight, as love and hope and light join in the battle for the soul of the nation.
I'd say that particular piece of mainstream messaging emanating from your worshipped figurehead is pretty unequivocal - Joe's very clearly framing the issue as an absolutist moral, nay quasi-religious one, where effectively he's claiming - and quite deliberately - on the one hand to be Gandalf and
anyone supporting the Dems are the elves, whilst simultaneously portraying Trump on the other as Sauron and
anyone supporting the Pubs as the orcs. How "end of times"... how puerile... how utterly fucking ludicrous.
Could the imminent election be framed in
any more morally polarised a way than that? Could this facile piece of messaging come from
a more mainstream Dem source than that? I think not. As I said at the time, Biden picked up Hillary's election-losing and massively divisive "deplorables" schtick, ran with it and then quite deliberately trebled down on it, by categorically defining
anyone supporting his opposition as "the forces of Darkness"... you don't get much more "Evil Incarnate" than that.
And yet you make the utterly sweeping and utterly one-sided claim that yes, it's just the Republicans who believe that the other side is evil incarnate...
I seriously don't know whether you wear those blinkers which you insist on sporting voluntarily or inadvertently?
But I do know in advance that there is zero chance of your being able to accept there being any justification for my own position that in many ways, each side is is every bit as bad as the other, no matter what crystal-clear evidence may be laid out to support such a position. That simply won't fit into your childishly simplistic and utterly polarised view, so you'll reject it and will again have no choice but to label me as a "bad faith actor".
You know what you - and
anyone on either side so wholeheartedly buying in to such a fatuously polarised and extremist piece of issue-framing - remind me of? The sheep in Orwell's Animal Farm, mindlessly and endlessly bleating "Four legs good! Two legs bad!"... and I find that both a little sad and more than a little concerning.
"Dems/Pubs are Goo-oo-oo-ood! Dems/Pubs are Baa-aa-aa-aad!" (Delete as appropriate)
Or hey, how about trying your best to take an objective look at both sides? You might end up with a view that more closely approximates the actual reality of things.
No? Didn't think so...