Anti-Trumpism is still the reigning principle, it seems. I cannot wait to see what other behavior you’ll forgive on such grounds.

Don’t bother. I don’t require bits and pieces of CNN articles to tell me what I should think.

Do you believe policy should be reached through a process of debate and deliberation, or by presidential order?

The point was made and you desperately searched for some way to dismiss it, but did a poor job of doing so, convincing no one but yourself. Thanks anyways.



According to Biden’s own fuzzy principles, ruling by EO is something dictators do.

28 executive orders in 2 weeks. Benkei: “For creating a task force?”

If the problem isn’t Biden why didn’t others do it? No, the problem is Biden.

Biden has been signing EO’s like a madman. He has almost signed as many EO’s in his first two weeks as FDR did in his first month. According to Biden’s own words this is dictator shit.

https://www.npr.org/2021/02/03/963380189/with-28-executive-orders-signed-president-biden-is-off-to-a-record-start

But who cares? At least he doesn’t make mean tweets.

I ask because I’d like to know who privileges someone on account of these characteristics. If not yourself, then how are we able to assume that the larger society does so?

Do you privilege people on account of these characteristics?

You say that 'the recipient of privilege is never born with it', but that ignores the whole way into which can be born into an environment of privilege. An easy example is how some people are born into wealthier backgrounds. The whole life we are given at birth affects who and what we can become in so many ways.

What I mean is one does not come out of the womb with privilege in his skin color or gender, as if it was biology. Rights, immunities, favors, privileges etc. are always given, granted, bestowed. So it isn’t the case that one is necessarily privileged by virtue of certain attributes. One remains unprivileged until someone privileges him.

Everyone has privileges in the structure of the social world, such as being male, white etc. In a way, we could say that the most disadvantaged could be the black, disabled lesbian. We live such hierarchical structures in a way in which these categories are almost invisible but they permeate life.

I don’t think there are such hierarchies or privileges, and we risk falling into identity politics by thinking along such lines.

Privileges must be granted before they can be possessed. People who grant privilege according to such characteristics certainly exist, but the recipient of privilege is never born with it. One could heap privilege on a black disabled lesbian and she would be privileged thereby.

First: "Thinking" is an Action and it is an obvious truth that all Actions unequivocally exist in the Real Universe. I might also say: "I eat therefore I am" or "I sneeze therefore I am" or "I walk therefore I am".

I would push back on this because I don’t think it’s obvious that all actions unequivocally exist. When I jump, for instance, something called a “jump” doesn’t immediately pop in to existence and vanish when I’m finished.

That’s exactly what the Trump administration did.

“Our number one goal is to unify them with their sponsor and while that’s happening we’re providing them with a quality education”

- Mark Weber, US Dept. of Human Services, Trump administration.

It must have slipped your mind.

The Biden administration is reopening a “concentration camp” for children. Given the past, I suspect we’ll see mass world-wide outrage and condemnation. But given the selectivity of said outrage, I won’t hold my breath.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/02/politics/migrant-children-facility-immigration/index.html

What I mean is, the meaning isn’t in the symbol. I carry it around with me so that when I come across a symbol I can understand what it means. Obviously I must first learn what it means.

This is where Wayfairer works. He has a VPN.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinjiang_re-education_camps

The implications are dire, I admit.

I just explained that. It's not complicated. The sound (or image) stimulates a neuron sufficiently for it to stimulate one to which it is proximate. At the end of that chain is the instruction to your muscles to type. What is it you're not understanding about that?

It’s not that I don’t understand it. I just think it’s kind of ridiculous because I am being treated as a passive object, the words acting upon me as if I was silly putty. I think it’s the other way about: I act upon the words.

All the activity you describe, from hearing a word on down to responding, is performed by and caused by me. Just as you chose your words and manifested them, it is I who chose to read them. It is I who learned the language. It is I who differentiated between your text and the general noise of other sense data. It is I who interprets the data and supplies the meaning to the symbols. It is I who formulates and delivers the response.

I would call myself a liberal in the classical sense.

No, I do not approve. This sort of stuff leads to the killing fields. I think your ideas are unjust and I fear for the countries where such mindsets achieve power.

Not only stupid, but ignorant. Can you say rhetoric? The art of persuasion? And never mind Aristotle's measly Rhetoric when you can have Quintillian's whole bookshelf on the subject. And these just two of thousands. Every letter write, every poet, every person who attempts literature of any kind, in particular every speech writer. Every mother who calls her child. These just examples; in short every person who communicates. Btw, nos4, are you aware of music? Do you know what that is? As usual you are an insult to these forums. You just don't usually display this "level" of ignorance.

Then why won’t you persuade me, Tim? Surely you know some of these arts.

Well, it was text. I looked at the screen, I read the words, I interpreted the symbols, and I typed the response. How, in your neuroscientific view, is the word causing me to do any of this?

You repeat that the words are causing my response, telling my body to type, and in the same breath accuse me of magical thinking. But I’ve also seen a few posts in this thread which seem to be unable to cause a single response, not only from me but from others. Were these pixels, arranged as they were, lacking the causal force? Did they cause people not to respond? Did the “signals” travel down the wrong neurons?

So far all you’ve done is written about me in the passive voice and the words in the active one. I think it should be the other way about.

I would be for defunding people and institutions who are guilty of those crimes against humanity, but I could not in good conscience lay blame and seek punishment upon an entire class of people without knowledge that each and every individual composing that class were guilty of said crimes.

I would not be opposed to defunding the government, though.

Is it logical or illogical to take into account a real statistical difference between groups when dealing with an individual in that group? Not to stick with this difference when updated with individual information, but to start off in the absence of individual data/experience?

It depends on the group. I think it is illogical to take account of statistical differences between groups if the existence of those groups can be easily questioned. Take the idea of reparations, for instance. I think there is a solid argument for reparations, and I do think the United States should compensate the victims of slavery. But should someone like Kamala Harris get reparations on the basis of her “race”, even though she is (according to her father) the descendant of a slaver?

I refuse to acknowledge the notion that “speech has consequences” beyond the immediate physical effects, for instance the movement of breath from the mouth or the application of ink to paper. Since no one but myself can control my motor cortex, I believe the activities you described are the consequence of other, more personal factors. But I can understand the folk psychology of the notion.

The problem with this notion, as I see it, is that if speech is to be blamed for political skirmishes or violence, it can be blamed for any and all opposite effects. If you and I hear the same speech, but you go out and riot while I go home and read a book, we remain ignorant to the real reasons why you did one thing and I did another. Free speech becomes the innocent victim.

I doubt the physics and biology of such an assertion, but I am aware that such folk psychology exists and do not completely disagree.

How?

The Nazis were routinely censored in Weimar. Worse, Hitler himself used their own censorship to justify the Enabling act. After that Nazi Germany became a huge safe-space for Nazi ideas, with all critics censored in some manner or other.

The recent Capital insurrection suggests that words, specifically words that compose a big lie in that particular case, can have serious consequences. Ignorance can be exploited by unscrupulous influencers.

Could you use your words to guide me like a marionette to this or that action? Let’s give it a try.

Even if that were easily possible our values are not so easily reconfigured.

I think it is only a matter of time before one fallen belief leads to a collapse of those that depend on it.

Censorship is a huge problem, and will continue to proliferate as the means of expression become more widespread. But I think there is hope. As soon as the cowardly fear of words and voices is proven to be illusory (which, given the ease with which we can communicate, is only a matter of time), the fashionable idea that articulated sounds, marks on paper, or pixelated letters can be the same as violence will become increasingly untenable, and its believers increasingly silly.

I believe argument is valuable for its own sake, that one should subject his opinions to the grindstone of debate in order to form a better understanding of the world. But such a practice is a problem for those who have their identity all bound up with their ideas, so much so that an attack on an idea becomes an assault on the people who value it.

Personally, I believe a reconfiguration of the notion of self is a necessary step to disentangling identity from ideology. Being able to remove pride and self-esteem from the marketplace of ideas seems crucial if one wants to remain in it without fear and stress.

Lots here, (though almost none of it addressed by my post).

Sure, many substitute skin pigmentation for race and base discrimination on it, that is (somewhat inaccurately) referred to as "racism". It is a small subset of the larger topic of "discrimination".

Many discriminate based on race (among many other things), that is not necessarily negative. However, you stipulated: "… discriminated AGAINST...", which, of course is negative by definition, so I am against that.

There are many examples of racial discrimination that are not negative (and I am not against those).

There is little difference between so-called positive and negative racial discrimination, in my view. In each case, one adopts a perverted racial taxonomy, a race hierarchy, and applies it to actual people. To give preference to one racial group is to do so at the expense of other racial groups, with little care for the actual flesh and blood individuals involved. Positive racial discrimination is not contrary to racism. It is the continued application of racism.

What you didn't seem to grasp four years ago, and still don't seem to grasp is that there are laws against foreign participation in an American election. It is a crime.

Twitter and Facebook have nothing to do with American elections, so all that nonsense about Russian bots and fake news on social media was piffle. You guys live in some weird alternate reality.

It could be just that. Maybe the difference lies in the object of scorn, whether it be an actual, extant individual or an abstract generalization. If scorn is not grounded in something that exists, one must aim it an idea, which is an extension of the self.

That's all very well. But take the group of cunts. They're all cunts aren't they? They just are. Same with wankers, there's no non-wankers among them.

All groups are composed of individuals. There is nothing connecting one individual to the next. One can try to bridge that gap with generalizations and words but none of that means anything outside of human imagination.

No, I couldn't care less because there is no crime or evil occurring anywhere folks like yourself have been crying wolf for the past half-decade. Trump, like the mods and rockers, just happens to be the source of your hysteria.

I've never said nor implied Biden colluded with foreign powers to win in 2020, so I'm not going to bother.

Yeah, I could care less if Russians bought Facebook ads. Biden employed Facebook and they censored information that might look bad for Biden. Where were you?

Years of Russia conspiracy theories and where were you? It sounds like double standards but there is no evidence you have any. Is it because you have a Trump-shaped hole in your heart?

A lot of good that did. What they got was a pro-American, “America-first” agenda. The KGB fell with their commie empire. Maybe Trump cultivated them and we can thank him for the fall of the Berlin Wall.

It is complicated, agreed.

I would argue censorship is one big problem. Not only does it deny the hater’s right to speak it, but it also denies our right to hear it, ridicule it and prove it false. The Nazis were routinely censored up until they seized power and Weimar Germany had fairly modern hate speech laws. Such rules proved ineffectual on the one occasion when there was a real argument for it. And they used their own persecution as justification to persecute others.

So, in my opinion, prejudice of the type we’re speaking about needs to be met in the open and without fear.