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I am a progressive Democrat myself, and I feel similar to you in terms of reading and learning. I myself have very little interest in “pushing back”; I find it would be absolute waste of time, and likely why you won’t find the discourse you are looking for. In my opinion, the value of a forum like this is that it allows progressives, at least such as myself, to observe a rich diversity of right-winged thinking to identify the more insidious and subtle dogwhistles indicating the traits of a conservative, so one may steer clear of them in IRL interactions.
Wow, this would have felt vaguely intimidating a few years ago, but now it's just funny. You guys really are losing your juju.
Is this type of discourse approved by the mods?
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In my younger years, I would have thought that this sort of intentional closing off to other perspectives was definitionally antithetical to progressivism, but I must admit that my own cynicism about the supposed tenets of progressivism has grown in the past decade or so. I personally try to hew to the tenets of progressivism and expose myself to such conservatives in IRL interactions as much as I can (which, to be fair, is very low due to the physical location in which I reside, where IRL conservatives are about as common as a zebra/unicorn hybrid), but I do understand now that different progressives understand progressivism differently from me.
As I understand it, progressivism cannot exist alongside conservatism, because all of the progress done by the former will always be challenged by the latter. I think I have been open to those perspectives for a majority of my life and once possessed them myself, but when I realized I was at the point where I was sadly conceding that my future husband would inevitably cheat on me, or at least want to cheat, because I would get older and his nature would have him seek younger women with better childbearing hips, I figured I didn't need to be open to that kind of stuff anymore.
Anecdotally as well, where you find conservatives a rare breed where you live, the opposite is true for me. It is rare for me to find a progressive here.
This is almost the exact opposite of my understanding of progressivism and conservatism. Progressivism must exist alongside conservatism because the progress done by the former will always be challenged by the latter. Every ideology must be challenged in order for that ideology to be strengthened and corrected by attack from its strongest opponents, with the weakest and most harmful parts of that ideology not surviving that contact, which only benefits that ideology. Any ideology that must have its opponents not exist is one that is also a totalitarian dogmatic religion, and I don't believe progressivism is one. Subjecting one's ideology to its opponents is the basic scientific way of approaching ideology, which, again, I used to think was what progressivism was all about. Again, over the years, I've certainly become more cynical about how progressive people view progressivism, but I've personally tried to keep by the tenets myself.
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While I find the sentiment of maximizing the purity of your social bubble somewhat loathsome, in this instance I would be entirely content providing you as much assistance on this front as I could. I even think that I could do this in good conscience, given that your stated premise is to
The rules I have, personally, for total removal of an individual from my life before I even know them have been invoked a few times in my life, but not often enough that I feel the need to nervously genuflect towards the Paradox of Tolerance when I do.
That said your somewhat duplicitous presence would lead to my wondering whether your [statistically likely presence somewhere along the chain of decision-makers in the hiring/firing process, for instance] motives in this are entirely pure, or at least not intended to cause real, actual harm to real, actual people while offline. Could you please tell me if the stakes being there was a consideration to you, when you wrote this comment?
Would you consider asking yourself as well, if coding "right-wing" to danger or at least avoidance isn't just coding class-signals (your presumed outgroup) as political?
I sincerely don’t know what “coding class signals as political” means, otherwise I would answer that question.
I believe you are asking, “Would I not hire someone if I knew they were conservative?” To answer that, I would, yes. I believe conservative ideology is incredibly abusive to both the believer and those associated with them. My evidence for this belief is partially anecdotal; every single conservative I have ever known in my life (to include myself at one point) my mother and father, my brothers, my grandparents, my boss, my coworkers, my boyfriend’s sisters, brothers and parents, and his friends hurt themselves and others around them as the expectations social conservatism puts on them clashes with their wants and desires and causes untold amounts of emotional discomfort, immaturity and agitation. I have my own objective evidence as well, but that would be too long to list for this response.
I personally trust the judgement of someone who believes in social conservatism to be so significantly impaired that yes, if somewhere down the line I were to find two applicants were equally qualified but one attended their college’s Turning Point club and the other did not, I would find the former to be a potential emotional, physical and ethical danger to my employees. I would worry they would say hurtful things to their coworkers, disrespect the authority of their supervisors and use workplace equipment incorrectly.
If you are asking me if I would hurt a conservative in real life when you say “real harm”, no. I believe social conservatism was partially born from poor emotional regulation being met with hostility and pain, and responding with more pain is not constructive.
I think it's likely you are confusing the urban/suburban/rural cultural divides with political allegiance: while these things map to each other to a degree, these are far more likely to signal class allegiance as opposed to political (e.g. "conservative", "progressive"). Since we're discussing anecdata, I happen to know a great many pro-lgbt, pro-public healthcare, pro-prison reform, all around fairly leftwing types who also exhibit every sign you likely find repulsive (religiosity, "traditional" families, regularly hunting every autumn, drives a pickup truck daily for no reason). These are overwhelmingly lower class markers, not political. In fact there's almost no commonality whatsoever between the "cultural" practices of members belonging to any given political group, these commonalities are far more accurately mapped onto stuff like Red Tribe/Blue Tribe, lower/middle/upper class. If you've (perhaps) had trouble figuring out just why the chuds voted against their interest in 2016, perhaps view it through the lens of "the proletariat sending a message to the petit bourgeois". Hopefully this helps you understand my meaning, I wasn't attempting to be cryptic and apologize for not making myself more clear.
Thank you for answering, it's pleasing to see my assumptions born out by reality, at least so far as this place is a reflection of it. How do you reconcile your overt and clearly stated reactionary behavior and bigotry, that appears of the same order (if perhaps a differing flavor) with what you proclaim to despise? It's hardly an original observation, but could you please tell me where and how your desired institutional discrimination differs from historical redlining, women being unable to vote or legally own property, or exclusion of lgbt from marriage/adoption/surrogacy? Or that this discrimination will catch only bad actors and not simply the poor, working and lower classes?
This is not a gotcha to be clear, I find quite literally everything you've said to be objectionable but I'm genuinely curious what your worldview is that consolidates and synthesizes what appear to me to be contradictions and am hoping for an explanation. Or do you simply not feel that these are contradictions, and that conservatives are so uniquely repugnant and valueless as a group their ultimate extinction (not via murder or violence of any kind of course, just the inexorable push over a generation or two down and out of our shared world) is a net benefit to society?
I think that you and I have differing thresholds for what we consider "harm". I think someone being denied the opportunity to fulfill their natural talents or chosen course in life, not by insurmountable failure or poor fortune, but rather by a conscious and conscientious human being deliberately putting their finger on the scales to be harmful. Consider that others may share my definition of harm, and that some quantity of the hostility you see might be a normative reaction from fairly standard-issue human beings towards perceived contempt and deliberate depredations. Consider that the Morlocks also know how to read, and have recognized, rightly or wrongly, the parallel between your course of action and the UN definition of genocide, specifically Article II.c. Consider that someone otherwise entirely sympathetic to your motivations and lived experience would still look at your proposed course of action and consider you "a baddie".
I know you've stated already that you aren't interested in discussion or debate (here, at least) so if you don't want to respond then feel free to ignore me, I won't take it personally and am happy to indulge your wishes.
Bonus points:
You and I may be in agreement with your direction on this specific example, if not your destination. Mere attendance isn't quite the mortal sin to me as it would seem to be for you, however.
I do think conservatives are uniquely repugnant, and therefore do not consider discrimination against them bigotry, much less in a similar vein as sexism and homophobia. I reconcile this because, unlike homosexuality, poverty, sex and gender, conservatism is a choice. What you consider bigotry, I consider to be consequences. I do not think someone who chooses to be anti-authoritarian, bigoted and dishonest is a good employee for a workplace, although I sympathize that emotional abuse is a lifelong damage people suffer from, and I try to, as they say, separate the sin from the sinner. However I believe the good news is they have the ability, unlike gays, women and the poor, to change their status down the line to find a job they really want, or find someone who doesn’t care, or to actually change their mind. Therefore I would disagree as well that my motivations lie in genocide, because conservatism is not an immutable trait. In your link, genocide is defined as “in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”. Unless conservatism is a religion or a nationality, it fits none of those descriptions.
I do not believe the people you know who are “fairly leftwing” are also “traditional” and are more likely in my opinion casual conservatives, because “traditional” families (AKA gender roles) set misogynistic and misandrist expectations for everyone involved, and sexism is not a tenant of progressivism (but is of conservatism). I know myself plenty of self-described liberals who spout misandry (and therefore reveal their misogyny) - I do not consider them to be liberals. I also do not consider religion, hunting and pickups repulsive, although I do consider traditionalism to be. Almost all of the conservatives in my life I have known have not been rural - they live in the city or suburbs, with the exceptions of my aunt, grandmother, and a family friend. So I disagree with you there are no commonalities between the culture practices of conservatives, because I have seen a farmer in Minnesota and a mayor of an affluent neighborhood and a divorced mom of two in the neighborhood ask me the same questions and have the same responses and be just as nauseating to try to converse with.
I have known no trouble understanding why “the chuds” and the city folks and the suburbias voted against their interests - because they ate Fox News every morning for breakfast and the Drudge Report for lunch and more Fox News for dinner and found a man who represented their emotional immaturity born from generational abuse kickstarted by the Industrial Revolution. I believe they wanted a man to reenact the abusive nature of their lives, and a person like Trump was bound to come along eventually.
If someone was entirely sympathetic to my motivations and lived experience, then they would also agree with my desires. It is the common good for everyone that social conservatism, much like institutional Civil War era slavery, is no longer tolerated by civilized societies, and is socially ostracized. Such as, for example, Turning Point. I do not believe that organization has anything useful to say, and so I find the motivations for why someone would want to listen to useless things dubious, unless they found it useful.
I am not interested in discussion and debate insofaras I have no expectation that my arguments will be met in good faith much less intellectual honesty and so will not put in extra effort into replying to a post that engages me.
You're getting reported a lot, and most are just angry rightists unsurprisingly infuriated that you say the same things about them that they are in the habit of saying about leftists.
That said, while you are certainly allowed to honestly express your opinion of conservatives, you're veering rather hard into "boo outgroup" territory here.
If you assume everyone who disagrees with you is evil, why are you engaging?
The whole point of the Motte is for people to test their shady thinking and engage with people they probably would not engage with in real life. We mod people who take off the mask and say "Fuck liberals, they're all scum" even though we're quite aware that there are more than a few folks here who think that (and frequently test how close they can come to openly saying it), and I'm going to caution you likewise that you are required to at least make an effort to engage with conservatives here in good faith, even if in your heart you don't believe they deserve it.
Your opinion is duly noted. I'm not going to draw up a list of all the times rightists and leftists have been warned and modded, nor answer your question about reports. I am fully confident in the accuracy of my statement, however.
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That my posts are being mass reported comes a bit as an amusing surprise to me, I must admit. But I am not entirely surprised.
I agree that a majority of my posts are an expression of opinion and anecdotal evidence, and I can attempt what I believe you are asking in terms of course correction. Please forgive me if I veer again and I will try further correction.
I do struggle, admittedly, in that you say I assume everyone who disagrees with me here is evil. However, I feel I have to defend myself that I have not said the word evil since I began posting here, because I do not assume everyone here who disagrees with me is evil (I think “everyone who disagrees with me” is too diverse of a group to generalize like that). An assumption I do have is most people who disagree with me here are also reporting me.
The reason I am participating instead of lurking is because I believe there are impressionable people reading these forums and adopting beliefs that are hurting themselves and others around them because, as discussed I believe below in further threads, there is very little if any “push back” from non-rightwinged aligned folks.
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That's a rather cynical way of viewing things, but you do you. So long as you can be sure not to consider any other perspectives, and most importantly to "steer clear of them in 'in real life' interactions". Something, something, "ATM machine".
I feel it is unfortunate you find it cynical, as I find it to be rather optimistic. I am quite sure I have considered other perspectives, and have found them, in charitable terms, to be utterly fruitless. I believe my overall peace increased and my confusion decreased when I stopped giving my time to conversations which I found ultimately proved unconstructive. As a result, I like to think my capacity for mercy and forgiveness increased with my overall contentment, and where my previous necessary interactions with conservatives was, I’d say, entirely hostile, now I believe it is far more constructive when viewed from a lens of what I consider to be compassion. But I find I can only retain such compassion in the company of conservatives IRL by restricting my company with them to absolutely minimum - sans my one guilty pleasure of commenting on here.
I don't have much to say to your response, other than to say that it strikes me as shockingly condescending and naive. Hopefully life experience will help you grow out of the arrogant perspective you seem to have adopted.
I find your last sentence to be especially uncharitable and antagonistic. Is this type of discourse approved by the mods?
Condescendingly implying you're arrogant and immature isn't great, but you're kind of dishing it out yourself, albeit your way of telling people they are beneath contempt is more wordy, so what the mods would prefer is that you try to exercise the same charity you'd like to be shown you.
I highly disagree I have exhibited the same uncharitable language.
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