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Build a parallel status economy.
Every social system should either work for us or not work at all. Actively attack enemy-held institutions by any means necessary.
reject and subvert systems that work against our interests. Deny their power, hamper their operations, refuse their legitimacy, appropriate or destroy their resources.
Focus on outcomes, not process. Process is for coordinating cooperation, and that is not a thing our present society is capable of maintaining.
The goal should be a breakdown of federal authority, and acceleration in the decay of existing systems of social control such as the media ecosystem, educational system, academia generally, the courts, and the federal bureaucracy. Delegitimizing these institutions in the eyes of as much of the public as possible is a good first step.
I took one semester of anthropology courses in college and that was enough to tell me I don't want to return to a hunter-gatherer level of civilization.
There are plenty of forests available to you if you do want that. Until then, please stop trying to destroy my civilization.
In the first place, the deconstruction and seizure of institutional power did not reduce us to hunter-gatherers when blues did it, so there's no reason it should do so were Reds to reciprocate.
Secondly, we were here first.
Given that the first Blues came over on the Mayflower, I doubt that.
Seriously, (unless you believe one of the more radical anti-semitic conspiracy theories) the rise of wokism did not involve a hostile takeover of any institutions - the top universities and most prestigious newspapers in America were run by Yankees and Quakers in 1776, and are run by Yankees, Quakers, and Yankee-aligned secular Jews now. If you do the genealogical research, you will find that most of the individuals in charge are drawn from the same families. (Descendants of PMC Holocaust-era refugees excepted). The rise of wokism (beginning with the Civil Rights movement and the Sexual Revolution, and continuing through 1990's PC and ultimately the current Great Awokening) happened by some combination of conversion and generational replacement. There are several important books still to be written about how and why this happened - Moldbug certainly has a book-length treatment spread over multiple long blog posts, but I don't think his thesis (on my reading, that Yankees were always like this, they just increased in power slowly until they they didn't have to compromise with reality any more) is correct, and his presentation leaves a lot to be desired.
It is worth remembering the background though - in the period 1945-75,
Some form of moral upheaval was probably inevitable.
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Ive seen several of these types of posts from you but this time I feel compelled to say something. The motte seems to be one very rare place where people on the left and right can engage in intellectual cooperation with some semblance of a shared set of principles. These polemics against perceived enemies on the left, in a tone so radical and final, is just shitting on the public good here. Given what you've written here it's obviously pointless for anyone who might disagree to engage with you.
I cannot fathom why the community tolerates this kind of thing; certainly it would never tolerate any naked calls for the explicit demolition of conservative power structures from anyone left of center.
We absolutely would. We had marxbro and Impassionata and a few other hyper-leftists posting on the reddit site for a while - they eventually got permabanned not because they were advocating for "explicit demolition of conservative power structures" (which they absolutely were) but because they were incapable of being civil and just flat-out insulted anyone who didn't buy their premises. Do leftists who post here get reported, a lot? Yes, absolutely. Fortunately, the people who report everyone who disagrees with them are not mods and hopefully will never become mods.
@FCfromSSC is many things, but one thing he's not is impolite, and whatever you might think of our moderation policies, we very explicitly allow people to say things that would be considered "unacceptable in polite society" in most other places, as long as you are, well, polite about it. So yes, "Disenfranchise people I hate" is an allowable argument. "Accelerate until the system breaks" is an allowable argument. "People I hate are scum who should all die" is not an allowable argument. "I specifically wish harm on you" is not an allowable argument.
But there is always the low-grade sophistry or condescending remark that gets through that is not breaking the rules, but is in some ways worse by being personal and directed at the recipient, than just openly rude to a broader outgroup.
Generally speaking, if we see someone using "low-grade sophistry" or condescension directed at individuals, we will mod it. We don't get every single one, and we probably won't always agree with you about what should be modded.
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You're the second person who has had to reach back literal years to find a relevant example from the left. Without access to those posts I cant evaluate whether they are a valid counterexample. Suffice to say im unconvinced by your assurances but I think we'll have to set that aside.
Presumably the rules by which you moderate are designed produce some outcomes and accomplish specific aims in the tenor and culture of this forum. Probably these are things like, ensure the average comment quality remains high, keep inflammatory and emotionally triggering posts to a minimum, encourage thoughtful and respectful engagement, etc.
One of the aims which I thought the rules were designed to achieve was establishing some cultural norms that encourage the consideration of cross-axis views in a charitable and good faith way. Correct me if I'm wrong.
FC's post contributes to the erosion this norm. By publicly advocating for the wholesale and categorical defection against liberal institutions, he is sending a signal that he believes cooperation with blue tribe is pointless. Therefore, why should I engage with him, a public defector? I simply won't. It would be irrational of me to do so. That is a potential cross axis engagement point that has been eliminated. And the more similar attitudes I see, the less likely I am to engage overall. And I think many people would respond the same way.
I think this forum highly benefits from this norm of cross-axis charity (luckily most have internalized it I believe). The alternative is an echo chamber, or one filled with ideologues. Even with a veneer of politeness, there is no value, for me at least, in a place like that.
We had Impassionata (or a pretty good impersonator) here not long ago. We do occasionally have very leftist posters here making anti-right arguments. And yes, they get downvoted and reported a lot, but they only get modded when they get insulting.
You're not entirely wrong that that's how we'd like conversations to go, but we are not a social project. @FCfromSSC and other people arguing that cooperation is pointless and the other tribe is bad and we have no common ground is allowable, because our "goal" is not to foster cooperation, it's just to host discussion and arguing of ideas.
Then don't. No one is required to engage with anyone.
You aren't alone - @FCfromSSC has provoked similar reactions before. But if we took up your suggestion, we'd just be creating a different kind of echo chamber, where anyone whose views put off too many people gets silenced. We do have a bit of a problem here in that we are leaning ever-more rightward and fewer left-leaning people see much value in participating. I think that's a shame, but frankly (as a left-leaning person) I think the problem is not that "righties say unacceptable things" but "lefties cannot tolerate hearing things they don't like." That's certainly not a problem this forum can solve, but if as a left-leaning person you're going to insist that you won't participate if right-wingers get to say right-wing things... well, case in point.
Any joe can host a discussion website. Hosting a site where /good/, /quality/ discussion occurs is much harder, and that I think is the aim, is it not? And that absolutely does require some level of cooperation between participants engaged in that discussion.
Is this supposed to be some kind of gotcha? So lame. Anyway. Perhaps I did not articulate my point well enough, as it does not concern "things I don't like". I read a hundred things I don't like every time I sign on to this site, yet I singled out FC's post in particular. My point concerns behavior that erodes the norms that enable quality discussion.
I don't see how. I am not advocating for modding conservative viewpoints in particular. You already taboo a good number of posting styles /and/ content in order to keep the quality of discussion high. You don't allow trolls, intentional sophistry, or, I believe, outright Holocaust denial. You of course don't allow name calling. For the sake of the argument, why not? Who are you to say that someone shouldn't be able to express their sincere and honest belief that person X has literal shit for brains? And if anyone gets offended by that, well, we can't silence that person just because he puts people off; the problem is people cannot tolerate hearing things they don't like, etc. There are of course real forums where this kind of free speech absolutism is a deeply held principle, but they are almost universally terrible, for obvious reasons.
You get to call the shots at the end of the day. I've said my case about as clearly as I can, so I'll leave it here. Thank you for at least considering what I have to say here.
Trolls and intentional sophistry (i.e., bad faith arguments), no, Holocaust denial, yes. Though outright stating "The Holocaust is a hoax" would be subject to our "inflammatory claims require proportionate evidence" rule, there is no explicit prohibition against Holocaust denial, and it has not been made a special case of unallowable arguments.
Because that would be unnecessarily antagonistic, which is against the rules. Attack the argument, not the person.
If I sound dismissive, it's not because I don't (somewhat) sympathize, but because I've had this argument so many times before. You are not the first or only one to object to accelerationist-posting. We're not going to prohibit it. We do take a close look at anything that veers towards fedposting.
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That is in fact the point of the rules. You think I'm wrong, and further, you think the way I phrased my statements is unconducive to further discussion. That's true; I was replying to a specific comment in a specific way, not trying to have a conversation with the room generally. Is there elaboration or background I could offer that would allow more of an entry into conversation? Or would you like to lay out why you think what I proposed wouldn't work, or why it is objectionable on general principles?
I certainly do not think liberal institutions are worth preserving, and I do believe that attempting cooperation with Blue Tribe is pointless. If you're looking for conversation, either of those are a reasonable place to start. Why do you think liberal institutions should be preserved? How do you define "cooperation", and why are you confident that Red/Blue cooperation is possible?
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I, on the other hand, am starting to become unconvinced that you are unconvinced. If you were here long enough to remember Ozy's post, or the "downvotes aren't an 'I disagree' button" mantra, you should be familiar with Impassionata, with MarxBro, with the defenses for BLM riots, etc.
You are yet to argue that this constitutes a violation of the norm. Many ideologies argue for a wholesale and categorical defection against liberal institutions. Communism, monarchism, anarchism, uncle-Tedism... are all of these supposed to be off limits?
Literally no one is asking you to.
Charity does not mean you should unconditionally cooperate with liberal institutions. It means you shouldn't caricature what your opponent is saying, or that, out of all interpretations possible, you shouldn't pick the one that makes him look the worst.
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I do not think the claim that "we" share principles is a supportable assumption, whether referring to you and me or the community generally. What the community shares is a standard of decorum.
What level of evidence would you require to consider removing the "perceived" from that phrase? If you're left-wing or Blue Tribe or a moderate or whatever, I'm happy to talk with you politely, but I'm pretty sure you're my enemy, and not in a loosey-goosey metaphorical sense. I'd give it better than 70% odds that you or a close friend or family member would experience net-positive qualia if they heard about me being fired from my job, imprisoned, seriously injured or killed due to a politically-colored incident.
This is not a claim that you or your friends or family are in any way unusual; the above applies to me, and without the caveat of friends and family. I observe that a lot of Americans legitimately hate each other across the red/blue divide with great fervor and zeal. I have consumed memes about bad things happening to Blues in politically-charged incidents, and experienced positive qualia. I think it's fairly obvious that most politically-aware people on both sides have. That is not a good thing, but it is a thing, it is not hard to find, and pretending it isn't real doesn't make it go away.
The post I was replying to was putting forward the idea that Hanania is providing a viable path forward for, broadly speaking, "the Right". They listed off the other, obviously-non-viable alternatives. I listed the alternative they left off the list, which happens to be the most viable, easiest to execute given the givens, and probably one of the least destructive. Every tactic I listed has been a standard part of the political environment for decades. No violence is required. To the extent that laws can be said to exist in a meaningful sense, there's no need to break them. All that is needed is to recognize that our values are not, in fact, reconcilable, and that we are all better off if we stop pretending otherwise. It is better to divorce and then leave each other alone if we can, than to continue the endlessly-escalating fight for dominance.
I don't think this is true. You are free to disagree if you like, and I will do my best to be polite and respectful in return.
You are free to argue for the explicit demolition of conservative power structures, and people have. You are free to argue for Communist revolution if you like. During the riots, people argued that rioting was a good thing and that burning police stations was awesome. I'm religious; someone elsewhere in this week's thread has argued that religion should be considered a mental illness. He's allowed to do that.
That's because you are not thinking about them as people at that point but faceless statistics, I would wager. If you sub in some Blue person that you actually know and care about, a friend, relative, an in law. Do you still feel the same way? I heavily suspect from what I know of you, that you would not.
Being happy something bad happened to a faceless member of the outgroup is as easy as it is meaningless. The question is do you hate the individual Blues that you know just because they are Blues?
Because that is what would be required for the breakdown of society in the way you talk about. Not that you are vaguely happy some random pink haired trans activist is hit by a truck with a MAGA bumper sticker while they tried to block the road, or that your Blue equivalent is vaguely happy some redneck in a cowboy hat gets beaten with a chair by a black paddleboat crew. That is entirely normal! We like it when bad things happen to the faceless other side, because they are wrong and bad, otherwise they would be on our side. That is an entirely normal human feeling. Our societies have had to deal with that since we started living together in groups bigger than 5.
But if it was your Blue brother in law, who you talk sports with at family weddings and who treats your sister well, who was hit by the truck, are you still happy? If so, then yes you are probably over the edge in partisan hate (in my opinion). But from how you write, I don't think that applies to you, and from my interactions with both Blue and Red Americans (given I am not American but live here), I don't think that is true of the vast, vast majority of them either.
I live in a Red town, but I work in the city in academia. When I have a bbq and my worlds collide, people are perfectly ok with each other. The local hardware store employee does not end up in a death match with the university HR rep. They eat hot dogs together while complaining about how people who prefer ketchup to mustard are evil (real example!).
In my direct experience most Americans do NOT hate each other across the blue/red divide. Because they barely know each other and true hate requires knowledge. They may dislike the opposing tribe, but that is not the same thing, and confusing the two is a mistake.
That or as an Emmanuel Goldstein, if they're particularly odious. Think people's attitude toward Shkreli a few years back.
Of course not. But kind feelings fostered by intimate familiarity are no protection at all against the strong arm of the government, or of the mob.
On the contrary, kind feelings however they are fostered are a strong protection. Not necessarily at the individual level of course.
One of the reasons the IRA was forced to cone to the table was that their own people had begun to support them less due to a couple of bombing campaigns that killed children and OAPs. These victims were still of the outgroup, but their was outrage even with Catholic communities. How people felt about the victims killed in their name was crucial in the ceasefire.
Before that the British dialed back on internment and brutal tactics to suppress Catholics after British citizens condemned things like Bloody Sunday and several shootings where teenagers ended up dead. The government responds to public pressure.
In the US, it was seeing black people brutalized by the police and having dogs set on them while peacefully marching that triggered enough support, that finally tried to remove layers of legal discrimination.
Seeing your opponents as people, as lives lost and ruined is a key factor in keeping, and returning to peace, and even when those differences have been built on hundreds of years of hatred and violence, it can still be done. We can still see dead Protestants or dead Catholics as abhorrent even after all of that.
Red's and Blue's are no different in my experience. Most Americans whatever their affiliations do not want to see their opponents murdered. Your levels of division are increasing, but you're not even at the levels the US was in the 60's and 70's let alone where Northern Ireland was in the 60's and 70's. Tensions wax and wane over time. Your fatalism is I believe misplaced.
Back home we would say that everything is bigger in America. I recently attended a wedding in Texas, and the saying that everything in Texas is bigger, apparently makes Texas, the America of America. But the people I met in rural Texas were not particularly different than the people I meet in Pennsylvania (though the church was huge as was the liquor store!) A union of a Philly city boy and a Texas rural girl, and the union of their families. Even North to South, rural to urban, the divisions in America at the personal level, simply do not look that great especially compared to history.
And it is, make no mistake at the personal level that will drive or heal the divisions you do have. Mobs and governments can be dumb and violent and can do terrible things, no doubt. But if the next day the public looks at bodies on the street and is repulsed, then there is a cap. Even at the height of the BLM riots, very few people actually died compared to the numbers involved (though there were some). Even in mobs and with mobs facing armed police, largely widespread death was not the result. Even for those who believed an election was stolen, and were there when the decision was being made ended up with very little death and destruction. Everything may be bigger in America, except when it comes to mob and government violence it appears.
I am not American, but I think you will get through this as your great nation has got through so many other (in my view) worse positions.
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Yes it is all about decorum, that is in fact my point. I have seen many people criticize conservatives, but none that I have seen have done so with decorum youve shown-- the finality of the tone and extreme positions advocated for, (at least originally) without explicit argument, while at the same time telegraphing your intent to defect from your enemies...
You say this could be tolerated from the left, but I really don't believe it. I would welcome some examples from you if you think otherwise.
Well, I've kind of been doing this for a while.
Have you read Scott's Conflict vs Mistake theory, or Sort by Controversial? I see in another comment that you've read Conservatives as moral mutants, but have you read Zunger's Tolerance is not a moral precept.
In Conflict vs Mistake, Scott lays out two basic ways that people can frame disagreement, either as a mistake to be corrected so cooperation can be restored, or as a conflict where cooperation is impossible. The thing to note from that one is that from a materialist, rationalist perspective, the two are asymmetric; if one side thinks it's a conflict, and you can't convince them they're wrong, you are in a conflict whether you think they're making a mistake or not.
Conservatives as Moral Mutants might require some background to appreciate the full effect; the author is (or was at the time of writing, I haven't followed their writing in years) an eminently reasonable, charitable, thoughtful person. The takeaway is that values, at the end of the day, are by definition the only things that matter to any of us, and not all values are compatible.
Tolerance Is Not a Moral Precept addresses the question of what we do when we are confronted by incompatible values. He points out that tolerance has never been more than a least-worst alternative to what we all want, which is for things to be Right. We accept that we can't have things perfectly right because we can't all agree on what "Right" is, so we tolerate some deviation to keep the peace. But deviation that can be suppressed without compromising the peace always has been and always will be suppressed. If it can't be suppressed, the alternatives are separation or war. In my opinion, it's one of the best essays I've ever read.
Sort By Controversial is the chaser, compressing into a short-story something of the actual feeling of long-term exposure to the culture war.
If you've read them, I'd be interested to know what you think of them.
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I gotta agree here @FCfromSSC I like your style and think you're a good writer. You've actually helped convince me to flip more conservative myself since I've been reading the site.
That being said, even I get pretty turned off by your no-holds-barred never changing your mind position. You can believe that sort of thing, but at least keep the fig leaf that you're not actively waging the culture war. If only to slow the descent of this site into a right-wing echo chamber.
The term you're looking for is fatalism.
I am inclined to argue, but there's little point and it's a fair cop.
[EDIT] - It's tough, you know?
Speak plainly, and it's waging the culture war.
Speak obliquely, and it's darkly hinting.
Don't speak at all, and endure the misery of people asking questions with obvious answers.
Probably I should just make more spaceships.
It would be nice if you guys who believe so strongly in common values and the strength of institutions would actually bring some evidence at some point, though.
So you are trolling on the Motte when you could be making spaceships...
You are Elon Musk and I claim my 3 months' free Twitter Blue subscription.
Also get off social media and go back to making spaceships, for all of our sakes.
Sadly, no... just an guy who likes making spaceships...
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Eh honestly I don't know if it's an instrumental reason I can clearly articulate. I certainly don't have strong faith in our institutions. More that I just feel it's wrong to call for violence and to not see the potential for good in humanity.
Honestly I prefer your darkly hinting, I think you're quite good at it. I can sympathize with you though, it is difficult to figure out where to draw the line.
Hold on... where was he calling for violence? And for that matter, where is he not seeing the potential good in humanity?
IMO any 'accelerationist' position is ultimately calling for violence.
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Take the spaceship pill and make me happy.
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Is he actually exhibiting a "no-holds-barred never changing your mind position"? My impression is that what you, and others, are taking an issue with is the "some institutions are hostile, and need to be treated as such" position. That he's supposed to act like these institutions don't have the explicit goal of spreading values hostile to his, even when he can give a direct link to them saying this is what they are doing. While I can understand someone disagreeing with his views on these institutions (and debate on their nature would be very interesting to see), I don't see why the expression of these views should be beyond the pale.
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Here's one that happened relatively recently. Back on reddit we discussed this essay, and not only was it not banned to argue in favor of it, a person that jokingly said "Quick, get her kids before she gets yours!" was moderated. Otherwise he brought up a few specific examples like BLM riots being defended. If it's links you want, that demand is unfair given that reddit search sites have been crippled, and you don't feel obligated to provide any to make your point.
I disagree about the "without explicit argument", his post is the explicit argument in the context of the conversation. Otherwise, none of that is against the rules as far as I can tell.
Yes that heavily downvoted post... great example! The community obviously thought it was below some standard on some level, and I would tend to agree. We will see where FC's post will stand in 24 hours.
Given how conservatives still seethe about the moral mutant post, it seems to me an obvious net negative in its impact on the discourse. In fact, I think I recall FC, or some other, citing that post as a justification for their tone. Well obviously defection begets defection. I think the ideas in that essay could have been presented another way, and should have, but the OP chose the way of brash, arrogant condescension. And we see the fallout from that.
I'm sorry, what definition of "tolerate" are you using?
No. They disagreed, and clicked the "I disagree" button.
Now this would be a violation of this community's decorum.
This is weird. If you think the substance of the post is fine, it's just the way it's presented that has issues, I have no idea what is the issue with FC's comment. He was nowhere near as condescending as Ozy, and the substance is pretty much the same, the big exception being that FC does not want to indoctrinate blue tribe kids, just shield the red ones from blue indoctrination.
On reddit, the mantra was that the downvote was not an "I disagree" button. If that's not the case at the motte I sure would like to know that.
How so? To seethe means to get angry or become highly agitated. It seems to me factual that many conservatives did angry over the post. And I don't blame them really. It is no less factual or inflammatory than FCs follow up claim that 70% of blue tribers hate his kind and vice versa.
I am baffled by what you consider acceptable decorum. Do you believe Ozys essay meets the decorum standards of this community? Yet my use of seethe does not.
Full disclosure, I think both the substance and the tone in Ozys essay are both quite bad. If there is any kernel or value to be had in discussing it, then the discussion should proceed in a tone that inversely proportional to how inflammatory the subject is. This is a basic principle I think that allows highly charged topics to be discussed productively. I don't think Ozys or FC's posts meet that standard.
Despite the mantra, the downvote button is pretty universally used as a disagree button on Reddit: I think the main reason the mantra exists is as a push against the clear regular use.
It's a good question to ask what the intended use here is. I vaguely recall a discussion where it was useful to have a button to push as a way to let off steam in response to a post that you dislike: instead of writing an angry retort that drives down the quality of the discussion, you just push your dislike button and move on to a conversation you can productively engage with. I don't know if mods were involved in that discussion or what their thoughts on that philosophy were.
Certainly with our aggressive modding of tone and the community moderation effort, there's a question of whether downvotes meaningfully imply "this shouldn't be on here": that's what the report button and janitor duty are for, and downvotes seem rather redundant with that.
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You can chant the mantra all you want, you're not going to stop people from using it as an "I disagree" button, and if that's how they're using it, that's what it is.
For the same reason calling someone's ideas "retarded" would be a violation of the decorum, but calling them "immature" would not, even though they mean the same thing.
It would need some edits ("moral mutants" is past the line, I think), but the substance is fine.
Well, I agree to an extent, and both of the posts we're discussing have their strengths and weaknesses re: productive discussion. Ozy's is better in the she elaborates on her views, explains where they come from, and why they are irreconcilable with conservative ones, the issue is mostly her tone. By contrast FC's tone is perfectly fine as far as I can tell, but elaborating on his views could soften the blow for any progressive skimming through The Motte. In his defense, he was responding to "Hanania is literally the only thing keeping me from falling back into white supremacy, someone please throw me a lifeline!". He did. I understand how the post might be a turn off as a stand alone one, but surely even a progressive could see the value in providing peaceful and non-racist alternatives to white supremacy?
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It tolerates it because it's entire point is to tolerate civilly expressed views, and his counts as such. Counter to your claim, it did tolerate naked calls to demolish conservative power structures from people left of center, and punished anyone who refused to engage charitably.
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A shared set of rules has, unfortunately, never implied a shared set of principles.
I think @FCfromSSC is being obtuse, and that accelerationism is one of the least useful philosophies known to man. Choosing defection over cooperation is the strategic equivalent of a public suicide. I concur with you that what he claims to want would result in the end of places like this.
But.
It remains within his rights to advocate for such, because the rules are not the principles. So long as he maintains the written and unwritten decorum, he could advocate for the worst and most debased philosophies, and you or I could step in to argue that he's wrong.
Do you think this is just a fine example of the kind of decorum that's acceptable here? If these kinds of posts were 100x more frequent, at the same level of decorum, would that make the motte a better or worse place? Personally I think the motte would quickly become unusable.
This is a standard which would be failed by pretty much every post here, including the Actually A Quality Contribution posts. A 100-fold increase in frequency of any one particular type of post, no matter how good that type is, is such a drastic change that it's likely to throw the social dynamics off balance in a way that is hard to predict and thus make the forum harder to use for the people who are already accustomed to the preexisting ones.
For instance, your posts here complaining about someone else's level of decorum; if people posted these types of posts 100x as often (presuming the posts were approved), then the Motte would quickly become unusable. That's not to say that you should stop posting these; just like other people shouldn't stop posting comments that would, if scaled up 100-fold, make the Motte unusable, because that's a ridiculously high standard.
And I'll say that the post in question isn't exactly the flagship example of the kind of decorum that's acceptable here, but it's definitely well within the bounds of the kind of decorum that's acceptable here. And furthermore, personally, it's the kind of decorum that I enjoy seeing here and wouldn't mind seeing more of, though a 100-fold - or even 5-fold, TBH - increase in its frequency would definitely render the Motte unusable for my uses.
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I think, if that is how people are thinking and feeling they should be able to talk about it here. I think my almost namesake is wrong on a lot of things. But I think he truthfully believes what he says, and as such it is pretty important to know that. Particularly if there are other people who feel the same way (and there are I believe). Now of course if everyone said the same thing this place would be the worse for it, because it would be more boring and echo-chambery.
Generally I think he is civil to people here and I have no problem with him saying what he says, even if I disagree with him, and think he is way too pessimistic and thus can only see (what I would perceive) as negative ways out.
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Randomly scraped from the hopper:
Obviously, I agree that k-12 education should emphasize the necessity of resistance to oppression. I merely insist that the correct definition of oppression be the one taught; that is to say, mine. Currently that's not the case, and I think that should change. Why would that be an invalid preference?
...And you and I, I think, share common knowledge that the "understanding" they're inculcating of the "roots of contemporary systems of oppression" has little to no basis in fact. That is to say, they cannot actually point to discrete mechanisms by which these "systems of oppression" operate, and they cannot successfully intervene to make those "systems of oppression" stop oppressing. It's a name, not an explanation. Meanwhile, the 30% increase in the murder rate post-BLM-riots has sustained itself, it's mostly black people getting killed, and it is definately not the result of police hunting black people for sport. The people who wrote this curriculum do not actually have a way to "eliminate" "injustices", only ways to give themselves more power, and they are successfully doing it with taxpayer money.
I don't think you approve of this, but I don't think you have any real solution to it either. I think describing the strategy that produces that material is fairly described as "reject and subvert systems that work against our interests. Deny their power, hamper their operations, refuse their legitimacy, appropriate or destroy their resources". I think if you were unfortunate enough to be forced to live under a total victory by my side, you'd still be happier than under total victory by the woke. I think the overwhelming majority of the woke would be better off, though I would greatly prefer they live somewhere else. What makes you so invested in a detente that arguably never existed and certainly is no longer sustainable?
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I'm not seeing it. This place is very deliberately trying not to be a power center, so there's no reason to attack it. Also, while FC might not have spelled it out, the point isn't to destroy blue institutions across the world, wherever they might hiding, but to shorten their reach so they can't exercise their power over reds. Blue institutions ruling over blues is completely fine and proper. Neutral grounds like this site also have their place.
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