We're All Doomed!™ (the Conquest, War, Famine, and Death Thread)

[rats19]

Politically, I value freedom and think collectivism always leads to authoritarianism -- and that authoritarians have the same foibles as the rest of us but that their errors have far greater consequences. I'm not (most) of that list, Chef, but I do identify more with the right of the American political spectrum than the left. Extreme on both ends are bad bad bad, but I find that the mainstream right is grounded in a fundamentally (classical) liberal orientation, which mitigates authoritarian or theocratic impulses that might otherwise exist, whereas the mainstream American left is increasingly infatuated with progressivism, intellectually (un)moored in post-modernism, and the unhumble in a belief that they should and can remake society. Me, I think perfection is a pipe dream but that there is more good than bad in modern society. I think the trajectory when working within our liberal system -- political freedom, individual rights, equality under the law, and regulated-when-necessary free markets -- is generally positive. And I think that mix -- political freedom, individual rights, equality under the law, and a free market orientation -- is the best bargain for the future.

Don’t we all value freedom or is this paranoia of socialism? Collectivism? Is that another word for communism? Communism is Righties go to ad hominem, if all else fails refer to unity as communism. If you want want affordable healthcare you’re a communist. If you believe that all lives matter in which I am including Blacks you’re a communist, or should I say that is Collectivsm. All for one for all? Don’t be silly you commie bastard. BTW your current President has been a poster boy of Authoritarianism and his people (MAGA) collectivism. Maybe a better way of describing Trump and his people would be Nationalists! Yup. Let’s be honest, Nationalism (MAGA) is running hot in the USA, ain’t no denying that and we all have been taught by history the atrocities caused by Nationalism. If you ask me it’s a fight of Nationalism against everything else under the sun - Environmentalism, Blackism, LBGTQism, Veganism, Affordable Healthcarism blah, blah, blah, let’s call it “we are sick and fucking tired of status quo. If you think it ain’t broke UW then well, that’s sad, Keep on keeping on in your white wash world because well it works for you
-

You punch hard against straw men.

Yes the dude seems to be angrily frustrated as of late..

[Strangelove]

Thanks for Topper and UW giving some good summaries.

The conversation was too good.

So much so that a coupla super-emo morons felt compelled to start ranting... about something?

(TDS sufferers flip out when the adults have an intelligent conversation)

The Dude (AKA the Chef; AKA Greta the Strawman-Puncher) has no idea that he makes zero sense.

I'm sure his prattle sounds good in his skullet-tossed noggin though. (smile)

He seems do be on a Christian-bashing "Blackism" kick of late (hard to tell, I know).

If true, one of the many things he seems to have missed is that 85% of Afro-Americans are Christian.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_ ... _Americans

You know I love ya Dude, that's why I can be the one to tell you how fucked-up you are bro!

[Cornuck]

The conversation was too good.

Then the name-calling comes...

[Strangelove]

The conversation was too good.

Then the name-calling comes...

Aren't you glad I resisted the urge to show the Dude what he looks like right now:



You're welcome.

[2Fingers]

The conversation was too good.

Then the name-calling comes...

That is just Doc's way of saying "Why can't we all just get along?"

[Strangelove]

OK - no I do not watch CNN. I watch many different news channels, read newspapers etc.

[Blob Mckenzie]

You punch hard against straw men.

He always has. He’s been kicking the piss out of them in the hockey forum for years. He’s also amazing at setting up and then re-assembling portable goalposts

[Chef Boi RD]

I like UW. Ole Chef was just lettin’ ‘er loose. You see ole Chef May not be the most well read cook in the kitchen but you give ole Chef an inch and he will stretch out into yards. I skim the surface for facts then I write a thesis, purely shot from the hip. I last 2 seconds reading UW’s postings then I fire it up. I hope UW took it well, just old school bored bikerdude ramblings. Now back to Blobbee McDoyles. Do you dudes recall the time Blob mention he hated being called Blobbee spelled Blobbee? Ever since hearing that tidbit I’ve been calling him Blobbee ever since. I think it might’ve been HW who coined the term Blobbee

[Per]

What am I for real? I don't like being told what to do or what to think, but I usually do the right thing and think deliberately. I think the answers to most problems are found within and answered most effectively without finding someone else to blame -- even if someone else can legitimately be blamed. As a corollary, I think people should spend less time telling others how to behave and get their own house in order. I value clear thinking but find that ideology is generally the absence of truth -- so clear thinking involves understanding nuance, perspective, and sometimes incomplete answers to confounding questions. We should be okay that we can't tie everything in a bow. I think we should be humble as individuals, and allow for the fact that others might have something to offer. I think truth is messy, our subjective impressions of it prone to bias, but it exists and is worth trying to find. I think all individuals are vested with human dignity. I think one owes it to one's self, one's family, and one's society to do things well and aim to be a better person.

Politically, I value freedom and think collectivism always leads to authoritarianism -- and that authoritarians have the same foibles as the rest of us but that their errors have far greater consequences. I'm not (most) of that list, Chef, but I do identify more with the right of the American political spectrum than the left. Extreme on both ends are bad bad bad, but I find that the mainstream right is grounded in a fundamentally (classical) liberal orientation, which mitigates authoritarian or theocratic impulses that might otherwise exist, whereas the mainstream American left is increasingly infatuated with progressivism, intellectually (un)moored in post-modernism, and the unhumble in a belief that they should and can remake society. Me, I think perfection is a pipe dream but that there is more good than bad in modern society. I think the trajectory when working within our liberal system -- political freedom, individual rights, equality under the law, and regulated-when-necessary free markets -- is generally positive. And I think that mix -- political freedom, individual rights, equality under the law, and a free market orientation -- is the best bargain for the future.

Well put. And to a very large extent I agree.

Living in a country that was ruled by social democrats from 1932 to 1976 and still remained a liberal democracy with strong protection for freedom of speech, I’m not convinced that collectivism always leads to authoritarianism, but there is clearly a risk there. That’s why I have never voted for either of the two socialist parties in Swedish parliamentary elections. But I have also never voted for the conservatives. I’m centrist in my views and tend to vote for the parties that inhabit that part of the left-right spectrum.
For me the truly important political scale is the authoritarian/liberal one though. I can see this get confusing for many Americans, as you tend to use liberal as a euphemism for socialist, which is something completely different, and instead call your right wing liberals libertarians. But there are left wing and right wing liberals as well as left wing and right wing authoritarians. I think the individual is more important than the party or nation, and therefor I chose the liberal side of this scale.

Like you, I treasure freedom. Freedom of choice, freedom of speech, a free press, freedom of religion, free movement of people, capital, services and products, free trade and free and fair elections. I am not an anarchist though, so I also believe in the rule of law, and that all people should be considered equal under the law. But laws must also be kept in check, so they do not become a means for the majority to oppress the minorities. I actually think the SCOTUS does a great job at that. Credit where credit is due.

I’m not strictly a classical Adam Smith liberal , I belong to the group of liberals that believe that for an individual to be free, they need access to affordable education and healthcare. I’m therefor a supporter of free or subsidised education and public healthcare. Now, in Europe that’s really a moot point, because even our conservatives support this. I think the same goes for Canada. But I understand it is a matter of contention in the USA.

Anyway, good to see you posting again! Cheers!

I will finish by posting a call for respect for open debate and free speech that I think we can both support:

A Letter on Justice and Open Debate
July 7, 2020
The below letter will be appearing in the Letters section of the magazine’s October issue. We welcome responses at letters@harpers.org

Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial. Powerful protests for racial and social justice are leading to overdue demands for police reform, along with wider calls for greater equality and inclusion across our society, not least in higher education, journalism, philanthropy, and the arts. But this needed reckoning has also intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments that tend to weaken our norms of open debate and toleration of differences in favor of ideological conformity. As we applaud the first development, we also raise our voices against the second. The forces of illiberalism are gaining strength throughout the world and have a powerful ally in Donald Trump, who represents a real threat to democracy. But resistance must not be allowed to harden into its own brand of dogma or coercion—which right-wing demagogues are already exploiting. The democratic inclusion we want can be achieved only if we speak out against the intolerant climate that has set in on all sides.

The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted. While we have come to expect this on the radical right, censoriousness is also spreading more widely in our culture: an intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty. We uphold the value of robust and even caustic counter-speech from all quarters. But it is now all too common to hear calls for swift and severe retribution in response to perceived transgressions of speech and thought. More troubling still, institutional leaders, in a spirit of panicked damage control, are delivering hasty and disproportionate punishments instead of considered reforms. Editors are fired for running controversial pieces; books are withdrawn for alleged inauthenticity; journalists are barred from writing on certain topics; professors are investigated for quoting works of literature in class; a researcher is fired for circulating a peer-reviewed academic study; and the heads of organizations are ousted for what are sometimes just clumsy mistakes. Whatever the arguments around each particular incident, the result has been to steadily narrow the boundaries of what can be said without the threat of reprisal. We are already paying the price in greater risk aversion among writers, artists, and journalists who fear for their livelihoods if they depart from the consensus, or even lack sufficient zeal in agreement.

This stifling atmosphere will ultimately harm the most vital causes of our time. The restriction of debate, whether by a repressive government or an intolerant society, invariably hurts those who lack power and makes everyone less capable of democratic participation. The way to defeat bad ideas is by exposure, argument, and persuasion, not by trying to silence or wish them away. We refuse any false choice between justice and freedom, which cannot exist without each other. As writers we need a culture that leaves us room for experimentation, risk taking, and even mistakes. We need to preserve the possibility of good-faith disagreement without dire professional consequences. If we won’t defend the very thing on which our work depends, we shouldn’t expect the public or the state to defend it for us.

*list of signatories*

[UWSaint]

[LOTS of stuff]

Anyway, good to see you posting again! Cheers!

I will finish by posting a call for respect for open debate and free speech that I think we can both support:

[LETTER]

I agree with the thrust of the letter, and think its important to continue to explain and defend free speech principles.

Two side points, though. One, I don't think the burden of persuasion has been met to conclude Trump is a "real threat to democracy." He's many many things, but that's a particularly bold claim and one that requires evidence that he intends to cancel elections, dissolve (or make puppets of) Congress, actively defy court orders involving his use of government power, etc. To be sure, muscular use of executive power is a valid claim, but those complaints can be made against nearly every President in the past century. Still, I get the rhetorical cover of a "criticize the enemy while disagreeing with the friends" approach -- I just did it subtly!

Two, leftist intolerance for speech is not a new thing. Of course the true communists never tolerated dissent, but without going to that extreme, the intellectual "freedom" basis for progressive intolerance can be traced back to at least Herbert Marcuse's 196(5?) article "Repressive Tolerance." The rationales for speech suppression we see today can more or less be traced back to that work, though today's cancellers and would-be-censors also borrow heavily from the "threat to public safety" rationale that was a principle argument of conservatives in early to mid part of the last century. They do so by defining every harm from speech into a threat to "safety." (There's also plenty of borrowing from the moralist playbook -- purge unclean thoughts, etc.)..... Arguments against free speech aren't new, they aren't newly from the left, they are just repackaged for the times. (Side note to this side note -- the seeds for all this left-illiberalism could get traced back to Rousseau and the continental enlightenment).

Also, Per, I agree with you on the loss of the meaning of the word liberal. When I say that mainstream (American) conservatives are steeped in classical liberalism, I mean it is the thing they wish to preserve (or make only slow change to). I wonder if European conservativism ends up being a lot different because of the illiberal nature of many of their traditions. While America does not have many traditions that extend further back than the traditions of European nations, it does have a long liberal tradition. That's its only post-colonial way of organization (and it was a colony of a relatively advanced (in liberal terms) nation), and it is the central reason for the country's existence (NYTimes 1619 project notwithstanding). To be sure, America's institutions are more complicated than that, but I think it makes a difference that we don't have pre-liberal history as an organizing-society-principles and that its culture arose from a mishmash of nations and dissenters.

[Cornuck]

One, I don't think the burden of persuasion has been met to conclude Trump is a "real threat to democracy.

There's a few things, but remember how he constantly was saying how elections are rigged? He was expecting to lose and would blame rigged elections and "millions of illegals" voting? He kept this game up until he won, and then of course said it wasn't rigged, because he won. That might be a game to play when a crappy reality show doesn't win an Emmy - but it's calling a country's democracy into question.

(Of course you can make arguments that the system is rigged, with gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc - but he was talking in general terms of outright vote fraud).

Now we're seeing the same thing again, only for mail in voting (which he himself does) - and is setting the stage to call the results into question if he loses in November. With the pandemic, there will be heavier mail-in ballots, so here we go again...

As for a threat to "democracy" - that's a vague point, but how about a threat to "the institutions of democracy"? Do you approve of his foreign policies of praising dictators and insulting democratically elected allies?

But as for the rest, the Atlantic had a good article to sum things up.

[Chef Boi RD]

Per, the American right has referred to our healthcare in Canada as Communism since the inception of time. Nobody up here is complaining. Then again we don’t prioritize an Industrial Military Complex over the welfare of its weakest citizens like America does.

[Strangelove]

Per, the American right has referred to our healthcare in Canada as Communism since the inception of time. Nobody up here is complaining.

"Greta the Strawman-Puncher" fo sho!

"Every American who leans even slightly to the right has referred to Canada's healthcare as Communism since the beginning of time"



You beat the stuffing outta that strawman Dude!!!

#strawmanlivesmatter

Then again we don’t prioritize an Industrial Military Complex over the welfare of its weakest citizens like America does.

If it weren't for that Industrial Military Complex you'd be speaking Chinese right now Dude.

(although one might say you are speaking Chinese right now)

[UWSaint]

One, I don't think the burden of persuasion has been met to conclude Trump is a "real threat to democracy.

There's a few things, but remember how he constantly was saying how elections are rigged? He was expecting to lose and would blame rigged elections and "millions of illegals" voting? He kept this game up until he won, and then of course said it wasn't rigged, because he won. That might be a game to play when a crappy reality show doesn't win an Emmy - but it's calling a country's democracy into question.

I agree with you on this one because you can't know an election is rigged before it happens unless you've got pretty good evidence of an ongoing conspiracy to do so. Unless your in Russia, burden of proof is on the person making the claim that elections are rigged. But at most he questioned the legitimacy of the election process -- something you did with your criticism of gerrymandering and voter suppression (a phrase that used to mean something but now means everything including basic voting integrity matters). Someone questioning whether an election is fair (or whether politically drawn districts are democratic or whether requiring someone to show an id at the polls is suppression) is presumably trying to secure a fair election process. Of course they might be trying to cause chaos, too, and undermine a legitimately elected candidate -- and this is why I think you raise a decent point with this example. I thought what he said was completely foolish and I remember having that debate on the computer and doing something else and then doing a double take when I heard this. But I don't know that the comment *caused* chaos and we really don't know how it affected people in terms of their confidence. Last bit, undermining some people's confidence in the legitimacy of a democracy is several steps removed from undermining the democracy itself. Because the decreased confidence that is created has to inspire people to overthrow the system. That can work in unstable democracies; we've had one for a long long time.

Now we're seeing the same thing again, only for mail in voting (which he himself does) - and is setting the stage to call the results into question if he loses in November. With the pandemic, there will be heavier mail-in ballots, so here we go again...

All the more reason to have mail in voting systems with sufficient mechanisms to ensure the legitimacy of ballots! At the end of the day, most of us want voting to be relatively easy, we want people eligible to vote to vote and have their votes counted, and we want *only* those votes counted (and counted correctly!). There are a few people, of course, that would prefer only their preferred candidate's votes to count. And there is always potential for illegal votes to be cast -- through intention or negligence, it happens in every election (though I can only recall it being done once in recent memory on a large scale -- a Republican congressional candidate who -- guess what -- gamed the mail in ballot system. (lots of articles on this, see one here https://www.npr.org/2019/07/30/74680063 ... llot-fraud).) All election processes designed for voting integrity (from registering to vote to signing a poll book to showing an id, etc.) impose some inconvenience to the voter; and almost all liberalizations of those systems pose increased potential for fraud or mistake. It doesn't undermine democracy to debate whether we have the right balance and it didn't undermine democracy to catch that bad actor in North Carolina.

As for a threat to "democracy" - that's a vague point, but how about a threat to "the institutions of democracy"? Do you approve of his foreign policies of praising dictators and insulting democratically elected allies?

Depends on the context. From time to time, it makes sense to butter up an enemy. From time to time, it makes sense to embarrass a friend who you think is doing something that isn't consistent with the friendship (your well being or possibly their well being). Not a single comment has caused a democratic state to shed its democratic form. (Its a counterfactual to ask whether buttering up of dictators has delayed democratic movements, but I think there's a fair argument that US support of pro-democracy movements in anti-democratic countries can be pretty important -- so it you think the US doesn't have your back or worse will assist the anti-democrat, its gonna change your assessment of how and when to push for change. On the positive side (from a policy perspective) flattery gets you places.). Trump's style *is* very manipulative, I'll give you that. It is a little bit like the relationship between an abusive husband and his abused spouse.

But as for the rest, the Atlantic had a good article to sum things up.

This article is mostly about certain civil servants and government careerists who don't think the President is good. Most of the complaints are about the President "meddling" (generally indirectly), gettin in *their* way. But if they get their way and not the elected leadership's way, that's the threat to democracy. The theory of democracy is we want our elected leadership to be making the decisions, because they are directly accountable to the polity. For better or worse, the executive power belongs to the President. To interfere or frustrate that power from the inside of the executive branch (as opposed to from outside the government) is anti-democratic. We get to judge whether the President has done a good job exercising his executive power in November. It was the electorate's choice to give him the power, and it is not Andrew McCabe's or some DOJ lawyer whose bosses disagree with her legal position on some pretty complicated questions, to take it away case by case because they feel their ideas or analysis are better.

[Chef Boi RD]

Are you a Nationalist?