I heard this first at Uncommon Descent from blog-tsar, Dave Springer. I think it is a reasonable aspiration. Do we at TSZ fall short? Is it possible to attack the ideas of Donald Trump without being disparaging about the person of Donald Trump? I’ll admit to a lapse there. But in general, I think contributors support their claims and naked ad hominem seems rare here to me. Please correct me in comments if your mileage differs.
This post was provoked by this comment from phoodoo. It’s a difficult area for me, being born white, male, and British. Is it possible to safely navigate between justified criticism of the speech or actions of a cultural, ethnic, religious group and personal attacks that could be described as racist? Is there a bright line between free speech and hate speech?
Well, I think phoodoo is just projecting some hatred towards evolution by making a poor argument from consequences. Not attacking a group directly, but using the feelings towards the holocaust to paint evolution, and anybody who accepts the phenomenon as real, as being racists. Then continuing with anything that might provoke. I think it’s better to steer off from that false conversation with phoodoo.
Nonlin’s “so we stopped speciation?” goes in the same direction. It’s a racist comment from the start, just trying to project such racism onto the other side of the conversation.
So, I try and steer clear of those conversations because they bring the worst out of creationists.
Anyway, to your point: I think no blog is completely free of mere ad hominem, but TSZ does better than most. Some commenters call for it, but they get responses to their “arguments” along with their well earned adjectives.
That’s good advice I’ll try and follow.
I think that is certainly is possible. But it’s very difficult, because it requires that everyone in the conversation is committed to arguing ‘in good faith’: people aren’t trolling, looking to score cheap points, start a fight, get a rise out of the opponent, etc.
One of the things about TSZ that bothers me is that we’ve made it a rule to always assume that other people are posting in good faith. What this means in practice is that we have to pretend that other people are posting in good faith, even when they obviously are not — and when they are called out, and they blatantly lie about posting in good faith, the rest of us have to accept their lie.
This hasn’t happened lately, but it happened quite often when fifthmonarchyman was here.
TSZ is not perfect but pretty good. Free speech is a natural right because free thought is. tHis is from God. However if a blog etc sets out they will not allow free speech but enough speech then thats okay.
Its the accusations behind justifying censorship and punishment that is the issue.
there is never anything wron with saying anything about anyone if one thinks its true. it might be true or is the boss of true?
There is no such thing as hate speech or racism or anti-semetism or sexis or homophobic etc . These and many more in the old days, now, future days are concepts to decribe and discredit opinions regardless of any actual malice behind them.
If mankind really was stopping hate , first time in history, then it would be evereything. Every insult from the car or from your loved ones woul;d be hate too. NO. instead these are left wing terms to discredit opinions and actions they don’t like. its a lie and a fraud and a oppresion against the liberities and rights of mankind.
The only censorship on areans of discussion should ne in stopping malice. We all know when its malice. Offensive speech, real or imahined, and very selective for all of us, SHOULD be allowed. I receive heaps of offensive speech toward me, the faith i defend, creationism which i defend, but I don’t care. i believe in freedom . If malice kicks in then thats no longer freedom of thought/speech. So censor/punish that.
i think free speech ideas are american, some Canadian, and don’t see brits/Europeans or the rest as understing it or agreeing. I understand in Britain they hardly pretend to submitt to free speech.
anyways the truth and our souls right to think what is truth is our birthright however much stamped on.
TSZ is okay.
I agree this rule has caused difficulties resulting in us losing contributors whom I’d preferred continuing to hear from. Lately, I’ve been taking it as an aspiration rather than a rigid rule.
Thanks for the endorsement, Robert.
We should be careful about ethnic stereotyping (brash yanks, reserved Brits) but sometimes “free speech” in US circles appears to be an excuse to justify conspiracy bunk, ludicrously false claims on medical issues, racism. People have a duty of care in what they say.
Prime example: was Trump’s exhorting his protestors to march on the Capitol protected free speech?
Isn’t it annoying that other people get to enjoy free speech as well?
Oh, but I fully endorse free speech. For example, I feel no hesitation at all telling you that nationalism is childish, stupid and toxic.
It is my firm belief that the way to counter dangerously wrong “opinions” is not to silence or ban them but to: a) rebut them and b) try to persuade the person not to post their opinions as fact without doing due diligence to check that those opinions are justified.
Spotted this remark while browsing another forum. It might be idealistic but it’s not far from what can happen here.
No, because he wasn’t only expressing an opinion — he was also giving a directive.
I also think there’s a question about why we value free speech that needs to be considered.
Traditionally the liberal argument for freedom of speech is that the powerful should not be allowed to silence their critics for expressing unpopular beliefs. It does not mean that the powerful have the right to promote falsehoods and conspiracy theories.
That was my impression. 45 senators disagree.
No. Trump’s “ideas”, to the extent he had any, were simply expressions of his nature – uneducated, bigoted, selfish, and basically sociopathic. A good many books were written about him and his administration, and I don’t recall any evaluating his policy positions, and those I saw focused on his childhood, his business failures, his misogyny. Truly reprehensible policies like child separation were orchestrated and managed by Stephen Miller (and ex-KKK Jeff Sessions), and Trump accepted these because he hates the colored folk and always did.
It may be worth remembering that long before he ran for office, Trump’s politics were more-or-less New York liberal – he never attended any church, had no problems with abortion, preferentially hired Jews. Most of these opinions were reversed not because of a change of heart, but because of a (correct!) assessment of the size of the bigot vote. If he could have attracted fawning worship from liberals, he’d have played to that base instead. The policies didn’t matter at all, only the worship.
So are all these things “ideas” of Trump, or more aligned with his person?
No they don’t. Those 45 Senators (and well over 100 Representatives) agreed with the directive, and voted against Biden’s victory. The question isn’t whether the mob was directed, but rather whether it was appropriately directed. It seems nearly every Republican in Congress would have gladly traded democracy for power.
Flint,
Whatever happened to the idea of public service? Or was it always a myth but better disguised. If politicians are competent, why not let a little grease lubricate the mechanism? Because too much is never enough I guess. 😉
The GOP used to be “soft authoritarians”: they understood that their policies are unpopular, so they know that they need to restrict how many people can vote in order to retain power. It’s not a coincidence that the states that drew their ire in this election were states that were narrowly decided for Biden because of Black and Brown voters in Detroit, Atlanta, and Philadelphia.
But now they seem to be openly flirting with become “hard authoritarians”: they just dislike democracy and want to get rid of it. They see liberals and leftists as the enemy. One does not compromise with enemies or negotiate with them; enemies are to be destroyed by any means necessary. Fox News, right-wing radio, right-wing websites like Breitbart and InfoWars, and social media echo chambers have radicalized millions of Republican voters. They now believe that Democrats are an existential threat to the United States, and they will stop at nothing to see them eradicated.
Democrats wish Republicans were more reasonable and informed. Republicans wish Democrats were dead.
It’s a bit of a difference.
I don’t think it was always a myth. I think that it has genuinely become corroded and corrupted even during my relatively brief lifetime.
I don’t think any here are ethnic and its a opinion of mine from what i see and heard. also based on history since America created freedom as Mark Twain said.
Conspircys are real or not. Who is the boss of that would justify censorship and stripping freedom away. false conspiracy ideas are our freedom. anyways few ever think they are false but think they are true. medical issues are just more issues. there must be no speech control like some, youtube, on covid etc. they are not the master and must obey the fredoms and law. just too big for the common people to enforce it.
raciusm, which i say never existed, is also a right and freedom from any boss. Controls on racism, the accusation of it, is just control on things someone wants to control. only the laws, by the peoples consent, and god/natural laws do free men obey. Racism is not against the law unless God/man actually made a law.
its just a example of anypmne or the left wing to presume to dicate thoughts, opinons, nd speech.. Including the invention of these concepts without the peoples consent of god. The bible never mentioned racism because god doesn’t recognize it as a real thing. just more ordinary opinions, right or wrong, kind or unkind, about one people verses another. its not a special branch in human affairs. thats a recent humbug that is being discredited by its overuse.
anyways if i had a blog i would obey/allow free speech when the whole point is discussion of things. i would allow offensive speech, which is in the eye of the beholder or really real, BUT i would not allow malice. We know malice. We offend out loved ones but we don’t do malice to them. ( Iused to think offensive speech should be banned but corrected myself as i realized most speech could be seen this way if you pay attention)
Anyways TSZ does a good job, a few errors in my direction, and no one can complain.
I have always regarded the parable of the good Samaritan as a moral comment on racism. The golden rule also.
But I’ll readily agree that regarding those different from oneself as inferior, is an ordinary opinion. I just disagree that this attitude is religiously neutral.
This may be a reasonable description of the views of the hard core of the Republican Party. It is not, at least not yet, true of a good fraction of Republican voters, who simply want to see Democrats out of power. And it is not true even of many of the 45 Republican senators who voted to overturn the election. Many of those 45 senators do not want Democrats dead. Some of them did not even want the election overturned, but they voted that way because they were afraid of being targeted by the neofascist right in the party and defeated by primary challengers in their next election. They may well also have been afraid for their lives if they became targeted by the crazies.
You have no evidence that is true.
I suggest you are almost certainly wrong. Most of them show signs of being mild psychopaths, or at least completely unconcerned about their neighbors welfare.
I think I’m going to agree with you (and KN) on this one. A politician’s priorities are #1 to get re-elected and stay in power. #2, whatever it is at the moment, is way down the list. During normal times, any competent politician can make noises about principles, claim patriotism, and say feelgood stuff. But Trump essentially took that option away, so now there basically IS no priority #2, and Republicans are left with nothing but the drive for re-election, even if it means wrecking democracy as we know it.
The votes for Republicans today come from two groups: the glazed-eyed drooling Trumpies, and those who vote Republican because that’s what their parents and their friends have always done. This second group can be taken for granted (and always have been; this is true of Democrats as well) but winning election as a Republican today absolutely requires appealing to the unprincipled vicious intolerance of the Trump core.
Let me get that straight. You’re agreeing with KN and phoodoo that most Republicans want Democrats dead? Both the politicians and the Republican voters?
So your cranky uncle who voted for Trump wants Democrats dead?
Weird.
Well, I regard that as hyperbole. But I tried to describe what I see in more detail:
The thrust of what I wrote, to put it in other words, is that the Trumpies who actually knew who they voted for, are not the sort of people with whom productive compromise is possible.
But I doubt it’s accurate to place all the blame on one side. According to dating sites, political preference under Trump became the single most predictive factor in a potential relationship. BOTH political orientations regarded someone of the enemy party as disloyal opposition, beyond any hope of communication. Polarization has reached the point where someone’s attitude about Trump is all anyone needs to know to regard someone of the enemy tribe with contempt and disgust. No redeeming characteristics can be sufficient, because being for (or against) Trump overrides everything else.
(But I should note in passing that those Republicans who voted to impeach and their families are receiving death threats. And THAT is weird.)
Anthony Fauci gets death threats. He has to has bodyguards with him 24 hours a day. His daughters have been threatened. He receives pouches in the mail with white powder in them. Anthony Fauci! This is how crazy the republican party’s 30 percent have become.
Lauren Bobert got elected to the House of Representatives. Marjorie Taylor Greene from Atlanta got elected. They believe in Qanon. Do you know what Qanon espouses? You think Louie Gohmert wouldn’t be perfectly happy if all Democrats died? You think Mitch McConnell isn’t evil? You think Dick Cheney isn’t evil? Rand Paul said
Michael Grim, republican representative from new York told a news reporter who asked about his campaign finance practices
Colorado State Rep. Gordon Klingenschmitt call himself Dr. Chaps. He
has repeatedly bragged about performing a gay exorcism (he’s a former Navy chaplain) to rid a woman of “the foul spirit of lesbianism,” and also tried to perform a long-distance exorcism on President Obama because of something about the NSA. Believes that Obamacare “causes cancer” and that Obama’s former FCC chairman was driven by the Devil to “molest and visually rape your children.”
Representative Mark Walker of North Carolina said
Senator Joni Ernst, who said Obama was a dictator, carries a “beautiful little nine millimeter” with her everywhere she goes (including the capitol) to protect herself “from the government.”
Steve King of Iowa is an unabashed white nationalist he said
Paul Lepage of Maine is a complete psychopath. He urged a repeal of Maine’s ban on the plastics chemical component BPA, claiming it wasn’t dangerous and saying, “Put it in the microwave and you heat it up, it gives off a chemical similar to estrogen. So the worst case is some women may have little beards.”
Lindsey Graham isn’t evil? Joe Jordan isn’t evil? Josh Hawley cares about democrats dying? Joe Arapio? Orrin Hatch? Pat Robertson? Kelly Loeffler cares about poor people dying you think Joe? She cares about ANYBODY but herself? Ted Cruz? Dan Crenshaw? Sean Hannity? Lou Dobbs? Larry Kudlow? Steve Bannon? Sebastian Gorka? David Clarke? Stephen Miller? Fucking sociopaths.
Come on Joe, this is just barely scratching the surface. Where the fuck have you been? Jesus Christ. Are there some republicans who aren’t war-mongering , hate filled narcissists? Probably. Are there a whole hell of a lot who are? Without a doubt? Have you ever read any news, ever??
Talk about weird.
Pelosi blasts GOP leaders for putting Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on Education Committee
Earlier this week, CNN published old Facebook posts that showed Greene had indicated support for executing prominent Democrats, including Pelosi, before she ran for Congress in 2020. In one post, from January 2019, Greene liked a comment that said a “bullet to the head would be quicker” to remove the House speaker.
Posts on Greene’s Facebook account also expressed support for baseless conspiracy theories about the school shootings in Newtown and Parkland. “Exactly!” she wrote in response to a post saying the Parkland massacre was a “false flag planned shooting.” She agreed with another post claiming that the Newtown shooting, in which 20 children were killed, was staged.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/pelosi-marjorie-taylor-greene-death-threat-sandy-hook-parkland-174418708.html
Wake the hell up, Joe!
The Republican platform is-We like military, a lot! We like police. We don’t really care much about the environment, but we like hunting and guns. We don’t like health care. We don’t like social programs. We don’t like immigrants. In fact, we don’t really like many people who aren’t white. We don’t like gay and lesbian rights much. We are for unfettered capitalism. If the strong can crush the weak, well ok, that’s capitalism. We like prisons. We believe in segregation. We believe in protecting big business.
These are all REAL republican platforms. Now Joe, who do you think these kinds of policies are going to appeal to? People who care about others?
Joe, who do you think Trump was appealing to? Who were his speeches designed to appease? What does a MAGA hat mean if it doesn’t at least in part suggest some kind of racism?
Joe, you live in America and you don’t know this? Tell me more about some republican ideal platforms that isn’t about crushing the enemy and protecting self-interests? Are you joking Joe?
Less taxes, oh great, what heroes.
May I suggest we’re do not all seem to be on the same page. Your list of Republican nutball legislators is impressive, but I think Joe, KN and I are talking about ordinary voters. A few campaign signs show up in my neighborhood every couple of years, but even those who decorate their lawns with these signs aren’t virulently aggressive or dangerous. Closed-minded to be sure, but on the whole decent people who are often misinformed and don’t know it. Remember the little old lady in Iowa who watched the news every day, and had no idea there was anything but pure exoneration for Trump in the Mueller report. The news she watched so regularly never mentioned anything else.
I think it’s correct to say that Republican extremists tend to be more numerous and more dangerous, even outright psychotic, than Democratic extremists. But I think it’s also correct to say that most ordinary voters have never even heard of most of the people on their ballots, and don’t really care.
And as I’ve tried to say, tribal identity implies far more than who someone votes for. Ask the dating services. I’d probably invite a Republican to a party if I had no idea of their politics, because if I had no idea, their political identification probably isn’t very strong. If I DO know they’re Republicans, then no invitation. I wouldn’t expect a gunfight, but I wouldn’t expect much fun either.
Also, we think women are inferior and men should make decisions for them, we don’t believe in public education, and we believe America is a Christian country, just look at the dollar bill!
Right, so the point is, its not a “well both sides have their points” argument. The republican side’s position by definition is the more selfish, more violent position. I don’t like when people try to make the argument, as is in fashion after the capitol riots, that both sides are to blame, yadda, yadda. That’s not right.
The side that is for stifling people’s rights. The side that is for more guns, more violence, less tolerance, more racist hate, less help for others who need it, more in favor of letting big businesses operate without constraint, and just generally in favor of the policies that benefit themselves but never benefit anyone else, THEY are the ones to blame. Its not equal. If someone is for protecting the environment, holding big business accountable, providing health care for everyone, making sure society has social programs to help those who need it, etc…they inherently are espousing policies for the overall good, not just good for themselves and fuck everyone else.
That’s a very big difference, and its why the party of compassion and wanting to do good is one sided. If you hate other people and don’t care if they starve and die, you are definitely more likely to be a member of the republican party, because its right their in their platforms. I suspect Joe leans republican so he is trying to make his party seem more humane.
Did Trump build the vehicle he used to have his four years of being US President, or did he just rent it? My outsider view sees Trump as an opportunist, cynically courting groups that he could use by taking up their causes as his own. The religious right rallied behind him and he took up their mantle on abortion, for example. Perhaps the lesson is you don’t have to be Trump to do what Trump did, just be like him.
Alan Fox,
To call him an opportunist suggests he had some idea of what he was doing and I don’t think that is the case. I think he just went to rallies and whenever he would say something hateful people would cheer. It wasn’t a very sophisticated formula, just say immigrants are bad, I hate them, America is good, except for those who aren’t. And everyone yelled, yeah! So the more he did that the more the rest of the Republican party just stood behind him and said, do that more. No plan, no ideology, no fucking clue about anything. But as long as it worked for the morons who clapped, he figured there must be a way to make some money, or at least have status.
It was easy for him because he hates everyone.
phoodoo,
Random positive feedback? Not sure if there’s enough raw material for a leftist populist to build and ride on.
Anyway, it occurs to me that your criticism of TSZ promoting an anti-Christian line is relevant to the phenomenon of the US religious right and its authoritarian leadership being drawn to Trump despite his venality.
Putting it simplistically, would Jesus approve? My take on the Gospels is that Jesus was a bit of a socialist.
OMagain,
This sounds a bit confused. I think Alan is right in suggesting that if Trump himself hadn’t come along, some functional equivalent would have. The times had come to demand it. Sure, Trump took advantage of the feedback he got from hating and blaming; he had a gift for identifying and inflaming bigotry and intolerance wherever he found it, and there was a lot of it.
But as Buttigieg said repeatedly, Trump was a symptom and not a cause. He succeeded because there WAS a lot of frustration, anger, and demand for change from much of the public. Trump was a good lightning rod, but he didn’t cause the storm. The underlying resentment wasn’t anything new – manufacturing jobs had been vanishing, religious belief had been drying up, urbanization was increasing, nonwhite populations were growing fastest and whites would soon be in the minority. And those nonwhites wanted democracy and equality, of all things! In terms of buying power, middle class incomes hadn’t increased in over 40 years, while the 1% gobbled up 80% of the national wealth.
Now, these trends aren’t inevitable; something as simple as a good progressive tax structure and an emphasis on education would work wonders. But of course Trump had no interest in fixing these problems, his goal was to exacerbate them to his own personal advantage. And fixing the problems is hard, because money is power, and any fixes must necessarily redistribute wealth, a goal desired by the powerless and opposed by the powerful. As the rich get more powerful, they use that power to make themselves richer. The trend to oligarchy may be irreversible.
You are very wrong.
I think that there are many people among Republican voters who are supporting Trump because they are angry about the disappearance of jobs that pay enough to live on, and they have been sold the idea that neofascism is the cure. Of course many also are angry about people who don’t look like them demanding to be treated as human beings.
I am just trying to avoid delusional thinking about all those who vote Republican — thinking that they are lying awake nights trying to figure out how to kill their neighbors who vote Democratic.
This article in Politico comparing Trump to Benedict XIII seems amusing, pertinent and worrying.
Enjoy!
Joe Felsenstein,
You didn’t say the average disillusioned voter who voted for the orange idiot you said;
That’s a whole different thing. They are not disillusioned people who have fallen on hard times and so wanted a candidate who would say any promises that he was going to make their lives better no matter how illogical. These are people of mostly privilege whose core principals are more military, more guns, less social programs, screw the poor. That is who runs as a republican candidate.
Of course there are some rational people who hoped the idiot would help the struggling class (of course he never did, suckers!). But there was still the 30% percent who would be perfectly happy if all democrats died. Those are the 30% percent who you can rally and instigate to storm the capitol and take hostages and plant bombs and threaten to kill every democrat member of congress.
You are ignoring this 30% by saying another 15 % perhaps don’t want to kill anyone-they are just naive saps.
Why can’t I attack phoodoo, and anyone else who has no ideas?
You can.
Because you sure as hell aren’t going to be able to defend the republican agenda as it were, under the idiot.
https://apnews.com/article/269b3de1af34e17c1941a514f78d764c
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide
As opposed to 100% of phoodoo who are perfectly happy if millions of Unghur’s die or are imprisoned or prevented from having children. To him that’s justice. They are, after all, according to him, criminal terrorists who deserve to be treated this way.
It’s clear that phoodoo does not consider some people to be actual people.
And he seems to believe that a million+ people are ‘suspected’ of conspiring to do terrorist harm.
And he seems to believe that people are not jailed just because they are Uighurs.
Yet he can’t address the documented facts of camps, forced sterilizations and so on and on.
China is doing exactly what the Nazi’s did. And phoodoo is a collaborator.
Yes, because calling out Nazi’s is exactly like stalking.
My advice to you is to get used to it. Nazi’s should get punched in the face. Your ideas are the ideas of a Nazi. Every few posts you post I’ll be posting that picture. Over and over and over and over and over.
It’s funny how rather than actually making a case for why I’m wrong about the ethnic cleansing in China phoodoo just calls me a stalker.
His quoted ‘defense’, the sum total of his entire justification for deleting an ethnic group is that they are not all in camps and the ones that are are there for a good reason.
Heil Hitler.
If you click through and read that entire comment of phoodoo’s it’s clear he views such events in a transactional way.
It seems that for the ethnic cleansing happening in China to be a problem for phoodoo every other country in the world must clean up their act first. And then what China is doing becomes wrong, somehow? And in any case, in that thread nobody was making any such excuses. phoodoo just imagines you were because that’s what he’s doing for China, pure projection.
It’s either wrong or right, regardless of what other countries are doing. What happens elsewhere does not change the fact that exterminating an ethnic group is wrong.
That’s what you don’t seem to be able to understand. Or, rather, what you are being paid to pretend not to understand, collaborator.
Well that’s lovely. Especially for everyone else who might use this forum. I am sure they will be very interested in you repeating the same thing over and over and over…
Perhaps you could also just occasionally type a series of exclamation points or the letter B. That would be fascinating for other to read.
And then go cry with the unwanted. Alan thinks it’s me who wants to destroy this site. Clever you. Is that your mom calling Gunther?
Maybe sometime you can at least be funny? Original? Not you?
The kewl thing about this battle of whataboutism is that nobody will ever run out of ammunition.
Mung,
No one can attack you because 1) sealion, and 2) IDist. Nuf said. Computer science training alone surely validates his confidence in that, right?
Not so. I have great difficulty in putting the phoodoo internet persona into any category. Actually, that’s not correct because I haven’t given it much thought.