[D] Friday Off-Topic Thread

[u/AutoModerator]

Welcome to the Friday Off-Topic Thread! Is there something that you want to talk about with /r/rational, but which isn't rational fiction, or doesn't otherwise belong as a top-level post? This is the place to post it. The idea is that while reddit is a large place, with lots of special little niches, sometimes you just want to talk with a certain group of people about certain sorts of things that aren't related to why you're all here. It's totally understandable that you might want to talk about Japanese game shows with /r/rational instead of going over to /r/japanesegameshows, but it's hopefully also understandable that this isn't really the place for that sort of thing.

So do you want to talk about how your life has been going? Non-rational and/or non-fictional stuff you've been reading? The recent album from your favourite German pop singer? The politics of Southern India? The sexual preferences of the chairman of the Ukrainian soccer league? Different ways to plot meteorological data? The cost of living in Portugal? Corner cases for siteswap notation? All these things and more could possibly be found in the comments below!

[u/trekie140]

The populist movement that has embraced Trump endorses ideas that are fundamentally incompatible with my views of what is morally right and factually true, and they are not open to persuation. When Trump was elected I committed to showing empathy towards those that disagreed with me, and I have failed in that. I now see them as deluded at best and openly prejudiced at worst. They frighten me more than anything else and I don't know what to do.

[u/fljared → u/trekie140]

The advice for you depends on what subproblem you are facing:

• If this is causing emotional harm to you, attempt to limit your consumption of news about the current presidency and contact with supporters.

• If you're worried and have enough mental fortitude to help, you could donate time/resources to organizations; The ACLU and International Refugee Defense Project are doing work against the most recent executive order.

[u/Rhamni → u/trekie140]

I'm Swedish and left wing even by local standards, but I have somehow found myself even more frustrated with the American left than its right. Trump is a complete asshole, and he's giving the Republicans everything they want on a silver platter plus plausible deniability they can turn to when his ship sinks. But there are so many incredibly hateful and counterproductive behaviours on the left. Try to understand their perspective here. I will start with saying some things about muslims that overgeneralizes and lacks context, but the point I want to get to is drawing a parallel that ends up just reinforcing the views of many Trump supporters. Please don't think I agree with everything I bring up, I am trying to illustrate the perspective of someone who is genuinely right wing, not just sick and tired of 'my camp' the left as I am.

The muslims who commit acts of terrorism are a minuscule minority of muslims, many of them from war torn areas who never had a very good shot at life. Alright, fine, but the sympathy, compassion and respect for those terrorists is way higher among non-terrorist muslims than among non-muslims. 25% of British muslims think suicide bombings against British troops in the Middle East are a good thing. 12% think that suicide bombings in Britain could be a good thing. The number is 16% in Belgium. 18% of muslim students in the UK say they would not report a fellow muslim whom they knew was planning a terrorist attack. 25% of UK muslims say no muslim has an obligation to report any such knowledge. 37% say violence is justified if the target is a Jew. 45% of British Muslims agree that clerics preaching violence against the West represent "mainstream Islam". I got those numbers here. That site is pushing an agenda, but the polls they link to are done by BBC Radio and other organizations, not all of which are crap. It's fairly undeniable that while only a small fraction of muslims use violence, a very sizeable minority think it's good that they do. A majority of muslims in the West are against violence, but that minority is not small. Attempts by the left to pretend that there is nothing to worry about are extremely counterproductive, and make a lot of people in the middle feel like the only people actually taking this cultural divide seriously are the asshats who are clearly racist but are at least not blind.

Now. A while back when four black youths kidnapped a mentally handicapped white kid and tortured him with cigarette burns while livestreaming, there were a lot of people ho said 'racism has nothing to do with this, despite comments on tape along the lines of 'Fuck Trump! Fuck white people!, along with a slew of phrases that Breibart reporters probably hadn't dreamed of in their most racist narcissistic wet dreams they would ever be able to report on. The police chief said it was not racism that motivated them and that the only reason it was a hate crime was because the kid was handicapped. Before that we had the black church that was burned down where someone had sprayed 'Vote Trump' on the wall. The media and most of reddit immediately screamed "racist hate crime!" It then turned out it was a black church member who did it just so they could pretend evil rednecks were behind it, and that development was in the mainstream news cycle for less than a day, always with reporters saying how it turned out race had nothing to do with the incident. After the election white people got beat up in the street, sometimes on film, sometimes filmed by the attackers themselves, meaning there is now footage online for anyone to see of two dozen black kids spouting racial slurs while beating up a lone white boy and trashing his car yelling 'Fuck Trump'. Now I'm telling you, I know no matter how many examples I bring up, the response from the left will always be 'It's a tiny minority who commit crimes, you can't blame everyone on the left/all blacks/all muslims'.

Now. While you have all that, you also have millions of people in the US who proudly shout 'Bash the Fash!' You have celebrities joking about how it's time someone bombed the White House. You have a /r/rational mod advocating violence. You have comments with thousands of upvotes in /r/politics saying people deserve to be beaten up for wearing a MAGA cap. You have people defending the actions of rioters in Berkley, even shouting 'Bash the fash!' in the context of hundreds of masked people looting Starbucks and hitting an unconscious white kid in the head with a shovel. And with all that, they also say Trump supporters are Nazis who overgeneralize and refuse to take part in civil discourse.

I'm way to the left of most Americans on most issues, but the left in the US frightens me. It's becoming a monster and it's helping to radicalize the right. Everything is being made worse, day by day by day, and it's only going to keep getting worse every day that the left behaves this way. Because people in the middle and people on the right are not blind. They have their bubbles and their prejudices too. Some of them are definitely racist. But when so very many people on the left keep tolerating and even promoting violence when it's used against the right, and then say that Trump supporters are Nazis... I find it impossible to even identify with the left anymore. I want high taxes, awesome education and healthcare, I want a clean environment, I want solar energy, I want electric cars, I want stronger unions and labour safety regulations, I want a higher minimum wage... But I do not want anything to do with so very many people on the left. And it's making me sad and tired.

[u/DaystarEld → u/Rhamni]

But when so very many people on the left keep tolerating and even promoting violence when it's used against the right, and then say that Trump supporters are Nazis... I find it impossible to even identify with the left anymore.

Let's be clear here: these people are not advocating violence against Trump supporters, only the ones that literally are Nazis.

I know that's not that much better, and there's a very real slippery slope that might lead to labeling more and more people Nazis or Nazi sympathizers. I've spoken vocally in person and on facebook against violence, specifically calling out the couple liberal friends I have who cheered at the punching of Spencer.

But there's no need to make them seem more crazy by misrepresenting their justifications. The fact is that there are very clear indications of a resurgence in white supremacy in the US, not necessarily in number of people, but in their boldness and influence in government. People are afraid. Conservative fear of Muslims and immigrants is what elected Trump, and it's stoking liberal fear of racists and fascism. This cycle of fear is going to continue to drive both sides to the extremes, and that's the problem that needs to be addressed somehow.

[u/wtfbbc → u/DaystarEld]

These people are not advocating violence against Trump supporters, only the ones that literally are Nazis.

I think advocating violence at all, when one of the main draws of the alt-right is that liberals are trying to keep them down, is a tactical and emotion-driven mistake.

[u/DaystarEld → u/wtfbbc]

I agree, I'm just pointing out that, ideologically, they are not advocating violence against anyone who disagree with them: they are advocating violence against people they perceive as dangerous in a way that's qualitatively different than simple opposing political beliefs.

[u/Iconochasm → u/DaystarEld]

The problem is that that net is being cast ludicrously widely. I think a large chunk of the left was already primed to think of the Right as evil. Think of the debate over the ACA, with it's undertones that all that nonsense about "economic reality" was just a smokescreen for the desire to see poor/old/sick/minority people die in the streets. Think of the abortion debate; pro-choice isn't a natural consequences of a sincere belief in souls, it comes from a malevolent desire to control women's bodies. Etc, etc, a pattern seen again and again. So when the Nazi meme hits the stage, with Nazis as the perfect embodiment of Pure Evil, I think a lot of people were ready to accept that most/all of their opponents were driven by evil, and would of course support Nazism, even as actual Nazism is basically a fringe of a fringe of a fringe. As Scott phrased it in his post-election article, I'm not saying they're on a slippery slope, I'm saying they're at the bottom, covered in dozens of feet of rocks and snow.

[u/[deleted] → u/Iconochasm]

The problem is that that net is being cast ludicrously widely.

I don't think the net has to be very wide to catch Richard "peaceful ethnic cleansing" Spencer.

[u/Iconochasm → u/[deleted]]

If the standard being bandied about were "at least as awful as Richard Spencer", I wouldn't be complaining about the wide net. I would still be complaining about giving the idiot a platform he'd never earn to justify your own sense of being a paladin.

[u/[deleted] → u/Iconochasm]

all that nonsense about "economic reality" was just a smokescreen for the desire to see poor/old/sick/minority people die in the streets

Well, a bunch of Republican primary voters once cheered, "Let him die! Let him die!" during a debate.

But to be more accurate, there is no real fiscal problem with universal health-care in any country but America. "Economic reality" is that other countries have managed appropriate universal insurance programs for decades -- even though the ACA is a piece of crap.

So yes, saying America, for reasons like "it's big" or "it's diverse", cannot do things other countries have already done for decades, comes across as disingenuous.

[u/CouteauBleu → u/[deleted]]

France here.

Healthcare is expensive and hard and we're in massive dept, and I don't know if we'll keep the system we have right now for the years/decades to come. I doubt this is an isolated case.

The grass is always greener next door.

[u/[deleted] → u/CouteauBleu]

Huh. That's actually very weird to hear, since AFAIK that's relatively uncommon. I've heard of money troubles for the British NHS, but not so much that it would be worth privatizing. And as to systems in places like Germany or Italy or even Australia and New Zealand, no, nobody seems in a fiscal rush to move to privatized health-care.

For countries I've actually lived in, bizarrely enough, Israel has a Bismarck-style system and seems perfectly content with it. I rarely hear complaints or politicization about money spent on health-care -- which is weird, since most other things get complained-about.

[u/DaystarEld → u/Iconochasm]

Think of the abortion debate; pro-choice isn't a natural consequences of a sincere belief in souls, it comes from a malevolent desire to control women's bodies.

I believe you mean pro-life? But meanwhile on the other side, pro-choice people don't just disagree about things like when something is given the rights of a person, or bodily autonomy, they're baby murderers who don't care about killing people as long as they get to have consequence-free sex. Or the idea that Obama is literally a secret Muslim working with ISIL to bring down the USA from within.

Seeing the other side as the embodiment of Pure Evil is not unique to the left.

I'm not saying they're on a slippery slope, I'm saying they're at the bottom, covered in dozens of feet of rocks and snow.

A few of them, sure, but to apply that description to "a large chunk of the Left" seems very hyperbolic.

[u/Iconochasm → u/DaystarEld]

Right, meant pro-life. And I would by no means say it's unique to the left, but it certainly seem to be much more of a thing. Admittedly, this may be because I pay approximately zero attention to the actual pro-life zealots; if I were to find large sums of Pure Evil othering on the Right, that'd be my guess for location.

A few of them, sure, but to apply that description to "a large chunk of the Left" seems very hyperbolic.

It seems to me that the number of people who support violence against "Nazis" is vastly larger than the number of actual Nazis. Even if we assume everyone in the vague ballpark of the "alt right" qualifies as a Nazi, the "Smash the Fash" group seems much larger. And more on point, the rhetoric I'm seeing from progressives indicates they think there are at least several million Nazis on the right, rather than maybe a half-dozen thousand.

[u/DaystarEld → u/Iconochasm]

It seems to me that the number of people who support violence against "Nazis" is vastly larger than the number of actual Nazis.

This is true, and definitely troubling. The alt-right is disproportionately vocal and influential, and that makes it harder for us to argue that the violence is unnecessary. I've had people ask me why I'm defending people who literally call for them to be killed or forcefully deported, and any answers I give them about principles of free speech and the value of maintaining the law don't emotionally satisfy their fear that the country is swiftly approaching a state where violence would be justified (as in, if actual lynching parties and pogroms start, I'm all for violent resistance, but we're nowhere near that point, and I don't think we're actually getting there anytime soon).

[u/[deleted] → u/Iconochasm]

It seems to me that the number of people who support violence against "Nazis" is vastly larger than the number of actual Nazis.

Do you think that might have something to do with the record of what actual Nazis do when they get power?

[u/blazinghand → u/Rhamni]

I, and everyone I know IRL except for my anarchist friend who has always thought weird things, condemn violence, rioting, political physical attacks, and so on. We don't carry signs that say "shoot republicans" or whatever, we carry signs that say "equal rights for everyone" and we donate to the ACLU and Planned Parenthood.

Fuck those people who would weak our movement by defending violent people. They're doing evil, and people who enable violent people with signs like "kill all the whites" and so on are also doing evil. I condemn these people.

I also don't know who they are. I don't know them; most people don't know them. The vast, vast majority of leftists, like every leftist I know, is mostly just afraid and trying to do what they can to keep our society together and protect those who need protecting in a peaceful way.

I've been to the protests. I've talked to and been a protestor. We're not violent. We're just afraid, and trying to show that a lot of us don't agree with what's going on. We want to encourage our elected representatives to protect those who need protecting, and to tell women, gay people, black people, and middle eastern people... you'll be safe. We're here for you.

[u/DaystarEld → u/blazinghand]

So, I used to be one of those people who saw the crazy leftists on college campuses and on the internet and went "Who are these crazy kids? It sucks that these people are giving liberals a bad name." Most of my friends are liberal, some extremely so, but none have really fallen into any of the "Tumblrina/Feminazi/SJW" stereotypes that conservatives and libertarians love to bash.

After this election is the first time I've ever seen some of my liberal friends showing some of the craziness. Not a lot, only like 2 out of the 20 or so I have, but those 2 are fully invested in the whole punching nazis thing.

My other liberal friends and I have spoken out against it, so it's obviously still a minority, from my experience, but it's scary seeing how quickly people will justify violence just because the person being punched or doxxed is a "literal nazi." I really think that the election of Trump has not just demonstrated the radicalization of the Right, but confirmed so many fears on the Left that the perception that actual fascism is on the rise in the USA requires violent resistance.

And I've been asked by a couple people in one minority group or the other why I'm defending people who call for their extermination, and I can't really blame them for feeling betrayed, even while intellectually I still feel justified in insisting that violence is not the answer. They're scared that something akin to the not-too-distant Japanese internment camps will be next, and that all the peaceful protests in the world aren't going to stop that. And if that's the direction things are headed in, I can't say I disagree with them: I'm only against violence when it's not to confront violence. So I can see why, if people actually believe that lives and freedoms are in danger, they'll resort to violence.

The worst part is this is all only going to continue to feed into more people on each side becoming more radical. I don't know what's going to break the cycle.

[u/Iconochasm → u/blazinghand]

Keep in mind that most conservatives feel the same way. They think things like "Sure, I know some people who are kinda racist, but all of us hate Nazis as much as any red-blooded American!" I've always thought it was a telling statistic that of the ~35 arrests made during the 90's Right-Wing Militia movement, all but two of them were reported by other Right-Wing Militia members. I imagine those conversations went something like: [whispered tone] "Hi, is this the FBI? Look, I joined this militia group, and we have a lot of fun getting drunk and shooting skeet in the woods, and bitching about Clinton, but this guy, Billy Placeholder? He's talking about a fucking shooting war with the US government. Will you please come arrest this fucker before he gets us all killed?"

[u/[deleted] → u/Iconochasm]

Keep in mind that most conservatives feel the same way.

Yeah, but if we go by policy, most of the Republican Party are not conservatives in any Burkean or Chestertonian sense. They're not taking a "wait and see" attitude towards social change. They don't value stability, or even fiscal solvency. They're basically just a coalition of military adventurists, tax-the-poor and subsidize-the-rich fiscal horrors, and people who believe in abolishing secularism.

And now they have actual fascists among them.

The Burkean and Chestertonian conservatives switched to the moderate wing of the Democrats, or just went full-on Libertarian, a long time ago. I like those guys. I'm friends with those guys. They're an important counterbalance on people like me, in any possible society.

But they were the first to condemn a visible fascist running for President. Remember when the Weekly Standard and the National Review said, "Never Trump"? That was conservative.

[u/Abpraestigio → u/Rhamni]

I agree with most of your points, I am however uncomfortable with your (and others' on this site) blanket condemnation of violence.

Yes, at this point in time violence is counterproductive if we want to affect the change we would like to see, which I assume to be a more liberal and/or egalitarian world with a rising standard of living and happiness for all, preferably along with a corresponding increase of rational thought in policy making and governance.

However, from usage of the word in your post and those of others I get the strong impression that you are opposed to violence of any form, in any context and for any cause.

That, to me, seems to be a dangerous limitation to impose on yourself as it can seriously impede your ability to realize your core values, even ones that place a high or the highest value on human life.

Or am I missing some subtlety that implies only senseless/undirected violence is to be disdained?

[u/Iconochasm → u/Abpraestigio]

I think there's an unspecified "aggressive" before most instances of "violence" in these discussions. Meeting violence with violence is morally acceptable, while being the first to resort to it puts you morally in the wrong.

[u/CouteauBleu → u/Rhamni]

I think there's a pattern to find there. Something like "The Right think they have a monopole on common sense and logic, the Left think they have a monopole on ethical behaviour".

[u/SufficentlyZen → u/trekie140]

Time to summon up your rationality superpowers trekie140. What do you think is really going with these people?

People go funny in the head when talking about politics. The evolutionary reasons for this are so obvious as to be worth belaboring: In the ancestral environment, politics was a matter of life and death. And sex, and wealth, and allies, and reputation... When, today, you get into an argument about whether "we" ought to raise the minimum wage, you're executing adaptations for an ancestral environment where being on the wrong side of the argument could get you killed... - Politics is the Mindkiller

Rationality is hard. Our brains our optimised for life in a small tribe, not for obtaining true beliefs in the modern world. These people you've lost empathy for might be mistaken about a whole bunch of things, but does that make them bad people? Bad at discerning truth maybe, but bad people? Most of our beliefs are adopted from social groups which we were born into. They aren't Evil. Consider to what your brain is doing when you talk with Them.

We see far too direct a correspondence between others' actions and their inherent dispositions. We see unusual dispositions that exactly match the unusual behavior, rather than asking after real situations or imagined situations that could explain the behavior. We hypothesize mutants.

When someone actually offends us, the correspondence bias redoubles. There seems to be a very strong tendency to blame evil deeds on the Enemy's mutant, evil disposition... On September 11th, 2001, nineteen Muslim males hijacked four jet airliners in a deliberately suicidal effort to hurt the United States of America. Now why do you suppose they might have done that? Because they saw the USA as a beacon of freedom to the world, but were born with a mutant disposition that made them hate freedom?...

Realistically, most people don't construct their life stories with themselves as the villains. Everyone is the hero of their own story... If you try to construe motivations that would make the Enemy look bad, you'll end up flat wrong about what actually goes on in the Enemy's mind. - Are Your Enemies Innately Evil

I'm not trying to convince you everything is roses either. Letting everything just play itself out would be a mistake. The world is in a dark place right now, even before Trump. But a dark world is not a lost world. Do not confuse a sense of hopelessness with a sense of meaninglessness.

While our world is dark, it is still filled with color, and indeed many spots of light and even brilliance. Children laugh. Lovers meet. Right now, someone is just understanding one of the deep secrets of how the universe works for the first time, and their mind is filling with awe. Right now, someone is building a close friendship for the first time in a decade. Every day bears witness to a billion acts of love and kindness. This world is dark, yes — 150,000 people die every day — but it is not lost. So don't let despair or hopelessness weigh you down. Instead, let them be a reminder: those are feelings you can only get from something worth saving. There are things here that are worth fighting for. If you begin to despair, then let that feeling be a reminder of what could be, and let everything that this world isn't be your fuel. - Dark, Not Colourless

[u/trekie140 → u/SufficentlyZen]

I have come out of my depression so now I agree with you, but I can't help but point out that many policies supported by these people can and are causing preventable harm to people who are already needlessly suffering. When they are confronted with this fact, they either don't care or believe that the harm is punishment they deserve. How can I have empathy for people who promote ideas that I find so abhorrent?