Homophobia & Racism

re: Speaking of twit-threads

[from notes ca. March, 2018]​

So the backstory, here, is that Vice published an article under the title, "Trump Fans Are Owning Libs by Losing All Their Friends"↱, which in turn asks, "How do you engage with someone who doesn’t just not care if their aggressive political stances upset you, but wants you to get upset—someone for whom 'this makes people upset' is actually the whole reason to have that stance in the first place?" The question itself crossed my Twitter feed, leading to the following twit-thread↱:

The magagaga are a point on an upward curve, the rising power of antisocial sentiment and behavior. As old greed runs out of time, it pares down to basic elements. Try: Cornered, frightened animal capable of masking its fear by taking pride in its ferocious truculence.

Questions of liberal and conservative still exist, but the predominant dispute has to do with notions of civilized society, to the one, and antisocial impulse, to the other. Civilized society is not a suicide pact.

The #GOP has been a suicide pact, in this context, for some time, now. Anecdote: A Christian preacher had time to post an essay online, move it to a new server, and withdraw it twelve years later, and American society still hadn't recognized this aspect. Think #KimDavis.

Still, when society got around to the Kim Davis Experience, this was her argument: Christian equally protected right to free religion is violated if Christian cannot violate other person's equally protected right to free religion.

Also note how the asserted right to free religion only has to do with others: Kim Davis' marriages were adulterous. That's what society skipped out on for over fifteen years: Christians objecting to adultery while endorsing adultery. (Luke 16.18) Went on the whole time.

In order to grant Kim Davis and other Christianists the sort of "equality" they demand, we must do away with equality itself. This is the suicide pact. The Constitution is not a suicide pact (Terminiello v. Chicago, Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, Aptheker v. Secretary of State, &c)

At some point, conservatives seem to have dispensed with any concerns about societal suicide pacts; they want what they want, and this is itself a complicated tale of misunderstanding and envy, a generational curse of ego defense as narrative heritage.

As #antisocial mythopoeia become living realities—(e.g., children born to conservative parents ca. Romer v. Evans ['92-'96] are voters, now)—antisocial behavior itself becomes some manner of social instrument. Deliberate antisocial conduct is presently a socializing behavior.

Thus we pick our battles, as some might say. But it is also important to talk to others about the antisocial engagement we witness. Many people still try to cross the gap because it is, customarily, rude to presume such ill will in our neighbors, except, well, yeah, original sin.

It's not a matter of setting original sin aside for the moment, but still: "There is no point to engaging this argument which is intended at the outset to be disruptive", is not yet a proper response in the public discourse. And there are, of course, reasons, but still.

To the other, those reasons—namely the complications of the same tool in the hands of the antisocial—also point, if not the, at least a way: Observe who benefits when the discourse goes nowhere on a good day, or even regresses, because of antisocial disruption.

For the #altRight and other #antisocial movements, disruption means society makes less progress against #injustice. It's all they have left, which is why they do it. How to communicate with those who refuse?

What is pathos to ensconced antisociality?

We must overcome.

[fin]

The particular corrollary of Godwin's Law asserted about winning and losing arguments becomes volatile when a movement includes actual Nazis. I know, I know, damnedest thing. Furthermore, sometimes there really aren't any good juxtapositions, and may we please escape the time of Trump without rape actually being part of the platform. No, really, the latest cooperating witness was once arrested and charged with importing child pornography°; he maintains his innocence despite the charges only being dropped for procedural reasons pertaining to how the evidence was obtained and seized. So, yes, it's kind of creepy to even feel the need to say that, but I'm also recalling, by way of difficult juxtapositions, that one dude who was trying to push child exploitation. Because it's true that if someone was seeding literature from a known member of an infamous (ahem!) love association or associated pop culture movement, we wouldn't put up with it.

If we constrain ourselves to mere political labels, then we will miss certain details: What is the role, in discourse, of the element that would disrupt discourse?

It is, of course, easy to get tangled into the basic politics. Consider the idea of rational discourse. By what definitions do "conservative" or "right wing" require that the political argument be dysfunctional? What is the actual behavior we are looking at?

Are there no right-wing arguments that are not dysfunctional? Is tanking rational discourse a reasonable accommodation attending the latter? We're over twenty years since Lind published "Why Intellectual Conservatism Died"↱ (Dissent, Winter 1995), but the proposition that "alt-right" is the only thing remaining for conservatives is absurd°°.

†​

Oh, hey, another note on Nazis: So, Angus Johnston↱ got caught up in a question of someone trying to argue↱ about how absurd it is that computer passwords make someone a Nazi. It's worth a read because this is kind of how it goes; the inquiry actually follows an alt-right trolling pattern, and there is nothing surprising about the associated feed. Nonetheless, Johnston explains, over the course of several tweets:

I don't know what Milo's core beliefs are. He enjoys pretending to be a worse person than he is AND a better person than he is, so it's tricky to pin him down. But having said that...

It's clear that he's been infatuated with Nazism for a long time. The social posts from before he was famous. The jewelry. The passwords. That all speaks, at a minimum, to a sort of Nazism-as-titillation thing—something that was common in punk in the seventies, for instance.

Add to that the fact that he pals around with Nazis, who feel comfortable seig-heiling him—in public, no less. And that private email comment about how he "struggles" with how much distance to put between himself and his Nazi supporters.

All this adds up to a portrait of someone who's drawn to Nazism as iconography, as style, as power worship, as iconoclasm, and likely as anti-intellectualism and a model of fringe masculinity, too.

I don't know how Milo ticks. I don't know what draws him to Nazism. But the list of his Nazi flirtations is as long as my arm. It's a real pattern. There's a there there.

As one response↱ to the discussion reminded: "Think of it this way: if he were 'trolling' us as an ISIS sympathizer or taking their side for the lulz, how long would he last in public discourse? No one would put up with him."

Sometimes there just aren't any good juxtapositions. Well, you know, as long as "good" means "not unpleasant". Still, though, the inquiry Johnston is responding to should not feel unfamiliar; it's a dedicated but clueless routine very much similar to versions we see here. Comparatively, we ought not be surprised at the weakness of the inquiry, and at some point we might also acknowledge how downright ridiculous it is that people should need to spell it out like that.
___________________

Notes (22 September 2019):

° Reminding that the original material was written in March, 2018, we should take a moment to clarify and update: Said witness not only dodged a domestic charge, but has actually been convicted, overseas, of sexual misconduct involving male children, and a couple months ago was charged with a new child pornography offense in the U.S.. Also, he is apparently so important to what goes on in the world that he might not be entirely blameless in the fact that Dumb and Dumber To exists.

°° In fairness, to clarify, that statement was simplistic; in addition to "alt-right", there is also, "alt-lite", which is more tacit and wishy-washy about white supremacism.
 
Not if some of the "thems" are your own sons and wives! That's both a societal and evolutionary liability: it causes internal conflict, rifts, factions,and fractured families.
Very true. While our evolutionary behaviors USUALLY aim us towards best possible odds of promulgating our genes, that doesn't always work 100%. And there are several behaviors that do not improve individual odds of proceation, but do improve the odds that the society (which carries a similar genome) survives - and are thus retained.
Those are three different categories - four, if you colour-code xenophobia. Also, they manifest on different levels, with different causes and driving forces: the societal (systemic - usually about power); the regional (tribal - usually about group solidarity) and the personal (psychological - usually about self-esteem).
And each one of those categories have elements of several underlying causes. Homophily is generally the lowest level cause. Dave Chappelle skits aside, there aren't many black KKK members or Muslim Islamophobes.
It's not a one-sentence phenomenon.
Nor is it only three categories. It is very complex, since it comes at the confluence of evolutionary, social and religious drives.
 
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49803733

"The children will not be prosecuted, and just as importantly I am looking into options that may reverse the legal damage such as removing the arrest from the children's records," said State Attorney Aramis Ayala in a news conference.

Prosecutors say they will try to erase the arrests from their records.

soo the police department have no self regulation ?
they cant self monitor ?
they just process 6 year old children as criminals ?
sheesh

soo much for the good ol days of logic and common sense when the x police officer would have been thrown out the back door of the police station with a slap in the face and told to resign and take up gardening.
(who wants it both ways?)


old senile ex police officer employed (as an armed school shooting defense security guard)to protect children with guns

arrests 2, 6 year old children and processes them in the criminal system

i wonder if they are black

how far wrong can it go ?
 
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re: Juxtaposition and implication

[from notes ca. March, 2018]​

The great wisdom of the twit-thread has something to do with the idea that people find merit in compressing complicated reality into mythopoeic baubles. Perhaps a lot gets lost or distorted in compression, but even people of literature and science, who know the problems of such compression, understand at least some of the merits. Or, you know, whatever. It's always strange to take our cues from Tuxedo Mask↱, but such is the iteration of the obvious that crosses enough paths to eventually cross mine. For whatever reason, this particular iteration is, indeed, getting some attention:

It's wild that the Parkland shooter had a swastika carved into his gun, wore a MAGA hat, and explicitly expressed his hatred for Jews and black people but all these things were excluded from the subsequent conversation.

Since the Parkland shooting, we've talked about guns, we've talked about mental health, but the shooter's outspoken white supremacist values and where they came from are seen as non factors. Why?

We all know that if the shooter expressed support for ISIS online, it wouldn't just be taken into consideration, it would be seen as the direct cause of the terrorism. And yet people insist on acting as if violence isn't white supremacy's goal too.

Had the Parkland shooter even expressed sympathy for Black Lives Matter or wore an Obama hat instead of MAGA, the pitchforks would be sold out all over. People's selective outrage and lack of self-reflection is the fuel white supremacy depends on...And right now it's thriving.

Perhaps this is a particularly American context of the problem, but it's something we do a lot. It's why, for instance, Father Coughlin, the Canadian-born American xenophobe, is not more widely remembered; while Americans disdain recalling our infamy, his is a double-dose because it also means condemning our supremacist heritage, and we are still in a time when many Americans disdain and even fear acknowledging those aspects of our history.

Nonetheless, Aldous Huxley wrote, in 1925, that the British were very healthily unaware of history. Our American conscience, as a matter of heritage is riddled with this sort of ignorance. It has to do with the idea of ego defense in the process undertaken when "winners write history".

The American custom similar to and predating the Godwin corollary would say, "Are the KKK Nazis? Well, no, but ...." The answer, "Well, some of them," is, effectively, in that construction, a concession that no, the "KKK are not Nazis". Think about that for a moment: Are the alt-Right Nazis? Some of them. Are the alt-Right the KKK? Some of them. Does it really matter if the alt-Right "are Nazis" or "are KKK", if the principles are sufficient that Nazis and Klan members will take part in order to advance their agenda? Americans are, to the one, notoriously vague about such questions; to the other, it's not an easy answer; that latter is part of what is changing. Once upon a time, it was a very easy answer: The KKK were not Nazis and how dare anyone imply otherwise. Even that is simplification; the larger point is that, amid traditionally problematic juxtapositions, the very fact that someone—e.g., the alt-right identity spectrum—should evoke the question for having such influence is not insignificant.

Meanwhile, a further point persists, because it must: If there is a rational, objective argument in support of given principles, it seems reasonable enough to presume that someone, somewhere should be capable of presenting it. That is to say, even in the context of alt-Right, it is about behavior, not specific political labels.

Some arguments just aren't rational. The only reason we might carve out exceptions is that we want to. Why would we want to? That is a much harder question. Still, it is true that certain supremacism still gets certain passes in certain circumstances.

Is the alt-Right Daa'ish? Probably not, but they really, really want to be. Or, more realistically, what does it matter if they're not Daa'ish?

The difference between what we will make excuses for, and what we will not, which in turn can also speak to the point of unfortunate justifications, basically comes down to splitting hairs 'twixt factions of suicide-pact politics. For our part, such comparisons haven't much use except for being part of the point. If there is a functional, rational argument for supremacism let someone make it. Meanwhile, if the political label happens to coincide with a behavioral problem, is the problem all there is to the label? That is, does addressing the behavior have the appearance of suppressing the political identity? If so, why?

†​

[23 September 2019] The later clarification runs: Shouldn't there be more to a political identity than fallacy and fantasy?

There are some who will find that simplistic, and, sure, it is. Plenty of those, however, will recognize the fact of market demand, a lot of which really does sound and read so poorly.

A few weeks before sketching the old notes, I actually had occasion to explain to someone, "your arguments only make sense if we cancel out the parts of reality you don't seem to know about". In a way, this can be a self-evident assertion about any argument achieving a range of rhetorical failures and catastrophes, but on the occasion it really was that obvious. I also recalled that once upon a time the grumpy old-men of moderately conservative society lamented the lack of civics education and knowledge among the kids of the day, and these decades later the irony is more unfortunate than hilarious insofar as conservative society now relies on civic ignorance in order to maintain its argument.

There might be some themes that stand out, such as behavior and political views; at the time, I was reflecting on a puzzle that gets strangely more complicated as it becomes more simply defined. We can also reasonably suggest that complexity comes from breaking the obvious or apparent down into fundamental components, and explaining them as simply as possible. Play a childish game of why, and try to justify the statement that "rain sometimes falls" by figuring out what parts of physics and chemistry to explain to someone who can't even tell you what confuses them about the idea that water sometimes falls out of the sky. Eventually, the sheer number of words, no matter how simple or simply arranged, gets too large for the demanding audience to countenance.

(Nor does this account for the variation by which we might suggest, "Water doesn't grow on trees, after all, except when it does," and suddenly the other can explain physics, chemistry, and biology well enough to demonstrate that, "Water doesn't grow".)​

There is a question of function about marketplace equivocation. Watch who or what gains from any given disruptive behavior, and remember the metric of gain is not, on this occason, going to be our own.
 
re: Not unexpected

[from notes ca. March, 2018]​

The Raw Story↱ headline for Elizabeth Preza's article reads, "Neurotic people were particularly vulnerable to Trump and Brexit, study shows".

The AlterNet↱ version: "One Type of Voter Was Uniquely Vulnerable to Donald Trump and Brexit: Study".

A new Social Psychological and Personality Science study published Thursday found that "neurotic traits positively predicted" shares of voters who opted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election or to "leave" in the Brexit vote that same year.

According to University of Austin psychology professor Sam Gosling—one of the study's co-authors—of the Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism), "regions highest on neuroticism are particularly receptive to political campaigns that emphasize danger and loss and that previous campaigns have not tapped into these themes as strongly as we saw in 2016."

The study, spearheaded by Queensland University of Technology psychologist Martin Obschonka, analyzed personality data from 17,217 Britons and over 3 million U.S. participants, testing for "regional prevalence of neurotic personality traits"—including anxiety, and depression.

‡​

Researchers found higher levels of anxiety in regions that voted for Trump and Brexit, and Science Daily reports those traits were even stronger "when considering Trump gains since the 2012 election, when Mitt Romney was the Republican candidate."

In England, rural areas "and the industrialized centers have higher neurotic traits, and higher Brexit votes," the report notes. "Trump gains (over Romney's level of support) and higher neurotic traits overlap. The ‘rust belt' shows a concentration of both neuroticism and Trump gains."

The researchers say Trump's gains on Romney in these regions "underscores our initial assumption" that neurotic individuals were drawn to Trump's "Make American Great Again" message.

Obschonka's team said their findings are "consistent with the idea that populist campaigns played on the fears of the voters," adding "campaigns that draw on fear should be particularly compelling to people already prone to being anxious."

There is actually a really large variable in it all; in order to answer, "neuroticism win out in these regions, as opposed to openness and conscientiousness", we apparently must consider "a kind of 'sleeper effect'", which must be the absolute worst way to phrase it we might imagine. "Under normal conditions ... but in certain circumstances ...."

But the key to understanding that variability is right in front of us:

Both campaigns traded on themes of fear, lost pride and loss aversion which tap into fear-prone personalities; a construct not previous associated with the behavior of voters.

(qtd. in Preza↱)

Lost pride and loss aversion.

This is one of the times we might pause to consider function. It sounds nearly circular to describe a behavior as irrational simply because "it was not predictable by means of rational models", but something about technology and magic goes here, and, at any rate, the Queensland psychologist, Obschonka, suggests, "the campaigns of fear worked".

Understanding the rational structure of any given irrationality is the key to unlocking the contradiction, but in the meantime, consider fear invested in lost pride and loss aversion, and we should not be surprised if the resulting irrational behavior seems rather quite like ego defense. Indeed, we might again recall Huxley: Healthily unaware of history is a fine description until that history is challenged; as I said, it has to do with the idea of ego defense in the process undertaken when "winners write history".

The idea of recruiting among the psychologically unsettled is hardly new. There is a certain degree to which it kind of happens with postures of revolutionary politic. Even still, it would be a cynical bid to cast, say, Christ among the lepers and delusionals, as similar; more ancient populism didn't have computer-driven marketing machines to exploit the damned.

Not every demographic group, nor political identity nor argument, must calculate such manners of lost pride and loss aversion as traditionalist, empowered supremacism. Remember the basic function of what is going on.

There is an old bit I have about how equality is a step up for ninety-five percent of people, and a step down for some part of the remainder. It is within that remainder that we find the pride at stake. Remember, those who are looking to climb the societal ladder are invested in the perpetuation of civilized society; we should, similarly, be unsurprised to find seething antisociality in supremacism that perceives such existential threats and feels so cornered.

And in a marketplace rife with promotion of antisociality, it behooves us to observe who gains from disruption of socialization.

Beyond that, there is simply a question of what we call a discussion. As a matter of function, there are days when taking part in good faith just doesn't lead anywhere, because that's not what the "discussion" is for.
 

Click because now is now.

Futrelle↱ was tipped to this by a friendly tweet, which sometimes seems a twisted way of saying it. After all, tipping anyone about incels is like wishing a migraine unto someone:

Incels exist because same-sex marriage deregulated the marriage market. It's become a free for all where chads hoard all the sexual wealth

Highly regulated hetero marriage used to be the guarantee every man would get a wife as long as he had a job (any job). This is all obvious

cantuslaudanum-20190920-tweet-incel-gaymarriage-detail-bw.png

Point the first: The twitmeister enjoys the attention his idiocy has drawn. This is a perpetual risk of addressing incel spectacle; it is, after all, attention-seeking behavior.

Point the second: Futrelle is reasonable enough to wonder, "I mean, where to even start".

Point unfortunate: It ought to seem well enough to ignore this stuff, except it does actually have consequences. It's already found sympathetic harbor at the New York Times, with a columnist musing about the redistribution of sex as if intimate contact were a resource like food, water, or money. Redistribute women as a resource; that'll bring a socialist revolution among the men, eh? The more immediate point is that incels do from time to time go on killing sprees, and are even known to encourage each other in doing so. In fact, they've inflicted enough damage and made enough noise that the U.S. Army, relying on a memo from the FBI, last week distributed an email to personnel advising elevated danger of mass shooting at screenings of The Joker, and based on incel chatter.

†​

While Futrelle also undertakes the obvious about the incel tweet, such as the ¿say what? aspect of the gay marriage thesis, or the point that, "Chad is not hoarding all the women", a determination easily achieved by attending reality, we might also take the moment to consider a much more fundamental question: What the fuck is wrong with you?

No, really. Chads hoard the sexual wealth? I cannot possibly describe, having grown up listening to men complaining about cold fish wives and watching the divorce rate soar, the idiocy of Douthat pushing redistribution, and Peterson pushing the days of men complaining about cold fish wives in a desperate effort to not be seen pushing sexual conduct redistribution after having talked himself into such a ridiculous corner.

†​

Whenever I find myself recalling Peterson's marriage debacle, it is also obligatory to mete out what feels like a certain punishment, because I cannot stress enough that getting a wife doesn't mean you're getting laid, incel, and even if you do, no, you're not getting laid enough or well enough. And, sure, there are circumstances under which she's just a lousy fuck, but odds are, you're not the magic one in a number followed by that many zeros, so, yeah, if you're not getting laid enough, or well enough, by your mandatory wife, that's going to be your own damn fault.

And why should I have to explain this old masculine trope? So, yeah. John Candy, Jim Belushi. Cop buddies. Wrapped in towels. Glistening in a steamy locker room. Talking about sex toys. You're welcome.

Y'know. Marital aids. French ticklers, and the like.

The movie is called Only the Lonely, and, for what it's worth, you could find a worse way to waste ninety or so minutes. Ally Sheedy. Maureen O'Hara. The greatest Jew joke never told. Oh, right, I digress.

†​

Except I don't. "This is all obvious", our incel writes, and if you really want the particular context↱, it has to do with back and forth, with another explaining "why homicide, rape, theft, same-sex marriage, abortion, adultery, and fornication ought to be illegal", and another asking the obvious question about gay marriage, and the market-deregulation complaint chimes in on that count. And then everything goes completely downhill.

winternights-20190920-tweet-governmentmandatedgirlfriends-detail-bw.png

There comes a point at which we must ask a pathological question: Is the obligation part of the point?

I mean, if you are never going to be getting enough satisfactory sexual gratification without the power trip of raping her ... I mean ... come on, what kind of setup is that?

The answer is no, the government should not be mandated to provide a girlfriend. I just tried that rabbit hole, and we don't need to read that paragraph.

And I'm pretty sure that of all the things government can't do properly, teaching these wet ends how to fuck properly would be its own special kind of disaster.

But this government-sponsored mandatory pity-fuck discussion?

What in the world does it have to do with homophobia?

I don't know, either. Ask the incel.

Oh, right.
____________________

Notes:

Futrelle, David. "Today's nuclear take: Gay marriage caused incels". We Hunted the Mammoth. 21 September 2019. WeHuntedTheMammoth.com. 25 September 2019. http://bit.ly/2n4mk0H
 
to do with the idea that people find merit in compressing complicated reality into mythopoeic baubles.

Conceptualisation of the outer world as a quantitative value of the internal paradigm

suggestion
without the evolution of secular governance(& moral ideology & culture), multi cultural and multi religious co-existance would not be tolerated.
 
Should homophobia be construed as:
Fear of momosexuals

When I googled Momo this is the only thing that came up?

Moderator warning: The following links to disturbing material targeted at children.

Who wouldn't be scared of that, LOL?!
 
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they seem to be connected
what makes them soo attractive ?
why are they such hard core sexy man love partners in the same ideological bed ?

i noticed SNL re-evaluating a comedians fit with their audience in the news
they decided racism and homophobia was not what their audience was looking for in a comedian.

yet it seems to sell so well to the tin-foil hat brigade

what i have wondered is if there is an association with psychopathy

please discuss etc ...
There is no such thing as homophobia or racism .
 
Should homophobia be construed as:
Fear of momosexuals
or
Fear of homosexuality

neither
homophobia is fear of the male sexual predator that has been normalised and indoctrinated into the child now in an adult state.
in fear of being the prey of their own cultural & moral ideology
the man fears being the victim of the man as a sexual object they have defined the women to be

it is complicated by various other aspects, however that is the core aspect of it.
 
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