Yazata said:
You feel completely free to express those dislikes. Tiassa, Joepistole and several others behave as ideologues on Sciforums, constantly and ceaselessly expressing their own dislike for Republicans and for "conservatives" generally. Each of you resorts to insults, caricatures, stereotypes and rants when you get going.
Well, here's the thing about that, Yazata: If someone gets caught lying, it isn't hate speech to call them a liar. If someone isn't a goat, it's hateful to compare them to such just to suit one's own aesthetics. Around Sciforums, it's kind of like the old idea that it isn't an
ad hom if it's true.
And I think that if you actually took the time and made an effort to pay attention to certain details, you'd figure out pretty quickly what is wrong with your complaint.
Consider this: Delusional rants like we get from Tali or Wellwisher about liberals as root of all evil aren't the problem with their delusional rants. Are you able to figure that part out? It's that they have to dehumanize other people along the way in order to do so. How about that part? Is that too tough to figure out?
My question is, if you feel free in pissing people off, why shouldn't they?
My question is whether you're really so stupid that you can't tell the difference?
So, for instance, yeah, right now the GOP is a house of bigotry. After all these years of my conservative neighbors lying about how this isn't really part of their movement―you know, a bad seed argument, and how it's unfair to say this is really conservative or Republican―we now see the hatred not simply on display, but proudly marching about and demanding betrayal of Constitution and nation alike. And if this hurts a conservative or Republican supporter's feelings, what, are we supposed to lie in order to make that person feel better?
So, what now? We going to call a black man a thug? Compare a queer to a dog? Talk about women like they're cars or houses, to be owned and traded and locked with keys and alarms?
Tell us, Yazata, is it just a word or idea that you're complaining about, or would you concur that when one argues for the curtailment of human rights, and refuses to acknowledge the humanity and human rights of women, it would count as misogyny, or do we need to tailor our speech in order to show extraordinary sensitivity to bigotry?
We actually have a special policy in place to illustrate. The thing is that it's one of those rules somebody invented in the moment, applied once, and has never been used again; the Administration has never disowned the policy, so it is, technically, still in effect. And this is how it goes:
Racists get to post racist material, but calling out racism is a personal attack and should be forbidden. We also have a one-time rule protecting sexual harassment of women that was invented in the last couple years that, translated into the real world would mean you can't charge a serial criminal with anything but the first crime.
And these are the things we've done in order to protect the conservative right to "free speech". In order to accommodate conservative demands for fairness, we must handicap the field.
I would greatly appreciate your answer to the following:
• A criticizes a person's existential condition; they are faulty for having dark skin, or being a woman.
• B criticizes choices a person makes; they are in fault and error according to their decisions and behavior, such as supporting bigotry.
↳ Do you argue that A and B are equivalent?
We need to account for this difference.
And this is a problem. Kim Davis? Mat Staver? They're not the only conservatives who can't tell the difference. It really does seem as if they have forgotten that their mockery was, in fact, mockery. No, really; it's as if conservatives have spent so long arguing that there is no logic, that all these headaches are because some liberal somewhere decided to call this racism or that sexism or the other thing over there civil rights, that they now actually see the world that way, and thus think they can get away with demanding supremacism as a condition of equality.
Can you tell the difference?
Your own words tell us you think this is about deliberately pissing people off. And maybe that's how conservatives do it, but I can't help it if a racist is pissed off by being called a racist, or a misogynist because it's unfair to call it misogyny when what's really wrong is the destruction of his right to treat random women like sex toys. Something about maturity goes here.
So let's try this:
If over the course of years
a person's behavior consistently demonstrates a range of outlooks that fall within the boundaries of a certain descriptor, should that term be reserved simply because it might piss the person off?
I think of, say,
rape advocacy. I'm well aware the term pisses people off; that's why I use it as little as I do. And if something about the preceding sentence rings a little strangely to you, I would point out that once upon a time we were supposed to believe the argumentation we hear frequently today wasn't really what was going on.
And just like the xenophobia tempting Republican voters toward fascist-cult behavior, we've been expected to believe for decades, at least, that this wasn't really what was going on.
Over the course of years, identity politics can be very dangerous sympathies. Maybe Jack the Conservative didn't think he had it in him, and resented that kind of talk once upon a time, but after throwing in with the label for the sake of pride so many times without attending what was actually said, maybe after a while he needs to wake up and listen to himself.
Once upon a time it was fair enough for a Christian conservative to denounce what he or she didn't like as the root of all evil. Think about the real implications of saying something is from the Devil. And here, you can set aside my point about the Book of Job and Satan's actual status in the divine hierarchy, because while I might make the point over and over again, they don't believe it. Now that Christians have to take heat? Now that their bigotry is being called out as bigotry? Well, now we have to stop, apparently, because
accurate descriptions of bad behavior apparently now count as bigotry. Christ left them a pathway through; that they reject it is their own problem, and shouldn't be anyone else's. This is their own choice. One might be born black, or female, or not heterosexual, but I have yet to see the Punnett calculation on the dominant and recessive traits defining who is born an asshole.
It's true that a certain amount of the back and forth between the factions is pretty useless. To wit, I disdain Joepistole's enjoyment of dimunition with terms like "Baby Bush", but I also get why he's doing it. And the thing about it is that in conservative rhetoric, what he's doing is fair game. Practically speaking in a Sciforums context, sure, I could put on my green hat and tell him to knock it off, but I think the
other results, the number of media and literary sources that would be similarly prohibited, would only give conservatives another reason to complain that they're being censored.
So let's start with that:
Okay, so I'll put my green hat on and start with Joe and tell him that since conservatives can't take it anymore, he has to be the first to stop.
(1) Do we think conservatives will stop?
(2) When conservatives complain at the number of sources stricken from discussion, will you stand with them and yell about censorship?
Part of the problem with that one goes back years; we allowed certain political conservatives extra room under the rules―tacitly, of course, most days―because otherwise the resulting actions would look like we had it out for them. There was even an occasion six years ago that saw us rewrite the English language in order to punish an uppity liberalized woman in order to help conservatives feel better. Hindsight, of course, screams that it was always a mistake, but at that point if we actually enforced certain rules we would wind up with all of the two conservative moderators and, well, you weren't here, yet, so ... I don't know, I don't remember who else would have been left on your side of the aisle.
And, you know, I guess I look at more than just the words. I mean, really; sure, there's a smarmy, juvenile thrill to saying, "Obummer" or "Baby Bush", but I think of so many of the names conservatives call President Obama, and can recall the period in which they were so determined to convince everyone else that he was the beginning of a national socialist personality cult they started inventing a cult to mock.
These days, most of it is just post-juvenilia, but at the same time the question arises:
Is snark according to convention the same as trying to redefine the terms of discussion according to desperate, mythopoeic snark?
And if you don't like my assessment, you can always be more specific. Like the time a rape advocate pointed to old arguments in order to declare dehumanization of homosexuals admirable discourse. I mean, honestly, that one technically requires no response, but it also does serve as a useful example.
