Your idee fixe that anyone who tries to engage in conversation with the Right is making excuses for them and/or secretly in cahoots with their agendas and/or somehow validating their feelings ....
See? You even have to make believe about what you're responding to.
That's just ridiculous.
Seriously, man, what the fuck?
Here, try this: Comparatively, when you engage with the Left, similarly use leftward vocabulary to discuss leftward ideas. Engaging in conversation with the right is not the problem, and never was. For instance, when you opened your
Rowling thread↗, were you
only talking to the Right? Similarly, when you were screeching at me about
Maoists↗ in defense of traditionalist prejudice, were you talking to the Right? When you
followed up↗ seething at a strawman¹ about the "snide and idiotic insinuation that somehow everyone here who fails to completely condemn Rowling is in lockstep", were you trying to engage in conversation with the Right?
There is a difference between promoting, propagating, or advancing discourse, to the one, and engaging in conversation, to the other. And while it is possible to do both at once, it's kind of hard to figure the boundaries of your conversation with the Right.
e.g., The
"ally on the Left"↗ part, you weren't engaging in conversation with the Right, but what about the Rowling thread, were you engaging in conversation with the Right, or promoting what coincides with a rightward position? And, later, when you
expressed↗ certain concerns are "sorta why" you started the thread, maybe you were engaging, promoting, or even both. But were you engaging with the Left at all, at that point? When you did your little turn about Salon and Mother Jones, were you engaging in conversation with the right?
That is to say, your bawling make-believe doesn't even make sense unto itself.
†
Whenever someone like Tiassa comes on a forum swinging their vorpal sword and insinuating that anyone who ever stopped and listened to a Republican, or ever had a bias, is a WS ....
I think it stands out that you can't stop lying.
As much as you cry, why do you have to make believe?
If you ever want to convince me there is something awry, just do that. The fact that you can only respond to your own straw is not insignificant.
Remember, nobody forced you to write
#144↑. Your decision to upbraid me for the sake of your make-believe is entirely your own, and if you failed to pay attention to what you were getting into, that, too, is entirely on you.
And that's how you tried to wind the clock back on both women and black people; it's not so much that you disagree, but that you lied in order to do so. That is, you weren't reproaching under false pretense merely for style points, so we might take it as face value for what it is, a straw distraction seeking to ward off questions intended for other people to answer. And people like Foghorn or Exchemist never have to answer.
And the truth of the matter is that you, I, and they all know they
can't answer certain questions because the actual answers are problematic. Thus Foghorn's story remains shrouded in mystery that could have been resolved days ago. Maybe he's not supposed to be taken seriously, but on this occasion, sure, people took him seriously enough to diagnose what's wrong with black people.
For something like that, a little bit of detail would be helpful, but apparently it's not something we're entitled to. If you want privilege, people's easy acceptance of stereotype, and thus reinforcement of traditional prevailing prejudice, is a straightforward example.
The easy sympathy toward how art criticism hurts someone's feelings so existentially is another.
It's like make-believe stories about dumb religious people; in theory, we shouldn't need them, as the religious people who actually exist provide such bountiful examples.
But instead we're down to Wonderland,
Star Trek, and calls to
shut↑ down↑ the discussion. In its way, that is not at all surprising.
But here's the complication: Do I really think these people are unaware of the basic implication? No, of course not. Answering the basic questions might mitigate the efficacy of their underlying accusation. What they are apparently not banking on is that answering the question will resolve toward their favor.
Consider a question of
"cancel culture"↗; Spiers (2021), "apparently defined as any sort of consequences for displays of bigotry that happen to be driven by social opprobrium", and Beauchamp (2020) before her, "Abstract appeals to 'free speech' and 'liberal values' obscure the fact that what's being debated is not anyone's right to speech, but rather their right to air that speech in specific platforms … without fear of social backlash". We encounter a similar question, here. The airline question can easily resolve in favor of the basic telling, but if the underlying detail still undermines the highlighted contrast of an uppity-black stereotype, that only weakens the accusing context, thus affirming their own perception of exposure to certain criticism.
And insofar as art criticism might hurt someone's feelings, or make them ashamed to be white, or male, &c., the question of who said what really is important. I couldn't even begin to imagine how that all works until we know what it is supposed to mean.
Compared to an art critic, or maybe a butch feminazi stereotype, it would probably feel a little undermining if it turned out the criticism is some podcast bro's summary of something he doesn't like. You know, kind of like your phantom Maoists, vorpal whatnot, and idee fixe.
So I would urge you to consider your response to Billvon,
#197↑; after Billvon enumerated a basic and observable problem, you spent one word, "Sure", to pretend to agree, and nearly a hundred making an excuse for the behavior observed. What remains unclear is when the magatude is obliged to come back to reality. In a thread about privilege, you just hit your mark. Thus:
Okay, so this is the circumstance, what now?
As it is, as you have expressed, it stands that maga should never need get it right, and no matter how many times their ignorance (
¡ahem!) accidentally coincides with white supremacism, it would somehow be unfair for anyone to raise that issue. It's not that your "feel" is especially wrong, or anything like that, but, rather, it would seem to grant privilege according to a middling defense of
status quo.
More directly: You'll sympathize with and even defend stereotypes about uppity black people, but only acknowledge behavior coinciding with white supremacism while laboring to mitigate or even excuse culpability. Your reluctance toward the one and easy approach to the other presents an obvious contrast.
____________________
Notes:
¹ I mean, sure, it reads kind of snide and idiotic, but it's your insinuation.
