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As someone who claims to be educated on history, it is important then to remind yourself of why this actually occurs. You can't make essays dismissing some angr

As someone who claims to be educated on history, it is important then to remind yourself of why this actually occurs. You can't make essays dismissing some angry mob as if they are a homogenous hivemind. They won't listen to you because they literally can't listen to you, they act independently and uncoordinated. You have to tackle issues which cause them to be aggressive towards racists to begin with. Police brutality, for example, is still a threat not yet addressed. yet in all of Paul's preaching about the mob I don't see him making an iota of effort to do something that would actually stop the mob: fixing their issues. Instead, the current plan seems to be to dismiss their outcries and trod steadily along down the path of least resistance in a world that was already collapsing with or without the anger.

missosoup 6y ago
You probably don't know this word, but you're literally advocating for ochlocracy, which is the very thing I was talking about in the upstream comments. The mob has an infinite well of issues, the mob will never be satisfied. That's exactly how it transitions into totalitarianism. Pandering to the mob just adds more fuel to the fire. Police brutality etc. are issues that should certainly be addressed, and there's countless other societal issues that need to be looked at. But dealing with those and pandering to the mob are orthogonal issues. We have a democracy, the rule of law, and a government structure specifically to define a process for addressing such issues. These are the mechanisms that differentiate the western world from the soviet nightmare my parents escaped. It's so bizarre and terrifying to watch people openly advocating for discarding them and embracing mob rule. Americans have fought and died to uphold these values, and now a pocket of their own citizenry wants to demolish them. > You have to tackle issues which cause them to be aggressive towards racists to begin with Pretty heavily loaded language there. Anyone mob targets = racist? There's far too much evidence of the mob targeting non-racists to even pretend that this is what motivates them at this stage. 'Racist', or rather the newspeak co-opted 'Bigot', is now just the current incarnation of 'Communist', 'Kulak', 'Witch' and whatever other generic labels for the enemy of the mob. The mob never runs out of enemies, the mob never runs out of issues to get angry about. It's Lord of the Flies at a national scale.
- wdwecewc 6y ago
  I would argue a mob is just a sort of tumor clinging onto the back of a very legitimate protest movement. My point, which I maintain, is that people like Paul are using this as an excuse to dismiss the movement in its entirety by selecting the (real) problems created by the mob. You would not be allowing the mob to rule by satisfying the entire group's demands. This is a function of very ordinary protests that have gone on over the last forever. And I don't think it's fair to compare racists, which are real, to witches, which are not.
  - skellington 6y ago
    "racist" and "witch" are just labels given to those that don't agree with you or are somehow disapproved of by the mob. Not surprisingly, their definitions just change as needed by the mob. The term racist is just as ephemeral as witch in the cancel-culture world. Racist used to mean something around "believing one race was inherently better than another," but now it means anyone who doesn't agree with the BLM organization or who supports the Constitution, rule-of-law, Trump, etc.. In fact, if you've taken a look at modern critical race theory writings, you might be a racist if you: - emphasize objective thought, cause and effect thinking - support nuclear families as a good structure - prefer individualism - "work before play" or believe that hard work is key to success
- cmorgan31 6y ago
  You are not addressing the point that the society at large has to continue to trust institutions to alleviate concerns of corruption by the institution. The mob is not formed in a vacuum. Democracy, rule of law, and government only have value when trust in those pillars of our society have not been eroded to the point where large swaths of people form a mob to carry out their own justice. It’s been made abundantly clear in the West that our systems are very vulnerable to bad faith actors from inside the system. > Americans have fought and died to uphold these values, and now a pocket of their own citizenry wants to demolish them. This is true for both ends of this spectrum and also never ending. The mob doesn’t see themselves as eroding those institutions just as our current government doesn’t see itself as obstructionists. What makes this difficult is two competing extremes. I don’t focus on cancel culture because I’m concerned more with the erosion of our voting rights and the dismantling of our institutions by our own citizens. It doesn’t invalidate your points what so ever but it makes them a blind spot for individuals with competing priorities.
marcus_holmes 6y ago
Is this how this is supposed to work, then? A lot of people get angry about something and demonstrate/riot, and in response the laws get changed to pacify them. There's a term for that: "mob rule". It's not a good thing. I'm not for one second saying that Police brutality isn't a problem. I don't live in the USA so I don't know. I am saying that if your system doesn't provide a method for fixing this problem without rioting, then your system is probably broken, and it might be better to fix the system and then use the fixed system to fix the problem.
- krapp 6y ago
  That's how things tend to work when people are so alienated or disenfranchised from the system that change within the system becomes impossible, yes. And while people like to dismiss any group whose concerns they disagree with as being merely an "angry mob," more often than not that "mob's" concerns are legitimate, and their anger is justifiable. Laws don't get passed to "pacify" them, they get passed because public pressure and awareness turns public opinion in their favor, making it politically infeasible for those in power to continue the status quo. That's not the way it's supposed to work, but that's the inevitable result of a democratic process and society not working as it ought to begin with.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - marcus_holmes 6y ago
    >> That's how things tend to work when people are so alienated or disenfranchised from the system that change within the system becomes impossible, yes. And the endpoint of that process is revolution. Again, not a good thing. Revolutions are bloody. How can you fix the democratic process so that works as it ought and prevent the disaster you're heading for?
    - krapp 6y ago
      I don't know. I never thought I'd see the day when Americans seem more concerned about "SJWs" exercising their free speech rights than actual secret police tossing political dissidents into black vans but I guess here we are.

missosoup 6y ago

You probably don't know this word, but you're literally advocating for ochlocracy, which is the very thing I was talking about in the upstream comments. The mob has an infinite well of issues, the mob will never be satisfied. That's exactly how it transitions into totalitarianism. Pandering to the mob just adds more fuel to the fire. Police brutality etc. are issues that should certainly be addressed, and there's countless other societal issues that need to be looked at. But dealing with those and pandering to the mob are orthogonal issues. We have a democracy, the rule of law, and a government structure specifically to define a process for addressing such issues. These are the mechanisms that differentiate the western world from the soviet nightmare my parents escaped. It's so bizarre and terrifying to watch people openly advocating for discarding them and embracing mob rule. Americans have fought and died to uphold these values, and now a pocket of their own citizenry wants to demolish them. > You have to tackle issues which cause them to be aggressive towards racists to begin with Pretty heavily loaded language there. Anyone mob targets = racist? There's far too much evidence of the mob targeting non-racists to even pretend that this is what motivates them at this stage. 'Racist', or rather the newspeak co-opted 'Bigot', is now just the current incarnation of 'Communist', 'Kulak', 'Witch' and whatever other generic labels for the enemy of the mob. The mob never runs out of enemies, the mob never runs out of issues to get angry about. It's Lord of the Flies at a national scale.

wdwecewc 6y ago
I would argue a mob is just a sort of tumor clinging onto the back of a very legitimate protest movement. My point, which I maintain, is that people like Paul are using this as an excuse to dismiss the movement in its entirety by selecting the (real) problems created by the mob. You would not be allowing the mob to rule by satisfying the entire group's demands. This is a function of very ordinary protests that have gone on over the last forever. And I don't think it's fair to compare racists, which are real, to witches, which are not.
- skellington 6y ago
  "racist" and "witch" are just labels given to those that don't agree with you or are somehow disapproved of by the mob. Not surprisingly, their definitions just change as needed by the mob. The term racist is just as ephemeral as witch in the cancel-culture world. Racist used to mean something around "believing one race was inherently better than another," but now it means anyone who doesn't agree with the BLM organization or who supports the Constitution, rule-of-law, Trump, etc.. In fact, if you've taken a look at modern critical race theory writings, you might be a racist if you: - emphasize objective thought, cause and effect thinking - support nuclear families as a good structure - prefer individualism - "work before play" or believe that hard work is key to success
cmorgan31 6y ago
You are not addressing the point that the society at large has to continue to trust institutions to alleviate concerns of corruption by the institution. The mob is not formed in a vacuum. Democracy, rule of law, and government only have value when trust in those pillars of our society have not been eroded to the point where large swaths of people form a mob to carry out their own justice. It’s been made abundantly clear in the West that our systems are very vulnerable to bad faith actors from inside the system. > Americans have fought and died to uphold these values, and now a pocket of their own citizenry wants to demolish them. This is true for both ends of this spectrum and also never ending. The mob doesn’t see themselves as eroding those institutions just as our current government doesn’t see itself as obstructionists. What makes this difficult is two competing extremes. I don’t focus on cancel culture because I’m concerned more with the erosion of our voting rights and the dismantling of our institutions by our own citizens. It doesn’t invalidate your points what so ever but it makes them a blind spot for individuals with competing priorities.

marcus_holmes 6y ago

Is this how this is supposed to work, then? A lot of people get angry about something and demonstrate/riot, and in response the laws get changed to pacify them. There's a term for that: "mob rule". It's not a good thing. I'm not for one second saying that Police brutality isn't a problem. I don't live in the USA so I don't know. I am saying that if your system doesn't provide a method for fixing this problem without rioting, then your system is probably broken, and it might be better to fix the system and then use the fixed system to fix the problem.

krapp 6y ago
That's how things tend to work when people are so alienated or disenfranchised from the system that change within the system becomes impossible, yes. And while people like to dismiss any group whose concerns they disagree with as being merely an "angry mob," more often than not that "mob's" concerns are legitimate, and their anger is justifiable. Laws don't get passed to "pacify" them, they get passed because public pressure and awareness turns public opinion in their favor, making it politically infeasible for those in power to continue the status quo. That's not the way it's supposed to work, but that's the inevitable result of a democratic process and society not working as it ought to begin with.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- marcus_holmes 6y ago
  >> That's how things tend to work when people are so alienated or disenfranchised from the system that change within the system becomes impossible, yes. And the endpoint of that process is revolution. Again, not a good thing. Revolutions are bloody. How can you fix the democratic process so that works as it ought and prevent the disaster you're heading for?
  - krapp 6y ago
    I don't know. I never thought I'd see the day when Americans seem more concerned about "SJWs" exercising their free speech rights than actual secret police tossing political dissidents into black vans but I guess here we are.