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This is the culmination of about a decade of reinforcing the idea that political actions don't count as violating norms if the actions are against someone who v
by pie_flavor 5y ago
This is the culmination of about a decade of reinforcing the idea that political actions don't count as violating norms if the actions are against someone who violates other norms of yours.
- whatshisface 5y agoOr maybe just the culmination of internet libertarians who stick to principles being out-populated by more average people who stick to each other (that is a nice way of phrasing the practice of putting popularity before ideals but it's also true to its real nature).
- SamoyedFurFluff 5y agoInternet libertarians definitely also stick it to each other in dumb ways whenever they think their cause is right. Let’s not kid ourselves; an average person wouldn’t know how to wield open source for their personal political nonsense. It would precisely be a technocrat who thinks they’re enlightened.
- whatshisface 5y ago>an average person wouldn’t know how to wield open source for their personal political nonsense I am close to an average person in this regard because I am a free-rider on other people's enlightened steering: all I do is install stuff and in exchange I get privacy and security.
- LudwigNagasena 5y agoThe culture of those “average people” stems from the beliefs of Calvinist fanatics that fled England because it wasn’t radical enough.
- whatshisface 5y agoWhat's Calvinism got to do with Russia?
- LudwigNagasena 5y agoIt has nothing to do with Russia. It has to do with stuff like inherent sinfulness, the promotion of social righteousness, the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world, double predestination and whatever else Puritans and other Calvinists who became the American elite believed in and promoted. The views of those people who were considered fanatics back in Europe became the norm in the US.
- emodendroket 5y agoI think people get a little carried away with this. I'd bet money that the average American cannot even describe the difference between Protestantism and Catholicism besides something facile like "they have a pope." There aren't even any Protestants sitting on the Supreme Court. In a historical sense, it's very geographically dependent. Before states got rid of established churches, Virginia, for instance, established the Episcopal church, while Massachusetts established the Congregational church.
- mordero 5y agoI don't think his point was directly related to people's religious views today, but the type of people who originally came to the US and how their views and norms have impacted the culture up to today.
- emodendroket 5y agoWell I'd go a little further and say that it's getting too clever to act like the most important thing to understand how Americans think is the details of a dispute that happened before most of their ancestors came and that they can't even describe in broad strokes.
- jollybean 5y agoThis is disturbing to read. This notion that somehow 'FOSS' is a moral ideal that stands above others is rubbish. If you're helping Russians drop bombs on Mauripool that's a choice. You can also choose not to do that. That concerns an 'ideal'. There are issues at hand of much greater consequence and idealism that 'internet librarians' pretending that they are consequential in this context. 'More Average People', like accountants and teachers, are literally right now upholding their 'ideals' by learning how to use a weapon and defending their homes with their lives against literally the Russian Empire. That is an 'ideal' thankfully none of us will ever have to contemplate upholding.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- emodendroket 5y agoI think it is a little bit more complicated than that when you're taking sweeping actions like banning Russians from sport (something we managed to avoid in the Cold War but apparently not this time). I also wonder if you'd take the same line about someone seizing your bank account, because every American, by the standard we are now using, is culpable for the Iraq War.
- malka 5y agoIt's not that they are guilty. It is impossible to harm a state without harming its citizen in the process.
- emodendroket 5y agoHow is the state being harmed by stuff like people vandalizing shops for having Cyrillic letters on the storefront, I wonder.
- diordiderot 5y agoStupid people do stupid things all the time. Clearly not an educated tactic. No one with an anything above the brain stem would do that, and that's not what's being argued for. Racism isn't the point, crippling the Russian state is. Assuming anything else smells like bad faith.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]