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You only need these people on your side if their opinion is actually the majority opinion. Often minority opinion groups get their way because they turn out and

You only need these people on your side if their opinion is actually the majority opinion. Often minority opinion groups get their way because they turn out and vote in outsized numbers.

armchairhacker 4y ago
It’s also morally wrong, like why should i care if someone has access to the Bible? And even if you don’t care about morality, but just being the majority opinion - the majority tends to swing back and forth and there are a lot of people who constantly switch sides. When you make inflammatory actions like banning the bible, or proposing to ban viagra (as some democrat did more as a symbolic gesture for banning abortion), you’re actually pushing away undecided voters and giving fuel to the “radical leftists” theory a lot of right-wingers seem to think is the entire left.
- phailhaus 4y ago
  This is a really good point. They don't see those inflammatory actions as satirizing them, they see them as serious policy beliefs. "See? They want to outlaw us!" You can't respond with satire because it will be taken literally.
  - wahern 4y ago
    I've heard this dynamic mentioned many times by politician and pundits, regarding reactions by groups to satire that could only be construed as the group being completely oblivious to the satiric character. It seems a sizable fraction of the population doesn't get satire. In this current epoch they also seem to skew conservative, but certainly there are many who lean in other directions and likewise aren't capable of recognizing satire. (We might say they choose not to see it, but I'm not sure that's a meaningful distinction at the end of the day.) The apparent conservative bent might simply be because satire is usually employed by cultural and academic elites, who skew liberal by a significant margin these days. In any event, it seems to be a real and important dynamic, and for anyone earnestly advocating some policy, satire is best confined to narrow audiences, or preferably not at all given how difficult it is to choose your audience in the information age.

You only need these people on your side if their opinion is actually the majority opinion. Often minority opinion groups get their way because they turn out and vote in outsized numbers.

armchairhacker 4y ago

It’s also morally wrong, like why should i care if someone has access to the Bible? And even if you don’t care about morality, but just being the majority opinion - the majority tends to swing back and forth and there are a lot of people who constantly switch sides. When you make inflammatory actions like banning the bible, or proposing to ban viagra (as some democrat did more as a symbolic gesture for banning abortion), you’re actually pushing away undecided voters and giving fuel to the “radical leftists” theory a lot of right-wingers seem to think is the entire left.

phailhaus 4y ago
This is a really good point. They don't see those inflammatory actions as satirizing them, they see them as serious policy beliefs. "See? They want to outlaw us!" You can't respond with satire because it will be taken literally.
- wahern 4y ago
  I've heard this dynamic mentioned many times by politician and pundits, regarding reactions by groups to satire that could only be construed as the group being completely oblivious to the satiric character. It seems a sizable fraction of the population doesn't get satire. In this current epoch they also seem to skew conservative, but certainly there are many who lean in other directions and likewise aren't capable of recognizing satire. (We might say they choose not to see it, but I'm not sure that's a meaningful distinction at the end of the day.) The apparent conservative bent might simply be because satire is usually employed by cultural and academic elites, who skew liberal by a significant margin these days. In any event, it seems to be a real and important dynamic, and for anyone earnestly advocating some policy, satire is best confined to narrow audiences, or preferably not at all given how difficult it is to choose your audience in the information age.