8 ms·

> There has been a complete loss in any interest in meeting a middle ground There's no middle ground between wanting to kill someone and wanting to let them li

by msla 4y ago

> There has been a complete loss in any interest in meeting a middle ground There's no middle ground between wanting to kill someone and wanting to let them live in peace. If a person thinks someone is a born child molester (a "groomer" in the modern Newspeak) and that person thinks the punishment for child molestation is death (as is fashionable in Florida of late) there's no way they can meet that person in the middle. And that, sadly, is not new, either, as Matthew Shepard demonstrated so memorably in my own lifetime, but things are rather coming to a head now that sexual and gender minorities are forcing their longstanding plight into the public eye. They don't die quite as quietly now, in other words, and the great mass of people is more sympathetic to them now than it ever has been in the past. This, naturally, makes their would-be killers feel a bit persecuted. > and like the use of stocks in medieval times the concept of cancellation is much more power than any reality. Here we go, right on cue. The notion of being run out of employment for holding the traditional bigotries is a bit new, isn't it?

AlgorithmicTime 4y ago
[dead]
rayiner 4y ago
> There's no middle ground between wanting to kill someone and wanting to let them live in peace. If a person thinks someone is a born child molester (a "groomer" in the modern Newspeak) and that person thinks the punishment for child molestation is death (as is fashionable in Florida of late) there's no way they can meet that person in the middle. You can start by pulling back from the obvious rhetorical flourishes. We can acknowledge that social liberals aren’t literally child molesters. At the same time, can you acknowledge that parents in Florida don’t want to put anyone to death, but simply don’t trust what liberal teachers will tell their kids about sexuality? Like is it possible for you to acknowledge that folks in Florida don’t want to kill sexual minorities, but are also wary of a resurgent sexual revolution that could change the behaviors of kids who aren’t born gay or trans? Like can you seriously deny that there is an emerging trend of sexual identity becoming a form of self expression? https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/19/health/pronouns-guide-for-parents-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/19/health/pronouns-guide-for-par... It’s instructive to note that society did reach a broadly acceptable middle ground when it came to same-sex marriage. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the science was not well established, radicals wanted to use same sex relationships as a vehicle to deconstruct social norms around gender and marriage more broadly. The shift in the 1990s to refocus on same sex marriage was a deliberate, and in liberal circles controversial change: https://www.salon.com/1998/11/30/cov_30int https://www.salon.com/1998/11/30/cov_30int. And of course that’s the view that won. Obergefell is a paean to traditional marriage that bears little resemblance to how radical academics conceived of sexual orientation either then or now.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  Some major headlines in Florida recently: "Florida Republicans Take Aim at Gender-Affirming Care, Drag Shows... [The bill] would treat parents as abusers for allowing medical care to children, and cracks down on parenting harder even than Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s notorious anti-trans child executive order." [1] "Florida lawmakers approve death penalty in child rapes, sending bill to governor... The Florida Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would allow the death penalty for people who commit sexual batteries on children under age 12, sending the issue to Gov. Ron DeSantis." [2] "Florida to allow death penalty with 8-4 jury vote instead of unanimously... If the Republican governor signs the bill into law, Florida prosecutors trying capital felony cases would need to convince only two-thirds of the 12-member jury that someone who is convicted deserves the death penalty, rather than a unanimous decision by a jury." [3] I'm sorry, but we are able to connect dots. DeSantis looks like a fascist to many of us outside looking in. I mean, you couldn't be more transparent about building a legal framework for the state-sponsored execution of LGBTQ people. They're doing it right out in the open, and you're telling us that we should just maybe consider that the parents are concerned about what the liberals are teaching their kids about sex. Well then why are they busy passing laws making it easier to put LGBTQ people to death? You can make sure your kids are taught whatever you want without making the death penalty a 8/4 decision. You can do that without making being trans or providing trans healthcare a capital offence. This is just like the Dobbs decision. When that landed, you had assured us it was a great thing because it meant the states could finally decide once and for all their local norms based on local politics. Well here we are now and there's a nationwide ban on abortion medicine because of an ideologue federal judge with a religious bent, writing laws from the bench, who decided he didn't like it, so we all have to abide by that. People who live in communities that support these medications will be affected, and we were assured by conservatives on the court (and their supporters) that this situation would not come to pass. So really, I can't stand any more predications about what restraint the right will use with these laws. Any loophole in there will be used as such. Omissions and vague language aren't an oversight in lawmaking, they are tools which allow for the unequal enforcement of those laws in whatever way the executive (Ron DeSantis) prefers. We cannot give Florida the benefit of the doubt that they aren't currently laying the edifices for genocide because a man like Ron DeSantis would never aspire to exact that kind of revenge on his enemies. Please. The man oozes petty authoritarianism. He is a walking narcissistic injury, and he's proven (though his Disney debacle) he is willing to use his power and his office to exact personal revenge against political opponents. He's not fooling anyone, and any calls to "please let's all give everyone the benefit of the doubt" doesn't pass the laugh test when he's lowering the threshold for the death penalty. [1] https://www.advocate.com/politics/florida-republicans-transgender-drag-shows https://www.advocate.com/politics/florida-republicans-transg... [2] https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ne-nsf-death-penalty-child-rapes-20230419-a7t4zmrj2nbprmpzx33iyjxavq-story.html https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ne-nsf-death-p... [3] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/florida-allow-death-penalty-with-8-4-jury-vote-instead-unanimously-2023-04-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/florida-allow-death-penalty...
peanutcrisis 4y ago
A contra-narrative to your point is that there exist a minority of people who hold very specific and very dogmatic views about gender. These people are pushing their views through the education system (I do not know the extent of it, just that it exists), and seemingly without the consent of parents (i.e., social transitions without informing parents). While I deeply disagree and detest the use of the term "groomer", the people who are doing so, are doing so in reaction to this dogma. Mind you, this is not about sexual minorities, but about infringing on child-parent relationships. As far as I best know (I can be wrong), the dogma is largely unsubstantiated, and it is not majority accepted in most places around the world (look at the UK for instance). Mind you, this is not about trans or gay acceptance, but the rejection of the biological sex binary, the conflation of sex and gender, and the subversion of parent-teacher relationships in favour of this dogma. Furthermore, I don't think "groomer" is the modern newspeak. If anything, the dogma that the terrible term "groomer" was meant to counter has the support of countless of mainstream institutions, academic, political, medical, news establishments, etc. Unless you live in a pure conservative bubble of any sorts, the dogma is word, the dogma is the newspeak; for starters, painting actual bigots and people who have compassion for these minorities (but refuse to toe the line behind this dogma) with the same brush by calling them "would-be killers". As such, there is a middle ground to be found, a minority of extremists such as yourself just get in the way.
- dtauzell 4y ago
  The reaction became a chain reaction and now the details don't matter and the "dogma" could be anything. For example, singing the sone "Rainbowland" at an elementary school concert is now considered pushing some dogma of shaming on kids.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - 4y ago
Slava_Propanei 4y ago
[dead]
dbrueck 4y ago
> There's no middle ground between wanting to kill someone and wanting to let them live in peace. A big part of the problem, though, is that the extremist voices/views get amplified the loudest, and then get trotted out as a typical example of the "other" side. And thanks to modern communication, you can always find bizarre extremist voices to amplify, so it leads to this narrative that the extremist view is held by vast numbers of people when in reality the percentage of people who hold those views is effectively 0.
- mehlmao 4y ago
  Sadly "effectively 0" includes a number of mass shooters.
  - dbrueck 4y ago
    Sorry, can you elaborate on your point a little bit - I'm not sure where you're going but genuinely want to understand.
    - mehlmao 4y ago
      Even if effectively 0% of people hold extremist views (and I think that is a low number), they also commit outsized acts of violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Springs_nightclub_shooting#Responses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Springs_nightclub_sho... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_nightclub_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_nightclub_shooting You'll also note that mainstream conservatives refused to condemn the Colorado Springs shooting and there has been no change in the rhetoric that encouraged it.
      - dbrueck 4y ago
        > Even if effectively 0% of people hold extremist views (and I think that is a low number), they also commit outsized acts of violence. Sure, that's true. But it's always been true and, AFAICT, will always be true. But they are such a tiny number of the total population that they aren't the gatekeepers to progress on big social issues. There is a tendency today to give people like that the spotlight and to paint everyone the slightest bit on the other side as being of the same ilk. Both of these things are mistakes that give those extremists power they couldn't otherwise get. Backing up, the context here is the notion of finding some middle or common ground instead of splitting into warring tribes. When we fall into the trap of believing that the other side is full of people that look like the extremists on the other side, it eliminates the possibility of there being a middle ground. The result is a deeper divide, utter despair, a lack of progress on resolving issues, and often more people moving to the extremes. OTOH, when we recognize that the extremists are in fact extremists (i.e. statistical outliers), it's empowering and hopeful. The distance between your views and those of the vast majority of people on the other side is actually much shorter than the distance between your views and those of their extremists (and even likely shorter than the distance between their views and the views of their extremists). It really is a bell curve; don't buy into the lie that it's an inverted one. There is an abundance of potential allies (including the main ones that have a real shot of deradicalizing some of those extremists), most of those other guys are pretty decent people, and real progress is plausible.

by msla 4y ago

AlgorithmicTime 4y ago

[dead]

rayiner 4y ago

> There's no middle ground between wanting to kill someone and wanting to let them live in peace. If a person thinks someone is a born child molester (a "groomer" in the modern Newspeak) and that person thinks the punishment for child molestation is death (as is fashionable in Florida of late) there's no way they can meet that person in the middle. You can start by pulling back from the obvious rhetorical flourishes. We can acknowledge that social liberals aren’t literally child molesters. At the same time, can you acknowledge that parents in Florida don’t want to put anyone to death, but simply don’t trust what liberal teachers will tell their kids about sexuality? Like is it possible for you to acknowledge that folks in Florida don’t want to kill sexual minorities, but are also wary of a resurgent sexual revolution that could change the behaviors of kids who aren’t born gay or trans? Like can you seriously deny that there is an emerging trend of sexual identity becoming a form of self expression? https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/19/health/pronouns-guide-for-parents-wellness/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/19/health/pronouns-guide-for-par... It’s instructive to note that society did reach a broadly acceptable middle ground when it came to same-sex marriage. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the science was not well established, radicals wanted to use same sex relationships as a vehicle to deconstruct social norms around gender and marriage more broadly. The shift in the 1990s to refocus on same sex marriage was a deliberate, and in liberal circles controversial change: https://www.salon.com/1998/11/30/cov_30int https://www.salon.com/1998/11/30/cov_30int. And of course that’s the view that won. Obergefell is a paean to traditional marriage that bears little resemblance to how radical academics conceived of sexual orientation either then or now.

ModernMech 4y ago
Some major headlines in Florida recently: "Florida Republicans Take Aim at Gender-Affirming Care, Drag Shows... [The bill] would treat parents as abusers for allowing medical care to children, and cracks down on parenting harder even than Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s notorious anti-trans child executive order." [1] "Florida lawmakers approve death penalty in child rapes, sending bill to governor... The Florida Senate on Tuesday passed a bill that would allow the death penalty for people who commit sexual batteries on children under age 12, sending the issue to Gov. Ron DeSantis." [2] "Florida to allow death penalty with 8-4 jury vote instead of unanimously... If the Republican governor signs the bill into law, Florida prosecutors trying capital felony cases would need to convince only two-thirds of the 12-member jury that someone who is convicted deserves the death penalty, rather than a unanimous decision by a jury." [3] I'm sorry, but we are able to connect dots. DeSantis looks like a fascist to many of us outside looking in. I mean, you couldn't be more transparent about building a legal framework for the state-sponsored execution of LGBTQ people. They're doing it right out in the open, and you're telling us that we should just maybe consider that the parents are concerned about what the liberals are teaching their kids about sex. Well then why are they busy passing laws making it easier to put LGBTQ people to death? You can make sure your kids are taught whatever you want without making the death penalty a 8/4 decision. You can do that without making being trans or providing trans healthcare a capital offence. This is just like the Dobbs decision. When that landed, you had assured us it was a great thing because it meant the states could finally decide once and for all their local norms based on local politics. Well here we are now and there's a nationwide ban on abortion medicine because of an ideologue federal judge with a religious bent, writing laws from the bench, who decided he didn't like it, so we all have to abide by that. People who live in communities that support these medications will be affected, and we were assured by conservatives on the court (and their supporters) that this situation would not come to pass. So really, I can't stand any more predications about what restraint the right will use with these laws. Any loophole in there will be used as such. Omissions and vague language aren't an oversight in lawmaking, they are tools which allow for the unequal enforcement of those laws in whatever way the executive (Ron DeSantis) prefers. We cannot give Florida the benefit of the doubt that they aren't currently laying the edifices for genocide because a man like Ron DeSantis would never aspire to exact that kind of revenge on his enemies. Please. The man oozes petty authoritarianism. He is a walking narcissistic injury, and he's proven (though his Disney debacle) he is willing to use his power and his office to exact personal revenge against political opponents. He's not fooling anyone, and any calls to "please let's all give everyone the benefit of the doubt" doesn't pass the laugh test when he's lowering the threshold for the death penalty. [1] https://www.advocate.com/politics/florida-republicans-transgender-drag-shows https://www.advocate.com/politics/florida-republicans-transg... [2] https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ne-nsf-death-penalty-child-rapes-20230419-a7t4zmrj2nbprmpzx33iyjxavq-story.html https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/fl-ne-nsf-death-p... [3] https://www.reuters.com/world/us/florida-allow-death-penalty-with-8-4-jury-vote-instead-unanimously-2023-04-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/us/florida-allow-death-penalty...

peanutcrisis 4y ago

A contra-narrative to your point is that there exist a minority of people who hold very specific and very dogmatic views about gender. These people are pushing their views through the education system (I do not know the extent of it, just that it exists), and seemingly without the consent of parents (i.e., social transitions without informing parents). While I deeply disagree and detest the use of the term "groomer", the people who are doing so, are doing so in reaction to this dogma. Mind you, this is not about sexual minorities, but about infringing on child-parent relationships. As far as I best know (I can be wrong), the dogma is largely unsubstantiated, and it is not majority accepted in most places around the world (look at the UK for instance). Mind you, this is not about trans or gay acceptance, but the rejection of the biological sex binary, the conflation of sex and gender, and the subversion of parent-teacher relationships in favour of this dogma. Furthermore, I don't think "groomer" is the modern newspeak. If anything, the dogma that the terrible term "groomer" was meant to counter has the support of countless of mainstream institutions, academic, political, medical, news establishments, etc. Unless you live in a pure conservative bubble of any sorts, the dogma is word, the dogma is the newspeak; for starters, painting actual bigots and people who have compassion for these minorities (but refuse to toe the line behind this dogma) with the same brush by calling them "would-be killers". As such, there is a middle ground to be found, a minority of extremists such as yourself just get in the way.

dtauzell 4y ago
The reaction became a chain reaction and now the details don't matter and the "dogma" could be anything. For example, singing the sone "Rainbowland" at an elementary school concert is now considered pushing some dogma of shaming on kids.
- rayiner 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - 4y ago

Slava_Propanei 4y ago

[dead]

dbrueck 4y ago

> There's no middle ground between wanting to kill someone and wanting to let them live in peace. A big part of the problem, though, is that the extremist voices/views get amplified the loudest, and then get trotted out as a typical example of the "other" side. And thanks to modern communication, you can always find bizarre extremist voices to amplify, so it leads to this narrative that the extremist view is held by vast numbers of people when in reality the percentage of people who hold those views is effectively 0.

mehlmao 4y ago
Sadly "effectively 0" includes a number of mass shooters.
- dbrueck 4y ago
  Sorry, can you elaborate on your point a little bit - I'm not sure where you're going but genuinely want to understand.
  - mehlmao 4y ago
    Even if effectively 0% of people hold extremist views (and I think that is a low number), they also commit outsized acts of violence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Springs_nightclub_shooting#Responses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_Springs_nightclub_sho... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_nightclub_shooting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_nightclub_shooting You'll also note that mainstream conservatives refused to condemn the Colorado Springs shooting and there has been no change in the rhetoric that encouraged it.
    - dbrueck 4y ago
      > Even if effectively 0% of people hold extremist views (and I think that is a low number), they also commit outsized acts of violence. Sure, that's true. But it's always been true and, AFAICT, will always be true. But they are such a tiny number of the total population that they aren't the gatekeepers to progress on big social issues. There is a tendency today to give people like that the spotlight and to paint everyone the slightest bit on the other side as being of the same ilk. Both of these things are mistakes that give those extremists power they couldn't otherwise get. Backing up, the context here is the notion of finding some middle or common ground instead of splitting into warring tribes. When we fall into the trap of believing that the other side is full of people that look like the extremists on the other side, it eliminates the possibility of there being a middle ground. The result is a deeper divide, utter despair, a lack of progress on resolving issues, and often more people moving to the extremes. OTOH, when we recognize that the extremists are in fact extremists (i.e. statistical outliers), it's empowering and hopeful. The distance between your views and those of the vast majority of people on the other side is actually much shorter than the distance between your views and those of their extremists (and even likely shorter than the distance between their views and the views of their extremists). It really is a bell curve; don't buy into the lie that it's an inverted one. There is an abundance of potential allies (including the main ones that have a real shot of deradicalizing some of those extremists), most of those other guys are pretty decent people, and real progress is plausible.