4 ms·

> you don't have a framework to consider racism intrinsically evil I guess because it just doesn't seem that way to me. All of us have frameworks that we use t

> you don't have a framework to consider racism intrinsically evil I guess because it just doesn't seem that way to me. All of us have frameworks that we use to discriminate against each other. It's an ape thing. Each difference we find is another reason for hostility. All of that is to say that it doesn't seem evil as much as stupid. Race is a superficial cosmetic feature, and only small minds give importance to superficial features. Excluding people for stupid reasons doesn't strike me as evil. Evil starts when you round them up. The point I was making that you may have missed is that I defend their right to be small minded. Largely because it's a futile thing attempt to change a small mind. There's also quite a lot of "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". Jews defended the rights of nazis to march in Skokie. The point is we should be able to separate our personal opinions on matters from what of those opinions are appropriate to codify into law and impose on others. > But the previous half showed us the failure of many small, interdependent-but-separate territorial nations Yes, but USA version 2 was in the goldilocks zone here. It had enough federation to assure continuity and enough decentralization to assure continued pluralism. Had the constitutional protections enshrining this balance been a little more carefully crafted and explicitly laid out, it wouldn't have changed into the increasingly authoritarian nation we see today. > we get more stability when people enjoy the freedom to be left alone It would follow that the instability we've been seeing would be ameliorated by leaving more people alone. The trouble is that the system we've got doesn't go backwards. Laws don't get unmade. Government doesn't shrink. Things grow until they become unsustainable. There's not a known peaceful process to dilute authority. That's why I'm so vehemently against its concentration.

shadowgovt 4y ago
> I defend their right to be small minded. I see it and I respect your right to have that position. I disagree with it as a personal position because of how dangerous an empire is to the rest of the world (as well as itself). Americans don't have the luxury to be small-minded. Not when we sit on the largest nuclear stockpile in the world. We have the liberty of not caring about what half the planet does day-to-day, but no country on Earth has the luxury of ignoring the US. If we're too dumb, people get very, very, very hurt. We owe it to humanity to be better. If it's futile to change the small-minded, then the world would be better off if this empire imploded now, as bloodlessly as possible but to no stone left atop another, because the alternatives would be oh so much worse. To every liberty, an obligation and a responsibility. > Jews defended the rights of nazis to march in Skokie Yes, some did, over 40 years ago, when people believed that ideology was dying out. Then what happened? Do we believe that would happen now? Do we believe, in hindsight, it was wise for them to do so given where we are now? > USA version 2 was in the goldilocks zone here It suffered a great depression and couldn't reign in the abuses of corporate power. It may have been in a goldilocks zone for a world of a specific intrinsic distribution and scale due to transport costs and time delays, but everything got smaller. How do we justify the philosophy of independent, decentralized authority when an instigator in California can convince a man in Pennsylvania to pick up a gun and kill his neighbors, or a bridge collapse in Idaho means no food in upstate New York, or one strain of one virus making human-jump in one place means total economic disruption for two years? > It would follow that the instability we've been seeing would be ameliorated by leaving more people alone I can't disagree. That's why (circling all the way back to the top) it would probably be best if we stopped actively persecuting trans folk and just accepted they are Americans too, with every bit as much right to describe their worldview to our children as Iowans or soccer players or jazz musicians or Irish immigrants.
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  > how dangerous an empire is to the rest of the world Exactly! We should never have built an empire in the first place. Are you saying that empire-building was unavoidable and that no other path could have been taken? It seems that you agree that there's no easy way to back away from empire now extant. I'm not aware of any way to change small minds; they lack the capacity for change. You can substitute race for something else but people who can only keep a small number of things in their head will always focus on the simple ones. Identity politics bears this out. > Do we believe, in hindsight, it was wise for them to do so given where we are now? Aye, I do. It was the individualistic spirit of that action that would have kept those very nazis in the margins. That spirit being so diminished is what has given fuel to the fires of extremism. If you leave people alone (and they have enough to eat), they tend not to gather in large groups and cause trouble. It's when they feel pressured, even if it's only in their heads, that bad things start to happen. This is exactly why I'm suggesting we don't pressure people to accept ideas they're not willing to accept freely. It's safer. Forcing (via education policy) ideologically opposed communities to "accept" trans people exacerbates anti-trans sentiment. It's actually counterproductive to the goal of trans people's wellbeing. Further fuel is added to the fire when policies have absurdist outcomes like Lia Thomas or Isla Bryson, and no reasonable debate is accommodated by their advocates. None of this is good for the average trans person just trying to live their life. Educating young children should be done in as worldview-neutral a position as possible. It should be about the things the Iowan, soccer player, jazz musician, Irish immigrant, and trans person, can all agree on, using simple dictionary words and definitions.
  - shadowgovt 4y ago
    It's a bit irrelevant to me what other path than empire could have been taken, because I wasn't around in the 1840s to suggest that Manifest Destiny was maybe a terrible idea for a nation with a cultural mythology wrapped in small-community independence. I'm interested in what we can do now that we're a country of over 300 million people that spans a continent and won two world wars. And I'm ill-convinced that fascists are kept at the margins by individualism. Fascists appeal to and weaponize national mythological ideologies; the "self-made man" is every bit as weaponizable as the übermensch, especially if, say, failure of collectivist-minded policy in the face of an adherence to a "you are paid the money you deserve the money" mythology has allowed the delta between the extremes and the averages in society to grow to such a level that those who believe they should be the inheritors of the self-made-man mantle bust their asses for 40+ hours a day and can't afford rent. It is then the fascist comes to them and says "You would be as great as destiny says you should be, but for..." and makes up an enemy, always one with not enough power to fight back (so rarely, for example, the people who have all the money). > Forcing (via education policy) ideologically opposed communities to "accept" trans people ... is every bit the same as forcing them to accept the Irish and the black person and the Christian, or to learn state capitols, or to recite the Constitution; no more and no less. They live in America they get with the program. The program is their neighbors are their neighbors and that which they do that harms no-one is of no concern.

shadowgovt 4y ago

> I defend their right to be small minded. I see it and I respect your right to have that position. I disagree with it as a personal position because of how dangerous an empire is to the rest of the world (as well as itself). Americans don't have the luxury to be small-minded. Not when we sit on the largest nuclear stockpile in the world. We have the liberty of not caring about what half the planet does day-to-day, but no country on Earth has the luxury of ignoring the US. If we're too dumb, people get very, very, very hurt. We owe it to humanity to be better. If it's futile to change the small-minded, then the world would be better off if this empire imploded now, as bloodlessly as possible but to no stone left atop another, because the alternatives would be oh so much worse. To every liberty, an obligation and a responsibility. > Jews defended the rights of nazis to march in Skokie Yes, some did, over 40 years ago, when people believed that ideology was dying out. Then what happened? Do we believe that would happen now? Do we believe, in hindsight, it was wise for them to do so given where we are now? > USA version 2 was in the goldilocks zone here It suffered a great depression and couldn't reign in the abuses of corporate power. It may have been in a goldilocks zone for a world of a specific intrinsic distribution and scale due to transport costs and time delays, but everything got smaller. How do we justify the philosophy of independent, decentralized authority when an instigator in California can convince a man in Pennsylvania to pick up a gun and kill his neighbors, or a bridge collapse in Idaho means no food in upstate New York, or one strain of one virus making human-jump in one place means total economic disruption for two years? > It would follow that the instability we've been seeing would be ameliorated by leaving more people alone I can't disagree. That's why (circling all the way back to the top) it would probably be best if we stopped actively persecuting trans folk and just accepted they are Americans too, with every bit as much right to describe their worldview to our children as Iowans or soccer players or jazz musicians or Irish immigrants.

thegrimmest 4y ago
> how dangerous an empire is to the rest of the world Exactly! We should never have built an empire in the first place. Are you saying that empire-building was unavoidable and that no other path could have been taken? It seems that you agree that there's no easy way to back away from empire now extant. I'm not aware of any way to change small minds; they lack the capacity for change. You can substitute race for something else but people who can only keep a small number of things in their head will always focus on the simple ones. Identity politics bears this out. > Do we believe, in hindsight, it was wise for them to do so given where we are now? Aye, I do. It was the individualistic spirit of that action that would have kept those very nazis in the margins. That spirit being so diminished is what has given fuel to the fires of extremism. If you leave people alone (and they have enough to eat), they tend not to gather in large groups and cause trouble. It's when they feel pressured, even if it's only in their heads, that bad things start to happen. This is exactly why I'm suggesting we don't pressure people to accept ideas they're not willing to accept freely. It's safer. Forcing (via education policy) ideologically opposed communities to "accept" trans people exacerbates anti-trans sentiment. It's actually counterproductive to the goal of trans people's wellbeing. Further fuel is added to the fire when policies have absurdist outcomes like Lia Thomas or Isla Bryson, and no reasonable debate is accommodated by their advocates. None of this is good for the average trans person just trying to live their life. Educating young children should be done in as worldview-neutral a position as possible. It should be about the things the Iowan, soccer player, jazz musician, Irish immigrant, and trans person, can all agree on, using simple dictionary words and definitions.
- shadowgovt 4y ago
  It's a bit irrelevant to me what other path than empire could have been taken, because I wasn't around in the 1840s to suggest that Manifest Destiny was maybe a terrible idea for a nation with a cultural mythology wrapped in small-community independence. I'm interested in what we can do now that we're a country of over 300 million people that spans a continent and won two world wars. And I'm ill-convinced that fascists are kept at the margins by individualism. Fascists appeal to and weaponize national mythological ideologies; the "self-made man" is every bit as weaponizable as the übermensch, especially if, say, failure of collectivist-minded policy in the face of an adherence to a "you are paid the money you deserve the money" mythology has allowed the delta between the extremes and the averages in society to grow to such a level that those who believe they should be the inheritors of the self-made-man mantle bust their asses for 40+ hours a day and can't afford rent. It is then the fascist comes to them and says "You would be as great as destiny says you should be, but for..." and makes up an enemy, always one with not enough power to fight back (so rarely, for example, the people who have all the money). > Forcing (via education policy) ideologically opposed communities to "accept" trans people ... is every bit the same as forcing them to accept the Irish and the black person and the Christian, or to learn state capitols, or to recite the Constitution; no more and no less. They live in America they get with the program. The program is their neighbors are their neighbors and that which they do that harms no-one is of no concern.