5 ms·
"what should be a dispassionate analysis" - why should it be dispassionate objective?
by 4ndrewl 3y ago
"what should be a dispassionate analysis" - why should it be dispassionate objective?
- keiferski 3y agoBecause it tells me that your sociopolitical opinions are coloring your read of historical facts, and therefore your commentary is suspect. Again, this isn’t about an opinion piece; I’m complaining that people use this term as if it were an obvious description of reality, when they have no basis for doing so. I consider it a milder form of, “The Rapture is almost upon us!” Maybe, but you don’t know that.
- 4ndrewl 3y agoMy reply was questioning your suggestion that the article "_should be_ a dispassionate analysis".
- keiferski 3y agoI don't have a problem with people hoping, arguing for, dreaming of an alternative future. My complaint is that this term is used so casually and so frequently in a matter-of-fact way that it distracts from whatever point the author is trying to make.
- usrcc 3y agoLiterally everyone's sociopolitical opinions color their interpretations of history, current events or anything else. Making the claim that your particular political opinions constitute some kind of neutral default seems to me to be rather absurd.
- keiferski 3y agoI don't think you've understood my comment. I didn't say my political opinions were better or more neutral. I criticized the term for making predictions about the future into an assumption about present reality. We can't call the present time "late stage capitalism" because we don't know what will happen in the future. It's a criticism of fortune-telling, not of a particular political stance. "Late" is a descriptor of past events, not of future ones. The Late Roman Empire already happened. We are looking back on it. We can't do that with capitalism, because we are still in the midst of it.