DreamerofDays @ DreamerofDays @kbin.social

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2 yr. ago

That depends upon how you mean those terms, and would be aided by capitalisation.

Do you mean lower-case “d” “democratic” (likened to the concept of “democracy”) or upper-case “D” “Democratic” (of or related to the party that goes by that name? If the former, more or less yes, if the latter, no. The parties kinda swapped alignment middle of last century on a lot of issues though.

I think this is ignoring the seas of dross that have fallen away in the past. There have always been bad movies, and unoriginal movies, some of them doing quite well at the box office(used as a metric to show that people were showing up to see them). We don’t hold a lot of them in popular memory because we don’t watch them anymore, and what’s left from those eras are the movies of sufficient quality or resonance that we continue to watch them.

The system has a number of issues that are well trod, and certain pitfalls which are inherent, but hanging a lack of quality or unoriginality entirely on capitalism is overselling it.

I would posit that a lack of moderation, or a form of monomania is a bigger culprit here. Too much focus on the business side can stifle creativity, but too much focus on the creative side can result in sprawling, unfinished messes. With too much focus on safety we can be stigmatised from action, but with too much focus on action we can lose our humanity in favor of feeding the gears of progress.

This accounts for the bean counters, but doesn’t grant them the power of being the one true reason for everything being bad.

Implication being that if Republicans are losing in states they think they should win, they’re not going to change their positions, candidates, or arguments, but instead try to rig the system so they still win.

It feels like everyone is so goddamned angry right now, and the anger just begets more of itself. Anger and fear, fear and anger.

To the best of our knowledge, they still won’t care about the other creatures in the web going extinct. We don’t have any evidence of animals global or species-wide conceptualisation. This doesn’t make it right, just that anthropomorphising animals and animal thought isn’t a good argument.

But you’re right— no creature exists in a vacuum. The decisions we make matter, and having this abstract conception of the world gives us a moral obligation to be stewards of it. Some of that stewardship is about restoring and preserving what exists in the wild. Some of that stewardship means honoring the bonds we have made and the responsibilities we have taken on to animals we have domesticated. And some of that stewardship means acknowledging that our constructed environments have also become the homes and habitats of wild critters.

This is all to say— we need to do better, but no good answer will be simple, and nothing comes without consequences.

It’s an Alabama focused news site. The we can apply to either Alabamans, media outlets, or both. So that’s the we, and likely one you’re not a part of.

If you are in that we, it sucks, but if you’re going to be part of a whole with your neighbors, you’re going to have to own the consequences of their ideas sometimes. Maintaining a separation from them might make you feel morally superior, but it’s not going to do anything to negate those consequences or prevent future ones.

Separating is a powerful act, but it should be a rare one.

You are so wound up in a rote shutting down of OP that you aren’t listening.

• Nazi = antisemite
• antisemite ≠ nazi

One can be antisemitic and not be a nazi. The pogroms that harried my ancestors were not practiced by nazis. The expulsions of Jews from various countries over the centuries were not practiced by nazis. The “no blacks, no dogs, no Jews” signs my grandfather saw were not put up by nazis.

Antisemitism is a thing we’ve been living with for a long, long time. I would appreciate it if you didn’t condescend to tell us how you know better about who does or can hate us.

The current situation is certainly making that clear.

It’s an uncomfortable time, certainly. The left seems to think we’re monsters, and the right has a weird fetishisation thing going on. Neither one feels good, and it ends up feeling very isolating.

A nazi is an antisemite, but an antisemite is not necessarily a Nazi. Downpunxx never used the word “Nazi”, and the two are not the same. Plenty of non-nazis over the years have persecuted or tried to kill us. Hitler didn’t invent the idea.

Forced migration, which this would be, is a bad idea, as has been born out repeatedly through history.

• if it’s to many countries, it splinters communities.
• if it’s to just one country, few are open to taking even small numbers of people in, let alone five and a half million.
• if one was open to it, none have the infrastructure in place to receive so many people.
• people get attached to land, and the idea of it.

To that last point, that land is not interchangeable, and any assumption that it is is remaining ignorant of some of the desires of the parties involved.

I could go on, but I don’t think that would add to discourse. This is a hard problem, renewed with every moment of violence. I don’t believe we should expect any of the grievances each side has stacked up to be let go of without honouring their non-violent desires.

I think the answer lies in between our statements, as absolutes have an absolutely thin margin for accuracy.

Intrusive thoughts are a thing, and they introduce thoughts of violence in pacifists, and racism in the tolerant. We don’t get these ideas because we want them or believe in them, and, from my perspective, giving them voice grants them power or legitimacy they never would have had otherwise.

But this could be an exception to your position sitting in a cutout you assumed in the expression of it.

Eh… I think I might care about somebody suggesting nuking the entire area. Not all ideas are created equal, and not all ideas are worth expressing.

No, he didn’t. But people get to want things. Sometimes they want things for themselves, sometimes they want things for their communities.

Criticism, constructively made, helps avoid bad ideas, and makes good ones better. But you don’t always know the better way when you see a bad one— I don’t need to know how to build a boat to know a screen door won’t float.

Part of the problem is one side having a desire for autonomy, and limited, at best sense of self-determination. Robbing them and the state they have grievance with of both their autonomies and capacities for self-determination doesn’t seem like a good answer to the problems they both have.

Nobody’s perfect

It’s part of the cognitive dissonance peppered throughout these comments: championing empathy, showing none.

This. People are complicated, even when it is inconvenient.

I would imagine that becoming mayor in certain parts of the country is much easier if you’re a member of the dominant party in the region.

A lot of the internet survives by pattern and habit. Pattern, habit, and the hope, founded or not, that things might get better with a site you’ve been using for years.