mdk

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

Humanity without competition among itself is a recipe for disaster.

@The Harbinger of Ferocity

Fortunately, there's no such thing as humanity without competition.

If you vote for Clinton you have to accept her moral obligations. Perhaps the continuation of failing foreign policy in Syria, probably her failure to enforce tax reforms ect.

If you vote for Trump you have to accept his moral obligations. Splitting up families with illegal immigrants, worsening an already substandard healthcare situation or whatever else he does.

@Penny

And this is where I'll play the maturity card again.... Holding that someone is morally inferior because they don't do things your way is childish. Disagreement among children produces conflict; disagreement among adults produces....... well, shit, bigger conflict I guess, but it's not supposed to.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

@mdk

Just because getting accurate information might be hard, or confusing, it doesn't change the underlying moral issues. I certainly dont imply an equivalency between all positions and all possible reasons for voting a certain way. Its entirely possible that your candidate whips up a bunch of hysteria about asteroid collisions or whatever because he knows it will motivate you to vote for him, even though in his heart he dosen't care about asteroid collision. I fell like your moral culpability is lessened if you were tricked in such a way but it isn't eliminated.

Its also possible that your classic lesser of the two evils situations arises. That certainly complicates matters but it still wouldn't remove your moral responsibility.

@Penny

So let's cut to the chase. I'm morally obligated to vote for which candidate, Trump or Clinton?

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

<Snipped quote by mdk>

It probably says something that I wouldn't have bet money that neither of those things didn't happen...

I get what you are saying in a larger sense. It is impossible to have complete information in almost any real world situation and you cant be certain of what information you have, it might be right wing bull, or left wing fear mongering or what have you.

Even so, that doesn't translate completely. Lets say that Politician A has on his platform: I Politician A, think that gay marriage is an abomination and should be opposed. That isn't nuanced information that you need to sift your information sources to obtain. If you vote for Politician A you are responsible for (even if only to a small extent) the action that Politician. You might have voted for him for another reason, but that just means you have done the moral calculus and come up with infrastructure projects are more important than gay rights. That is a moral decision you have made. I might still decide to have coffee with you of course, but I shouldn't be giving you a pass on it just because you expressed it via a ballot.

@Penny

Well it's even more nuanced than that. Let's say Candidate A thinks marriage equality is awesome, and openly supports it, but picked a VP who disagreed entirely (but whose position gave him no legislative power to enact anything); then candidate B openly opposed gay marriage until it became politically necessary to pander, gave it token support, then smelled blood and successfully branded A a homophobe. Then you, hearing that A is a homophobe and hearing that I voted A, call me a homophobe (or "part of the problem" if you're feeling kind). THEN, because that wasn't enough, you declare all the LGBT supporters of A "Not Gay," throw them out of your culture entirely, and physically attack (as in with guns, knives, bats, and firebombs) A's supporters whenever they threaten your homophobic narrative. You know, as a pure hypothetical, because that never happened.

IF ALL OF THOSE THINGS were, like, in a parallel universe or whatever, to happen -- then how would I, as your average run-of-the-mill A supporter, take one single word of B-supporters' diversity narrative seriously?

Right?

So that's just the one side. Then there's the other side, which I won't bother laying out because you've got plenty of ammo already (maybe something along the lines of Jesus Loves Everybody but Commands Me to Punch Gay Kids All Day).

Now take those two sides, right, and pick a random person from each camp. Which one is IMMORAL??? Then remember that really, what this all boils down to in the end is which side thinks the corporate earned income tax credit should be 7.1% and the other side thinks it should be 8.2% and that's the real actual reason why everyone is being mobilized in this way. It's fucking ridiculous to introduce some concept of morality into that.

And that's why you shouldn't judge one asshole based on the actions of another asshole. WHICH -- again -- is literally the cornerstone of diversity, tolerance, and community, just in case anyone forgot.

(this rant brought to you by: not as much bourbon as you might think)

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

We all make moral judgments about people. My point is that we frequently give them a pass on politics because for whatever reason we tend to segregate religious and political opinion from our everyday interactions. I do it all the time, but that persons still believes that thing that I find appalling. Why am I not considering it, and if it reaches whatever threshold I want to set, acting on it.

@Penny

I can totally answer that question.

Because of all the things I've been talking about -- holding Citizen A accountable for Politician B's shortcomings is unfair to Citizen A, etc. BUT ALSO, it's because political bias touches everything. Let's say Fox News reports that Hilary Clinton ate a baby, and CNN reports that Donald Trump sacrificed a kitten to the Mayan god of the apocalypse. Citizen A favors Fox, and Citizen B favors CNN, and they both know "this probably isn't 100% accurate, but there must be a kernel of truth behind it." Well now both our citizens judge one another for supporting such a terrible person, and then they go shoot up a baseball game and all their buddies alternate between cheering the effort and chastising them for not killing enough political opponents.

....when really, at the end of the day, they both want the same thing (let's have an awesome country). The more passionately they want that, the more likely they are to literally murder the baby-eater/kitten-sacrificer -- or if not to literally murder them, to just stop talking to one another altogether, and then the divisions deepen from that point forward and the enmity festers until we're right back to murder. Now if you're CNN and/or Fox, you're more or less okay with this -- you don't want people talking to the guys who favor the other side, or they might stop buying your shit. So you just keep stirring the pot.

If you're an adult, though, you say "Okay, I care about this and I know I care about this and I don't have to prove that to myself or to anyone else. Let's just drink our coffee."

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

<Snipped quote by mdk>

Well that is already true. At the end of this contract I'm going to make a move to a bluer state, where people spend less time beseeching God to smite the gays, liberals and Mexicans.

@Penny

They literally just exchange it for white people. It's 0% better and 3000% more smug. Good luck with all of that.

If that is true, then don't they bear the moral responsibility for that choice? I certainly believe they [do]. There are utilitarian reasons for voting for people you find personally distasteful, lesser of the two evils stuff, but it hardly absolves you of your moral responsibility.

There we go again, dictating the morality of society itself. No. You're responsible for yourself and Slick Willy is responsible for himself and he doesn't stop and check whether it's okay with you before he fondles an intern. You set your own rules, and if you're not comfortable voting for a guy who does that to basically every woman he meets -- GREAT! Good for you, you're a good person. If you preach all that same stuff, but then still endorse the guy -- well NOW you've got a problem, because that would be pretty intensely hypocritical. And lastly if you run around judging everybody by your own standards, essentially meting out your own moral sentences on everyday people because of what their politician did, you're acting like your own personal atheistic Spanish Inquisition and NOOOOOOOOBODY likes the Spanish Inquisition. What is the point of that? Feeling superior to others while changing precisely nothing?

In short holding yourself to the highest standard is laudable. I sincerely like the fact that you're even asking these questions. Holding others to that standard is pretty uncool/unfair/nonproductive/jerk-like, though. But it's your call. You get to be that person if you want.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

Any one suggesting that murdering people is obviously reprehensible. Just like anyone voting for a candidate who assault members of the press I suppose.

@Penny

Totally equivalent.

Anyway that was an aside. The part relevant to our conversation is that the mainstream left voted en masse for a personally reprehensible candidate, and I for one don't think that makes them bad people, but if you're arguing that anybody who votes for any reason for a bad person is a bad person, you're going to find America's political scene extremely hostile. And a very lonely scene it will be, if you start cutting all those folks out of your life entirely.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

<Snipped quote by mdk>

If that is true and people voted for him after coming into possession of that information then they absolutely DO bear some of the responsibility. A principle isn't a principle if you apply it selectively.

I don't know anything about the particulars of the Clinton case as it was before I came the USA. If people genuinely believe he is a rapist and still voted for him then that is morally wrong.

@Penny

And then to prove how much they changed, the DNC rigged their own primary in an effort to put him back in the white house 16 years later.

also, this is happening right now.

MFW democrats are trying to murder their political enemies again.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

In the reality of my life, if you are promoting homophobia, misogyny or whatever, you are just gone, plain and simple. I don't need to dignify these 'ideas' with my consideration. But what about second order effects. What if you vote for a candidate that advocates these positions? Even if you didn't vote for them because of their homophobia, you still bear a measure of responsibility for their actions if they are elected. Why am I giving you a pass because you expressed the opinion through the ballot rather than spouting it to me personally?

@Penny

Bear in mind: if you apply that standard, Bill Clinton raped (at least) three women, not counting his consensual womanizing, and he pulled in 99.72% of the democrat caucus for reelection. So like...... yeah....... about that whole misogyny bit, you, uh.....

The takeaway here is, you've met (I assume) loads and loads and loads of Clinton fans who are not, themselves, rapists and womanizers. Which ought to put the nail in the coffin -- this concept that you should shun people because some asshole in DC did something you don't like is ridiculously unfair.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

http://insider.foxnews.com/2017/06/14/scalise-shooting-details-ron-desantis-says-man-asked-whether-republicans-or-dems-field

Breaking.

Frokane's Mildly Politcal Hangout Thread

<Snipped quote by mdk>

Sure, except me choosing not to spend time with someone, or to pursue a personal connection with someone, is hardly a systemic system of oppression. I certainly have plenty of friends and acquaintances with whom I don't see exactly eye to eye. It is certainly possible to agree to disagree, but there are position which I would consider not just wrong but immoral. Racism springs to mind as do things like sexism and homophobia. If someone expresses such an opinion, it doesn't seem like tolerating that person in my life is morally acceptable or at least not morally consistent.

@Penny

Certainly there are positions bad enough that cutting ties is justified. We could think of those on a case-by-case basis. Using those extremes to justify things like "Well, you voted for Trump though, I'm unfriending you" is where it becomes childish. There's a lot of childish people in today's America, largely because schools (especially universities) have been growing into liberal echo chambers for generations, and we're not teaching our children how to handle other POVs (case in point, that woman who stabbed a police horse in the neck with a bladed flagpole because people nearby were supporting the president).