What's with Social Justice Warriors?

[Siúil a Rúin]

I'm actually approaching this from a position of resigned misanthropy. Pure brass tacks and pragmaticism. I don't have any expectation of anything personally related to myself being understood, but it does tend to motivate people in general. I don't think the entitled brats on Fox News represent all the people on the Right. It would be great to re-claim whatever ones are working from a position on individual integrity even if their knowledge and perception is limited.


I sure as hell don't personally identify with that demographic or have secret sympathies. I think nearly all humans are incomprehensible assholes and selfish out the wazoo. I'm also surrounded socially by extreme Leftists who brag about being stingy paying the help and who grab a tip from the pizza guy and give him a lesser amount but also go on great orations socially about the working class.
It's not all equally immoral and saying so is a cop out, but there are moral violations galore on both sides and tunnel vision that serves self on both sides. I agree that everyone needs to stop being a baby but I'm also open to using negotiation tactics on any responsive subset of the population and hope for the best while realistically knowing the truth of what humanity is.

edit: looks like 61% of Americans voted leaving nearly half that didn't. There are a great many of the rural working class that didn't vote. Maybe they weren't that into Trump. I think many are tired, busy, and have given up on government. These are the people I'm talking about.

 

[ceecee]

If I'm addressing the demographic I mentioned here then I would encourage them in the direction you mention. We can't control that culture but are surrounded by them. There are different individuals within it with differing capacities for growth, but as a group what do you propose as a solution to change their mindset?

Get involved with the labor movement in this country. Appeal to the working class taking back their power, solidarity, stop voting for your own destruction. If it really is about jobs and the economy stupid, then fucking act like it. This is where I would and have attempted to make headway with them. It's somewhat effective. But there is nothing that can be done with people who are unable and unwilling to differentiate fact from fiction - outside of mental health care which is one more reason to support M4A or similar It all falls under the same umbrella as care for working people.

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

Get involved with the labor movement in this country. Appeal to the working class taking back their power, solidarity, stop voting for your own destruction. If it really is about jobs and the economy stupid, then fucking act like it. This is where I would and have attempted to make headway with them. It's somewhat effective. But there is nothing that can be done with people who are unable and unwilling to differentiate fact from fiction - outside of mental health care which is one more reason to support M4A or similar It all falls under the same umbrella as care for working people.

Leave out the word "stupid" and see how it goes.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

This.

Yup.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

One observation I've made about the Left vs. Right in the U.S. might be useful for further discussion. People in general have a hard time seeing the big picture and taking everything into account. People also have a tendency towards selective perception, so if you imagine each person's world view is like Swiss cheese with varying degrees of holes in it (and having the humility to realize this can be true even of people who have intellectual integrity to attempt balanced, big picture thinking), you then realize that each side can see the same issue or politician through vastly different distortions - depending on what is emphasized or overlooked.

I think it is important to encourage people towards big picture thinking, but to also accommodate the fact this is limited in human thought. This would pertain to social issues, but it struck me with particular clarity about environmental issues. I've noticed the Left will tend to focus on a detail that effects the big picture, but is still a fragment and limited in contribution. For example, straws. When it was discovered that these cause more problem as a pollutant than realized before, I had a number of liberal friends putting peer pressure to get people to stop using straws. I could appreciate it in theory, but could also understand why it could seem relatively hopeless to solve a problem and more a stance for moralizing. Culturally, I think people on the Right could accept an approach to the environment equally fragmented, but focused more on their local community. I think we need to give people constructive fragments that hit closer to home and have greater pragmatism and less socially defined moralizing.

When it comes to social issues there is a negative side to needing to view relevance of an issue through the lens of its impact on a local community and individual life, which is more of a mindset of the Right. The problem is that not all social issues occur at the local level. For example a rural, working class person on the Right may not knowingly have someone transgendered in their personal life, so that issue isn't real to them. The problem is the issue IS real for many, but they may perceive it much like the straw issue. In the working class, rural American, there is a tendency for reality to not exist outside of literal, individual experience and community, so these global issues need to be deconstructed down to that level.

It is helpful to think of this like an educator where you have to break down concepts into smaller pieces that people can comprehend and also show practical ways their effort will apply to their life. In the same manner students have tended to reject subjects where they say, "when will I ever use this in my life?", big picture thinking needs to be translated in a way people can understand through the limited lens of personal experience. The bottom line is that the two sides tend to fragment information differently and while the Left holds more of a value of global and wholistic thinking, it does not always apply and communicate it as such because it is also compromised of humans with limited, fragmented brains with selective perception.


No one enjoys being looked down on, and I think the rural, working class Right can feel like the Left finds abstracts and irrelevant issues to grand stand and moralize about as an excuse to look down on them. I'm not saying that is what is happening, but I think it can be seen that way. I am personally still horrified by Trump, but he was looked down on through the moralizing lens (with good reason), but I think that appealed to the demographic I refer to because they can feel like they spend their life working hard, with limited gains, and then the Left look down on them for reasons they don't feel are part of their life and experience but used as an excuse to disrespect them.

I feel like a big problem why I don't have a lot of hope on that front is the media; stuff like Fox News and Breitbart. These people encounter this stuff and accept at all at face value and regurgitate it, and reject anything that contradicts it.

(It's not just them, though; the center-left also does this. Yesterday, I heard Joy Ann-Reid say that "Russia hacked our election" which sounds very misleading [it implies they were hacking voting machines and going in and changing votes which there is no evidence for) when we consider what we actually have evidence for. And my family members that watch this stuff, sure enough, believe that "Russia hacked our election." I wouldn't say hacking emails of people involved in the DNC and on campaigns is the same as "hacking an election"]I also have a very low tolerance for unsubstantiated claims about the foreign countries being repeated as unqualified fact, so this bugs me quite a bit. It also seems like it's easier for some people to blame Trump on some foreign bogeyman rather than admit that he's a symptom of some pretty severe systemic problems.)

I hate to say it but I really don't think there's that much more to the attitudes of these people than consuming media (including internet sites) that caters to their biases (or being surrounded by a social circle that does). The talking points obtained there are used as a shield against any cognitive dissonance that might be stirred up when encountering numerous data points that contradict their worldview

At the end of the day, people that want to believe a certain political party or politician is blameless to the extent that they consume media to reinforce that perception are going to have a wide variety of pre-fabricated defenses against any challenges to their world view in place. The defense might not make any logical sense or be backed up by evidence, but that doesn't matter because it reassures them that what they want to believe is true, and they'll be damned if they're going to give that feeling up.

 

[ceecee]

Leave out the word "stupid" and see how it goes.

I didn't put it there to begin with.

It's the economy, stupid - Wikipedia

It's the economy, stupid - Political Dictionary

 

[Siúil a Rúin]

I didn't put it there to begin with.

It's the economy, stupid - Wikipedia

It's the economy, stupid - Political Dictionary

But you have to know how it comes across. You didn't put it in quotes or anything. It's a great way to try to push a button and come back with plausible deniability.

I don't have TV, so I don't watch the news. I don't know your reference.

Anyway, this is a weird discussion for me because I'm not even a Republican. I'm pushing back against the blanket assumptions about millions of people no one here has even met. What about the 40% who didn't vote for anyone? 138+ million people and I would guess many working class because it is difficult to get time off work to vote even if it's the law. Yes, we can look down on them and say they deserve what they get or whatever, but being disillusioned is understandable from where I stand. Maybe it's worth approaching politics in such a way to get them to vote. They clearly were not that invested in Trump. Maybe they are a way to help make change.

Approaching people by looking down on them, using words like "stupid" even if there is some media reference, is worth editing out.

 

[ceecee]

But you have to know how it comes across. You didn't put it in quotes or anything. It's a great way to try to push a button and come back with plausible deniability.

I don't have TV, so I don't watch the news. I don't know your reference.

Anyway, this is a weird discussion for me because I'm not even a Republican. I'm pushing back against the blanket assumptions about millions of people no one here has even met. What about the 40% who didn't vote for anyone? 138+ million people and I would guess many working class because it is difficult to get time off work to vote even if it's the law. Yes, we can look down on them and say they deserve what they get or whatever, but being disillusioned is understandable from where I stand. Maybe it's worth approaching politics in such a way to get them to vote. They clearly were not that invested in Trump. Maybe they are a way to help make change.

Approaching people by looking down on them, using words like "stupid" even if there is some media reference, is worth editing out.

I didn't because it's such an old, well used line I didn't think it was necessary, that was in the links I provided. Although I have heard people from Sean Hannity on down on the right saying the same thing. I don't think you not having a TV matters here.

Be that as it may, I am not hearing the same concern for the derogatory slander aimed at the left. I don't look down on non-voters -I want to reach them. I did this for a living for some time, I know what I'm talking about. But again, there doesn't seem to be anyone falling over themselves to defend the left the way they do the poor misunderstood right winger. Why is this? Aren't they working people that deserve a break just as much as the poor misunderstood Trump voter? That's the point I'm trying to make here. And I have met and know many of them - that is the area I live in.

 

[Totenkindly]

It's a quote from a few decades ago that should be as well known as "Read my lips, no new taxes" or "I am not a crook," etc.

It seemed pretty clear you were just tossing out the reference because it's part of the quote.

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

I didn't because it's such an old, well used line I didn't think it was necessary, that was in the links I provided. Although I have heard people from Sean Hannity on down on the right saying the same thing. I don't think you not having a TV matters here.

Be that as it may, I am not hearing the same concern for the derogatory slander aimed at the left. I don't look down on non-voters -I want to reach them. I did this for a living for some time, I know what I'm talking about. But again, there doesn't seem to be anyone falling over themselves to defend the left the way they do the poor misunderstood right winger. Why is this? Aren't they working people that deserve a break just as much as the poor misunderstood Trump voter? That's the point I'm trying to make here. And I have met and know many of them - that is the area I live in.

I don’t really care about trying to understand right wingers. They’re pretty straight forward and easy to figure out. To the point of being very predictable.

I think it’s more important understanding why economically left people continue to support right wing populists. For instance, union supporters and blue collar Dems flocking to Reagan in 1980..

 

[Doctor Cringelord]

Mind elaborating? I think I may fit this mold.

Labor minded leftists tend to care less about identity politics because they feel the reforms and changes they support will ultimately benefit people of all backgrounds and make for an overall more egalitarian society.