https://techcrunch.com/2017/09/19/wikileaks-releases-documents-it-claims-detail-russia-mass-surveillance-apparatus/

So I guess a month ago Wikileaks released a bunch of documents detailing how the Russian mass surveillance system works. I think what, England, the U.S. and Russia have one, probably China too? Is this the new norm?

"Socrates" was all about the non-opposition of introspection and debate... so I guess that means: yeah?

I never knew philosophy could pwn someone so badly

You got the joke!

Okay Friedrich Obi-Wan Kenietzsche

To be honest, though, the whole "detached debate" ideal is one that, and I mean this as screeching liberal as possible, is privileged. When it comes to politics, at least, for many people there are concerns that are life and death serious, or can affect their quality of life greatly. Also it's entirely ineffective at convincing anyone either way, usually people only watch them to root for their side. I find it's mostly a sham.

Doesn't mean I don't like debate, but I think that characterization is a ****ty one.

That's a pretty good articulation of the irrationality and sensationalism that lies beneath a lot of identity politics these days. And I suppose it expresses an assumption of most identity politics movements: that people's political views are so tightly bound up with who they are (i.e., their identity) that there's no reason to have discussions with anyone who isn't like you, and therefore tribalism is preferable to politics.

You nailed it! Everybody else is at fault for not being rational™ enough to hear out all sides.

It will be a good moment for you when you realize sexual pathologies are better at driving political opinion than rational debate. Trump is the kind of guy who gets a weird feeling in his stomach every time he sees a black man holding hands with a white woman.

Well, kind of. Identity politics is just a social dimension of something whose political manifestation is partisan gridlock.

And we all know where that leads.

It's just not the case that if the left and the right got together and had a rational debate about police violence, that it would end or do anything about police violence.

If you think partisan gridlock is caused by identity politics, then lol. Just goes to show why your best take about the health care colloquium was some weird fantasy about bipartisanship.

There's definitely a pattern emerging where I understand your "jokes", but you don't understand mine.

Ah, well if that was a joke, my mistake.

So yeah, for instance, we don't want to live in a society where whether rape should be allowed is rationally debated. If we tried to debate every last thing a person does, we'd never get anywhere. That's why societies need to have sets of rules of discourse. There are things that have to be just unacceptable, and be ideas for which you are excluded from the conversation.

As the right pushes against the interests of average Americans further and further, it became increasingly necessary for them to appeal to fringe beliefs to maintain power. And this subversion of the political scene led to Donald Trump. Yet the right loves "rational debate", because rational debate doesn't do anything to alter the discussion, and normalizes stances that otherwise wouldn't be normalized. I think we've all read the quote by Sartre about antisemites. To the people who want to take away healthcare from Americans, "rational debate" does nothing. It's just a flourish.

Caused? No. (I didn't bring up causality. That's something you brought in.)

Identity politics takes many forms. At the most generic level, there are two identities that were in competition in the 2016 election. The cosmopolitan, city-dwelling Americans who, by virtue of living in urban areas, are beneficiaries of an increasingly globalized economy, and rural Americans, who don't benefit from it, and who have little job security because capital is increasingly concentrating in larger urban areas. Each group lives in a cultural bubble, with its own sensibilities and political worldview -- and very little genuine insight into how the other operates, but plenty of caricatures and stereotypes about the other. The fact that this rift exists doesn't cause congressional gridlock, and it's not caused by it. They coincide, likely because they're both effects of the same causes.

I basically agree with that. But who gets to decide who gets excluded from the conversation? That seems like a genuine problem and contradiction inherent in liberalism. On the one hand, liberalism doesn't want to suppress opinions, because it would be a violation of personal liberty for certain views to be forbidden. On the other hand, there are cultural and political costs to a society that is permissive of everything. But who gets to decide what should be forbidden? The idea that anyone should be invested with such authority over others seems to clash with some of liberalism's most fundamental tenets.



Sure. But the fact that our media has become WWE-style entertainment shouldn't completely undercut the principle that politics is based on compromise reached through debate.

Jokerman

Kayfabe

In theory, the people we elect to represent us should. However, it turns out that people are pretty poor at picking candidates. As to it being a genuine problem with liberalism, yes, actually, that is it's biggest flaw, and it's why many groups who believe in the value of democracy are also often in opposition to liberalism, e.g. socialists. Liberalism tends to allow even the dreggest of dregs to have a bigger voice than they should.

But yes, the point is that, no matter how far you extend liberalism, at some point we all have beliefs that we believe are above debate. In cohesive societies, these beliefs run together more, and they contradict in other societies. Large cultural belief systems like these form the platform where debate is possible. In other words, if people diverge too far, no amount of debate can bring them together. And, again like Sartre said about antisemites, in many cases people aren't even looking for good faith debate.

In other words, I don't think many people believe you can convert the far right by debating them about race statistics. Politics simply doesn't work that way.



Politics can be based on compromise reached through debate. It seems history is quite an experiment in showing how often that isn't the case. In fact, most important political movements ever were not won through debates and compromise. Just look at the U.S.: ending slavery, civil rights, world wars, labor struggles, these all have a violent and serious past to them.

Ironically, the situation is not dire in the United States by external factors, but by domestic *******s who are willing to sacrifice the long-term health and stability of the country for short-term profit. As to our media, they're basically just capitalists, which means they push the stories not out of objective considerations for what's important, but for what gains viewers. Trump being outrageous garnered viewers. Capitalism worked directly against the good of the people in that instance.

Also, I remember reading an anecdote, not sure if it's true or where to find it, that Plato once believed he could talk a king into ruling more benevolently through solid logic and convincing rhetoric, and was thrown out of the city not long after arriving.

The point being that politics is still a function of power above speech.

But Plato was himself aware that persuasion through speech can only exist under certain conditions. That's a point that he demonstrates dramatically on the very first page of the Republic:

Okay, so I think it's reasonable to say not always should you try to rationally debate your opponent. So, then, when your country appears to be politically deadlocked, with far right "joke" candidates gaining power, conspiracy theory dictating viewpoints, distrust in the establishment, much like Weimar Germany, what does a person do?

Uh, I'm not sure according to what theory you think this is true. But it couldn't be much further off. The reason why freedom of worship and freedom of the press are both covered by the First Amendment is because they both are rooted in a similar idea: the idea that government should be neutral when it comes to what people believe. Convictions and conscience are beyond the scope of legislation. Government should not be concerned with promoting or discouraging certain ideas. It would violate the inalienable liberties of individuals, which the principle of limited government is supposed to protect. So, no: that is not the responsibility of elected officials in any way.



Cool. Throw the dissidents in the gulags! Or better yet, just execute them! We'll definitely live in a freer society without that scum. This is the exact thing that conservatives don't understand about socialism: America will be freer when it has a socialist regime, because all of the conservatives will be thrown in gulags or murdered for having unpopular beliefs! I think if they only understood that socialism entailed draconian laws that severely constricted liberty, they'd jump on board the Medicare for all train. /s



Unfortunately I think that the radical right is a permanent feature of society that will never disappear. Regardless, the success of liberalism can't be measured by its ability to remove certain elements from society. Indeed, liberalism promotes diversity and pluralism, and liberal societies take some pride in the diversity and transgressive ways of life that exist in them. Harboring evil hate-filled people is an unwanted consequence of living in a free society, but the government should be aggressive about keeping such people within the bounds of the law.



It depends on what you mean by politics. Hannah Arendt, for example, thought that politics ends where violence begins: violence is opposed to politics, which is defined as the domain of speech. I'm on my phone now so I don't want to type out much right here because my thumbs hurt. But the fact that violence has produced consequential results in history doesn't make violence political. For instance, it seems feasible that war shouldn't be conceptualized as a political act, but a result of the failure of international politics to prevent it.

I don't know but I doubt punching Richard Spencer will help much.

"Convictions and conscience are beyond the scope of legislation" is a poor description of government. That's enlightenment B.S. and really fails to describe how politics works.



It's not as simple as "we'll never be rid of it", it also matters to what degree and influence.



I'm not strictly speaking about violence, here, I'm talking about anything, such as counter-protesting to calling for people to be fired to internet harassment.

"There's a political problem that I don't know how to solve and historically hasn't been solved peacefully, but at least I'll know those guys are wrong while it happens."

And no, I don't want or advocate a totalitarian government. I'm just pointing out that there are serious limits to debate and serious limits to your own viewpoint, you even acknowledge you don't have a solution to the political situation in America.

Hmm well you did use the phrase "in theory". But I guess the enlightenment was bull**** anyway, so who cares??!

It's funny that you think you've actually achieved that.

You think that I'm at fault because I don't have a plan of action to reverse American decline and the disintegration of American democracy? Pretty high bar you're setting there.

But yes, I think resorting to violent means to combat the far right actually plays into their hands and makes society into the type of society they want to live in. They want to live in a society where ordinary citizens beat each other up in the street in acts of politically motivated violence, so committing acts of politically motivated violence gives them that. Rejecting the use of violence against Nazis isn't some kind of principled pacifism, or some arbitrary self-imposed rule. Rather, it's pragmatic. Using violence to combat Nazis is bad because it's a self-defeating tactic. It empowers them more than it weakens them.

Riiiight... but limiting the "degree and influence" of right-wing extremism is primarily the task of law enforcement; it's not something that government should try to achieve by banning abhorrent beliefs. As I said before, liberalism isn't an ideology that's designed to eradicate certain opinions from society using political power. Instead, in a liberal society, civil society is supposed to moderate itself, without the relying on coercion of the state/political power. To that effect, the media should adopt norms that discourage the proliferation of harmful views, for example, by not giving extensive press coverage to certain groups with deplorable views (because it may embolden them, even if the coverage is negative). But they should adopt those norms voluntarily, not because they're legally obligated to. In the US, it's not for government to decide what can and cannot legally be said by the press (with some exceptions, such as libel laws, which are designed to protect the reputations of individuals).

Today on Hacker News somebody whose qualifications include "Bachelor’s in Computer Science and Philosophy" posted a long-ass Medium article arguing against Universal Basic Income.

Thankfully, I have seen enough of this objectivist schlock to spare myself the torture. I am sure that whatever was written was sufficiently refuted with this concise rejoinder:

I need to watch sarcastaball again.

You guys remember these days

I have a Master's in pretentious dickery.

master beta

hehehe

I forgot about that quote. That was hilarious.