The Liberals Thread

[slomo]

Sounds to me like you're interested in sticking with the rhetorical configuration that we saw during the election cycle dada.

White men more and more realize that that all big politicians are owned by hostile oligarchs who are going to suppress our group rights too like freedom of association. White people might be a global minority but their politicization doesn't require your permission, if you actually want common ground instead of a war of attrition you need to find new rhetoric.

Let me guess, all the big institutions dedicated to women and minorities in the US are "liberal"?

What would non-liberal ones look like?

We acknowledge the Donald never explicitly appealed to "white" people right?

How was Clinton to the "left" of the Donald anyways? Yah, yah, all of you hate her too now. Clinton's time as Secretary of State was wildly hostile to minorities in the Middle East, for instance.

Identity politics is not a non-starter because it always gets smuggled in covertly. In your post you equated "left" with "not white men". That's been a winning strategy in many places but not in the most recent US election...

I get that the heroic struggle against the white man and western civilization has a long, illustrious history. The culture of the west is dormant and basically dead now. Other societies and cultures have bounced back from this, however (Islamic ones most dramatically.) If you really want to stamp out any chance of the west being reborn, you'd better start kicking a little harder while it's down.

Or depending on our objectives, we could all find new axes to orient ourselves around, maybe. To one degree or another...

To reiterate this idea in the form of an anecdote: a dear relative recently complained that Sanders could not have won over Trump, as he only appealed to white men. I felt like telling this person, "news flash, you need white men to win elections." Kept my mouth shut, because I value the relationship and nothing would be gained by arguing the point, given the ideological commitment of this relative.

[semper occultus]

Trump strikes me as rather more orange than white

[tapitsbo]

In the next US presidential elections, you won't need white men to win. This suggests to me that the tentative coalition of "everyone else" might implode in interesting ways.

[semper occultus]

Trump didn't too badly with women either - considering

[dada]

I'm trying to find a better way to explain where I'm coming from.

I'm white and male. I think other white males that get upset at identity politics are lame.

This is 'two guys sitting in a bar' talk.

It's really simple as that. On the internet, though, I have a persuasive way of speaking. dat rhetorical configuration. Don't be fooled by it. I'm just some guy with funny opinions about everything. Some people like what I say, some don't. Sometimes it's the opposite.

In the last two real Dune books, there's a character, Miles Teg, the Bashar of the Bene Gesserit. He's their chief military strategist, fleet commander. Works for the witch-priestesses, right or wrong. That's kind of like me. smiley 'moticon goes here.

Structurally, society is fucked up, in my funny opinion. Tell you what, though. I'll throw out an idea. Go after consumer culture instead of white man culture, or multi-culture. There's a new axe everyone can orient around.

But who will listen to me on that one. People love their stuff.

I'm curious what you thought I said in the NYTimes thread, t. Can I call you "t?" The only thing I posted was,

"This piece could've been from the NYTimes. It leaves you with that same 'There's something missing from this article' feeling.

The NYTimes' narrative? That's easy. Global class war."

I didn't mean anything about political correctness, there. I meant the NYTimes' narrative is all about kissing up to hierarchies. Class hierarchies, social hierarchies, intellectual hierarchies. Anywhere there's a pecking order, the Times is there, propping it up. And they do it by the art of omission. It's what they don't say that shapes their narrative.

And I am against all hierarchies. Except the witch-priestesses, of course. That's basically my politics. Put a pyramid in front of me, I'm going to try and knock it over. It's why they keep me around.

[tapitsbo]

The "liberal" upset at identity poliitics is just identity politics in stealth usually. Maybe we can agree about that, d

The way I see it is identity politics can involve collaboration as well as conflict

I'm sure you attach all sorts of thoughts and meanings to "political correctness" and "trolls" and things like that but I'm not really down to get into a big semantic soup-stirring session.

My perception is that organs like NYTimes are pretty much at the centre of what I consider "political correctness". More so than "real leftists" are.

I do understand why there's rage against white men (and it comes from many angles)

It's funny though how the same mainstream journalists who clamor for the extinction and exclusion of "whites" are totally behind chechen extremists who have white skin and historically were allied with the third reich (just an example!) Then in other parts of the world like the former Yugoslavia they'll make ahistorical accusations of "white nationalism". The establishment in the west is still trying to push an odd grab-bag of ideas like this and it's of course funny how people aren't buying it anymore. Lots of common ground for people the establishment portrays as left or right based on identity...

I see a hierarchy or sacred order in pretty much anyone's beliefs, so it sounds like we're a little different in that regard

[brekin]

I forget exactly how it goes, but its something like, "When liberals have a firing squad. The get in a circle and point their guns inward."

[dada]

I see a hierarchy or sacred order in pretty much anyone's beliefs, so it sounds like we're a little different in that regard

Belief, another consumer product. More non-biodegradable waste, polluting the seas. It drifts on the currents, collects in a mass the size of Texas, like a big plastic Atlantis.

Belief is plastic, you know. Ask any of the 'chaos wizards' on this board, I'm sure they'll agree.

See, critique of consumerism could be a pretty sharp great axe, snapping sinew and cutting right through the bones of the subconscious, if people wanted to wield it.

Identity politics is fun to talk about, I guess. I agree with some of what you said in your last post, and disagreed with some. We have different perspectives, yes. And here we are, conflicting collaboratively. Maybe there's hope, yet. Although I'm white and male, and fight for witch-priestesses. So my perspective is skewed, and my opinions should not be considered as representative of... pretty much anything.

You may or may not be surprised at the type of person I really am, deep down. Once upon a time, I took the 'know thyself' above the door seriously enough to try to find out. So I got down to it. I wrote something yesterday, that pretty much sums up my core, basic personality structure:

"I am the system.
I'm cold, unfeeling. I simply don't care. A machine, swallowing the seas, grinding up the earth.
The Book of the Way and Bill Gates say 'keep their minds empty, and their stomachs full.'
I say fuck that noise. Keep the heart empty, and the gun full.
What else.
I'm society. I love money. The smell of gasoline. Kitty skulls. And every day is Halloween.
I work. And when I'm done, I work. Sometimes I post on RI in between. I don't know what brings me here. It's like Close Encounters. I'm shaping my mashed potatoes into devil's tower.
I'm just one person, breathing on one small planet, sitting cross-legged in one small room, posting on one message board. I'm not history's hidden reactor."

Taken in full, content and style, that's me. And yet, I consciously decide to adopt a moral code that cares. Sometimes. I take care of people who need help, every day, it's my job. I want to protect the weak, the soft, the broken, the little things in life. Why is that? Kropotkin's 'mutual aid as an evolutionary force,' is a nice idea, but I think it's a choice I make of my own free will.

So I've been thinking about it today. You know, what is free will. I think it may be something that anyone can have, but it takes hard work to create it. Everyone isn't born with it, in spite of what the philosophers might say.

Anyway, I know how Atlantis fell. In my surreal sci-fi stories we traveled back, and Eugene sank it with a casual shrug.

[tapitsbo]

Giving everyone a seat at the table is a good shortcut to getting a bigger consensus

I think we can both see that some benefit from the suspicions different coalitions have for each other which fuel their distrust of recognizing each other

things aren't going to stay frozen in the arrangement they were in this election

[slomo]

Giving everyone a seat at the table is a good shortcut to getting a bigger consensus

This has to be repeated as often as possible.

[tapitsbo]

I think it's an attitude many people start off with but lose when they don't feel it's extended to them in return

obviously in real life everything's always in flux and nothing is perfectly balanced

I feel Trump-like and Clinton-like coalitions are both going to melt away... I hope they will

[dada]

I think it's an attitude many people start off with but lose when they don't feel it's extended to them in return

Whose table is it? Who is throwing this party? No one is given a seat at the table, these seats are bought and paid for, one way or another.

If I'm going to sit at the table, there's going to be trouble. Is that okay with the consensus? Or should I do everyone a favor a stay out of it. I can do that, too. Your wish is my command.

[JackRiddler]

Giving everyone a seat at the table is a good shortcut to getting a bigger consensus

This has to be repeated as often as possible.

If you define yourself as "white" first, and think "white" has an interest unto its own (which it does, but only through the act of definition), then no, you don't have any particular place at a table that's going to bring anything positive to the "consensus" or the situation. Abandon that and become a human being again, and you certainly do.

[slomo]

Jack, has it ever crossed your mind that a large number of people are not fixed in their emotional commitments, and may be open to changing their positions once you've engaged with them in an open and empathetic manner? Of course, not everybody, some people are indeed committed to being assholes. But to the extent that you actually do need, you know, white males to win elections (at least presently), it might actually be good to suspend your contempt for some individuals' stated identities and try to figure out what you have in common with them, rather than looking for differences that separate you.

As a gay guy, I've actually had to do that quite a bit throughout my life, and I have found it to be a successful strategy in getting along with people in the outside world.

[JackRiddler]

Jack, has it ever crossed your mind that a large number of people are not fixed in their emotional commitments, and may be open to changing their positions once you've engaged with them in an open and empathetic manner?

I work on that every day in the real world. Sometimes it even works back on me, and I'm the one who changes.

The Internet does not work this way, you may have noticed. Right now it's a coordinated war on even the ideal of truth.

But to the extent that you actually do need, you know, white males to win elections (at least presently)

Not necessarily the ones who demand that they be catered to as "white males," or who believe themselves to have been victimized specifically as members of that category. If they want to figure out class and how their "identity" is used to sic them on people even more unlucky than they, who are not just suffering the same class problem but have been identified as not-white-male on top of that, that's a start.

try to figure out what you have in common with them

Lots of things. One would be the white male privilege they pretend doesn't exist. I get to walk past checkpoints and talk my way into venues and get called Mr. WhatcanIdoforyou all the time. When I speak, what I say is rarely interpreted as an emotional outburst. People don't think they can roll over me in conversation. People don't jump away from me if they see me suddenly on the street, unless I'm on a bike. The difference is I don't interpret any of this as my victimization by a non-white-male society.

A second thing in common would be a low-grade professional con-man and bully as president of all of us. The difference here is that it's thanks to their inability to figure out the emotionally obvious. "Emotional intelligence" apparently is something to demand of those who have enough of it to read and decipher Trump (an easy task, a handy majority) rather than those who can't or won't. (The "won't" is a pretty big portion who see the show for what it is and either enjoy it perversely or figure it's in their material interest as predators to support it. A lot of the latter in New York, where you only have the Trump core support, without the penumbra of patsies I'm supposed to not think of as patsies. The faster they figure out they're patsies, the better.)

rather than looking for differences that separate you.

If said differences figuratively punch me in the face, I'm not necessarily "looking."

As a gay guy, I've actually had to do that quite a bit throughout my life, and I have found it to be a successful strategy in getting along with people in the outside world.

Sure. Emphasis mine.

.