It is only possible as long as one side is able to have civil discourse, without labeling/demonizing/name calling and violently attacking their opponents. It’s quite hard to have a debate when people’s views are not only completely entrenched, they are simply not willing to give respect at all.
small correction; it's only possible if both sides are capable and willing to set aside heated rhetoric. At this point in time, I honestly question if any of the sides are capable of honest engagement.
I think civil discourse is possible if reasonable debate is allowed. Unfortunately, for one side, it appears that reason itself is problematic for them and they refuse it.
That can describe both the left and the right. I'd be very surprised if you weren't alluding to SJWs; but at the same time you're describing Qanon folks as well.
...and that's why we can't have discourse. No one can agree on what constitutes "reasonable debate".
Well, you’re conflating a fringe movement of radical conspiracy theorists with the average person who doesn’t go along with the woke agenda. That in itself is an example of what I’m talking about.
The “woke agenda” is a mainstream political shorthand. But I find it telling that you were able to infer that I was speaking about the left when I mentioned opposition to reason.
"woke agenda" is not a mainstream political term, and the fact you state it is demonstrates both your own position (to the far right) and inability to step outside of that viewpoint and discuss issues from a genuinely detached viewpoint.
I hope that, like me, you enjoy the rest of your day.
Well, it’s a rather convenient shorthand to describe the set of views and positions (largely emotive and inconsistent) that characterize leftist thinking.
But that's a large part of the problem, reducing everything to a simplistic "left-vs-right" dichotomy – everything is either "left" or "right", and everyone who is good/sane/rational/decent/etc belongs to one of them and everyone who belongs to the other is irrational/insane/wicked/etc
Yeah, IMO "left" and "right" are just two different flavors of neo-liberalism factioned off like sports teams; and the mentality and self-awareness of those who back either one tend to be similar in nature to the point of being indistinguishable.
If someone is pro-war (to any degree), anti-worker/union or pro-capitalism I have a hard time taking them serious as a leftist; that's more of a liberal bag.
Complaints about "woke"/"wokeness" aren't confined to one part of the political spectrum. Many present the term as a "right-wing talking point" – but if you go looking for it, you can find Marxists invoking the term critically too (for example, the noted African-American Marxist Adolph L. Reed Jr.)
I think it is an attempt to name a real phenomenon – a particular strand of left-of-centre thought, with a great deal of contemporary influence, which (among other distinctive traits) foregrounds issues of race and gender/sexuality, in opposition to the classic Marxist emphasis on economic class as the "underlying cause" of all those other issues. If you don't want to call it "wokeness" – fine then, what should we call it?
My personal suggestion would be to go back to what it was called when I was a kid; "knee-jerk". "knee jerk" doesn't have a specific axis connotation (unlike "woke" which refers explicitly to progressive issues). It was primarily aimed at (knee jerk) liberals but could easily be aimed at reactionaries without any change of meaning.
I asked what we should call "a particular strand of left-of-centre thought, with a great deal of contemporary influence". Your answer ("knee-jerk" which "doesn't have a specific axis connotation") isn't actually answering the question I was asking, because a term intended to apply to people with widely differing ideologies (obviously) isn't appropriate as a label for one particular contemporary ideological stream.
I misunderstood your intent -I thought the idea was to suggest a term which could be applied to the True Believer regardless of ideology. I didn't realize you simply wanted another phrase you could sling at the left.
You absolutely have misunderstood my intent – I was asking for a descriptive term for a particular current of contemporary left-leaning thought, to replace a term which has admittedly become rather pejorative in connotation – yet you seem to misunderstand me as looking for another pejorative instead. And "woke" is still not exclusively pejorative–it is not hard to find people calling themselves "proudly woke"–maybe much of that's ironic, or "reclaiming"; but couldn't also some of it be in homage to, or even in continuity with, its origin as a positive self-descriptor? And not all critical invocations of "woke" are fairly labelled as "pejorative"–such as when Reed criticises "woke" from a Marxist perspective. [0]
Surely it is valuable to find descriptive terminology for different ideological currents – across the totality of the political spectrum? The traditional Marxist answer is "yes" – followed up with an analysis of the endlessly diverse ways in which those various currents support class interests, which is what Reed presents for "woke".
Just because he is my son doesn't give me the right to tell him what he can do with his body. I would support him any way I could, but I would not force him to do anything. Criminalising drugs is using force to solve a mental health issue.
I've known people addicted to drugs, btw, mostly legal. I wouldn't ban their drugs either.
Well, hey, if you’re willing to die on that hill, and feed your only child to the machine on principle, then I guess there’s nothing I can say that would change your mind. Personally, I think there is nothing good that can come from recreational heroin or methamphetamine. They are not only hurting themselves - the cost to society is massive. And while they may choose to do it - they can’t choose to stop.
The only machine here is the legal machine that makes criminals out of ordinary people, and makes cops and politicians corrupt.
The cost to society is mostly caused by the criminalisation, not the drugs. And many drug users do stop eventually. Give them access to clean drugs and mental health support and more will.
If you want to prevent people dying of overdoses, then stopping people from starting would achieve that. “Decriminalization” is about treating the symptoms rather than the problem.
The thing that is, macroeconomic policy is already basically solved. It’s been understood for hundreds of years. But the lobbyists have succeeded in pumping misinformation and poisoning minds for so long that many factual untruths are blindly accepted by a large chunk of the population.
This size will have microscopic features! There is probably a balance between ease of scanning/technological sophistication required to see the pages, cost of etching, and the number of plates overall.
The Long Now Foundation has extensively studied the language loss problem and arrived at a fairly elegant set of solutions.
Looks like people misinterpreted my point. It’s not the right to sell illegal items. It’s a right to sell your product without being compelled to do anything else from a “fairness” standpoint. That cripples productivity and innovation in the long term.
Here (Canada) our nuclear power plants produce tritium as a byproduct.
This can be used to "boost" nuclear weapons. Should Ontario Hydro be allowed to sell this in the open market? It goes for ~$30,000/gram so Hydro would LOVE to be able to sell it.
What about poisons? They have no real use besides killing others, should they be available in your local walmart?
DDT, should we bring this back?
You see the point?
There is no "right to sell whatever you want" and there never will be one.
I'd love to have a glowing vial of tritium and I cannot find them on Amazon. The one site I can find says that it won't ship to the US without proof of an NRC license.
Actually, your comment is foolish. Allowing companies to not sell specialist tools to third party repair persons is not the same as selling weapons grade plutonium.
Rights come with responsibilities, which are not set in stone. As we learn about the impacts of a certain activity our moral expectations evolve. And so we change the conditions that are required to assert that right.
where in the world you can sell whatever you want? As an example check cars, not only you have a, lot of safety stuff you need to implement, you also are forced to use the generic fuel,oils and are forced to let others repaird the cars. No DRM on lights,mirrors,windshields etc.
