191–200 of 219 posts
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What's gonna happen when having social media accounts in good standing is required to open a bank account, or take a loan or get an insurance?
You're getting downvoted here, but at border crossings often you'll be asked for social media access. I don't think it's that far off the mark.
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I live in the States but wasn't raised here. One of the things you might not know is that unless you live in a middle east or China, right of center is left in the States.
What has happened in western countries but most dramatically in North America is that "left" vs "right" has been transformed from a strong disagreement about management of the economy to a strong disagreement about how to manage the culture . This is because in the US especially the "left" in the traditional socialist sense -- and its allies in the union movement and among students and academia -- have lost the class…
Contemporary Pope would probably be horrified if someone suggested to him to initiate a crusade against the unbelievers. The combination of Christianity and politics has shifted over time, there is much less hard force and much more sentimentality involved.
But that does not mean that Crusaders weren't true Christians while Francis I. is, or vice versa.
The traditional left is gone because its proponents died out, but before they died, they introduced the young wokesters into their parties. The shift from blue collar workers to academia took decades to complete and there is a clear continuity in the process. So I think the label still fits, only the relevant institutions changed their priorities.
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Wait where do you have to "demonstrate your committment to the polical cause of the moment" to apply to college
On the sections for extracurricular activities, volunteering, etc. where you try to make yourself look saintly. Just guessing, but six months volunteering at a homeless shelter for refugees will probably help your admissions more than six months volunteering to catalogue 19th century clogs at a museum.
Youtube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0Yo5NdrVto
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The early US had many people of the opinion that black people were inferior, more akin to animals than humans. Do you think that led to anyone not getting food or housing, or to anyone living in poverty?
Indeed, and in that time people having the opinion that black people should be free would have been considered to have “wrong” and “dangerous” opinions that would cause great damage to society. Would we be better off today if those in power then had been able to silence unpopular opinions?
They definitely could, it just didn't matter because people spoke up anyway.
Social media has massively amplified the penalty for making a mistake or offhand remark. People used to make tasteless jokes all the time and it was treated as it was, just a joke and life continued. Now anything out of the pale that catches the attention of some sort of influencer spells doom. Anyone caught at a bad moment on camera is pilloried, made out to be the anti christ and have people actively seeking out th…
And the worst is kids. If you think you can go off track and say dumb things as an adult, think of the 14yo self. I thank God I was a teenager before the modern internet. There is no forgiveness. The doors of college education can be shut on a whim for a bad joke. Where and when I grew up, your political opinion was irrelevant to your college admission. You didn't have to demonstrate your committment to the polical c…
This is a typical witch hunt based on insecurity. At least academics should have enough self reflection to question their behavior, but they don't and they are the worst offenders here. And some of them even say they want to display leadership. What a sad joke...
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And the worst is kids. If you think you can go off track and say dumb things as an adult, think of the 14yo self. I thank God I was a teenager before the modern internet. There is no forgiveness. The doors of college education can be shut on a whim for a bad joke. Where and when I grew up, your political opinion was irrelevant to your college admission. You didn't have to demonstrate your committment to the polical c…
> Where and when I grew up, your political opinion was irrelevant to your college admission. You didn't have to demonstrate your committment to the polical cause of the moment to apply. And... is this the case today? Do universities exclude your application or scrutinise your political beliefs?
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> Let's not pretend this is new Let's not pretend the scale of the phenomenon today and mass surveillance capacity of today plus mass exposure and permanent public record of social media, web forums, even public spaces and events (e.g. with someone recording a video) is in any way comparable to the McCarthy era. Or the the "offenses" people get social-mob-attacked, pilloried, and fired are in any way comparable to th…
Most of the people I'm seeing get actually cancelled are... being considered "an enemy of the state working to overthrow the government". I'm also seeing a lot of base-rate fallacy and availability bias issues (surprisingly, from many of the same people who complain about other people falling prey to the base rate fallacy w.r.t. Covid). That you can think of a few instances where people were loudly pilloried for, say…
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> Every year unchanged is a lucky coin toss. But every year changed may be as well. For example the November-revolution in Russia. There are numerous examples that change was for the worse, especially for the masses. And the Chinese or Roman empires outperformed any other quickly changing empire by far.
Did they? As far as i remember, the chinese empire was toppled by a small fast changing merchant nation on a island half way around the world. Beginning a hundred years were it was trampled by repeatedly including by another island nation nearby. The roman empire died the strangest death of all, it created such a tremendous underclass stagnant in misery (slaves, woman, all non-citizens) that a religion could basicall…
China is on its way to become a superpower again. One could argue that the last 150 years are merely a temporary dip.
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Thank you for the post. I can hear the frustration in your writing. Or perhaps, it's my own frustration that I'm projecting on to you. More and more, I'm wondering about the proposition that the "left vs right" battle we (broadly) tend to engage in is just a bunch of bullshit that we get caught up in. If there are puppet masters in the world, they surely are happy when we fight amongst ourselves.
>If there are puppet masters in the world, they surely are happy when we fight amongst ourselves. History has shown this to be true. I think the biggest problem is that a generation of both left and right wingers have not been taught proper civics and history of how this country has and continues to operate. Some of the left is rediscovering this history now and is fighting the right who either already know the histo…
I'm curious about your association of slavery with conservatism. It's doubly strange since the Republican party is the one that fought the Civil war and supported desegration while many Democrats fought against it. The Democrat party had a former KKK member not that long ago.
I'm not saying that this should be used to invalidate Democrats or dismiss them out of hand or anything like that. I just think it is strange that modern day people aligned with the Democratic Party speak with a great deal of certainty that conservatives are racist.
I've heard and read the arguments for the party switch and I find them to be a bit tortured personally. But, civilized people can disagree about all of this, and I don't want to drag us into a partisan battle either.
Also, my sense of your post is that you are using left and right more along the lines of European usage of left and right. I'm using them more along the lines of American politics. While Europeans might say, "you Americans hardly have any true left at all". I'm more likely to say, "Where are the true conservatives in Europe"