mickthinks wrote: ↑Tue Oct 03, 2023 8:57 pm
You seem to me to be in two contradictory minds: you talk like a centrist of conversations and discussions and your desire to stimulate them, and at the same time you talk like an extremist of conflict and defeating the other side. You cannot be both. You must choose one or the other, and I'd be interested to know which it is to be.
So as VDH said “we” have to become immune to “your” moral-based critiques
What has the right got against crtiticism based on morals? If the critiques are indeed faulty, by all means identify and explain what you see as their faults. Hanson sounds like his party has a problem with morals and criticism
per se. To me that smacks of fascism.
First, I do hold to a centrist position. Second, it is true, or a case can be made for it, that the Overton Window shifted and that centrism has now been made to seem like extremism. But this must be understood in a number of ways: the country, through social engineering (a difficult and involved topic I admit) has been significantly -- what is the word? --
altered.
All of a sudden (this is my impression) the radicalism that had been in the works for decades manifested itself as
ultra-apparent. I could name the areas.
It has taken many people unawares. But now they
react. But it is a slow turning of the tide. It has taken a few years even to get started.
You are right in a sense through not because I have a contradictory mind. I value centrism, that is true, but my opponent (a radical régime -- and I believe I can talk coherently about that) does not play by fair rules. It does not want compromise. Compromise is not part of its larger strategy.
Now that I recognize this, or believe that I do, I am now of the mind that I cannot work with these people. This is more or less what VDH said and what TC seems to also suggest. What is the solution then? That is, right now, up in the air.
But don't blame me for these conditions. I simply describe them.
at the same time you talk like an extremist of conflict and defeating the other side
What I say, or begin to propose if you wish, is that I now see a point where negotiation is not possible. And this is what TC and VDH broached in their talk, Again, do not blame me. What I am trying to point out is that this is what things are coming to. One significant sector of the US has got fed up with another sector. The conflict is ideological.
Let me mention one aspect: once the political régime in power begins to use lawfare to attempt to stop a political opponent from regaining power, and the
political nature of the effort is
obvious, at that point you must realize that you are not dealing with people who are fighting fair. It is really almost that simple. They have become the danger they say they fight against.
And I can say "I have a generally centrist position" but it has been made impossible to hold to that position because those on a farther, radical side have made centrism an impossibility.
So really I am suggesting the beginning of far more significant divisions in the body-politic.
What has the right got against crtiticism based on morals?
The Left and the Progressive set always couch their (bad) arguments in moral terms. For example here, with you. You are beginning to suggest that because I have the ideas I do that it "smacks of fascism". But that is what the Left always says! Whoever differs from them is, ipso facto, a fascist. And all the same negative terms are used underhandedly to establish moral blame.
What I try to point out is that the Right that is now developing, but really it has incorporated many views that were traditionally of the Left, is becoming immune to those pseudo-moral accusations. And is reestablishing itself within moral arguments that it believes are more genuine.
I can tell you that it is in this area that I have myself been working (and struggling) for many years. Left-Progressive politics, and certainly those what are bent to Socialism, always couch their assertions about themselves in moral terms. But they are
immoral. However, and with that said, I do recognize competing moral sets. (But I agree overall with IC's assessments of Socialism and Communism -- these lead to wicked results).
Hanson sounds like his party has a problem with morals and criticism per se.
I've read and watched him quite a bit and, no, I do not share your view.
To me that smacks of fascism.
Generally speaking, for those on the Progressive Left, anyone who does not share their value-sets automatically gets located in that zone. It is almost a meaningless term though. The ultra-scare-word.
