June 7, 2012

Well, I do believe

you have hit a new high in low when it comes to sectarian demagoguery.

When you characterize our political opponents as following a faith that emphasizes "responsibility to the self", you are accusing them of Sociopathy. And when you attribute that sociopathy to their religion, you are calling them crazy because they believe something other than you. That is a particularly ugly and pernicious mixture of politics and religion that has been used by demagogues and tyrants for thousands of years. Shit like that is exactly what used to get people burned alive.

Republicans are not crazy, Charles. They are not evil. They are human beings who happen to have different political objectives than us. Their "religion", no matter how you care to characterize it, is not so diametrically opposed to the all encompassing goodness you claim to believe that it can be so easily dismissed and relegated to your narrowly narcissistic judgementalism. Your effort to attach your political objectives to your faith lead you to characterize your political opponents as mentally defective as surely as any Social Darwinist.

You are trading on the worst possible interpretation of conservative ideology and setting it against the best possible interpretation of liberal ideology to curry favor with liberals. Such pandering is in itself distasteful, but when you attach that kind of manipulative behavior to religion, of which you are an outspoken proponent and in which you are an active player, you are engaging in a Social Darwinist competition for religious domination. You are trying to leverage religion to gain political power.

Thankfully, this is just a political message board and the influence of something like this ugly piece of shit is almost nil beyond the outrage it inspires in those that read it here. You should be ashamed of yourself for such pernicious drivel.

June 6, 2012

Well

since you are unwilling to offer a starting point, I'll start. (Since I'm at a wifi hotspot with a laptop right now. I hate typing one fingered on a phone)

So here is the rule that defines the line between solicitous and sexist behavior: Don't be condescending. That's it. That is as close as we can get in any meaningful way to defining "benevolent sexism".

Condescension depends on the relationship between the participants in a given interaction regardless of its nature or the gender of the participants. Among the myriad variables that establish the context of the relationship, gender is only one. The people most able to tell if one is condescending are the participants themselves or perhaps those present at the interaction and who have a relationship with the participants.

It is certainly possible to be condescending in a gender specific way, and there is nothing benevolent about it. Whether or not one is being solicitous or insulting again depends on an evaluation of the person in question in the context of the interaction. The real question to ask is why would anyone even allude to something that might be mistaken for an a priori definition of "benevolent sexism"? Seeing the Unseen alludes to an empirical definition of the phenomena (seeing is believing) when it is little more than an exhortation to examine our feelings. The entire study piles all sorts and kinds of statistical analysis on top of the emotional impressions of undergraduate students. It gives the illusion of scientific analysis, when such feelings cannot be measured in any empirical way. Our feelings about another or some aspect of them, including their gender, determine whether or not we intend condescension. The other half of that equation is how our feelings are interpreted by the object of our solicitations. The context of the interaction is established by how we understand our feelings and how clearly others understand them. Such questions are better understood, and answered, with literature than science.

June 5, 2012

The "gunnies" have already won.

I don't think I've seen the slightest authentic concern for people above ideologecal purity, much less a cogent argument, from the anti gun contingent since I've been here. Most of DU thinks it's a right wing troll haven, and a good case can be made for that attitude. It also attracts ideologues on the left more concerned with thought crime than social justice.

Guns, like religion, will always be on the reactionary fringe. One value of discussing guns proper would be to educate others who are so unfamiliar with guns they can't intelligently discuss the issue. It also might help ground group discussion in reality and control the tendency toward emotional defense of ideological purity and the inevitable witch hunts that ensue.

Of course it might also attract a lot more right wing disruptors as well.

June 2, 2012

Just offhand...

First, Americans must shed the notion that the battle against violent crime has been won.

That's why they're buying all those guns.

Second, an alliance must be forged with gun owners.

Especially those who vote Democratic.

Random quotes:
I don't believe gun owners have rights.
Sarah Brady
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/sarah_brady.html#RCvY4EUPMeAe3WXS.99

Our main agenda is to have ALL guns banned. We must use whatever means possible. It doesn't matter if you have to distort facts or even lie. Our task of creating a socialist America can only succeed when those who would resist us have been totally disarmed.
Sarah Brady
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/sarah_brady.html#RCvY4EUPMeAe3WXS.99

Unless they're a fugitive or a felon, or adjudicated mentally ill, we're not against them buying guns at all.
Sarah Brady
Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/sarah_brady.html#RCvY4EUPMeAe3WXS.99

For target shooting, that's okay. Get a license and go to the range. For defense of the home, that's why we have police departments.
-James Brady


Those took about two minutes. It's hard to form an alliance when you can so easily find people saying things like that.

Finally, the NRA has successfully argued that gun-control laws are ineffective while it also works to ensure there is little to no government funding for scientific research on the effectiveness of gun-control measures.

Moot point. Nobody cares what the odds are. They know the bookies in the ivory towers and the halls of power won't be there to help them if they get assaulted, even if the odds are slim. Any politician that campaigns on the promise that "You probably won't get assaulted, so you don't need a gun", will get a one way bus ticket to the political wilderness. And he will get on the bus sounding exactly like the liberal, elitist, academic, arrogant mandarin the Republicans have accused him of being all along.