politics
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
view the rest of the comments
Isn't the process of refuting something properly by definition critical rather than uncritical? Not all ideas are equal by a long shot, I'm just saying someone shouldn't decide for us which ones we can engage with.
No individual human being has infinite time to dedicate to sifting through every insane conspiracy theory and terrible political theory that has ever been thunk. We, as a species, need to decide what we should and should not spend our limited time engaging with. Sometimes, that means listening to experts who have taken the time to study the subject in more detail than we will ever have time in our lives, and trusting their word on the matter.
For example, no one feels like they have to waste public time refuting the existence of aether (yet, anyway, though I'm sure the flat earthers will get around to it.) For another example, smart people who study history for a living identify several of key characteristics common to fascist political parties that look suuuuuper familiar to anyone looking at the modern day Republican party in the US.
We do not have infinite resources. Infinite time, infinite brain power, infinite public discourse. Just as it is widely recognized that it's fine to limit discussions of pro-anorexia groups for the public good, so too is it fine to limit the reach of harmful ideas like vaccine conspiracy theories, Neo-nazi recruitment of young people, whether or not people with this characteristic or that characteristic have equal rights and deserve life and freedom, climate change "debate"...
And some "ideas" that might not seem that harmful on their face should be suppressed when it is clear they are being deliberately used to lead people down paths toward much more harmful ideas for the profit of grifters. (Like Qanon and the Alt-Right YouTube pipeline)
It is ok for us to moderate what is said in public. We have always done this because it is necessary to a functioning, healthy society.
Yeah, this argument is getting at what's underlying my concern I think. There is a huge vacuum of trustworthy authority right now. It seems like institutions have been lighting themselves on fire left and right. This may be a problem that simply comes from the existence of the internet. 50 years ago everyone just trusted that Walter Cronkite was telling them the truth every evening, he was a big arbiter, likely because they didn't have any other sources of information the internet makes available. He may have been acting in good faith, he may have been parroting defense department talking points, who knows. Now we have a website to cater to every intellectual pretaliction. That isn't helpful to find definitive truth. Add to that, over and over we've found existing authorities to be completely self serving (e.g. the government lying about WMD in Iraq, CDC obfuscating it's funding of gain of function research early in the pandemic, recent revelations of perhaps long running corruption concern in the supreme court). Maybe that's because they've gotten worse, maybe they've always been like that and we didn't have enough information to notice it. So, like you said, all of this is happening and we no longer have arbiters to sift out this wheat from the chaff as it were. That's a huge problem.
So what's the solution? I certainly don't want Republicans to be removing books from their shelves because they deem them "harmful to the children" or whatever the fuck. But at the same time, I don't want self serving billionaires (the shitshow that twitter has become) or newly revealed corrupt institutions making those decisions for me either. So what's the solution?
I think right now it's basically an unsolved problem, with all of us just floating around to the sources that suit us best, allowing for the divides between us to absolutely explode in breadth and width (I have family that has strait faced told me that COVID was created and released on purpose to kill Republicans...shit like that). I know that I've struggled with who to "trust" consciously. And maybe that's the real difference between our perspectives is just that. Maybe that's what this all comes down to is that you don't trust American right wing institutions (rightfully) and I've lost faith in all of them. I don't know what the move is, but we need to figure something out fast.
The deluge of information is definitely a problem, and it's a problem that is exploited by bad actors (see: "firehose of falsehood" tactic explicitly endorsed by Russian intelligence that was used to great effect by Trump during his time as president)
I think A solution for the time being (perhaps not THE solution ultimately, but for now) is to adhere to quality evidence based whenever possible, which is something we definitely can review for ourselves. Vet and re-vet individual sources to determine which ones we can trust. And beyond that, go with a consensus. There will always be that one expert who disagrees with the majority on any issue no matter what, but if the general consensus is in a certain direction, then that's the way we should try to go
Yeah, I guess that's just more responsibility on us as individuals...hurray -_-
Thanks for engaging with me on this, I feel like it did clarify some things in my mind just having to justify myself. I appreciate. I hope I see you out there again Beltalowda.🖖
Dude, you're the first person to get the reference!
Taki, beratna. Be well.