I've got to say, it was funny peeking into the American Politics thread and seeing fascists desperately try to argue that hating on underprivileged people and barring them from their country was some sort of legitimate policy and not a recipe for disaster, like fascism has invariably always been and always will be. Why are we tolerating these losers, again?
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RB Political Discussion Meta Thread
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Because we aren't run by stupid cowards like you who spew out verbal sewage filled with nothing but emotional manipulation and buzzwords in response to a trigger stimulus without providing any argument, especially when the very thread is open, and when there are good arguments to be made.
--- insulting Anskiy Now that I most likely successfully flipped your switches, and chances are your responses won't amount to much more than more of the same complaints without substance (or empty labelmongering), I'm going to turn my virtual back to you and do the equivalent of talking behind your back, talking to an audience, which is just as virtual by the way, explaining to "them" instead of you. This accomplishes two things. First, now your response is pre-empted and potentially already ridiculed, and at the same time you are challenged to actually back up your claims, "develop your points", which would be a thousand times better than what you just wrote above. Second is the compounding psychological effect that - I expect - will make you more likely to read what I write, actually process it, and respond to it in depth rather than just mentally shut down from perceived hostility, which I expect you to be drilled to do. It is an automatic process and in order to have a functional discussion it must be overcome, which is difficult. Hence these whole three paragraphs of spiel. Hope you enjoy by the way. Or got pissed. Either works really. Okay, back to the audience, the reader, who now had to endure the previous three paragraphs, I'll finally develop and engage the user Anskiy's mess. --- "underprivileged" people and practising what you preach. Right at the start we have "fascists" promote hating "underprivileged people". Does he mean the drug cartels? Maybe the groups that got guaranteed quota slots without any merit through various initiatives causing situations where men from the majority ("white") population had the longest and worst time seeking jobs, or even had to train their "underprivileged" replacements before getting fired? He could be a CIA agent working on arming these people for all we know! Not so fun when the discourse is flipped on it's head. It's also a surefire recipe to talk past each other effectively "othering" each other. It's the most basic level of fascist tactics by the way, used by 30s nazi germany, formalized by Göbbels even. But why then does he need to resort to fasicst tactics if he is so against fascism? --- Migrants = helots, Trump = krupteia A not fascist, and also not cowardly move would be direct confrontation, and direct engagement of topics and people at hand. For example the cramped conditions of "outsourced concentration camps" in El Salvador, that's easy to criticize sending people there, especially as mistakes (or "mistakes", you never know) happen. One can also criticize the migration response as aimed mainly at furthering the exploitation of the remainder migrant population, to essentially cow them into submission by doing a "decimation" by deportation, much akin to a more "civilized" form of Spartan krupteia, which it's eeriely reminiscent of. Of course it's also necessary to deal with the debt of citizenship and visa programs by the "other side". In fact it can be argued that these modern helots - not slaves but neither citizens, often stuck in a serf-like status thanks to not coming through the proper procedure, which may or may not exist in a sufficient capacity - are meant to be a beatstick, something to bludgeon each other with, while the landowners, industrialists, and other "modern nobility" benefit from their cheap labor regardless of who is in the oval office. In fact, to completely flip it on it's back, one can argue for more visa'd migrants (slightly better status than the undocumented helots), and still be utterly shitty and obvious about it being about getting more underpaid and dependent labor, such as the case of Elon Musk arguing for more "H1B" visas for IT. --- Direct engagement Now, as I mentioned the non-coward way would be direct engagement, where he could even make valid and sensible points! (from my point of view anyways) For example, when has anything been accomplished in the political discussion thread? When was the last time people just got to agree, instead of what we have now? That this is a goalpost-moving "b..but.but.but what about" gotcha-seeking mess where people talk past each other, occasionally Bing comes in and blows up, or charr goes on Schrödinger's Drugs (he is either on drugs and he should stop, or he's not on drugs and he should get some ASAP). Okay this is an exaggeration but you, the reader, should be able to get what I'm illustrating here. As for engaging who, there are already Charr and Bing, who occasionally come over to explode, and me, who occasionally comes over to explode just in a less spectacular fashion, but from a hungarian perspective. For the "domestic" users, there are Greenline and I think Zed-F in team republican, the latter probably still traumatized from playing arctic blast in Sullla's Nature's Cabal team (or I'm just projecting my own fear of playing another low-damage build here). T-hawk who I THOUGHT was in team republican but is actually very sensibly in team T-hawk. Darreljs from team CIA because I'm not letting that first impression go. --- MJMD And finally MJMD, who I very much like outside of politics, gained respect for lately in politics, but who is also stuck in me as the closest thing to "Fascism with a human face". Now I view this word, which is a big boo-boo, very differently. To me, Fascism is the embodiment of the ideal that: ' "our view" is so superior to the "other's view" (see the othering) that we have the right to dictate how other countries are run, and by who'. It is also that many atrocities can be relativized through this lens ("We bombed our own aid worker and a bunch of children but its OK because we tried to target terrorists"* and literally nobody got punished for it, some "justice" system you got there!) so it's in my eyes a dangerous viewpoint to have, because it sets people up for a nasty and very slippery slope. At the same time, I have to be fair to MJMD, as he's been often hit, sometimes by me, by these topics brought up in an off-topic fashion and he was aiming to steer back to the topic. He's also been nothing if not patient, as can be seen from the pages upon pages of proper, tedious engagement with charr (which Anskiy can look at for inspiration on how to take part in a discussion). --- *MJMD NEVER called the bombing OK (May 1st, 2025, 23:15)Anskiy Wrote: I've got to say, it was funny peeking into the American Politics thread and seeing fascists desperately try to argue that hating on underprivileged people and barring them from their country was some sort of legitimate policy and not a recipe for disaster, like fascism has invariably always been and always will be. Why are we tolerating these losers, again? Disclaimer : Everything in this post is meant in a descriptive manner, not an insulting one, if you disagree with me fine but in no way do I intend to discuss why I label some things in a certain way. It's just an attempt at explaining the current RB politics situation to Anskiy. Basically, at the beginning of the political discussions on this forum it became clear that some of the most invested posters in those threads were proto-fascists. Some of whom were also respected members of the community. So as to not create a split in one of the last few remaining forums like this one, some thought about maybe closing the politics thread, but eventually it was allowed in its own subforum that people who didn't like the tone of the thread could avoid easily. It has been clear from then that there would be no serious moderation (note that there aren't a whole lot of moderators on this site, they do it well but they couldn't take on that job in addition to the rest, also they didn't all agree on how to moderate the politics thread). So what we get is a thread where sometimes the discussion is ok, and sometimes the fascists come by very regularly to spout racist stuff like "people from that area of the world/with those views are subhuman", and the less aggressive ones come at their aid and claim that criticizing fascism is the real fascism. I think some of the more interesting posters have been burned out of posting in the politics thread by the tone and content of some people, which means it's becoming less and less interesting generally. Which is a shame, some people had some interesting things to say. But there doesn't seem to be a good cure to it, so maybe we should just let go of the idea of having an engaging RB politics thread.
May 2nd, 2025, 08:16
(This post was last modified: May 2nd, 2025, 08:16 by BING_XI_LAO.)
Would it even be a real politics discussion thread if people weren't invoking very different moral frames and insulting each other as a result? Maybe you can have a discussion where people mostly agree, but it sounds like an awful, even nauseating experience.
It's been clear for years that there is no moderating that thread for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is that nobody wants to do it. So that thread is and will continue to be mostly unmoderated. That leaves just two choices.
1) We kill the thread and stop allowing politics on this forum 2) It continues being virtually anything-goes, which means it will regularly be nasty. I have been in favor of #1 for a long time, but it's clear I'm firmly outvoted. So it will continue to be #2 barring a ton of support for #1 materializing from nowhere. My suggestion is if you don't like that, stop clicking on the thread. This is what I do. I don't want to know about some of your insane opinions. If you would like an admin to ban you from this subforum so that you don't see the thread, that can be done. (May 2nd, 2025, 08:26)scooter Wrote: It's been clear for years that there is no moderating that thread for a bunch of reasons, not the least of which is that nobody wants to do it. So that thread is and will continue to be mostly unmoderated. That leaves just two choices. I was not at #1 six months ago, but am now. |
