Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.
Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.
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Notes -
Re: the FC thing—that was mostly relevant as a reminder that if that sentiment was broadly shared here, then I should not put my energy into building this space. If the zeitgeist of a space is “we don’t even want to live in a country with you,” it sure isn’t the sort of space I want to put my creative energy into.
As for the map—the map is that I spend the overwhelming majority of my politically relevant time online pushing against prog excesses, I have never self-identified as one and continue not to, and at this point I literally work for a law firm that is overtly anti-prog, but due to a few high-level traits, a loud subset of people cannot help but map me into that category regardless. The map is that after years of watching you and yours form overtly and obviously incorrect models of who I am and what I do, then cling to them after you should very well know better, I prefer to spend my time engaging with people who don’t do that. The broader map is that some form of this sentiment, spread over a hundred excellent former regulars here, is why there are a hundred excellent former regulars here, and the problem is not with them.
Well, it all feels a bit out of left field to me. I never asked for putting your creative energy into here, and where you decide to put it doesn't even require justification.
I thought we were talking about the general sense of betrayal you feel with this community, and I thought this was supposed to be an example of what makes you feel this way. If it isn't - my bad. If it is - I have trouble seeing anything hurtful about that statement. It's normal for people to live in a country where there fundamental values are respected. I'm pretty sure you expressed such a sentiment yourself.
You don't think you might be reading just a little bit too much into a single word? I never attributed the excesses of progressivism to you, or dismissed your work against them. It was a shorthand, and it's a relative term, and I distinctly remember you playing it for a joke, that a gay furry is the most conservative person at your law school. Is it really so wild you still look progressive to someone from a different background?
It is a reflection of that sense of betrayal. I'm not sure what's odd about feeling betrayed by a large chunk of your online community rallying behind the idea that they don't want to share a country with you. That you would struggle to understand it is a bit baffling.
Like, c'mon: "I don't even want to live in a group of hundreds of millions of people that includes both me and you. Your ideals disgust me on a fundamental level. But hey, now that you've broken out, where's the promotion for us hometown lads?" Surely you can see why I'd find that a bit rich. You cannot at once reject someone as unworthy to share a polis with you and expect them to treat your companionship as meaningful.
The friend-enemy distinction matters. Put bluntly, I see you personally as wanting to put me on the enemy side of the friend-enemy distinction, repeatedly defend that choice, and then post in resentment about a lack of friendship resulting from that. Choose one.
I don't at all think I'm reading too much into a single word, no. It's obnoxious for people to treat me as a representative of a coalition that rejects me and that I reject, and it is a specific coalition, not simply a relative term. Using it suggests neither understanding nor a wish to understand, and I find it much easier to simply build elsewhere than to bridge a determinedly unbridgeable gap.
Well again, I'm not struggling to understand, I just disagree.
No? I don't know what to tell you... You can find me as disgusting as you want, but If I find some interesting bit of info at your Substack, I'll drop a link to it when sharing it with others. If I forget to do so, and rake in a million views from it, I'll probably feel pretty shitty about it.
I don't really expect anything from how your treatment of my companionship. I'm just trying to figure out what your grievances are, and figure out what I can learn from them, and if I can improve. But this particular one... like I said I'm not sure on what grounds you're expecting anything more than "sorry to hear that, bro". Like I said I consider it 100% normal to want to live in a country that respects your fundamental values, so if you're going to get sufficiently values-diverse group together, you will inevitably end up with people not wanting to share a country with each other. It is again quite strange for me to see you insist on this, since like I said you expressed the same sentiment yourself, or at least I don't know how else to understand "I want to live in a culture where my family and I can live according to our values and build alongside people who share those values". Maybe there's supposed to be a difference between "country" and "culture", but no matter how I slice it, it sounds at most like the same thing with extra steps.
It matters when you're doing political activism. This place is very explicitly not a place for that, so I don't see the issue.
Quite frankly it's not even about friendship. I saw what you did as akin to meme accounts on Twitter reposting some webcomic or another, but diligently removing the artist's signature. The analogy doesn't quite fit since the post in question wasn't written here, but I can't help but parse the situation this way. It's not even that much of a big deal as far as I'm concerned, so I don't get why you insist on portraying me as making unreasonable demands.
If you want to tell me how it came off to you that's fair enough, but you can't tell me how I meant it.
That's a bit ironic, given the above.
Or, if we're looking to 2020:
Sorry, I'm trying to not to take out a bad mood and what I see as a repudiation of Trace's entire ethos on him, and I get the distinction TW's trying to move around ("I'm not going to write off the half of the country who supported him"). But it's hard to read this conversation and not see my (and I guess @drmanhattan16 's?) participation in TheSchism (and TW's twitter sphere) as part of the problem.
I want to live in a culture where I can build alongside people who share my values. That certainly does not preclude sharing that broader culture with others who have radically different values; I have not told my political opponents I don't wish to share a country with them, nor would I. I'm perfectly happy to share countries and forums alike with people I have wide-ranging disagreements with. Yes, it's horrifying when your tribe demonstrates adherence to values you didn't anticipate and that feel like a repudiation of your expectations! That doesn't entail wanting them to leave your country! The very comment you link emphasizes not writing them off and being happy to bury the hatchet.
It's risible to compare a sentiment of wanting to build alongside people who want to build alongside you to one of telling people you don't want them in your country. Nobody should struggle to tell the difference.
As for your participation in my spheres, I appreciate many of your contributions and am happy for people to participate where they'd like. Participate if you want, don't if you don't want. The whole point of planting a flag and letting people find it or not as they will is allowing people like you to decide whether what's under that flag is worthwhile enough to spend time around.
Yes, I've edited to note you find a big distinction between just feeling betrayed by people voting for someone you hate, and not wanting to share a country or be ruled by "Would they have killed him? From a probabilistic standpoint, I'd give it maybe 1-2% odds at most assuming he was passive/compliant."
There's an obvious difference, but as always the problem is and remains why the distinction matters. Clearly you care, and there's no small number of people who feel very strongly the exact opposite direction. I'm willing and happy to engage, to the extent that I'm allowed to engage, with questions like that at TheSchism if there's a chance of exploring the deeper disagreement.
This discussion, and that you find the current state of the subreddit a success, sounds very much like that's not the point of "the thoughtful discussion space" you hoped theschism would be.
"Share a country" and "be ruled by" are very different sentiments as well. The first is saying something very close to "I don't want you anywhere in any community I could conceivably be physically present in." It's a huge deal to say to someone and mean, particularly over a single hastily dashed out political stance, and it's not like he was saying it about specifically what I was trying to articulate about that scenario. He was saying it about me as a whole, and I think people absolutely should take it seriously if others say it to them. Be ruled by? Sure, nobody wants to be ruled by those they have deep-running disagreements with. That's not the same as sharing a country.
Crucially to the point here: a discussion space like this is much smaller and more personal than a country. If people in a small discussion space can't abide the idea of so much as sharing a country with you, it would be madness to put effort into sharing anything smaller than that with them. If someone both doesn't want to share a country with me and wants to write aiming to persuade others that they shouldn't, either, there's no turning around with a "but we're still cool, right?"
No. Words have meaning. That's about as emphatic a denunciation as someone can provide. If you do not want to share so much as a country with me, then you will at most be someone I occasionally argue with on the internet--nothing more--and my commentary about you will reflect that.
I think people should take it seriously when those on a pathway to a position of power suggest people should -- just morally, not legally -- accept a couple percentage point risks of death rather than be capable of defending themselves against an illegal assault, and accept ejection from public fora before either.
Yeah, I'd gotten the feeling that's how things were going. I'd hoped for a different answer to the naive experiment, but if the answer is "The friend-enemy distinction matters", Litany of Tarski go.
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