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I echo @Chrisprattalpharaptr’s half-bemused, half-despairing incredulity at the fact that you apparently genuinely think that MAGA isn’t an identitarian movement.
‘Remove the log from your own eye’, indeed.
I suppose you can make the case that they are "identitarian" in some vague abstract sense, but you're just not going to find the kind of racist screeds published by MAGA that routinely get published by progressive institutions. Or if I'm wrong feel free to enlighten me, but you seem like the one with the log in the eye.
Give me the worst such screed you can find, and I guarantee you that I can give you a MAGA screed that’s just as bad, if not worse.
Okay, let's start with something basic. Here's 3 day training that Lockheed Martin executives were sent to, where they were asked to connect the term "white men" with terms like "old, racist, privileged, anti-women, angry, Aryan Nation, KKK, Founding fathers, guns, guilty, can’t jump.". Or here's a chart by the Smithsonian that's so anti-white that it somehow managed to flip over into being racist against non-whites.
Sure, that’s a great example of bizarre double-standards racism, but…
Entities like Lockheed are not publishing racist screeds, progressive or otherwise. They are subscribing to them. The publishers are usually small, interchangeable consultants. In aggregate, they might count as an institution; individually, they’re effectively free to dance on the bleeding edge.
Lockheed and friends want that +1 to saves against cancellation, but they can’t commit as hard as the consultants, since they have lots of competing interests. So they pay whoever is currently atop the pile. It doesn’t matter if that consultant gets exposed and torn to shreds because they’re fungible.
That’s part of the reason the Smithsonian infographic was so insane. They’re not supposed to be fungible! They’re not supposed to be testing new and exciting frontiers for racism!
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Eh, fuck it.
After spending the better part of a day dumpster-diving through the worst MAGA shit I could find, I finally started wondering why I was doing any of this.
I mean, shit, it’s not like whatever I can throw at you is likely to convince you that actually, you’re wrong and I’m right; any more than than your (IMO unimpressive) examples actually convinced me that I’m wrong and you’re right. All I’ll succeed at is wasting both our time, probably irritating you with my unwillingness to cede any ground in the face of what you consider to be indisputable evidence, and further disgruntling me with continued exposure to anti-woke talking points.
So whatever; you win, I guess. Congratulations on your argumentative stamina. Feel free to get in the last words at your leisure.
If you haven't yet completely flounced, would you mind posting what you found anyways? I'm working on something of a steelman of your and magicalkittycat's positions and I'd like to see what you managed to dig up.
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Well that hardly seems fair, would you say the Smithsonian is a dumpster?
So just to clarify, if you saw the exact same workshops / infographics published under Trump by the exact same institutions, but with races reversed, someone got outraged over it, you'd say something like "I don't see where the problem is"?
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@Amadan, I’d appreciate it if you did the both of us a favor and permabanned me while this moment of clarity lasts.
Ought to make your lives easier having one less triggered leftist around accumulating reports, and maybe it’ll be the kick in the pants I need to finally get me off this site.
It’s clear to me now that the time for talking is over, and that there can be no further productive use for sticking around and trying to bridge the ever-widening divide in realities between “woke” America and “antiwoke” America.
Not here, anyways.
There are actually a lot of people in the middle here. I'd largely consider myself one; I'm often grudgingly willing to ally with the conservatives against the progressives (particularly since said conservatives are weaker here in Oz), but as an erotic fanfic writer I know I'm not exactly their favourite person either.
It would be nice to keep more diversity here - real diversity, that is, diversity of opinion. It has been noted to me that theMotte is not feeding me an especially-accurate view of "the left", and you could help with that.
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Sad, but not unforseen: https://www.themotte.org/post/2190/why-bother/335757?context=8#context
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If you really want me to.
I feel like I should say a few things, though. It's ironic you are at this point now. I just took you (manually) out of the new user filter since you've been around long enough that you're clearly a good faith contributor, but also clearly were never going to accumulate enough "karma" or however Zorba scores accounts to leave the filter on your own.
You do get reported a lot, but 100% of the reports have been people angry at you for being a leftist expressing leftist opinions. You have not a single warning on your record (so far). I can see how it's disheartening to get downvoted constantly. This place is no better than reddit, in that downvotes are supposed to be used only to express that a comment is "objectively" bad in the sense of contributing nothing to the conversation, but instead it is used as an agree/disagree button, just as half our members use reports as a "super angrily disagree" button.
Now, is "the time for talking over"?
I am kind of there myself. And this place frustrates the hell out of me. Proud and violent bigots and haters, accelerationists, and people who literally and explicitly wish me death.
Clearly I should go find greener pastures more aligned with me, right?
There are none.
SlateStarCodex and adjacent spaces come closest, and even there you'll pretty much be booted for talking about the wrong things or having the wrong opinions.
I could go on X/Twitter, which is pretty much the Wild West right now. Except while it's true you can say almost anything there, that just means you'll draw a small crowd of people who agree with you and a lot of fire from people who hate you, and since it's far more public the doxxing potential is greater. There's no real upside because you aren't actually having interesting and thoughtful conversations, you're just dunking and point-scoring. It suits a certain personality type, I guess, but not me with my milquetoast centrism and lack of desire to throw people out of helicopters.
Anything "mainstream/normie"? Fuck no. All my hobby and social spaces have converged on acceptable and settled positions on everything from trans people to HBD to whether or not Trump is Literally Hitler to ... well, everything. I mostly don't talk in those spaces anymore, because I, with my center-left "let's just be civil and polite" GenX 'tude retains just enough skepticism and contrarianism that I have narrowly escaped being tagged as a Literal Nazi more than once, and I know if I bother to get into it, I will be banned. These spaces provide other needs for me and I don't want to lose them, so I keep my mouth shut. No point in losing years of history and access to resources that are somewhat important to me because I cleared my throat about the wrong subject.
This is what your side does. (I say "your" side, but I still consider myself liberal enough that it's kind of my side as well, except not really- they want to fucking kill me too, and now I feel kind of like a sleeper agent seething and blackpilling in their midst.)
So tell me, bud, where are the other places I could go to share opinions and maybe express skepticism about whether or not trans women are really truly heckin' 100% biological women, even though I by no means hate them or want them killed or put in camps or forcibly detransitioned? Where are the places where I can admit I think HBD is probably true even though I think individuals should still be judged on their own merits? Where can I say that I really dislike Trump, but also I don't think he's Hitler (and also the Democrats brought all this shit on themselves)? Where can I say Charlie Kirk was a prick but murdering him in front of his wife and children was an atrocity and if you're celebrating it you need to fix your goddamn soul? And so on and so on. In all your spaces, I'll just be called a collaborator, a bootlicker, a useful fool, a Nazi, and then banned.
Here, you suffer downvotes and unpopularity for taking a contrarian position but you still get treated politely. We still politely talk to each other (not willingly, not happily, many people would like to take the gloves and masks off completely, but we mods won't let them). Sure, half the people here are salivating for the Day of the Rope, which means its inherently unstable, but it is what it is.
I would be disappointed to see you pack up and go because righties are mean to you, as has happened to so many leftists before you. But I also understand it's just not fun being constantly dogpiled and downvoted, so I can't tell you you should keep hanging around somewhere that makes you miserable. I just want to point out that the greener pastures you are heading to are only greener for your orthodox and approved opinions.
Some parts of the SpaceBattles diaspora used to be this (most notably Digital Wild West and Questionable Questing), but DWW's dead (its owner had a psychotic break) and QQ banned politics. I think The Sietch is roughly similar to here in outlook, although I haven't actually joined due to being satisfied with ACX/here.
Speaking of which, the ACX comments still do exist, although Substack's UI is hilariously inferior.
The Sietch is a bit too spittle-flecked for the tastes of most Mottizens, I think; and too dominated by the same half-dozen or so regulars.
The SB diaspora is a good example of the wider tragedy of the fragmenting internet. What used to be a more close-knit community with a range of opinions has, as it has grown, also narrowed its window for acceptable speech and become something of a shadow of its current self. It's a good example of self-siloing and the seven zillion witches effect.
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I get "Hmm...this page doesn’t exist. Try searching for something else." for this link.
Fixed, thanks!
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...By a MAGA institution/figure of similar prominence to the progressive institution in question?
That’s a good question; after all, I suspect that litigating over how equivalent the prominence/importance/impact/etc. the two ‘institutions’ are will probably be an inevitable feature of this little race to the bottom.
I’ll leave that up to @ArjinFerman’s discretion.
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It is and it isn't. Anyone who tries to suggest to a MAGA blue-collar worker that he should get affirmative action for being white will likely get a punch in the face. Rightly or wrongly, most MAGA supporters see themselves as rolling back unfair discrimination against them, rather than advocating for their own racial interests. Though tbf even as I type this I'm reminded that a lot of the progressive left launders its demands the same way, but the spirit still seems kind of different... they are often explicitly racial in a way that MAGA just doesn't seem to be. There's no Ibram Kendi in power saying, 'any disparity between white people and others is racist', there's no public statements 'blackness is an original sin', no 'grit and resiliance is a hallmark of black supremacy'.
I think it boils down to the fact that America is, still, a largely white country and a largely white-run country, where almost everyone was raised with the 'I have a dream' speech. White progressives are comfortable flagellating (other) whites, and raising up other races; despite many accusation, white MAGA aren't comfortable denigrating other races or exerting white supremacy, and those few who are don't feel able to say so publicly.
Using those specific words, probably.
Phrasing it instead as “putting them in the positions they deserve, and clearing out all those unqualified affirmative action hires who got inappropriately appointed to those positions instead of a deserving, meritorious applicant like themselves”, and that will get an enthusiastic approval.
Yes, but it really matters if they’re correct in that analysis! The Jews and Asians were correct: once historic discrimination was removed, they did considerably better. I think by now we can safely say that African-Americans were not correct about this: they were unable to compete after discrimination against them was removed, or even once a heavy finger was put on the scale in their favour.
Personally I grew up being told again and again that there are ‘too many white guys in X’, with special interest groups, mentorship, considerable government/media pressure and often quiet biasing of entry criteria all working hard to reduce the percentage of white men. In a friend’s line of work, jobs are specifically advertised as ‘for a person of BAME background’. It would be kind of weird if white people didn’t do better when these barriers are removed.
Put another way, isn’t there a pretty big difference between a movement that is campaigning to level the playing field for everyone, and once for reparations and affirmative action for their preferred group? MAGA doesn’t campaign for white men; Trump never said, “if you don’t vote for me, you ain’t white”.
You can call any political movement that broadly captures a specific group and advances their interest ‘identitarian’ but then I think you’re catching a lot of stuff in that net.
And I’m quite comfortable calling the MAGA movement that only supports so-called “Real Americans”, and wants the overwhelming majority of the people who actually live in America (whether the dirty, filthy immigrants, the city “vermin” and “filth”, the leftist “Unhumans” that need to be put up against the wall and machine-gunned, or just generally any of the “Satanic” folk who voted against Trump) to go fuck themselves and leave “““their””” country an identitarian movement.
And a particularly noxious one, at that.
Meanwhile, in the real world, MAGA won the popular vote (that is, the absolute majority of Americans) and some of its most fervent supporters are people who fled the third world and are appalled to see America sliding back into it.
MAGA did win the popular vote, but not an absolute majority of Americans (I don't think that that's ever happened; turnout and the existence of children make it really, really hard) or even an absolute majority of Americans who voted (he got 49.8%, significantly more than Harris but not quite an absolute majority).
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Your alternative reality sounds nice.
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