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So let me ask you two genuine questions (and to forestall any objections or claims that I am trying to "bait" you-which I have never done, contrary to your repeated assertions- I swear that even if you take this opportunity to insult me in whatever fashion you wish, I grant you immunity):
Is it your genuine sincere belief that every single person identified as being "on the left" is an evil liar? That it's literally impossible for anyone to be a Democrat or a liberal and sincere and well-intentioned?
If we allowed some of those anti-MAGA posters who wander in to post like you do, would you be okay with that, or are you explicitly advocating we make the Motte a "leftists fuck-off" space?
Because the point of not allowing people to just post "My outgroup is evil" is not that no evil people exist or that you cannot believe your enemies are evil. The point is that if people just post how much they hate their enemies with no nuance, context, or argument, we will just have people screaming at each other and competing for who can sneer most dramatically - unless we are just all circle-jerking each other about who our enemies are.
As an actual literal statement the political left is committed to violating black letter constitutional civil rights protections that they justify by inventing human rights, yes, that's a very defensible statement. The adults in the room in the Biden admin(and there were some- not Biden and Kamala, but figures like Ron Klain and Merrick Garland were powerful enough on their own to count) were mostly moderate, establishment, center-left types and not crazy radicals and they... just let the country fall apart while they pursued failed attempts at political vengeance and power consolidation. The war on domestic terror was just full of oversteps that make no sense except as retribution against dissidents against state ideology, the novel legal theories, etc. Meanwhile actual competent governance was... not a priority. The null hypothesis for both a Biden admin and a vegetable in the white house is that technocrats from his own party run the country in a not-cartoonish manner with some featherbedding.
Trump talks about some of this stuff. But he doesn't actually do it.
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I think they do evil. I think at this point to be a Democrat is to be deeply committed to doing evil. The hills Democrats have chosen to die on (castrating children, giving billions in fraud to immigrants of questionable legality, forcing people to take experimental medications, mass censorship) are virtually unrecognizable from the Democrats of 30 years ago. All the good ones left the party and joined the Republican ticket. Which is probably why so many high ranking positions in Trump's administration got filled with former Democrats (RFK Jr, Tulsi).
I have in laws who are deeply committed Democrats, deeply committed to destroying the country. They don't think of it that way. They are hopelessly, and willfully, ignorant of the consequences of their policies. If "Evil" had a version of "without intent" like manslaughter, they'd be that. All the same...
If they were honest. I only care about honesty. They may view me as evil, for caring about my heritage, and wanting it to continue to exist. For not wanting billions of 3rd worlders enshittifying my homeland. For the very fact that my ancestors conquered this nation in the first place. And these are the exact reasons these differences can only be sorted out finally. I cannot exist in their world, and they cannot exist in mine. We are mutually evil to one another. I find their morality an abhorrent inversion of proper morals, and they feel the same. I can recognize this however, and accept that it's all over now but the violence. We cannot coexist.
But only if they are honest. If they stroll in here like Darwin of yore, playing Arguments as Soldiers, refusing to be pinned down, refusing to ever admit what the negative space around their rhetoric is gesturing towards, fuck em.
Which goes straight to it, and you see this over and over and over again. The leftist always calibrates their speech towards maximum fog of war. Among their own it's "Yes, I want to destroy the white race." but then in public it's "Oh why can't we have sympathy for the 65 IQ serial rapist an NGO imported from Africa? He just needs more restorative justice. That 3 year old probably won't even remember what happened to it." Which also goes straight to why LibsOfTiktok went so viral. These people just put all that nonsense out there, under their real ass names, employment in bio, and thought they were the victims when people outside their bubble saw it. Because, like Hillary Clinton famously said, sometimes you have two sets of opinions, a public set and a private set. It was an invasion of privacy to see their private opinions... even when they posted them publicly.
Do you believe your in-laws literally want you dead and your daughter transed?
I suspect not. (If you do- well, I don't know what to say except that must make things tense at Christmas.) This is the problem with such absolute statements.
Wrong question. People love to abstract evil away into mustache-twirling schemes to deliberately do harm, so they never have to face the evil in their own hearts. Evil isn't doing a "paperclip optimizer" routine, but for double mastectomies, it's convincing yourself your cause is so good, that you can, say, lie to promote / defend it because the chuds would """weaponize""" the truth.
What you want to ask in the case of his in-laws is, if his daughter said she's trans and he opposed it, would they hear him out, or write him off as a transphobe? Or for the "want him dead" part: if the cancel mob came after him, would they defend his character, or throw him under the bus (or for a borderline case: squirm like Alec Holowka's sister, hinting at the truth, but refusing to state it outright for fear of the mob going after her as well)?
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No, but they literally keep voting for local politicians who have that as their party platform. They just... I donno, refuse to grapple with that part of things.
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Declaring someone a mortal irreconcilable enemy provides them with the best possible reason to stop being honest with you, or trying. There is no honor to be won being honest with moral aliens.
Well yes. Thats another reason i hate my enemies. They don't even have the descency to admit it and have a fair fight. Its just gas lighting about their naked aggression 24/7.
What did you think being mortal enemies was? Essays? Vibes?
According to you, someone who you declared should literally be wiped out as the only reconciliation is supposed to be decent to you?
You can conduct yourself in war the way Russians do in Ukraine, or the way Israelis did in Gaza (not to mention, heavens forbid, Americans in WWII). Existential war is no excuse for savagery.
There is plenty of room for deception, stratagems, collateral damage and psychological warfare even in non-existential wars.
N.B. I don't believe either of the examples you listed are examples of existential wars. Russia overplays the existentiality as part of its official excuse to swing the nuke threat around (it would be bad optics to admit that it went to war for the sake of mere "sphere of influence"), America was on the other side of the ocean from the Axis (now USSR would be a much more salient example). Israel is closest to existential but it still has a buffer of overwhelming power over Gaza. If that buffer is threatened I would expect them to glass Gaza into the precambrian age faster than you can say "Zionism" because any political fallout is better than being overrun.
Yes, but to a point. There's a reason why the "little green men" tactic was seen as below the belt.
Yeah, though I think you can make the case that they were more existential to the other side of the conflict, which makes it quite apt for this analogy.
Just as a side note, there has never been any existential threat on the part of Israel towards the residents of Gaza; all they have to do is stop attacking Israel and shortly thereafter the hostilities will entirely cease. That's the situation with Jordan and Egypt. Literally all they had to do was resist the temptation to lob missiles at Israel, cross the border to murder and kidnap, etc., and that was it.
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I realize these questions are directed at someone else, but I feel like answering them:
Pretty much yes. It's become an evil ideology. People who adhere to evil ideologies are -- to a greater or lesser extent -- evil themselves.
I think that's a slightly different question, since, generally speaking, people are very good at self-deception. I think there are plenty of (evil) Leftists who genuinely and sincerely believe in the lies they spread and genuinely and sincerely believe that they are trying to make the world a better place.
Personally, I'm fine with Leftists posting here since (at least for now) they cannot engage in their usual tactics of shouting down their opposition; ideologically capturing the moderation team and abusing those powers to silence their adversaries; etc.
How are you defining "left"? By the standards of the Motte, I am on the left. (I'm more likely to vote Democrat than not, I don't like Trump, I think *-isms are bad, etc.) So does this make me "evil" or do I not count because I'm sufficiently gray? (Go ahead and call me evil if you insist, I am genuinely trying to figure out how you are modeling other minds.)
Okay, but that necessarily means we don't let you shout them down either.
That's a complicated question, because in many ways Leftism is not a specific set of beliefs but rather a process by which people compete for social status and power by pretending to be morally superior by making use of what Larry Auster called the "liberal script." But here's a rough and ready definition for you: If you could unironically put one of those signs in your front yard which says "In this house we believe," then it is highly likely you are a Leftist. I haven't paid specific attention to your posts so I don't know if I would call you a Leftist.
That's fine with me. For the most part, the positions espoused by Leftism can't really stand up to fair scrutiny. In the absence of underhanded tactics, Leftism will lose.
I definitely would not put one of those signs in my yard. But I know who people who would and do, and while they make me cringe, they are not evil.
I would have to disagree with that. At the very best, they are minor minions of evil.
If you look at ideologies in history which, with the benefit of hindsight, are not disputed to be evil, they are no different from people who voluntarily adhered to and promoted those ideologies.
Just my humble opinion.
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that you know. The meme of the left eating their own originated for a reason.
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