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Not gonna lie, I was happy to see that your story was one of sympathy and compassion. From the tone around here lately, I was half-expecting it to end with "I decided 'Fuck this guy, one less illegal is a good thing.'"
I think the right and the left are increasingly unable to model one another's thinking. I come here and see people who are celebrating violence and clearly want more of it. I get disgusted, go to other places, and see people... celebrating violence and clearly want more of it. Just directed at different people. I think about a reddit (yeah yeah, I know) post I read the other day, where some woman out of the blue texts her brother basically demanding to know "where he stands" on Trump and ICE. No indication that this had been a previous topic of discussion or that he was MAGA, just suddenly she needs to know if he's aligned with her. When he replies with a sort of mealy-mouthed "It's not a black and white issue, but I love you and family over politics," etc. etc., she informs him that she's going no contact with him and his family forever, and immediately tells their mother that he's cut out of his life. He didn't even say he's a Trump supporter (though I guess one could infer it), just that he's not completely on-board with her TDS.
I recently got into an argument here where I said I know very leftist "woke" people, and they are not evil. I was piled on by Motters saying of course they are, they just haven't turned on me yet. Unsurprisingly, I have had similar arguments in left spaces. "I know conservatives/MAGAs, they aren't Nazis, they aren't evil." "Well, you can say that because they don't want to kill you." (I mean, some of y'all do, but...)
It's just... very sad. And tiresome. Thank you for still having a heart.
Good and evil aren't the same thing as safe and dangerous, are they? And I care more about who's likely to get me killed than about the hope in their hearts while they do it.
People who say "don't judge appearance" and then hate anyone wearing a dress shirt and slacks are dangerous.
Especially when they aren't interested in letting ask questions first.
If I were a god, I would save everyone. They deserve it anyway. But I'm not a god.
Yes, well, define it however you like. Rightists and leftists both clearly believe the other side wants to kill you and is dangerous. Good news for the accelerationists -this will become a self-fulfulilling prophecy!
You don't need to want to kill someone to do it. I rather get the impression that that's how we got here. Being nice is the problem.
But I don't disagree. This will end in tears.
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I appreciate the compliment about my writing. For what it’s worth, I have a history of leaving right wing spaces that become too harsh. It just became too dissonant to be dating my now wife and open my group chats to see TND spelled out and applauded.
It’s an odd position to be in. I’m full-right. Deport them all, pro capital punishment, hell I could be convinced to support a military coup. But I’m an extreme right-winger because I want to preserve what is good and beautiful in this world. I want to live a beautiful life with those I love. I want to feel like I’m fighting side-by-side with Aragorn, not sniggering in a cave with a bunch of imps reciting the word “nigger”.
I’m thinking I need to be a little slower about leaving though. If I leave, the places just become more harsh. I love the motte, I think it is one of the best run forums on the internet. But I have noticed an increase in harshness lately from people on my side.
I appreciate what the mods do here to tend the garden and I hope to provide the tone and perspective that I want to see in the world
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I remember my surprise at how this forum reacted to the atrocities in Gaza. Not a lot of posts or interest about it; nothing compared to how it gripped political discussion in America at large. I was even mod-warned for posting on the subject too many times. Our empathy can be exceedingly narrow when it is convenient.
The motte is inherently going to lean towards conversations that can only be had in the motte. There's an infinite supply of places to discuss the plight of the Palestinians
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Mostly ignoring Gaza is a sign of a healthy forum culture, unless your forum has a mission that specifically includes paying attention to obscure third-world humanitarian disasters. The Israel-Palestine conflict is boring, notoriously intractable, and has a low death toll relative to a mid-tier African civil war. It gets far more press than it deserves because it somehow became a proxy for the US culture war.
The key point of interest IMO is that we funded it and supported it, and so, as the evidence right now points to a lot of children having faced needless starvation for no legible reason, we actually funded and supported a policy of arbitrary mass starvation directed at children. For a lot of Americans that deserved attention in a way that an African civil war typically does not, although I’d note that we cared a lot about the Rwandan Civil War back in the day, and even growing up years after the fact I can recall seeing a lot of ambient social and political interest about it.
The communications around this are/were so messy and awkward that it became quickly illegible to most people.
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I agree that Americans have more of an excuse for caring about the I-P conflict than other Westerners do.
"The UK should butt out of the I-P conflict, and individual Britons who pick a side either have dual loyalties or are idiots" is probably my most dangerous political opinion in polite company.
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The reason is that their leaders which enjoy overwhelming popular support started a war. You might not like it but it is a very legible reason. I'm personally on the fence whether anyone in the middle east should receive western support, but if it's going to be anyone it's going to be israel over palestinians every day.
But really, middle east is gonna middle east, no point discussing it too much.
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You were never warned for posting too much about Gaza.
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And they say being the resident mod bad cop brainbroke Hlynka.
From some of the responses, I am not far off.
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The mod log looks absurd. Amadan is doing too much of the work.
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Most people aren't good at modeling their own thinking, thus are very bad at communicating it, and the outsider map is more accurate in some ways, less so than others.
I've come around to a sort of cold comfort in that what the sides mostly see as "evil" in the other is what the allowable failure modes are, and the selectivity of attention (whiteness studies professors and actual no-joke neonazis aside, those two groups are evil in the regular sense). Maybe this is just warmed-over Arendt, I haven't taken the time to read her in full. A person can't legitimately care about everything, and where one chooses not to care- to draw their blinders close- has outsize effect on how they're seen by people that make the opposite choice.
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