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Elon Musk is a nice chap
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PlainName:
Well, let's not make this a mega-thread about Boris. He did indeed give the impression you state, but that's normal politics to imply without meaning it. I think people must be hung up on this particular thing because they are ashamed of being taken in by it - I saw it and what I got from it was just that we would not pay so much (350 in government speak is easily rounded down to a tenner or something - just look at how something can be presented as new and then a couple of months later again presented as new), and that the NHS might get some extra dosh as one of the things it could be spent on. Why don't they, instead, bang on about the 40 new hospitals that turned out to be coats of paint or similar on existing ones? Presumably because that straight-up lie was obvious and no-one was taken in.
tooki:

--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 24, 2022, 02:29:36 pm ---

--- Quote ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 22, 2022, 09:52:29 pm ---
--- Quote ---But the right doesn’t debate in good faith, they literally call the left “evil” and then invent things to support their position. I won’t abide that behavior.

--- End quote ---
And the left are no better.

--- End quote ---
That is plain and simply not true.

The right employs falsehoods far more: https://news.osu.edu/conservatives-more-susceptible-to-believing-falsehoods/

The fundamentalist religious aspect of modern American conservatism have turned their ideology into one of “good vs evil”, and they literally believe (and routinely express) that they consider liberals “evil” in the biblical sense. This means they approach things with a very different mindset than the left does. Facts and details don’t matter to the right because they’re in a fight for the moral salvation of the nation. And while certainly not all republicans actually hold these fundie beliefs, they are content to go along with them.
--- End quote ---
Again more left-wing propaganda sites.

--- End quote ---
OSU is a “propaganda site”? NY Times and WaPo are “propaganda sites”? You don’t know what propaganda is, then. Are those papers more left-leaning? Yes. But they’re not propaganda.


--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 24, 2022, 02:29:36 pm ---In reality, there are evil lefties and righties.

--- End quote ---
Absolutely.


--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 24, 2022, 02:29:36 pm ---It's very difficult to say who's worse.

--- End quote ---
Not even slightly difficult. The right has set out to vilify tots opponents at all cost while putting on a pedestal individual selfishness and lack of empathy, and wants to enshrine their personal religious beliefs into law. The left, while sometimes overzealous, fundamentally wants tolerance and consideration for fellow humans. Speaking just of the political parties, they’re both severely corrupted by lobbying money. But in terms of who is worse, it’s not even a contest.
Zero999:

--- Quote from: tooki on December 25, 2022, 12:40:11 am ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 24, 2022, 02:29:36 pm ---

--- Quote ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 22, 2022, 09:52:29 pm ---
--- Quote ---But the right doesn’t debate in good faith, they literally call the left “evil” and then invent things to support their position. I won’t abide that behavior.

--- End quote ---
And the left are no better.

--- End quote ---
That is plain and simply not true.

The right employs falsehoods far more: https://news.osu.edu/conservatives-more-susceptible-to-believing-falsehoods/

The fundamentalist religious aspect of modern American conservatism have turned their ideology into one of “good vs evil”, and they literally believe (and routinely express) that they consider liberals “evil” in the biblical sense. This means they approach things with a very different mindset than the left does. Facts and details don’t matter to the right because they’re in a fight for the moral salvation of the nation. And while certainly not all republicans actually hold these fundie beliefs, they are content to go along with them.
--- End quote ---
Again more left-wing propaganda sites.

--- End quote ---
OSU is a “propaganda site”? NY Times and WaPo are “propaganda sites”? You don’t know what propaganda is, then. Are those papers more left-leaning? Yes. But they’re not propaganda.
--- End quote ---
Fair point. Bias was the correct term. There are left wing outlets such as The Washington Post and right wing such as Fox News.


--- Quote ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 24, 2022, 02:29:36 pm ---In reality, there are evil lefties and righties.

--- End quote ---
Absolutely.


--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 24, 2022, 02:29:36 pm ---It's very difficult to say who's worse.

--- End quote ---
Not even slightly difficult. The right has set out to vilify tots opponents at all cost while putting on a pedestal individual selfishness and lack of empathy, and wants to enshrine their personal religious beliefs into law. The left, while sometimes overzealous, fundamentally wants tolerance and consideration for fellow humans. Speaking just of the political parties, they’re both severely corrupted by lobbying money. But in terms of who is worse, it’s not even a contest.

--- End quote ---
I've encountered just as much intolerance from the left. They love to vilify those who disagree with their ideas. If you express concerns regarding single sex spaces and irreversible treatments on children, then your labelled a transphobe, who wants to erase trans people. If you disagree with their policies based on CRT such as affirmative action, you're called a white supremacist. They fail to see that those concerns are often not based on prejudice but unintended consequences of their policies, however well-intentioned they may be. Those with such Conservative views get deplatformed, by educational institutions. Of course this isn't the case off all leftists, just some, same as those on the right.

It's not true that all of those on the right want to enshrine their personal religious beliefs into law. I strongly disagree with those who do, just as much as I disagree with those on the left, who want laws based on their ideology of intersectionality such as: affirmative action and quotas for gender and race.

tooki:

--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 25, 2022, 09:06:03 am ---Fair point. Bias was the correct term. There are left wing outlets such as The Washington Post and right wing such as Fox News.

--- End quote ---
Exactly, though I don’t think WaPo and NYT lean as far left as Fox News does right. (I mean, it’s a bit hard to compare since Fox is TV and the other two are newspapers, but not even the most opinionated columnists in those papers come close to the frothing-at-the-mouth rage and disdain exhibited by the Fox News shows.)


--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 25, 2022, 09:06:03 am ---
--- Quote from: tooki on December 25, 2022, 12:40:11 am ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 24, 2022, 02:29:36 pm ---It's very difficult to say who's worse.

--- End quote ---
Not even slightly difficult. The right has set out to vilify tots opponents at all cost while putting on a pedestal individual selfishness and lack of empathy, and wants to enshrine their personal religious beliefs into law. The left, while sometimes overzealous, fundamentally wants tolerance and consideration for fellow humans. Speaking just of the political parties, they’re both severely corrupted by lobbying money. But in terms of who is worse, it’s not even a contest.

--- End quote ---
I've encountered just as much intolerance from the left. They love to vilify those who disagree with their ideas. If you express concerns regarding single sex spaces and irreversible treatments on children, then your labelled a transphobe, who wants to erase trans people. If you disagree with their policies based on CRT such as affirmative action, you're called a white supremacist. They fail to see that those concerns are often not based on prejudice but unintended consequences of their policies, however well-intentioned they may be. Those with such Conservative views get deplatformed, by educational institutions. Of course this isn't the case off all leftists, just some, same as those on the right.

--- End quote ---
While one can disagree on whether such people are actually transphobic or not, here’s the difference in the “vilification” as I see it: Someone on the left calling someone a transphobe as a reaction to an anti-trans statement or action is basically a statement of perceived fact. It’s not a condemnation of the person as such. (And in fact, a huge part of the left’s approach is education, meaning that they don’t think that the others are irredeemable.) In stark contrast, the right routinely calls the left “evil” (using that word). As I said, it’s a biblical interpretation, and it’s one that leads them to believe and act as though the left is an evil to be slain, not an ally who’s gone astray.

I don’t know how much hands-on experience you have with USA. (I’m American and have lived about half my life there, back and forth, with friends and family both in the liberal north and the conservative rural Deep South, so I’ve seen it all from up close.) I just hope you aren’t basing your opinions on how the left and right in USA behave on what you see on the news and social media. Because it’s not an accurate portrayal, since those tend to focus on the extreme fringes of both. What’s far less obvious is that the far-right fringe isn’t nearly as far from the average Republican voter as the far-left fringe is from the average democrat voter. The far-left fringe gets almost as many eye rolls from the average democrat as it does from the right. In contrast, mainstream Republican politics of today are essentially what was far-right fringe just a decade or two ago.

I wish I’d saved some interesting analyses of this disparity that I’ve come across over the years, because it really cannot be understated how large the disparity is between the two sides and their fringes.

The other aspect that bothers me about the issue is the wide belief by conservatives that a) they represent the majority of Americans, and b) that they are the “real” America and the rest of us are illegitimate. On point a, this is created by the maps during elections showing huuuuge swaths of the USA in red. What gets forgotten is that this doesn’t show to what degree a jurisdiction was more red or blue, and that a giant red state in the Midwest represents far fewer voters than a small blue state on the east coast. Maps that instead show blue and red dots whose size indicates voter numbers show that conservatives aren’t dominant, and that far, far more of the country appears as purple than as clearly blue or red. As for point b) I find it arrogant of the right to dismiss the coasts (typically as “coastal elites”, despite the fact that those same coastal cities are also home to lots of poor people who are anything but elite) as if we somehow just don’t count, simply because they declare it so.
Zero999:

--- Quote from: tooki on December 25, 2022, 01:23:10 pm ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 25, 2022, 09:06:03 am ---Fair point. Bias was the correct term. There are left wing outlets such as The Washington Post and right wing such as Fox News.

--- End quote ---
Exactly, though I don’t think WaPo and NYT lean as far left as Fox News does right. (I mean, it’s a bit hard to compare since Fox is TV and the other two are newspapers, but not even the most opinionated columnists in those papers come close to the frothing-at-the-mouth rage and disdain exhibited by the Fox News shows.)
--- End quote ---
One has to take their own biases into account. Those on the right say the same thing about left leaning outlets, as leftists say about right-wing media. I'm fairly centrist in many ways, yet you being more on the left, probably view me as right wing, which isn't true.  I disagree with the right on many things from having a free for all on guns, to teaching creationism as fact in school.


--- Quote ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 25, 2022, 09:06:03 am ---
--- Quote from: tooki on December 25, 2022, 12:40:11 am ---
--- Quote from: Zero999 on December 24, 2022, 02:29:36 pm ---It's very difficult to say who's worse.

--- End quote ---
Not even slightly difficult. The right has set out to vilify tots opponents at all cost while putting on a pedestal individual selfishness and lack of empathy, and wants to enshrine their personal religious beliefs into law. The left, while sometimes overzealous, fundamentally wants tolerance and consideration for fellow humans. Speaking just of the political parties, they’re both severely corrupted by lobbying money. But in terms of who is worse, it’s not even a contest.

--- End quote ---
I've encountered just as much intolerance from the left. They love to vilify those who disagree with their ideas. If you express concerns regarding single sex spaces and irreversible treatments on children, then your labelled a transphobe, who wants to erase trans people. If you disagree with their policies based on CRT such as affirmative action, you're called a white supremacist. They fail to see that those concerns are often not based on prejudice but unintended consequences of their policies, however well-intentioned they may be. Those with such Conservative views get deplatformed, by educational institutions. Of course this isn't the case off all leftists, just some, same as those on the right.

--- End quote ---
While one can disagree on whether such people are actually transphobic or not, here’s the difference in the “vilification” as I see it: Someone on the left calling someone a transphobe as a reaction to an anti-trans statement or action is basically a statement of perceived fact. It’s not a condemnation of the person as such. (And in fact, a huge part of the left’s approach is education, meaning that they don’t think that the others are irredeemable.) In stark contrast, the right routinely calls the left “evil” (using that word). As I said, it’s a biblical interpretation, and it’s one that leads them to believe and act as though the left is an evil to be slain, not an ally who’s gone astray.
--- End quote ---
Well they often advocate people with such views being fired from they jobs, with some success, so they clearly are vilifying people.

The way Larry Elder has been accused of white supremacy is terrible. Or perhaps you don't think white supremacy is evil, so it's okay to say that? I also find the racism spouted in this case pretty disgusting. Fine, disagree with his views and criticise his debating tactics, but don't being the colour of his skin into it. The person who wrote the article is clearly looking at it through the lens of critical race theory.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-08-20/recall-candidate-larry-elder-is-a-threat-to-black-californians

Here's a link to a post here, accusing some Republicans of being evil.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/diversity-equity-and-inclusion/msg4366939/#msg4366939

I can understand how some more extremist leftist opinions can be seen as evil, even if they're well-intentioned. For example the extreme pro-choice side who want to permit abortion, for any reason, including eugenics, right up to the point of birth. I'm also fully aware of the evil inflicted by the pro-life movement who have made it impossible for women to get some medicines which can damage a pregnancy, even though they're being used to treat other conditions, not to induce a termination.


--- Quote ---I don’t know how much hands-on experience you have with USA. (I’m American and have lived about half my life there, back and forth, with friends and family both in the liberal north and the conservative rural Deep South, so I’ve seen it all from up close.) I just hope you aren’t basing your opinions on how the left and right in USA behave on what you see on the news and social media. Because it’s not an accurate portrayal, since those tend to focus on the extreme fringes of both. What’s far less obvious is that the far-right fringe isn’t nearly as far from the average Republican voter as the far-left fringe is from the average democrat voter. The far-left fringe gets almost as many eye rolls from the average democrat as it does from the right. In contrast, mainstream Republican politics of today are essentially what was far-right fringe just a decade or two ago.

I wish I’d saved some interesting analyses of this disparity that I’ve come across over the years, because it really cannot be understated how large the disparity is between the two sides and their fringes.

The other aspect that bothers me about the issue is the wide belief by conservatives that a) they represent the majority of Americans, and b) that they are the “real” America and the rest of us are illegitimate. On point a, this is created by the maps during elections showing huuuuge swaths of the USA in red. What gets forgotten is that this doesn’t show to what degree a jurisdiction was more red or blue, and that a giant red state in the Midwest represents far fewer voters than a small blue state on the east coast. Maps that instead show blue and red dots whose size indicates voter numbers show that conservatives aren’t dominant, and that far, far more of the country appears as purple than as clearly blue or red. As for point b) I find it arrogant of the right to dismiss the coasts (typically as “coastal elites”, despite the fact that those same coastal cities are also home to lots of poor people who are anything but elite) as if we somehow just don’t count, simply because they declare it so.

--- End quote ---
It's true, I am basing my opinion on social media and my interaction with Americans online. There isn't much else I have to go on. What strikes me is the more extremist leftists views such as the one on abortion I mentioned earlier, seem to be more widespread and tolerated, than the more extreme right-wing views such as the pushing of creationism in school.
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