It's odd that you respond with "you should get off tumblr and do something productive" when your entire posture is smug self-superiority to the plebs who actually engage in politics or have "object-level" concerns. Incidentally: nothing conservatives do justifies bad behavior from left-wingers, on campus or elsewhere. So I'll admit that, and then you can admit that conservatives aren't, in fact, the poor persecuted minority you desperately want them to be.
You ask is too concerned with my “smug self-superiority” and not enough with whether my words are right. As I have said before, I identify with the absolute worst of humanity, so if there is any emotion or identity that would tar me as someone you don’t want to listen to, then don’t read me. Don’t listen to black homeless people? Then ignore me. Don’t listen to conservatives aka Nazis? You can unfollow. Think smug liberal intellectuals never have anything of value to add? Then why bother here. I make zero promises to my moral or mental purity. But if you are going to read me, then judge the words and logic themselves for whether they are correct.
When I say “you should” in a post, that is based on what your goals are.
One simply does not argue about politics on the internet, especially in very broad terms, because one is trying effectively to accomplish a political goal. There are infinitely better meatspace methods. Much like if you are an Effective Altruist and really want to save lives, then give a lot of money to the AMF, and don’t convince yourself that arguing about rationalism on tumblr is the way to do it.
“”You should get off tumblr and do something productive“” only if your goal is to accomplish policy change in the meatspace. Given the paucity of engagement with local and state government, it’s not that hard to make some real changes in the lives of people. It’s just pretty boring, especially compared to omg arguing about Trump.
This does not mean that online dialogue is pointless, only that it must serve goals conducive to the medium. Most people use online political arguments as a way to shore up their identity. You can symbolically inveigh against the symbols of the enemy, etc etc, it’s all very satisfying in an OCD way.
I use these online posts as a way to help people be happy. My assumption is that anyone reading this is unhappy and made miserable by the culture war. Rather than continuing to engage in it, hurting both themselves and others, I hope readers find a way to take an ethical stance outside ideology, that provides the freedom of responsibility, and better focus to accomplish their goals.
(You “should” get off twitter if seeing people bandy academic terms like “intersectionality” as part of a memetic popularity contest, bothers you.)
you can admit that conservatives aren’t, in fact, the poor persecuted minority you desperately want them to be.
American Conservatives are part of the dominant political coalition in the most powerful country in the world, a coalition that tolerates an insane idiot tyrant in order to accomplish their goal of cutting $880 billion from Medicaid. I have no interest in defending “conservatism”, it is an evil ideology. I do not think the “free marketplace of ideas” on campus needs that intellectual voice. If, for example, all campus debate were between libertarians and populists, I would not try to add “But have you read this guy Edmund Burke?”
(Ironically, the campus conservative trolls I knew when I was in college have now become social justice assholes, trolling people on social media to punish them for how they discuss sex or race, or trying to enforce the exile of people they deem hostile to social justice. My conclusion is just that they were first and foremost assholes, who will join whatever ideology gives them the most permissiveness to express that instinct.)
It’s weird to refer to my “entire posture” without noticing my many, many communist posts that give zero consideration to capitalism or conservatism.
What I do want to defend is people. Some of whom happen to be conservatives. You may notice how the most vicious targets of campus activism tend to be liberals, who want to question the party line in some way or another. The problem is not that “conservatives have it bad” but that when one political stance is stigmatized, any dissent from the party line whatsoever becomes an opportunity for mob justice. It is terrible and it makes everyone miserable, right and left alike.
Your conservative-disdain is like watching the Crucible and saying “Well?? Do you want to defend witches???” You’ve missed the point of who will get hit hardest by encouraging witch hunts.
You ask is too concerned with my “smug self-superiority” and not enough with whether my words are right. As I have said before, I identify with the absolute worst of humanity, so if there is any emotion or identity that would tar me as someone you don’t want to listen to, then don’t read me. Don’t listen to black homeless people? Then ignore me. Don’t listen to conservatives aka Nazis? You can unfollow. Think smug liberal intellectuals never have anything of value to add? Then why bother here. I make zero promises to my moral or mental purity. But if you are going to read me, then judge the words and logic themselves for whether they are correct.
I am responding only to the paragraph quoted above, not to any other part of this post.
Your position here is bad and you should feel bad.
By which I mean – this is basically the Lacanian version of the standard social-justice-flavored anti-tone-argument argument. “It doesn’t matter how much of an asshole I am, it only matters what declarative content my statement has!”
There is obviously a core of truth to this. The tone used by a debater doesn’t change the facts of the world, and trying to use “you used a bad tone!” as a substitute for “you’re wrong on the merits!” is a fallacy and a dodge and should be treated as such.
But there are very good reasons that we care about the tones that people use in conversation, particularly when they’re discussing important abstract topics. Aggressive bullying is a good way to make potential interlocutors hurt and afraid, or recalcitrant and defensive, either of which makes it unnecessarily difficult to find and spread truth. Smug superiority, while not quite as bad, does pretty much the same thing. It causes shy, insecure people to feel like they shouldn’t argue back against you because they’ll get smacked down (even if they have valid points to make). It causes more-confident people to hate you, and to want to disagree with you out of pride, even if you’re completely right.
And none of these is necessarily the worst thing in the world, but…what do you have to gain from using a tone like that? The pleasure of feeling like a shades-wearing Internet Cool Kid for the five minutes that it takes you to type out your thing? What benefits make it worth your while to pour even small amounts of mental pollution in the discourse?
(I assure you, I understand the joys of being personally unpleasant. Find a better context to indulge it.)
As a default, when we’re talking about things that matter, it is really useful to have a default presentation of “friendly and patient and inclined to take people seriously.” Actively making a fetish out of Not Doing That Thing should be regarded as seriously bad praxis.