Maybe.
Has political correctness actually gone mad?
- Thread starter Pogue Mahone
- Start date
Maybe.
You don't need to know much about Johnson to know what a terrible appointment he is. I've got a stack of cv's on my desk from job applicants at the place I work. If any of them had "fired twice, for lying" in their employment history then they would be going in the shredder, pronto.
That sounds eerily similar to what people said about Drumpf when he was elected.
I agree 100% but lying is something I would willingly accuse most of the politicians sitting near the top of their parties. Anyway, sorry I didn't mean to pull this thread off course.
Nope. I'm no Trump fan either. I'm just someone who looks at politicians on the left and right, comedians on the left and right and any other person slinging mud from either position and wonder what they're actually doing to better the situation.
A centrist is someone who stands for nothing but pontificates that "we need to find some common ground" which is the quintessential empty catchphrase.
And the bolded is just straight up nonsense.
Sorry Siorac, I don't agree. I feel like I stand for plenty and I like to think centrists are actually realists who understand the need for compromise. The world is a complicated place and one single vision (left or right) will not work for everyone. We are in a serious 'Thought Police' age where both sides are trying to bend the will of the other to match it's own instead of trying to forge a path that works in some semblance for both.
Just the way I see it. From my point of view the far left are no better in some respects than the far right. Totally intolerant and aggressive.
The far right are worse because they pose a legitimate terrorist threat, in the UK at least. There's no real left equivalent to that. They certainly can be bloody irritating though.
Indeed. And when people get overzealous and aggressive, I tend to be more forgiving of the ones doing it on behalf of marginalised groups, rather than those doing it against them.
The left's intolerance is largely directed towards those that are intolerant towards others. And as Karl Popper argued, intolerance of intolerance is necessary if you want a tolerant society.
This. Exactly this. The far right is outraged because disgusting poor, gay and brown people can walk down the same street as them. The far left is outraged that the far right can be such ridiculous hateful ignorant fecking bigots.
Big difference.
If you want to be right wing, fine, at least admit that you're a selfish cnut who doesn't like to share.
Yeah, what has ever been achieved in politics by trying to find some common ground between opposing viewpoints?
That's nice but in a lot of issues, there is no "compromise" or a "path that works for both". Let me illustrate with an admittedly extreme example.
If one side says all blue-eyed people should be exterminated and the other side says no blue-eyed people should be exterminated then what is the centrist solution, what is the compromise? Kill only half of them? Don't kill any but maim them for life or enslave them?
Or, to bring a real life example, look at the American Civil War. Imagine an abolitionist who believes that owning people is wrong. For them, a compromise that says owning "some people in certain places" is OK is not acceptable. There is no compromise to be had there.
This is from the US but then most of the examples of extreme PC in this thread come from there, too: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/a...rists-2018-were-almost-all-right-wing/581284/
The extreme left are mean to people on the internet. The extreme right commit terrorist acts.
To try to achieve a compromise, you first need to have a viewpoint. If you are a centrist whose sole political view is "we should all love each other" that's worthless. It's great for living your everyday life though so there's that.
Saying that "we need to find the common ground" is the politics equivalent of a football fan saying "we need more desire and passion!!!". It's meaningless. Compromise is to be had on specific issues, and only if those issues are not core to someone's value system. A die-hard fundamentalist evangelical is not going to compromise on abortion. They have to be beaten at the elections to make sure they don't get to influence policy. And for that, you need to stand for something.
Google “The Good Friday Agreement” if you want to learn about what can be achieved when two sets of people, with diametrically opposed - and entrenched - political opinions try to find some common ground.
I'll no doubt get slaughtered for this (I'm wishing I stayed in the saftey of the transfer thread) but Tony Blair was on to something at the start of his tenure in no10. I was in my 20's and could remember the Tory years before and that guy got the balance right. He sat pretty comfortably in that middle ground and for a while this country wasn't, or at least didn't feel so divided.
Obviously his legacy is tarnished now but he was truly a modern politician, which is something that cannot be said for either Boris or JC and since TB our politics have taken a massive step backwards at a time where it needs to be looking forwards.
Perfect. I manage a large team at work. Some of them really don't get on. Talking is always the key not name calling and aggression.
Yep. Theres no comparison here. One side is angry because they are racist, sexiest, bigoted and terrorists. The other side just shows how much they hate that particular side.
That's rubbish. We can't all love each other but what you're saying is that we shouldn't accept there 'may be a way' to move forward. That's as small minded as it is defeatist. Most centrists don't have 'sole political views'. Just realistic thoughts such as maybe some aspects of socialism are great but it doesn't work for our finances. And capitalism may be bad, we actually need some of it to fund socialism. It's all part of the same machine whether people want to accept it or not.
If neither side in any argument is willing to compromise then we're screwed. This is what being a centrist is. I just see a lot of pig headed and obstinate idiots so entrenched on either side they're unable or unwilling to accept that there may just be a solution.
Petty sniping has its place.This is true. Although the left also has a tendency to turn on each other with just as much anger and scorn as they use against the right.
The trans activists vs TERFs squabbles referenced higher up the thread being an obvious example. The whole intersectional thing also seems to cause regular bunfights, pile-ons and scrambles for moral highground.
I can’t think of any equivalent scenarios on the right (although that might be because I try not to spend any time immersed in right wing social media - too icky)
Yeah, great. I never said compromise is impossible or bad. I said, and keep saying, that "we need to find a common ground" and "we need a centrist government" are worthless political viewpoints in themselves. They mean nothing. It's the equivalent of "let's be nice to each other".
It's especially worthless on the context of this thread. Sure, let's compromise on how much the richest in society should be taxed or whether benefits should be means-tested. But if someone believes that homosexuality is a sin and it should be illegal then there's no compromise and common ground to be had. And all too often the cries for compromise come in this context: "we should not call racists racist, we should try to find a solution that works for everyone!".
Yeah agreed. It can get very messy and as you say the the pile-ons especially can be horrible. But nothing the left has done can equal the extremes of the right.
Can’t believe I forgot to mention Labour’s antisemitism clusterfeck as another example of left on left drama...
Maybe not currently and historically but I've seen it grow and grow into something that is ugly in its own right and if left unchecked how bad will it get in the coming years?
So not now and not ever but maybe in the future the two will be the same if unspecified things occur?
Yeah, they're totally the same then.
"even though it hasn't happened before, and it's not happening now, what if it ever does happen? what then?!?"
There has always been the right and the left all through history. They have both shared completely different values and it has always been one side that wants to openly hold back and oppress one side, while the other side tries to fight and revolutionise society in a more progressive direction. Modern society has it in the form of social media and advertising and posturing but its always the same concept.
The truth is regardless one side is clearly a worst side morally than the other.
Can you provide examples?
Some rich people might have to sell their 9th house and you might run into a girl dressed as a dude in the men's room. Lord protect us all.
Of course, I'm not making a direct comparison here as there isn't one. I just worry that the extreme left is getting messier and more angry and the lines between the behaviour of both sides are blurring even if the causes aren't.
Why would either of those bother me? I'm neither rich nor bigotted.
No not you, I mean the right in general. The solution is one of two things; either the far right will stop being bigots or the left will stop caring about them being bigots. The problem is on the right. The left's agression is reactionairy.
The far right have a lot of infighting which is why you see organisations like the EDL form and then splinter quite quickly before disappearing.
I think the hard left in this country have a similar strategic problem, they have little appetite to reach out to the centre to create a the broad church generally needed to win power (its a little different at the moment with the chaos in British politics), they'd rather those centrist vote for the Tories.
Of what? The extreme lefts' anger? It's there. The hatred and fury at protests against politicians or anyone who doesn't share their views ...
The far left may well be morally justified in their anger just as much as the far right are completely wrong in their views and beliefs but if neither side show some willingness to get beyond it then we are screwed.
That doesn't make either side right.
Not all people on the right hold extreme views on race or sexuality. Nor are they rich. Just as not everyone on the left wants to aggressively fight opposing views. There is a bigger middle ground to be had than is currently on offer that's all I'm trying to say.
Ah, yes of course, I thought we were talking about the far right and far left. Moderates can find middle ground of course.
Still the far right is inherently far worse than the far left if you ask me. That doesnt mean the far left is universally fantastic. I think far-anything is wrong. Us humans (we humans?) have the ability to look at things in a nuanced manner. We should always do that.
The problem with centrism is that some people like to see it as the only inherently sensible position, filled with rational and level-headed people who would do a great job of running the country if only they were given the chance, unlike the entrenched extremists on the left and right.
But take a gander through Twitter and you'll find that's not the case - many centrists (to use the term broadly) are just as hysterical, ideologically minded and entrenched as their counterparts on the left and right. I sympathise with the wider motivations of a lot of the People's Vote types but a lot of them are incredibly hysterical and over-dramatic at times, no less so than the worst of Corbyn's fans.
A lot of this comes down to Blair - the popular view is often that he was an unprincipled pragmatist who veered to the centre because he had to. That's entirely incorrect, he was a deeply ideological position with a very fixed and entrenched worldview of his own. Whether that ideological was good or not is another debate but he was by no means someone who liked compromise and he wasn't necessarily pragmatic either. He simply did a good job of convincing everyone else he was.
But take a gander through Twitter and you'll find that's not the case - many centrists (to use the term broadly) are just as hysterical, ideologically minded and entrenched as their counterparts on the left and right. I sympathise with the wider motivations of a lot of the People's Vote types but a lot of them are incredibly hysterical and over-dramatic at times, no less so than the worst of Corbyn's fans.
A lot of this comes down to Blair - the popular view is often that he was an unprincipled pragmatist who veered to the centre because he had to. That's entirely incorrect, he was a deeply ideological position with a very fixed and entrenched worldview of his own. Whether that ideological was good or not is another debate but he was by no means someone who liked compromise and he wasn't necessarily pragmatic either. He simply did a good job of convincing everyone else he was.