It’s a good but short talk, and she does confront her audience with the harsh reality that secularism is on the rise…but she identifies as a conservative? WTF? I only wish she were representative of conservative Americans, but I don’t think the attendees at CPAC would agree.
Who is she talking to?
So I know she’s talking to CPAC, but seriously who is she talking to?
doublereed,
She claims to be talking to people who “believe in the equality of all people” ( at 3 minutes)
So she’s talking to the janitorial staff?
“We were the party that formed against slavery”
Does she not see how utterly deceptive and irrelevant such a claim is, when we’re talking about the Republican Party of the last 30-40 years?
You know, if there are people out there who want to remake the republican party from the inside, well, more power to them. I would rather see a better republican party than the one that exists now.
We often talk about how delusional the right wing is when it comes to a lot of issues. But what exactly do you call this? This is just baffling.
“I was born a poor black child… no wait that was Steve Martin.”
I feel like in an audience full of people who actually like and understand comedy, the laughs would have come immediately before the ellipsis. Not a single person got the reference until she held their hands and explained it.
@Robert Westbrook, #5
My parents grew up with the Republicans that fought the civil war and ran the Underground Railroad. To be fair, that generation was almost gone in my parent’s youth, and theirs was more the Republican Party of 60 years ago than of today. Maybe it’s a regional thing though, but people in this area still take that very seriously. No, it doesn’t stop the Republicans from being Republicans, but it does give people something to latch onto.
As soon as someone cites “we were the party against slavery” to support conservativism they immediately lose respect from me. The Republican party of today bears no resemblance to the party of Lincoln. It’s an empty catch phrase. It’s a way for Republicans to pat themselves on the back and say “when it comes to race, we’re the good guys” without actually being the good guys. Her saying that made her look like a complete panderer. She’s right that the Republicans ignore seculars, millennials, and change to their own peril, but the fact that she has to feed them feel-good platitudes like “you guys are the family that ended slavery” should clue her in that it’s a lost cause. CPAC conservatives are never going to accepts atheists, or gays, or social justice, or economic justice, or anything a secular humanist stands for. Seeing her up there pandering to those bigots was just plain depressing.
Why?
I want to see it dead.
Get a fucking opposition from the left. It’s not like there’s anyone on that wing at the moment.
As far as the slavery thing, it’s just flatly false because she was talking about conservatives rather than the Republican Party. Conservatives were for slavery. Blatantly so. The Democrats were the conservative party at that time with the Republicans were the liberals. Conservatives never fought against slavery.
She’s just simply incorrect.
Her entire speech as just a sales pitch. “There are growing numbers of voters out there that don’t believe what you do. You better appeal to them if you want to keep winning.” While she’s right, it’s also sad that AA’s big talk had nothing to do with secularism or even secular conservatism and everything to do with “you best get them voters before the Dem’s do”. Again, that audience is not on her side. The only thing she has to sell them is votes, because they damn sure don’t share any secular values, and they’ll look on secular conservatives the same way they look at gay conservatives: threats to the social leg of the conservative table.
@11 Sili – Exactly. If the world was AT ALL sane, the Democrats would be representative of the right, they would feel heat from the left, and the Republicans wouldn’t even exist….
Bey: “The law is, change or die.”
The problem is, the CPAC audience would far rather die than change. After all, change is that thing Obama wanted…
I haven’t read much from Jamila Bey yet, but what little I have led me to believe she holds largely progressive views. Is progressive conservatism possible?
If you have to go back 150 years to find an example of “something good we did for black people”, you have a big problem.
It used to be in Canada, eh.
In the sense that a person can be progressive on some issues (say, social ones) and conservative on others (like economics or foreign policy). Problem is, the conservatives of CPAC (and the Republican establishment in general) don’t actually support the “small government, fiscal responsibility” that the average American conservative thinks they support. Republican fiscal policies aren’t responsible, they’re reprehensible. And small government to them just means “less welfare for those others”. They’re fine with government being big enough to meddle with people’s voting rights, reproductive plumbing, bedroom behavior, and spousal choices (as long as it’s not theirs that’s being meddled with though).
In case you’re dying to know what other CPAC speakers said, (not likely), here are some highlights:
The tidbits above were culled from rightwingwatch.org
I’ll reiterate what I said about Silverman last time this came up: If anyone at CPAC is part of your movement, you’re not part of mine, full stop.
Tony!
No. Conservatism means conserving the privileges of the already privileged. It is fundamentally opposed to progress, justice, and indeed prosperity.
themadtapper
Being conservative on any of these axes, supports all of them, whether proponents admit that motivation or not. Conservative foreign policy is neo-colonialism, and is fundamentally unjust. Conservative economic policy further impoverishes the poor and removes protections from vulnerable groups, and is fundamentally unjust (and also really, really stupid, from an economic standpoint). Conservative social policies, of course, freely admit that they want to keep kicking the people at the bottom, and are fundamentally unjust. There are no positive points to conservatism.
To the extent that the term ‘small government’ means anything, it means preventing the government from helping those in need or ensuring people’s civil rights; this is bad. It also means not investing in infrastructure; this is bad. There is no upside to the idea of ‘small government’, particularly not if you like having a 21st century tech base. ‘Fiscal responsibility’ is a plain lie, and anyone willing to look would have seen it by now.
Tough shit for them. There’s no fucking excuse for continuing to support what they actually do support, even if they really do believe that (which I don’t actually believe most of them do, to be perfectly honest, as many are quite vocal about supporting Republicans to ‘stick it to the libs’ (libs may be replaced by almost any sort slur relating to ethnicity, sexuality, and/or gender).
That ‘Party of Lincoln’ crap is so dishonest.
Why not say, the Party of Goldwater, the Republican candidate for President a century after Lincoln?
Oh yeah, Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act.
“If you have to go back 150 years to find an example of “something good we did for black people”, you have a big problem.”
Matt G wins the thread.
At 3:30ish “if you cant caste me out for my race or for my gender…” uh hasn’t the GOP has been trying very hard to do just that?
CPAC is an explicitly white supremacist-allied organization. This is . . . people are very, very strange.
So, FtB has their own token conservative now?
I’m seriously unimpressed. I’m completely uninterested in increasing the number of secular conservatives (no matter what country). I’m interested in decreasing the number of conservatives (by making them progressive, before anybody gets me wrong)
@Tony
Well, Frank Zappa was a fiscally conservative atheist who was socially liberal, so I guess anything can happen.
I’ll never stop being surprised when people who seemed at first impression to be good are actually horrible. Glad I won’t waste any more of my life than I have reading or listening to her.
@Dalillama
I never said it would be consistent to be progressive on some issues and conservative on others, but that doesn’t stop people from holding those opinions. If one thing should be certain by now, it’s that people are really good at having inconsistent ideas. My point though was that even if Jamila/Silverman/American Atheists fall into that camp of “socially progressive, fiscally conservative” (internally consistent or not), CPAC is still not the place for them because CPAC’s ideas of “small government, fiscal responsibility” are neither small nor responsible (you might argue that neither are AA’s, but first I suppose we have to nail them down on what size they want the government and what fiscal policies they consider responsible).
Whoa…Jamila is not horrible. That’s what bugs me about this: she was doing her damnedest to find a sympathetic angle with a whole bunch of people she disagrees with profoundly.
Definitely not saying she is.
The is no sympathetic angle to find. She couldn’t offer them any kind of common ground other than “party of Lincoln” and “you need that voter base”. That’s why it’s so ridiculous for AA to keep going. I’d honestly like to hear a reasonable explanation for it. Any conservatives that might be sympathetic to AA aren’t going to be at CPAC, and CPAC isn’t going to be supporting any kind of policies – social, fiscal, or otherwise – that AA would also support. At least, I sincerely hope AA wouldn’t support them. If AA genuinely thinks CPAC is the face of small government and fiscal responsibility… I’m afraid I just don’t have any words.
Whatever Jamila Bey is or isn’t, I am seriously unimpressed that she not only identifies as Conservative, but also as part of the “Republican family”. I am baffled how any smart, free thinking person can possibly choose to be a part of an openly bigoted science-denying free riding bunch of assholes.
I’ll be sure to check out her blog for the next little while to see if she can explain this mythical common ground a secular black women could have with the GOP, I’d imagine it’s also home to unicorns, and invisible pink dragons.
My wife found out a conservative that she knew was atheist – it was a first for her, and a second for me. It puzzles me sometimes that more conservatives aren’t atheist – the social-Darwinist, racist, competitive gits that they are.
As for the Republicans and slavery: It has been 150 years, folks, things have shifted. The current Republican party has inherited the war-profiteer merchants of the North, and picked up the former slave-owners of the South, and collected all the profit-at-others-expense miscellany on the way. Most of the former slave-descendants are voting Democrat, in case the Republicans haven’t noticed – I just wish that all of us had something less bad to vote for.
Fiscal conservatism and progressivism aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive in my opinion. I’d lean quite heavily towards liberal social values but would be more centre / centre-right on government spending; certainly not opposed to more left leaning policies and Keynesian economic approaches, but fiscal recklessness/profligacy irks me on a personal level, as well as on a governmental one.
At least there’s the capacity in the US for a massive diversion of government outlays should the decision ever be taken to significantly downsize the military budget; there are decent enough social welfare systems throughout much of western Europe, and some excellent ones in Scandinavia ( the amalgamation of socialist and capitalist values throughout the region represents the ideal in my view ) , but coming demographic shifts are going to seriously challenge those so I’m uncertain as to whether they can be maintained and improved on absent substantial and consistent economic growth.
I’ve also got some sympathy for complaints about over regulation and big government, at least living in an EU context, where I think the latter has probably gone too far.
themadtapper
If they vote for conservative politicians, they’re declaring which part they think is more important, and, funny thing, that’s always the part that fucks over outgroups. In the face of that, I am entirely unswayed by mealymouthed equivocations about what they ‘really’ believe, in their heart of hearts; they vote for bigotry, they campaign for the right of bigots to enact their bigotry, they’re bigots. Looks like a duck and all that.
I really don’t, actually. “Small Government” is as much a dogwhistle as ‘States Rights” and “Fiscal Conservative”, and the fact that someone is describing their position using those terms tells me all I need to know about it, specifically that it is based on ignorance at best, malice at worst, and most likely both at once.
PZ Myers
The extent to which someone is a conservative is the extent to which they are a horrible person. The overlap in that direction is total (not the other way, though; it’s totally possible to be a horrible person and not be a conservative, but being a conservative make you a horrible person).
corvidd @ 35
Is there anyone in the history of politics ever who’s stood for “fiscal recklessness” or “profligacy”? Aside from, I dunno, Louis XVI or Caligula.
@Snoof
I’ll add Nero to that short list !
Nobody of course has stood on a platform explicitly espousing them, but plenty have acted with fiscal irresponsibility when in power.
That’s what it was? She was finding an angle? Shouldn’t something like that have been found, if there is anything non-horrible to find, before going to CPAC to dangle millions of voters in front of them? Because to me it looked like that’s what she was actually doing.
I almost care about whether I’ve been counted among those millions (the RCC counts me, so why not?), or if instead it was an honest estimate of actual conservative atheists who exist somewhere in this country and are conservatives. Should I be utterly terrified to learn about this, or should I be somewhat bored by watching conservatives lying to each other? I do know the chances of me ever voting for any of these horrible assholes is next to zero. I’m very sure of that.
Before the meaning of words got ruined, I used to claim fiscal conservative and social libertarian.
The last fiscal conservative was Bill Clinton, who left a whopping budget surplus. Promptly reversed by Bush, who was a fiscal idiot and left us with budget deficits and the Great Recession we are still dealing with.
Republicans are not fiscal conservatives!!!
The social libertarian referred to the fact that the government ought not to run our lives. As in legalize marijuana, let women control their bodies and lives, leave science alone, and let whoever wants to marry whoever they want.
Republicans aren”t social libertarians either!!!
They deeply want to make you do all sorts of things that are none of their business, anti-gay, anti-birth control, anti-knowledge, anti-atheist, anti-abortion, anti-reality.
They are really christofascists and authoritarians.
And these days I’m a fiscally conservative progressive freedomist.
corvidd @ 38
My point being that “fiscal responsibility” isn’t an inherently conservative position, except in the trivial and literal sense that it’s about “conserving” things. It’s the default position of pretty much anyone who isn’t utterly detached from reality. People of all stripes disagree about which spending is necessary or desirable, but that’s a matter of different priorities and views as to the role of government.
I gotta say this. I don’t get this from any angle. All evidence points to the GOP everywhere not being progressive enough to embrace atheists. Conservative hence traditional hence religious. You want to troll them you are spitting in the wind. Over 50 percent of conservatives would like to do way with the Constitution and make the U.S. a Christian country.
What are we saying can you please stop passing bill after bill against women’s reproductive rights and homosexuals and atheists to appease your rich Christian campaign supporters?
We bloody well don’t need more atheist republicans, until the GOP stops pissing on separation of church and state daily to the applause of fundamentalists that are ruining our country. I don’t know if it is because AA is not headquartered in the South and they don’t yet how boned you are with the GOP in charge.
The only point I see is that fiscal responsibility. Sure we can’t pay for everything we would like to do, and yes government screws up the best of intentions with bureaucracy and cronyism and wasteful spending. Yes I hear you, but the GOP has blown trillions on foreign wars. They let war profiteers loot our treasury. How many millions of dollars did we blow on a torture consultant that didn’t get us dick in terms of intelligence? How many trillions are we blowing away on the war on drugs and on private prisons? The whole Republican party is fiscally conservative is transparent tripe.
So please stop telling liberal, LGBT,and women atheists that you got their backs don’t worry about it. Heck all atheists are boned by the GOP, you just don’t know how boned until you lose your job because they let the fox into the henhouse. I am a bit tired of my support being taken for granted as a progressive atheist.
The other huge lie of the GOP is that they are pro-family
They aren’t. Their constant attacks on the social safety net, public schools, and the ACA effect mostly…children and/or single mothers. To be sure, a lot of those children but by no means all are nonwhite and/or poor.
To take just one example, half of all food stamp recipients are…children. The rest are their parents and some old people. A lot of them work and still qualify.
The GOP are tribalists at best who care about their low education white tribe and at worst, useful idiots for the 1% oligarchies who are making a bid for power with a lot of success.
But since Republicans are so incredibly detached from reality, in fact they are just playing a word game. They may as well claim to be conservationists whose kids study at the conservatory. Nobody actually listens to that bullshit. As long as the correct right-wing noises come out, no matter what the facts are, their voters are satisfied.
Republicans aren’t fiscal conservatives. As most on this thread know already.
If you look at the two leading theorists of the GOP, both Brownback of Kansas and Scott Walker of Wisconsin have wrecked their states. Through the magic of supply side economics which almost never works. JIndal in Louisiana didn’t do so well either.
Their strategy thought up by St. Reagan. (It didn’t work for him either.)
1. Cut taxes and claim they will pay for themselves.
2. Deficits go up. Problem.
3. Cut services. End of problem.
Of course you now have fewer services such as universities, public education for kids, social safety net, and roads. Half of a state’s budget is…usually public schools.
Scott Walker finishes this year $283 million in the red. Followed by a $1 billion per year deficit. And this is after he cut services right and left. And oh yeah, all those jobs never came either.
And Scott Walker is running for president as a…fiscal conservative.
I wouldn’t trust him with my family budget. He would just stop paying for electricity, running water, food, cats, garbage and sewer, and car fuel. I’d have a great cash flow while starving in the cold and dark with hungry cats, non running car, and no internet connection.
@44 consciousness razor
Reminds me of Orwell’s Newspeak Dictionary:
I seem to recall reading somewhere that linguists scoff at the notion that culling vocabulary culls thought, but it was an interesting idea.
I feel like Jon Stewart’s recent words ring true here:
American Atheists presence at CPAC is nothing but foolishness and idiocy. It may not be as foolish as the Log Cabin Republicans considering the Republican Party actively waged recent two national campaigns specifically against gay rights, but it’s definitely up there.
A lot of respect lost. And the fact that CPAC is one of the more extreme and nutty conventions just makes it all the worse.
I like to call the present-day Republican Party the party of Jefferson Davis. Senator Trent Lott once said as much in a speech to the Sons of Confederate Veterans in Biloxi, MS: “The spirit of Jefferson Davis lives in the 1984 Republican platform.” That senator had a fascination with the only president of the Confederacy, wanting to rehabilitate his reputation.
As to Abraham Lincoln, he favored government support of higher education, transport infrastructure, and the like — nowadays, he’d make a good Democrat.
I read one book, Mario Pei, maybe, that argued that we humans didn’t become fully self-aware and human until we had enough language to talk to ourselves. I know we do better when we coach ourselves out loud, and I think that is because the connection between the two halfs of the brain is actually a bit narrow-band.
I knew a couple of multi-lingual people who said that they thought in the local language, rather than trying to translate all day. I know I can do some very visual thinking while listening to words, but words and gestures really help my creativity.
So I vote for linguistic thinking, or whatever we are talking about. I know a lot of conservatives, and they seem to have limited vocabulary and limited thought. The paucity of language may not directly restrict thought, but learning is indeed mind-expanding.
(I was just swearing at the dogs in my few words of Gaelic, and l heard the house teenager using the f-word for the thousandth time today. The kid needs to enlarge a bit.)
Could it be possible that someone involved in the decision for the American Atheists to attend and speak at CPAC thought that good or bad, it would be worth it for the headlines and the publicity it would generate?
Even if that was the case, tacitus, what Jamila Bey said was still… just…
PZ… I’m really sorry, but I’m sorta kinda done with American Atheists’ obsession with CPAC, and I’m legitimately ticked off at Jamila for going.
I don’t want CPAC Republicans in my fucking atheist tent. Anyone who does is not invited to my atheist tent.
Period.
I fail to see the purpose behind a so-called progressive atheist organization sending a representative to talk at CPAC. Where is the common ground to be found? The GOP is anti-science, anti-LGBT, anti-women, anti-government assistance, anti-education, anti-veterans, and anti-PoC. In addition, they’re a party of warmongers, they oppose any efforts to reduce the human impact on the climate, they don’t give a shit about homeless people, they want to create a theocracy, and they support torture. I’m sure there are a few things I’ve forgotten. Jamila is speaking to a group of people who spend the vast majority of their time, energy, and resources shitting on marginalized, less privileged people. It’s not like any of this is new. The problems with the Republican Party are well documented. I’ll be really curious to see what, if anything, Jamila has to say about her talk. I have to say I’m in agreement with Nate @51. This is a disappointment.
Worse, Tony, is that there isn’t much she could say that would make this okay:
1. She could say that she didn’t mean it, which makes her dishonest.
2. She could say she did mean it, which makes her a conservative, which simply isn’t okay when you’re ingratiating yourself into an ostensibly progressive group like Freethought Blogs and the commenters therein. As already laid out above, there’s no such thing as a progressive conservative. It’s an oxy-moron.
3. She could say that she was a given a terrible task and did what she could with it, which begs the question… why didn’t she then simply refuse to do it?
I can’t think of anything else that could be said about this, and I see no scenario in which this is okay. If it is number three, that’s provisionally forgivable, depending on other variables going into the future.
And okay… maybe I’m a bigot… a conservaphobe or whatever. But how is it not with good reason? These are the theocratic fascists/dominionists. These are the racists, the party the KKK and neo-Nazis and White Supremacists identify with now (Abraham Lincoln would be a Progressive at best, a Democrat at worst today… he was NO conservative). These are the misogynists, the ones who are anti-choice, the ones who want to control women’s bodies and sexuality. These are the homophobes and the transphobes who want to put that bigotry into law.
Obviously, as we’ve learned, progressives can be just as misogynistic, just as racist, just as homophobic, just as transphobic, and so on. But at least progressives are pro-choice and pro-marriage equality and so on. So they’re bigots, but they aren’t actively trying to make their bigotry public policy (well… except maybe when it comes to rape culture, but that’s a different discussion).
There is no way that America Atheists’ obsession with CPAC is good, and Jamila made a very, very big mistake in speaking there.
This Republican party is Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. Thinking that this time they will be reasonable and we just need to give them another chance is nothing but foolishness.
This treating of them as a legitimate party no matter how dishonest and transparently greedy they become is only playing into their game. I know in the rooms where policies to disenfranchise people and control the bodies of women were discussed, if anyone thought they were going too far, they were laughed at. “Don’t worry, those minorities will still be at CPAC trying to gain influence with us, ha ha”
Not just representatives, Tony, at least two of their biggest wigs. Silverman and Bay. http://www.religionnews.com/2015/02/26/first-atheist-activist-addresses-conservative-conference/
Damnit, autocorrect. Bey. But y’all knew that. :D
Is Silverman a gun fondler or an AGW denialist? That would explain a lot.
Nate @53:
I don’t think your opposition to conservative ideas makes you a bigot bc (correct me if I’m wrong) your opposition is borne out of a rational look at conservative ideas. Moreover, from what I know of you, you don’t actively seek to oppress, discriminate, or otherwise bring physical, psychological, financial, or emotional harm to people with conservative views. That meaningful distinction is what separates your “intolerance” of conservative ideology from the intolerance of bigots like Peter LaBarbera, Sara Palin, Rick Santorum, or Scott Lively.
bigwhale @54:
Love the Charlie Brown analogy.
****
Drolfe @55:
Thanks for the reminder (and the correction) about Silverman. It slipped my mind.
I think this is potentially very clever. 1. Divide and conquer? If republicans don’t see themselves as only christians, that could get them focused on the more relevant policy distinctions that face future american governments. The ones who only want to focus on that America as a christian nation crap will split off and form a more irrelevant party. 2. More subtle, but: inhibit identity politics? If the republican party can change in an obvious way, then the conservatives may be less inclined toward tribal voting (especially if they don’t like a bunch of people they think are in their tribe, and actually identify somewhat with folks in the other tribe). These are kind of similar things, and both outcomes would be good.
I sort of speculated about that in the last thread — Silverman and the rest of the secular lobby knows that as long as the Republican coalition* requires theocrats that secular legislation is DOA without gobs of Democratic support, but Libertarian atheists hate Democrats (because Libertarians give a shit more about not paying taxes than ending religious privilege, paradoxically; if they didn’t they’d be progressives). Libertarian atheists, like Silverman, like Bey, like Shermer, like Harris want to be able to have secular government without Democrats doing the heavy lifting. (Whom they hate voting for, because “I got mine”, and taxes, and maybe these days “Muslim appeasement” etc.)
It’s a delusional plan though — if they manage to split the Republican coalition without the generational work of voting-reform then wedging the coalition is in effect weakening the GOP while strengthening the Libertarian Party, insuring Democrats get elected. The good news is, secularism gets more votes with Democrats in majorities, but it doesn’t advance the Libertarian agenda at all and all the big wigs at and big donors to AA have a sad.
To the extent that more Democrats in government is winning for humanists (and as we argue here all the time, it’s the lesser evil) it’s a Pyrrhic victory because what cost is associating lower-case American atheists with AA and American conservatism?
If I had to guess, Silverman looked at his movement, over 80% white and says, “Maybe I’ll have more success with secularism bringing conservative whites into the movement instead of trying to tackle diversity. Diversity isn’t going to help me with congress. Fuck it, diversity hurts me if congress stays Republican.”
*The so-called Reagan coalition, the three-legged stool:
“strong defense”, “free enterprise”, and “family values” aka
military-industrial complex, libertarians, and the religious right, aka
capital, supply-siders and other sycophants to capital, and theocrats, aka
plutocrats, economic conservatives, and social conservatives.
PZ
1. She happily identified herself as a conservative and a member of the “conservative family”. These are her chosen people, the people she happily identifies with. The very people who only launch ONE attack on women’s reproductive rights a day if it’s a good day. The people who are pro war. The people who are pro social cuts. The people who are anti education. She even quotes the war criminal Dick Cheney. I don’t care what she believes in her heart of hearts. If she supports the GOP, she supports some of the worst people you have in your country.
2. She actually didn’t sound like she was addressing them as a representative of AA. She talked to them as a fellow conservative about how important it is for them to get that big fat secular vote. She did not talk about increasing secularism but about increasing the conservative vote. What that would mean? See above.
Here is the thing – when somebody says vote Green what do you do? You go full on savage attack mode. I’ve seen it every election.
You say you want opposition from the left, and you do your damndest to squash any talk of opposition from the left. You blame Ralph Nader for the 2000 election loss, despite the fact that more registered democrats voted Bush then people voted Green.
“Don’t split the base” is the mantra, “vote for the lesser of two evils”. It is never “well maybe the Democratic Party should work harder to win liberal votes” its always the fault of those voters.
So yeah you want opposition from the left, right up until it actually appears and then, no a vote for that is the exact same thing as voting for the Republicans.
Bey so far as I can see is trying to improve the opposition from the right, and I’m going to cheer her doing it because that leftwing opposition you want? You won’t let it happen.
Hell in this next election the Democratic Party’s favourite candidate is Hillary “HSBC” Clinton. That’s the lesser of the two evils. Elizabeth Warren, the only decent person in your government, is not even in serious contention.
The only hope of changing things for the better with the Democratic Party then, is improving the Republican Party, making it the lesser of two evils at least starts the path towards maybe one day voting for the greater of two goods.
I see what Jamila is doing as a Good Thing. If social moderates can reclaim the Republican Party then the Dems will drift further left too, or if nothing else their social policies won’t be seen as commiepinkosocialism by anyone other than Russia and Nigeria.
Good god, in a few decades you USAnians could even have a genuinely left-wing major party *boggles*
brucegorton
How?
I mean, maybe I did fall asleep and missed half an hour of her talk, but where is she talking about improving Republican politics*? I only hear her talking about improving Republican election results. Or are you still under the illusion that peopel automatically become less horrible just because they’re atheist and secular?
*Apart from the fact that I don’t even believe that this is a viable strategy cause I’ve seen it fail way too often.
Republicans have a poor track record on the economy.
The GOP. tax cuts are magic. supply siders Brownback-Kansas, Walker-Wisconsin, and Jindal-Louisiana wrecked their states.
2/3’s of the US GDP comes from Blue states that went for…Obama.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
I am not under the illusion that people automatically become less horrible because atheist and secular, but then unlike some I am also not under the illusion that people suddenly become decent just because they’re liberals either.
The Republican Party pushing towards appealing to atheist voters would be a net improvement because a big chunk of what is wrong with that party is its tendency to play to Christian identity politics, and push a “culture war” mentality wherein its Christian voters are constantly under attack by the forces of secularism.
It may not automatically result in improvements, but at least it would open the door for a lot of them to be possible.
If that happens, I’ll convert and believe in Hell and that it froze over.
1. The two main voting blocks of the GOP are low education white racists who see the USA going minority majority in 2043 as a disaster.
And fundie xian christofascists who see the Enlightenment and the rise of science as a disaster.
2. The real rulers of the GOP are the ultra rich 1% oligarchies who see both as useful idiots and just want a New Feudalism. Money and Power are interchangeable.
As odd as a New Feudalism seems, right now they are winning and everyone else is losing.
I’m afraid your “if” is an “if” too far.
brucegorton
So throwing women and poor people and people of colour and LGBTQ people under the bus now for the vague possibility of jam tomorrow is suddenly OK?
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
What do you think it would take for the Republican Party to appeal to atheist voters?
I’m not Gilliell, but…
Be the party that gave us Teddy Roosevelt. You know… that Trust Buster who raised taxes on the wealthy, lowered it on the poor, and proved that the “invisible hand of the market” qualifies as a god before the concept was even a thing. Oh… and was a science-loving environmentalist (except for the hunting, of course) who was, privately, at least, a little bit critical of religion (although likely was a believer when pressed).
The first thing the Republicans have to do is kick out the Tea Party and kick out everyone and everything Saint Reagan brought with him.
#70, brucegorton
Something like this, I think: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077745/?ref_=fn_al_tt_2
sez brucegorton@70: “What do you think it would take for the Republican Party to appeal to atheist voters?”
It already does appeal to some atheist voters—for the most part , those who are also Libertarians. But if you meant to ask what would it take for the GOP to appeal to SJW-type atheists… I don’t think that’s possible. The GOP, as currently constituted, gets most-to-all of its financial support from the 1%, and an awfully damned large percentage of its votes from the Christian Reich. This being the case, the GOP can’t appeal to anybody who gives a shit about social justice, on pain of losing the 1%’s money and/or the Christian Reich’s votes.
Now, the GOP wasn’t always the hive of scum and villainy it is today, which suggests that maybe it might be possible for the GOP to change for the better. But… I don’t see how to get there from here. Given the GOP’s existing political machinery, any hypothetical Non-Asshole GOPer cannot arise from ‘business as usual’; it would have to be someone who does an end-run around the entire GOP, most likely a true grass-roots candidate, as opposed to an astroturfed pseudo-populist. This person would pretty much have to go it alone, without any of the advantages provided by hooking up with the GOP’s ready-made financial support and voting bloc. And they’d have to somehow withstand, and overcome, the full force of the GOP’s truth-optional propaganda.
Again: I just don’t see how it’s possible. I mean, we’ve seen how GOP policies have, when implemented by GOP State governors, led directly to those States’ economies getting sucked down the toilet… and the inhabitant of those States still vote Republican. The GOP has, by now, become firmly entrenched in its position as The Party Of Reality-Denial. How the hell can that change? Answer: It can’t, or at least, it can’t change by any means short of the GOP’s total dissolution followed by a completely new party which basically shares nothing in common with the current GOP—that is, this hypothetical replacement party would be “Republican In Name Only” for real.
Bullshit: horrible is as horrible does. She may be personally pleasant, but she is deliberately siding with evil.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here: the “invisible hand” metaphor was introduced by Adam Smith in 1776, although perhps not with quite the meaning it has now; and I’m not sure what you’re saying Roosevelt did about it. Roosevelt was alos, incidentally, an imperialist of the most brutal kind, crushing the independence movement in the Philippines, grabbing the Panama canal zone, and declaring a doctrine of the USA’s “right to intervene” in the affairs of other western hemisphere states.
Sam Harris also identifies as conservative? What exactly do you mean including Harris in that list? Have any citations? My opinion of the person continues to fall.
I know Harris has some fucked up views on torture and war, but I still think he would clearly favor the Democratic party.
So, should we assume Bey would be fully comfortable with having high court cases decided solely by those justices appointed by her chosen party?
brucegorton
Well, apparently ditching the overt godbothering sounds good enough to Bey. Hell, she mentions points of agreement like “small government yadda yadda” and we all know what they mean by those words. A government so small it fits in every uterus. A government that can’t be bothered with regulations that would keep people and the environment safe. You are still conflating atheist and liberal.
She didn’t address abortion or gun safety or mariage equality because she apparently doesn’t think them important for getting that nice secular vote.
What’s more, she even claims they embrace her for her gender and colour, so obvioucly the racism and misogyny in the GOP are NOT a problem for her.
I have seen Jamila Bey speak at Women in Secularism. She is intelligent, insightful, funny, and iconoclastic, and clearly has a firm grasp on how social issues affect women and people of color. I have absolutely no idea what line of thinking has led her to identify as a conservative, but she’s smart and thoughtful enough that I can only assume that it is a carefully considered position, and until she has explained her position in greater detail, I’m withholding judgment. Honestly, I think the commenters here jumping to dismiss Jamila Bey entirely, even deciding she must be “horrible,” are being tribalistic, reducing “the others” (in this case, conservatives) to one-dimensional caricatures of humans without complexity in their beliefs and values. I see a lot of assumptions about views she “must” hold because she’s identifying as conservative, but which run directly contrary to things she’s said and written in the past. Are we really that narrow-minded about political philosophy? It is as though someone were to assume that because most of the commenters here identify as atheist, we all must agree with Richard Dawkins on social justice issues.
biogeo @ #79:
The issue is less about reducing conservatives to one-dimensional caricatures, and more about the fact that when addressing conservatives at CPAC, the alleged differences between different camps of conservatism are meaningless. Particularly given the discussion above on how mainstream American conservatism is not fiscally conservative, given their push for lower taxation for those who need it least and support for higher defense spending.
biogeo@79,
Sucking up to the bigots and corporate shills of CPAC is horrible, and inexcusable. You can make whatever daft assumptions you like, there’s nothing narrow-minded about rejecting the “political philosophy” (read: racism, misogyny, homophobia, spitting in the faces of the poor, denial of reality) she’s chosen to identify herself with. Her talk was flagrantly dishonest – notably, the identification of today’s Republican Party with that of Lincoln, and the absurd nonsense about her audience believing everyone is equal.
It is? Could you please explain exactly how saying unequivocally that bigoted policies and attitudes that harm real people should not be supported because they are immoral is like saying all atheists should agree with one bigoted rich white dude?
Really. I am dying to know how you think those thinks are alike.
Remotely.
I like how calling anything immoral gets called out as itself being an immoral thing to do.
I remember when it was theists making those kinds of arguments.
“Reason dictates that reason isn’t a way to decide if things are real.”
those things…argh
biogeo
No, I don’t see that. I see people like me saying that it’s fucking irrelevant what positions she holds in her heart of hearts as long as she actively supports groups that work against everything I stand for. It doesn’t matter if she’s the pro choiciest of pro-choice people as long as she supports and actively works for the success of people who want to reduce people with uteruses to rights free breeding vessels.
THIS^
Conservative atheists: “I’m totally cool with you having rights. Heck, I want you to have rights. But ya know what? I’m gonna go over here and help out the guys who want to take those rights away because we agree on sticking it to poor people. We’re still cool, right?”
Me: Nope
It should be pointed out that CPAC isn’t representative of the so-called ‘moderate’ conservatives. For people arguing that this could be an exercise in moderation of the republican party, CPAC is not an appropriate place to do that. CPAC is a kook-fest of islamophobes, nativists, pro-lifers, homophobes, and white supremacists. A distillery of the base of the Republican Party. It’s not the people who vote this way or that depending on the election.
It’s more like the people who think Obama is a Socialist Kenyan Satan. They don’t just disagree with his policies.
@74, Nick Gotts: “she is deliberately siding with evil.”
I disagree with you here, Nick. What she says is important. Ignoring the content of her speech and focusing on group membership is tribal guilt-by-association thinking.
Jamila says she’s a conservative, but how does she define conservative? Watch the video. She’s not siding with evil; she’s siding with attendees who value inclusiveness above their anti-social values. She ‘sided’ with the working/middle class. She argued against bigotry based on gender, race, and personal beliefs. That’s not evil.
And it could be clever — how else could you introduce those ideas to that audience? It’s vindictive and potentially destructive to hate all conservative people (as ‘evil’). Winning converts is a *decent* strategy, but you do it by bludgeoning bad ideas rather than bludgeoning the other tribe.
@biogeo
Agreed. This means she has thoughtfully decided to belong to a group that actively works to deny women’s rights, the rights of blacks, immigrants, labour, and the poor. A group that is anti-intellectual and wants schools to teach creationism and lies instead of history. A group that wants to remove health, safety, and environmental regulation. A group that denies climate change and who will do everything it can to further it along as long as it’s making money for the rich. A group that fights against any kind of gun control. A group whose primary purpose is to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few.
Then you’d be wrong. We’re deciding she must be horrible because she has, after consideration, chosen to join a party with universally horrible ideals and horrible policies run by horrible people who do horrible things. As for complexity–show me anything that the Republicans have done or propose to do that is a) non-horrible & b) exclusive to them (i.e would be something the Democrats wouldn’t do also). I don’t even require that it be something so overwhelming as to make someone agree to overlook all the evil they do in order to promote it. Just one thing that isn’t horrible.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/right-wing-cpac-2015-wants-you-to-know-you-are-in-terrible-danger/
I’m just gonna leave this here.
A room full of fiscal conservatives that don’t want to cut military spending is a room that has no fiscal conservatives in it at all.
That’s a joke, right? That was sarcasm.
*and I don’t mean back in the days of Lincoln. I mean in the last, say, three decades.
You’re ignoring the context entirely. Those people “associate” with each other for a very specific reason. Are you aware of what it is? Also, what “tribe” are we a part?
Edit of my comment: you do it by bludgeoning bad ideas rather than *only* bludgeoning the other tribe.
@92. Not a joke at all. Identity politics impedes progress. Some people are republicans just because of the circumstances of their birth. You won’t change their mind with only hate. Just like hate of the religious doesn’t make them more secular. Attack the ideas primarily. And to do that, you need them to listen to you.
Some people might be interested in this very short manual:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Debunking-Handbook-now-freely-available-download.html
Particularly the third section on the “Worldview backfire effect”.
@slatham
Political parties are not tribes. They are an aggregate of individuals who have agreed about certain ideals and policies they aim to enact. If an individual doesn’t believe in those ideas, they don’t stay with the party and try to change the ideas, they leave the party and join one that agrees with the ideas they hold.
Jackie, wikipedia says about half of attendees are college-aged. I suspect, regardless of the intentions of CPAC the conference, most of those kids are there for some sense of community that they didn’t find elsewhere. It could be too late to write them off.
?!?
Ibis3, I’m willing to be corrected on this in general. But from experience I know people who support political parties the same way they support particular sports teams. Often they inherit the affinity, and they don’t easily change. I wish they did.
slatham
Could you please carefully explain to me the wonderful progressive content of her speech, hopefully woth quotes? And if you want to start with the “where everybody is equal” part, just stuff it because we know that’s hot air.
Giliell, you’ve given me no reason to want to perform this task. You’ll blow off whatever I quote as just “hot air.”
“I see people who love this country and believe in the equality of all people.”
“If you can’t cast me out for my race, for my gender, you can’t cast me out for my different private beliefs.”
She says the party has to change, and she argues for some change that is progressive. Did I say it was wonderful? I said it was potentially clever.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
Are you sure that is what she is trying to do? Because I listened to that speech, and it sounded to me like she was trying to phrase progressive ideas as conservative givens. Saying “you agree with me on this” to try and convince her audience that they actually agree with her on that.
And here is the thing, the Republicans have fucked the world economy into a global depression within the last ten years.
That didn’t stop them taking back two houses in the last elections, and it isn’t going to stop them getting a significant portion of the vote in the next elections. Calling them evil, doesn’t stop them. Pointing out that they’re idiots whose views reproduction would embarrass a nine year-old, isn’t stopping them.
As it is currently, the Republicans are actively hostile to secularism, and anything attached to secularism.
That includes feminism and that includes LGBTQ rights. Both go against religiously mandated “lifestyles” so far as they are concerned.
And they could win, and even if they don’t the Democratic Party has no reason to play left.
Now I am not imagining a future of a leftwing Republican party, I am not saying that I think what Bey is trying to do will work, but it is at least legitimately attempting to do something.
I love the people trying to whitewash conservativism. At fucking CPAC. If you want to see why people think Republicans are bad, instead of just whining and wringing hands over it, you need to look no further than CPAC itself. The idea of making the right “better” is also made laughable by looking at the voices at CPAC. It’s like pissing in an ocean. Or, rather, I suppose, like to clean an ocean of piss by splashing a water bottle into it.
Context is everything. Lynna already provided some content on the matter at post 20. I will continue that. All from Right Wing Watch articles:
So, let’s see if we have got all of this. first, from Lynna’s quotes, we have:
Immigration leads to gang violence
Multiculturalism is evil left-wing dogma
Kick in nuts, Abortion Barbie lolololol
Left wingers control everything and are evil tyrants
Unions are terrorists
White nationalists are okay, gay groups are not
Sexual harassment/molestation jokes!
Obama is an evil tyrant that controls everything
And amidst all of this, we have another person who apparently is trying to play the same angle as Bey.
Apparently Republicans are second class citizens?
Oh, and also Palin was there and said we “waved the white flag” in Iraq and Afghanistan and that’s why ISIS exists and she scoffs at the idea of not being able to simply “kill our way” out of the war, claiming that we did so with the Nazis.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/26/cpac-can-t-quit-palin-neither-can-i.html
Really, it’s just another day in the Republican party. Invoking the idea of moderates and fiscal conservatives is par for the course. That’s what they love to do. They love to glibly shield themselves with the image of milquetoast conservative that only votes Republican because they want to reduce their taxes by .3% or something, and then while everyone is distracted the ones with all the actual power wander off and start ranting to each other about how to best bomb and/or deport Teh Brown People. It amazes that anyone still buys into this disingenuous bullshit.
brucegorton:
But of course voting Green would! Somehow.
She is legitimately just trying to get Republicans to accept non-religious folk. Which legimitately does fuck all in terms of actually stopping their policies from hurting every other group. It would maybe help atheists, but mostly it would just mean more atheists voting for the people who thirst for war, hate anything Muslim looking, despise the idea of helping the poor, completely disregard the need for support systems and infrastructure, want nothing to do with making sure there are protections against racism and sexism, will do absolutely nothing to fix issues along those same lines involving our justice system, who think tradition is a valid argument against giving gay people rights, who actively restrict women’s rights, who are prejudiced against immigrants who aren’t the right skin color, who overwhelmingly support torture, and who will not accept compromise and are willing to burn the world to the ground if they get their way. That isn’t helping much of fucking anything, even if it fucking worked. Do you even realize that, or are you just being disingenuous?
Also, bruce, this:
If it’s true that LBGTQ rights and feminism are attached to secularism, then you are making the case against The CPAC Atheists for us. That just ain’t very Republican. And if you are allying with Republicans despite those issues, then you really don’t particularly care about women and LBGTQ rights, now, do you?
slatham
That’s your interpretation. Apart from the “accept me as a non-believer”. That is there. “Equality for all” is simply empty words unless you specify them. Because a great number of people in taht room believes that “equality for all” means to end affirmative action because that’s racism and sexism against white men. And if she’s as smart as everybody assures me she is, then she knows that damn well.
brucegorton
That’s like saying leaving the door of your freezer open is legitimately attempting to fight global warming. Because, you know, she didn’t go to just any GOP meeting. No, she went to the most right wing GOP meeting and told them “look, I’m no danger to you just because I don’t believe, I agree with you on so many things, let’s work together”
slatham @101
My parents were both Republicans and voted that way their entire life. When I was young I thought I was a republican too, hell I even voted for Bush the first (shudder) in the first election I could vote in. Then I started living life and learning. I paid attention to what politicians were saying and doing. I saw how real people were affected by the policies. It didn’t take much research to come to a conclusion. Anyone who was even semi-awake during the W tenure and happens to vote Republican because their parents do . . . well they are fucking evil, stupid or both. I’m not going to play nice with them, I’m going to call them what they are.
@98, Ibis3, These verbal jackboots were made for walking
Every single bit of evidence suggests that this statement is false, at least in the context of the US. Not only have people traditionally voted for parties because they always have, which is tribal behavior, but if this statement were true, most Americans, based on the positions which are revealed in polls, would be members of the Green Party, and the Democrats would essentially cease to exist. (There are remarkably few actual center-right voters left.)
Furthermore, consider the behavior of our two major parties: the Republicans have a knee-jerk response of opposing anything the Democrats do, while the Democrats have abandoned any pretense of being even vaguely left-wing, and run entirely on being “not the Republicans”. Those are tribal behaviors.
Poor, poor Republicans. Misunderstood, mocked, discriminated against. So much prejudice. They can’t help who they are. They were born that way. They need people out there to be sympathetic and understanding of them, and to not dislike merely for their political ideology. It is just ignorance that needs to stop.
We need a commercial to raise consciousness. “In The Arms of The Angels” playing in the background. Picture of George Bush staring with sad, puppy dog eyes. Cut to Sarah Palin, trying to load her gun but all out of bullets, staring with despair at the moon while wolves howl. Picture of Mitt Romney wiping his tears with hundred dollar bills. Rick Santorum staring at a gay couple and shuddering in terror. And Dick Cheney with a single tear streaming down his cheek as a man’s testicles are electrocuted in the background. For just a dollar a day, you can end Conservative Discrimination. Don’t let these poor people continue to face terrible mistreatment at the hands of bigoted and abusive people. Call now and we well send you a commemorative Republican Jesus action figure. If you are among the first ten callers and commit to a full year of payments, , you will also get a pocket constitution/Bible, a pocket sized rifle, and we will even throw in a Get Out of Taxes Free card. Call now.
The Vicar:
Citation needed.
anteprepro, #111
I read that as “In the Army of Angels” and it didn’t seem inappropriate.
Saad: That would rather change the tone of the piece.
That’s their July 4th advert. :)
@98, Ibis3, These verbal jackboots were made for walking
oh for frick’s sake it’s a metaphor.
@98, Ibis3
and people do try to change, for example, the democrat party to be better. Because who else will they vote for? frick.
Happy Nat @109 — good for you. I’m really glad that this happens. I vote differently than my parents, too. And I vote differently than pretty much all of my childhood friends. But I moved away. Many people stay in the same place and keep the same friends, and bend to the pressures of their social circle without even knowing it. Go ahead and call them stupid or evil. (I think most of them are just unaware, and socially isolated from reality.) But nothing in what you wrote indicates that being called an asshole for being a republican changed your viewpoint. In fact, some research (cited in the handbook I linked to previously) suggests that attacks like that might have inhibited the growth that allowed you to change.
anteprepro
Exhibit A of what I was talking about earlier.
I normally argue for it as being preferable to not voting at all. Voting Green would at least allow a liberal alternative to both major parties, illustrating the fact that there is in fact such an alternative. It would put pressure on the Democrats by illustrating the fact that the people who aren’t voting for them or the Republicans aren’t doing so because they’re apathetic, but because they don’t like either option and would appreciate something more to the left.
And note all of this is “If the alternative is not voting at all”.
But you still see even that as “splitting the base” even as Green votes don’t cancel out Democratic ones, and the fault is never with the Democratic Party.
So what else is left, what other tactics can you adopt? Push more for the Democratic Party, great, Obama’s healthcare plan was pretty much the same as Richard Nixon’s.
http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/29341-obamacare-is-not-some-crazy-left-wing-socialist-plot
It is so effective at countering the rightwing, it pretty much echoes the rightwing of the 1970s. Okay, so maybe go after the right where they are, try to speak at their events, push a better version of rightwing ideology, try to shift the Republicans at least a little bit towards a world less imaginary.
Except now you are throwing people under the bus, aren’t you?
Greens won’t be an alternative until they are capable of being elected. It takes more than just putting a candidate forward, that allows by default a rethug to be elected due to the split progressive vote. instant run-off for an absolute majority is needed so that third party candidates are viable, and don’t split the vote. That is the problem.
Giliell @108: I agree — my interpretation is different from yours. But I guess that was predictable, since I’m not a professional cynic :). I thought the fact that she is a woman of color broadened the message from being simply about secularism. And maybe that’s not right. So I’ll agree to disagree on interpretation.
One suggestion you can take or leave, is that striving for ideological purity is one factor (of several) that drives republicans to be so ridiculous. It’s not necessarily a good objective. And it’s likely to be a worse strategy.
See y’all tomorrow — too much work to do on a Friday….
MOAR about CPAC:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2015/02/26/hillary-clinton-takes-center-stage-at-cpac-2015/
http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2015/02/27/rick-perry-blasts-obamas-misguided-foreign-policy-at-cpac/
Nerd of Redhead
And that is why I say a Green vote should be as an alternative to not voting at all. The problem you have isn’t the Greens, it is too many people not voting.
brucegorton:
Uh….. you’re not saying this idea might be just crazy enough to work. You just don’t think that, whatever it is, it will work (to do something good).
Okay then. So we’re done here? …. No??
We don’t need to respond to the claim that she is “at least legitimately attempting to do something.” I could already tell that she is existing in space, moving around in it, reflecting light, making sounds, and so forth. I figure it’s also true that she was attempting to do some such things like that, legitimately even! Maybe there were also things she attempted that we never could know about, because they never actually happened despite her attempts, not that it would do us any good even if that were the case. One thing that’s pretty clear is that there’s no way inane observations like that could get us anywhere.
brucegorton:
Well, for one, I was mocking what you were saying earlier. I wouldn’t even broached the topic if you weren’t the one bringing it up. Self fulfill your prophecies often?
I will grant you that.
i.e. protest votes.
Sure, that maybe might have an effect. But really, looking at the Democratic party, they have rarely decided to go More Liberal and have usually decided that the answer to every loss is “Go More Moderate!”. And you could probably communicate much more clearly and be much more effective at pushing the Overton Window through ACTUAL protest than through protest votes. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think “3% of voters voted for the Libertarian party” sends a clear message about what people want and what the parties should do to court them.
Yes, the fault is never with the Democratic Party. I totally said that. You didn’t assume that position or put those words in my mouth at all.
Election. Reform. We have had this debate plenty of times before around here so I would be very surprised if you hadn’t heard about the problem before. First past the post system. It necessitates that there were only be two real options and it makes third parties very, very unlikely candidates. Change the voting system, and suddenly Green votes aren’t a waste of time and real liberal parties can actually exist in this country. We could actually have a system that provided us with real options. Otherwise it is ultimately, for all practical purposes, a choice between X and Y, and it will take a damn long time before Democrat and Republican are dethroned from those two slots.
Also Romney’s. And yet still right wingers talk about it like it was created in collaboration between Marx and Hitler.
Push a better version of right wing ideology? Okay, I am trying not to tear out my hair when constructing a response to this.
1. Weren’t you mocking the idea of criticizing right-wingers and trying to get them to change their opinions? Didn’t you state that has been ineffective? Why do you think this Better Right-Wing ideology isn’t the same fucking thing? It points out where their dogma fails too. It is criticism of people who are stubbornly unwilling to change in even the slightest just as much as any other criticism we make. How will this magically avert that? And do you really think ATHEISM will be the right Trojan Horse to sneak that shit in?
2. What exactly is this better right wing ideology? Because I’m pretty sure it will either look suspiciously like the Democrats or will basically be no improvement at all. Unless you somehow make the right-wing take a leftist position on a unique set of issues where Democrats previously had an identical stance to Republicans.
I have no idea what you mean by this.
brucegorton:
This is also true. Except…..you are only saying “assume that the person voting Green would not have voted at all” for the sake of argument, right? Because in reality, that isn’t a given.
Rick Perry spoke at CPAC. He said some stupid stuff. These other speakers make Jamila Bey look good. This is a cross post from the Lounge.
The Republican dunderhead interested in running (again) for president:
http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/02/27/3627942/rick-perry-weak-border-security-blame-assads-chemical-weapon-attacks/
“What do you think it would take for the Republican Party to appeal to atheist voters?”
Atheist voters as a group are predominately white, college educated liberal, middle class, men. How would the GOP change to make them more attractive than Democrats? Hm. Swear off hurting people with their social agenda, adopt reality based economic and environmental policies, even if austere, curb military adventurism, shrink the MIC, etc., then once they scaled back to equally evil with the Dems… THEN they could soak up those white atheists with um space research and exploration, some nonharmful deregulation Democrats oppose for some reason? I honestly am having a hard time thinking of Republican priorities that aren’t bipartisan once you strip away the harmful crap.
What part of the GOP platform doesn’t overlap with Dems or Horrible?
Drolfe:
I suddenly have a desire to make a thorough Venn Diagram…..
@125, anteprepro
You are ignoring something: people like me (and, apparently, brucegorton, although I don’t claim to speak for him — I certainly don’t agree that Bey speaking at CPAC was a good thing) used to be in the Democratic Party. We tried to fix things. It didn’t work. The Democratic Party betrayed us, sold us down the river, threw us under the bus, [fill in next metaphor], and told us — in some cases literally — “you have no choice but to support us because there are no better alternatives”.
You want to reform the Democrats and make them an actual alternative to the Republicans? Great. Go ahead. I personally don’t believe it’s possible. Not only are the Democrats hopelessly corrupt — the mere fact that Hillary Clinton is considered the favorite to win the nomination, one of the three people most responsible for the rightward push within the party thanks to her roll in forming the DLC — but even before the rightward push, the Democrats were explicitly the party of “doing the absolute minimum to prevent a populist uprising against the rich”. FDR was quite upfront about this; all his reforms were strictly because otherwise the rich much get put up against the wall and shot. The rightward movement of the Democrats isn’t really an aberration; Clinton is a classic Democrat in the FDR mold. The Democrats have realized that the nation is not willing to take a stand against the rich, and therefore they no longer see any reason to pretend they aren’t on the side of the rich any more.
But, hey, if you think they can be reformed, go right ahead. I will be ecstatic to vote for someone who doesn’t actually want to slit my throat the way Obama and Clinton do, behind all the rhetoric (both of them want to cut social programs, start new wars, cut environmental programs, make it hard to get abortions — remember “nobody likes abortions”, the big rhetorical piece from the 2008 primaries? — and in general hand control of things to the rich). If you can get someone like that onto the ballot, I’ll gladly vote for it. But you are asking too much if you want me to vote for slick sociopaths with a thin veneer of barely-acceptable rhetoric any more. Fixing the party is your job, not mine. My only job is to come back if you do an acceptable job of this, and so far the only thing people like you have done is complain about how people who vote for the Green party — i.e. who actually vote for their own interests — are betraying the Democrats. You can go fuck yourself with that kind of thought. Nobody owes the Democrats anything, let alone loyalty. When they chose to pursue the ACA instead of smacking down the banks, and then neutered the ACA so that it was a gift to the insurance industry instead of anything approaching meaningful reform, they lost any claim to calling the left their base, period.
As for voting: I voted for Obama in 2008, and for Pat Quinn in the recent Illinois gubernatorial election (yes, I live in Illinois) because Quinn — if you ignored the smears — was actually a fairly responsible person doing as good a job as political realities would permit. But if the choice in 2016 is between Hillary Clinton (or any equivalent) and some Republican clown, with no Green candidate, then I will not vote. I don’t care if Clinton stands for shoving the knife in marginally slower than the Republicans would like, she still represents a stab in the back, and I refuse to be complicit. The minimum acceptable candidate is Elizabeth Warren. I’m not even crazy about her, if you somehow transported her to the 1970s she’s be a plausible Republican, but she’s still a massive improvement over Clinton, Obama, Reid, Pelosi, or any of the rest of the gang of idiots.
Progressive conservatism isn’t an oxymoron. There was a Progressive Conservative party in Canada. Otto von Bismarck created the modern welfare state. Also, there’s a strong isolationist tradition in American conservative foreign policy, hence why the modern imperialist/colonialist strain of thought is known as neoconservatism.
@anteprepro, 129:
Fine. While you’re doing that, make another one with “Things the Republicans actually do when in office”, “Things the Democrats actually do when in office”, and — tellingly — “things which actually pass and aren’t immediately slapped down by the courts”. The third category is almost identical to the overlap between the other two, meaning that, no matter what the rhetoric may be, in practice the two parties are the same.
anteprepro
http://www.tulane.edu/~bbrox/Allen&Brox.pdf
It is not an unreasonable assumption to make.
The trouble with election reform is it has to be done by those who have already been elected so I am not too sure if that is really an answer.
Well there are a few differences.
First and most importantly, who’re you speaking to? Most of the time if you are criticizing the right, you’re probably speaking to other liberals.
But second, it phrases them as us, and it gives a positive definition of their values that they can hold up, and slowly build towards. A lot of the time people will rise or fall to your expectations, if you expect the worst, they won’t be that bad but you will find that they do in fact behave worse.
If you expect the best however, well that can improve things.
Now obviously there is still a place for strong criticism, this isn’t supposed to replace that, it is supposed to work alongside it. The individual politicians, they’re not that important, it is their followers that are the audience here.
If they hear it as just doing them down they’re going to get defensive, but if they’re in on the joke? Well, that is a little different.
At least that is how I think Bey is thinking here. Obviously without her actually writing about it, well I don’t know. But it is how I would arrive at the speech she gave.
What was she pushing as a better rightwing? A policy focus on strengthening the middle class, and a strong focus on “family values” in the sense of compassion and commonality with her audience.
Now is that the same as the Democratic Party? Sure. But the audience isn’t Democratic, it is Republicans and trying to sway them in a more positive direction? It is worth a shot.
The Vicar:
Behind all of your rhetoric….citation needed.
It’s not about betraying the Democrats, it is about the fact that you fucking know that the Greens won’t win and you vote anyway and by doing so express one fact: You are willing to let the Republicans win. Which means you think that the Democrats and Republicans are morally equivalent. No. Just no. You can only do so by completely ignoring all the social issues where Republicans will hurt minorities of all stripes, women, and poor people. The Democrats aren’t perfect, it is even hard to call them good, and you will inevitably scoff “lesser of two evils”, but you know what? It isn’t about good and evil, it is about harm. And you fucking know as well as I do which is the practical route to less harm.
As if to prove my point about your ludicrously high purity standards. And what about her do you have complaints about?
Ya, need to be able to vote for multiple parties at a time.
But, our counties don’t facilitate very much meta democracy, sigh…
The Vicar:
Conveniently this leaves out all the courts deciding, without legislation, that gay marriage is legal. Nor does it include any of the odious decisions being reached by the conservative controlled Supreme court right now. And of course, there is Obamacare, which isn’t perfect enough, same with Dodd Frank. There was the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell repeal, which I’m sure wasn’t a big deal to you. And then the flip side, where Republican controlled congresses pass “partial birth abortion” bans, No Child Left Behind, and the Patriot Act, but some Democrats also voted for that so it doesn’t matter to you.
So what exactly is your solution? How do we get to this perfect world where there is no right wing influence in any political party or on their legislation? Show us the way, please.
brucegorton:
It is the only real solution but because politicians have a conflict of interest, you’ve given up on even bothering to ask for it and just assume that it is impossible.
And yet somehow talking to hard-right religious Republicans into accepting secularism is a practical, tactical decision.
Okay then.
The Vicar @132:
And you think those courts end up the same in practice under both parties? You think Roberts and Alito are indistinguishable from Sotomayor and Kagan? I guess you’re such a special snowflake that you don’t have to betray your political purity by actually caring about things like voting rights, Medicaid expansion, or campaign finance.
brucegorton:
I guess it is worth a shot maybe but….. “family values” is almost a code word for some feelings that aren’t very pretty, and the focus on the middle class is usually done at the expense of the poor…. I’m not convinced that it would actually be an improvement. At best, I see this not as encouraging the right wing to get better policies: I see it as convincing them to wear a better mask. But I also admit that there is room for disagreement.
Just a not-especially-friendly reminder that this thread had exactly nothing to do with anybody voting for liberal/progressive third-party candidates. Somebody who represents American Atheists was talking to fucking CPAC, for fuck’s sake. That’s not your cue to start whining about Democrats.
Anteprepro back at 129,
Exactly what I was imagining. What goes in that disjunction?
anteprepro
I know. Normally the phrase “family values” makes me think “total fascists” – but here I think she was trying to push it in a different sense.
Obviously I could be wrong, you’ve probably figured out by now that I am an idiot, but I am hoping that what I think Bey was trying for is what she was actually trying for.
Oh god consciousness razor, I did not realize just how off topic we were going! Thank you for the catch, sorry for contributing to a derail.
brucegorten:
No, I’ve figured out no such thing. You actually did change my position on the matter, even if it was just a budge, if that helps ya any.
It’s all the same. I’m not sure how, but The Vicar manages to have everything upside-down, backwards, inside-out, and made of antimatter that spontaneously fluctuated into a low-entropy state just a moment ago, in some kind of mirror-image alternate reality, with cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria, and so forth. It’s kind of hard to describe. He also has a strange medical condition, apparently contracted on whatever alien planet he came from originally, which makes it impossible for him to back away even slightly from anything he’s ever said that could reasonably be interpreted as something of an overstatement. The point is, things really could not be more different for him, or so he claims. That’s why the rest of us look so fucking indistinguishable from each other, from his point of view. It’s a pretty fucking strange point of view to have, if we’re supposed to believe a word of it, but what can you do?
More on the OP then:
Here is a relevant thread on Jamila’s twitter explaining her appearance a bit more-
https://twitter.com/jbey/status/571094451449413632
(Quoting her parts of a conversation with someone else, to clarify)
So….it is confusing. She probably doesn’t identify as conservative, specifically. You could say that this kind of was trolling, but not in a mean spirited way, but more along the spirit of what brucegorten was saying: She was telling them a way that could and probably should become Better.
Trying to think of a way to describe it metaphorically. Somehow combine extending an olive branch with tilting at windmills. This is just simply not the audience where that message would get much play. Especially not when the messenger isn’t even really One of Them. Oh well.
@brianpansky @116 & 117
I think that went over your head. To be clear, a political party is not a tribe in the sense of a group of people to whom one belongs by accident of birth or early assimilation and to which one thereby feels a sense of loyalty and belonging. Moreover, a group whose ideology and behaviour is easier to change than its membership.
It’s a group that one joins or leaves on the basis of how well it appears to match one’s own ideology & policy, along with a consideration of pragmatism (e.g. it can be more prudent to join a centrist party that has a hope of winning seats than a socialist party that has none and try to pull it to the left as much as you can; or you might choose to vote for a party that supports torture if it’s also the only party that has plans to reduce carbon emissions and deal with climate change).
If people are picking political parties like they do sports teams and then trying to change them from being evil libertarians or christo-fascists into progressive social democrats, it’s no wonder things are so fucked up.
To me it sounds like someone joining the Ku Klux Klan and trying to change it from a racist white supremacist hate group into a civil rights group for oppressed racial minorities, whilst not expecting everyone around them to classify them as a bigot. Sorry, Jamila. If you want to promote human rights, you join the ACLU, you don’t join the KKK and go speak at their most blatantly racist convention and tell them that they’re just doing their activism wrong.
I have watched the fucking video. I nearly puked my guts up. It was packed with flagrant dishonesty such as”I see people who believe everyone is equal” and pretending today’s Republican Party has anything in common with the party of Lincoln; and with arselicking of the scumbag bigots and corporate shills who make up CPAC. The Republican Party is a proto-fascist political formation – the alliance of the far right of the elite with the frightened and resentful members of the lower-middle class looking for groups to hate and despise; and the extreme nationalist, militarist, misogynist and racist rhetoric are characteristic – and CPAC is the driving force for it to become fully fascist. You don’t, if you have an ounce of decency, suck up to such a parcel of shitspigots. You oppose them, you excoriate them, you build progressive alliances against them, and for those followers who are not irretrieveable, you give them a real alternative and show them who is really doing them down.
Yeah, before this sways me, I’d like to know exactly what GOP positions she does agree with, because I literally cannot think of any Republican position that isn’t outright evil, and mostly stupid too.
Oh, we’ve been wrong all this time – intent really is magic!
Saying justice for all is hate now?
You do realize that saying that LGBTQ people deserve the same rights I do is not me hating straight people, right?
How far through the looking glass are you?
There are no two equal sides that deserve consideration and tolerance. Either you think my body belongs only to me and that laws supporting forced birth are inhumanly evil and a form or torture or you don’t. If you pal around with the party of “legitimate rape”, supporters of Darren Brown and “personhood” for embryos and corporations, but not for me, you can fuck off. You are not my ally.
anteprepro@146,
Well going on that twitter conversation, I’d have said Jamila Bey is just very stupid (equality could be a conservative value – WTF?), but a lot of people assure me she’s very much the opposite, so I guess she’s lying.
The only thing she tried to change conservatives’ minds about was sucking up to atheists a bit to get their votes.
It’s difficult to keep my joy in check.
Nick Gotts:
It’s especially problematic because that fits into their narrative of supposedly living in a post-racial society where the only Real Racists are the people who dare to complain about racism.
And that also means she essentially threw black people under the bus in order to further the cause of atheism.
Dalillama:
I would place bets on invoking Fiscal Conservatism. Because, really. It’s like fucking clockwork. No bets on whether it is in the form of “I’ve got mine, fuck you” actual fiscal conservativism or the common sense desire for prevention of fraud, waste and abuse that fiscal conservatives want you to believe is all there is to fiscal conservatism.
If atheists do manage to gain acceptance among people whose attitudes and policies are still bigoted in every other way, who does that help?
Why, it is a boon for the wealthy, white, cis, male, straight atheists! Hooray! Too long have they struggled! Finally they can join the rest of the guys who think torture is A-OK and brown people are scary.
Gosh I’m glad AA has that covered. Not enough people stop to think about the needs of atheists live Carl Rove. It’s just so important.
She wasn’t doing women of other races any favors either.
That is what we’ve all been told we should do if we want to be involved in organized / movement atheism. We’re supposed to chuck one another under the bus to make the bigots more comfortable.
Nick Gotts:
To me it sounded like based on the conversation she was playing coy. Trying to find a way to have her cake and eat it too. She wants to be conservative and not conservative at the same time. To say whether it is due to stupidity or dishonesty is difficult. Even more difficult because she makes intentionally difficult to peg down what her actual position is, let alone her thought process. I really want to believe that it is just simple ignorance and naivete. Or maybe just being too influenced by Silverman, who has essentially the same position as her and is equally incoherent on the subject. I don’t know, and I’m not convinced that it even matters anyway.
Beatrice:
It’s a brave new world out there. Boundaries have been surpassed, new frontiers explored. Wonders more than any mortal mind could comprehend. For you see, CPAC let a black woman pretend to be S.E. Cupp for several consecutive minutes. And they even let her use their bathroom. Tides go in, tides don’t go out, you can’t explain that, for the world has been radically altered and will never be the same again.
@anteprepro #157
Is it possible to administer a sort of Voight-Kampff test designed to detect conservatives who are pretending to be good people? Maybe we can get Silverman and Bey to sign up to be examined.
slatham @109
People change their minds through various reasons. I had deeply held beliefs called evil and hurtful and it jarred me into thinking deeper on the subject. I may have lashed out at the time, but the insults stuck and caused me to question. If people are “unaware and socially isolated” maybe they need a big fuck you to wake them up, maybe not, but I’m too old to place nice with assholes who support policies that hurt a majority of americans.
Also, in this thread we are talking about CPAC who deny reality every chance they get. If you think talking nice to them will change their mind, then you haven’t talked nice to many hardcore republicans. They are authoritarians who lack empathy for anyone other than themselves. Sen Portman here in Ohio only changed his stance on gay rights when his son came out as gay. It had to hit that close to home for him to see gay people as human. These are not reasonable people and they won’t be swayed by reason.
@The Vicar #130
I’m guessing you didn’t live through the 70s. What you said is only approaching true if you look solely at taxation, welfare, social security, and medicare in isolation.
So . . . she really is just a bad person. Still, takes a certain amount of complete assholery to be a POC and speak at a white supremacist convention.
@Ibis #143
I practical terms in the US it is absolutely is. The best predictor of what party a person ends up in is still what party their parents were in. There has been exactly one major shift in parties in my lifetime. That shift began in the 60s with the 1964 CRA, accelerated under Reagan and completed in the 90s with the full fruition of the Southern strategy by the Republican party. Prior to that the party of economic populism was also the party of the racist South.
Ideally people would look at the priorities that they arrived at by long thoughtful self reflection and research, then choose the party that best reflected those values. In practice that ain’t what happens with most people.
Damn it that should have been @Ibis #147
@slatham
I’m in agreement with you here, although I’d probably go further and omit the “only”. I think hurling vitriol and profanities at those to whom you’re ideologically opposed leads to defensiveness and entrenchment; it’s difficult to fairly examine someone else’s point(s) when they’re accompanied by hate, much less actually concede that they’re right. And furthermore, it’s just lacking in simple respect for others.
As for the inherited affinities to political parties, I’d agree. Ideally political affiliation would be chosen on the basis of policy and ideology, and it certainly is for some, but from my perspective certain people do appear to develop strong attachments to particular parties, and those remain from generation to generation. Where I live the regional strongholds of the major political parties haven’t changed much from the foundation of the state, and I don’t think that’s coincidental.
corvidd @164:
Thanks for the reminder that you place a high value on tone.
Also, what’s to examine? Conservative ideology in USAmerica is poisonous and does not benefit the overwhelming majority of citizens of the country. It’s diametrically opposed to making the lives of people better (unless you’re a rich, white, heterosexual, cisgender male). Whatever her reason for speaking before CPAC, Jamila cannot change what the GOP stands for.
I doubt these were Jamila’s and the AA’s intentions, but the actual effect this will have is that those conservative Republicans went home happy knowing they may be getting more (atheist) votes.
For some dunderheads showing respect means you agree with them. They need the language and attitude to understand they, not us, are out of touch. And it does work. Which is why tone trolls always say “I think” or “I believe”, rather than presenting solid evidence being nice really works reproducibly. No social change has been made by being just nice. There has to always be a group that by the actions and loudness, garner attention and create discussion. That is what starts some folks examining their attitudes.
corvidd, 164
Yup. It’s the people opposing the racist, anti-education, anti-science, pro-guns, pro-war, homophobic, transphobic misogynists who are lacking respect for others.
You’ve got this situation summed up perfectly!
Women aren’t in control of their own bodies. Gay people can’t marry the ones they love. Trans people can’t have full protection from their own government. All three groups have a fucking hard time getting into high public office. Black people are killed mercilessly on the streets by police. Muslims are repeatedly called terrorists on a regular basis by their own public servants.
But no! Must not reply with rudeness!
Saad,
Everyone knows it’s rude to call a person racist*. Being a racist shitbag however? It’s just “the way they were raised” and they are a “product of their generation”, so it’s fine. If everyone was polite to racists they could continue to be racist without hurt feelings.
*Or misogynistic, or ablest, or transphobic or . . .
anteprepo @ #157:
Actually, this is starting to remind me of my own dad. He’s very fond of calling himself a “Moderate”. Occasionally, he will also call himself a “Pre-Reagan Republican” (my dad, I’m happy to say, does not hold Reagan as a saint). Both of these words are meaningless in a country that has no viable left-wing to speak of, but there you go.
In effect… starting in 2000, my dad voted for Al Gore, then George Bush, then Obama, then Romney. But he’s very likely going to vote Democrat again because he likes Hillary Clinton. That said, if Elizabeth Warren somehow manages to be the front-runner, he will probably vote Conservative, unless their front-runner is either Rick Perry or Ted Cruz, as he hates both of them passionately. His voting record is equally “some-Dems some-Repubs” in all other elections.
That said, Dad legitimately believes that the Democratic party is actually left-wing. He will concede that Obama is not a Socialist, with the quip “but he’s pretty damn close”. Dad thinks Nancy Pelosi is a legitimate Socialist.
I think that’s who Bey may be… someone like that.
Ibis…
You’re right that it’s wrong to call political parties “tribes”, but I don’t think it’s wrong to note how tribal politics are getting in this country…
You are so right Corvidd. They just want to remove my bodily autonomy and the bodily autonomy of my daughters. That’s no reason to say naughty words to them. How about I send them a nice fruit basket that reads, “Please recognize my humanity”. I’m sure that’ll work. That’s how we got same sex marriage in so many states, right? We just asked for equal marriage rights super sweetly with a cherry on top and lo and behold, conservatives saw the error of their ways and we all held hands and sang We are the World.
Remember when that happened? Good times, right?
Asshole.
Well I think this perfectly encapsulates the shitshow that is CPAC:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/27/phil-robertson-cpac-stds_n_6770838.html
Random asshole from Duck Dynasty gets a fucking Free Speech award, and goes on an incoherent rant about how America lost its morals, and that is why there are so many STDs, all because of hippies, and how everything would be fine if everyone would just be pure Christians in heterosexual marriages. All you can do in response is blink incredulously and once you can move again go look for whatever headache medicine you can find.
anteprepro,
Wow. The Free Speech award? He got that for saying among other gems that men should marry teenage girls (to keep them in their place) and homosexuals are evil?
The wrong tree, American Atheists are barking up it if they plan to be good without God.
anteprepro, #172
From the article:
Oh yeah. His crowd is definitely looking at Jamila on the podium and can’t believe their luck: We’re promoting the same policies we always have and the atheist/secular crowd is just going to offer us their support and their votes?! Thanks very much.
Welp, both Silverman and Bey seem to have gone to silent running on the matter. Silverman waved off my tweet about it.
@Jackie 171
You don’t have to adopt saccharine obsequiousness, but refraining from the use of demeaning language against another people isn’t asking much.
On the topic of “inheriting” political preferences, by the way: Sometimes you can’t just Common Sense your way to the truth.
http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2013/05/17/children-with-politically-engaged-parents-are-more-likely-to-deviate-from-their-parents-political-views-in-adulthood/#Author
and also
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=9345153&fileId=S0007123413000033
Basic summary: Children with parents who have strong political views are likely to share those views during childhood and are most likely to be politically active. They are also most likely to have opposing views when they reach adulthood, due to experiences during their political activity.
* other people
If what you are saying is demeaning to women, POC, immigrants, etc., you should be called out in no uncertain terms. You are othering. If you won’t see that, you are a bigot beyond help. Shut the fuck up and listen.
corvidd:
1. Define demeaning, first.
2. WHY does tone matter? Explain. Don’t just take it for granted. I believe thus far you expressed two half-formed objections:
a. Lack of respect
b. Bad tactics (causes irrational defensiveness)
You will need to show why a matters and that b is actually true rather than being Folk Wisdom.
@Nerd of Redhead
It’s not the calling out I’m opposed to, it’s the manner in which it’s done.
corvidd,
So one side (which has a lot of power and money) uses demeaning language about gay people AND also forces millions of gay people to live as second class citizens. In other words, they actually have a negative affect on gay people’s daily lives. And they do so deliberately while showing no shame or remorse at all. And they proudly say they’ll continue to do so.
The other side calls them bigoted assholes for doing so.
Your reaction is to tell the latter to use nicer language.
You’re a piece of shit. Plain and simple. Fuck you.
I remember your name from other discussions. If I remember correctly, I think you were arguing against feminism or in defense of sexism in video games or something.
Nerd of Redhead, Dances OM Trolls @179:
Is there a list somewhere of which targets are and are not appropriate to demean? Or does it matter more which characteristics of theirs are demeaned?
Pseudonym, #183
This whole demeaning angle of corvidd’s is bullshit lying. Nobody here is criticizing or insulting Republicans for their nature. We’re not mocking their looks, their height, their accents, etc. We’re criticizing their deliberate actions which are hurting millions of their fellow citizens and human beings.
Then you, tone troll, will have to provide legitimate sources outside of YOURSELF, or show BY EXAMPLE, how to do so effectively, and in a manner that can be verified. Or shut the fuck up. I recommend the latter, as you, as every other tone troll, can’t/won’t do the former.
@Saad 182
I’m very critical of those who use demeaning language against gay people, but I also don’t think the response to that should be more demeaning language. I support and advocate for gay rights, but hurling insulting invective against opponents is something I’m critical of in any context, social justice or not, even if I’m on the receiving end of it; I refuse to lower myself to that standard and to treat another human being in that manner . You can establish and promulgate your stance effectively without directing terms such as “asshole” or “piece of shit” against other people.
Yes, I was commenting on the problems I had with Anita Sarkeesian’s series on tropes in videogames.
Good memory Saad.
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/02/04/a-worthy-recipient/
Also here, re: “that’s not racism!”:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/01/17/the-glare-was-so-bright-i-might-go-blind/
corvidd:
WHY. Yes, you are very critical. But WHY should adhere to your standards? Do we just have to assume that insulting people, no matter the context, is an inherently immoral act? Because that seems to be what you are going on here.
You had those problems because your were repeating word for word essentially what misogynists asserted about her claims. And you appeared unable to determine you were being misogynist in doing so.
So, do you conclude that women are your equal with equal rights and ABILITY TO SPEAK THEIR MINDS AND BE HEARD as you have? I don’t recall seeing that. Either women are your equals, or your inferiors. Speak up.
If they are dressed like Klansmen or Nazis, then it’s okay. If instead they are wearing Republican campaign stickers, such that everybody can see publicly what a horrible asshole they must be, then it would be highly inappropriate.
If there are no clear clues like that to work with, you should not be demeaning to healthy, straight, white, male, mainline protestants who are not in poverty. If they don’t meet that description, then it’s all good, but please contact your local police or sheriff’s department immediately.
Ah yes. Corvidd is one of the clueless multitudes of assholes who hate Anita Sarkeesian for some reason, and when pressed for why, immediately went for “she was wrong about Hitman”. Except for the fact that Anita’s mindless opponents are blind idiots who have no idea what they are fucking talking about.
Two of corvidd’s arguments:
Killing strippers is just something that a player can do and isn’t incentivized by the game.
It makes sense to have strippers that weren’t meant to be killed because the setting is a strip club.
Of course:
The game is called fucking Hitman, everything programmed in the game that isn’t a lose condition is something you can do and are, in some ways, intended to do.
And the idea that there needed to strippers because it was a strip club level casually overlooks both the sexism of having a fucking strip club level in the game in the first place, and the fact that it was exactly the point Anita was making, because the title of the relevant video was “Women as Background Decoration”.
Thank fucking god corvidd is here to lecture us on tone though. We would have quite a clusterfuck if it was about feminism, video games, or logic.
Your problem is that you think (or at least say) that calling someone an “asshole” for being a bigot is lowering yourself to their level. Their level is much, much lower than that. Unless you had a way of looking straight down on everyone and everything, you would be able to notice the difference.
Of course you also have to open your eyes first, pay some fucking attention to reality, and not just blurt out crap you don’t actually mean. But maybe my expectations are just too high.
@anteprepro
If you’d like to discuss my arguments about Sarkeesian’s work, which were certainly not limited to the strip club setting in Hitman, I suggest the appropriate place would be on that particular post. Also, I don’t hate Anita Sarkeesian.
Robert Westbrook spurred to look at Silverman’s twitter.
Okay, so first here:
https://twitter.com/MrAtheistPants/status/571402058840076288
He is proud to have handed out almost two bags of atheist buttons. Bags I might generously call “medium sized”.
Before that he said: https://twitter.com/MrAtheistPants/status/571344380730191872
CPAC, at least in 2013, had 3000 attendees (not sure if that is per day or over the course of three days, but whatever).
And then there’s this: https://twitter.com/MrAtheistPants/status/571062119833194496
He is so damn excitable. I think he might be the human atheist version of Scrappy Doo.
corvidd: There is no need, you’ve babbled enough on the subject more than enough already. And you actually have more than babbled enough about tone as well, honestly. Both are tangents and if you feel compelled to continue along on them, the Thunderdome would probably be a good home for your inane posturing. Though it is probably the worst place to continue your faux civility and preach the Gospel of Purity of Speech.
corvidd,
The “demeaning” response is not to the demeaning language. It is to an unforgivable encroachment into the lives of living, breathing innocent humans such that it interferes with their daily lives. It is to the subjugation of people who have the right to be treated equally.
I’m gonna Godwin this since you’re being totally obtuse:
If Anne Frank was writing harsh, insult-laden criticisms of Reinhard Fucking Heydrich, one of the things you’d say is “Anne, that’s not nice. Tell him nicely that you don’t deserve to be sterilized by a war-criminal doctor before being sent to die by poisonous gas.”
How condescending.
Yes, it is. You don’t have the right to ask it of me at all. You presume too much.
Good catch Saad and anteprepro. I’m not at all surprised.
Corvidd is using two different definitions of “demeaning” depending on who xe is referring to.
It is apparently equally demeaning in Corvidd’s eyes to oppress a group of people as it is to say that oppressors are assholes.
It’s almost like there is some sort of personal prejudice at work in Corvidd’s ability to reason. It’s almost like Corvidd thinks certain people deserve more respect and consideration than others.
Jackie:
Hmmmm. I wonder if there is something to this. What were the other threads? Corvidd handwringing about how a feminist was WRONG about sexism in video games? And Corvidd handwringing about how an All White Oscars is totally not reflective of any racial prejudices? And now he is hear telling us how insulting bigots is just as bad as bigotry itself? Hmmmmmm. I wonder, I wonder. There has got to be a way to connect these dots….
Funny how you won’t pronounce she is fully human and is able to express and have taken seriously any EVIDENCED opinion of her’s, the same as you EVIDENCE your opinions.. Oops, that’s right, you supply no EVIDENCE, you can’t say a woman is your EQUAL, therefore the only conclusion is that you are misogynist fuckwit who couldn’t evidence themselves out a a wet paper bag with a tear, a book of clues, a map, and an GPS…..
I just remembered this post by PZ from 2014, I am kind of ashamed I did not remember it sooner. Tells me all I need to know about Silverman.
Did you vault that horse or were you put there by a crane?
corvidd,
There are two grounds on which you can be against using insults against these oppressors (there, I used an objective word to describe them): Using harsh language does not get the results one wants in these matters, or you’re just opposed to harsh language in general.
The first has two problems: You’ll need to show that being nice and polite does get the results historically. And you’ll also need to show that being abrasive or combative does not.
The second has one problem: It’s just your personal opinion. As such, you can only go as far as not being harsh yourself. You can’t tell other people they have to be nice while being oppressed.
Corvidd, you are at the stage where you either take it outside of your opinions, or have your opinions dismissed as fuckwittery, which they are. Or, you acknowledge you have nothing and need to shut the fuck up. It’s only your honesty and integrity on the line. Put up. Shut up. Or you lie and bullshit. There is no other options.
I picture Saruman. It’s the if you can’t beat them join them strategy.
I’m not totally in the loop of the current conversations here, but my first impression of Jamila was one of confusion when she said:
because, I don’t know if “none of the above” means the statements in A B and C are true, or if “none of the above are lies” is itself the lie, making at least one of A, B, or C a lie………..
Brianpansky: I imagine it would be better rephrased: “Of the three statements, A B and C, which, if any, are lies? A, B, C, A&B, B&C, or neither A, B, nor C”
I think it would have been easier to understand had the selection process not been the negated version of “spot the truth.” But maybe she was trying too hard to squeeze in a flat joke that appealed to too few people. I don’t see how it would have hurt the thoroughly obfuscated Steve Martin reference had it been the non-negated version…
This speech was just weird from the get-go. Made me go ‘ugh’ several times.
Saad @ 166:
They also went home with plausible deniability about the atheists, women, and POC that oppose them just being whiny, stupid, or evil. After all, if Bey can get along with them, why can’t any atheist, women, or POC?
They all got to tell themselves, “Look, we have atheist/women/POC supporters! We’re inclusive!”
She assisted a group of US conservatives (the most powerful organization in the world working to deny her basic rights as a women, an atheist, and/or a POC) to go home feeling good about being exactly that.
Those must be awesomely powerful magic good intentions to counterbalance that.
corvidd @176:
Ah yes.
We should be polite and civil to the people who deny our humanity and the rights that we all should have.
Gimme some of what you’re smoking please.
I never knew that referring to a homophobic/transphobic/misogynist/racist bigot as an asshole was lowering myself to their level. It’s interesting that my use of insults is somehow equal to their often successful efforts to deny the rights of marginalized people.
I never knew that insults somehow rob bigots (is it ok to call our oppressors bigots corvidd?) of their rights. When I’ve called an MRA a shitspigot, did they lose their right to bodily autonomy? When I’ve called a TERF a hateful shitstain, did that result in them being denied the right to marry the person of their choice? When I’ve called a racist asshole a racist asshole, did that insult cause them to lose their voting rights?
Is this news to anyone else?
(I love these rousing games of false equivalence)
You have to “love” tone trolls derailing in a thread about American Atheists backing a political group that once had a debate with an empty chair and lost. That’s unreal.
Nick Gotts,
“As far as I’m concerned, the only people who claim intentions don’t matter are those who have fundamentally bad intentions.”
http://thoughtcatalog.com/kyria-abrahams/2014/01/why-jezebel-has-the-wrong-approach-to-feminism-period/
Now lets be clear here, intent isn’t magic but it isn’t fucking nothing either. People can screw up, they can make mistakes, and “intent isn’t magic” utterly fails to deal with that.
“Intent is not magic” is just a pretty catch phrase for the empathy impaired.
I mean how about rather than say, going to her blog and posting “Having just seen your revolting performance at CPAC, schmoozing the bigots and corporate shills of the rabid right, I take back the greetings I extended on your first post here. I hope your stay at FtB will be a very short one,” you try making allowances for the fact that she is human, and humans can make mistakes.
brucegorton@213,
Another quote from your link:
And another:
And here’s what comes immediately before yours:
Like those, do you?
I’m not sure why you linked to that dimwitted bilge, because I didn’t say intentions don’t matter: I said they’re not magic – as you obviously noticed.
How about you stop being such a patronising git, both to me and to Jamila Bey? I think she’s old enough and clever enough to take responsibility for her “mistakes”. I also think it’s more than a “mistake” to go and arselike a bunch of bigots and corporate shills.
[OT]
I love articles that begin with [____________] is wrong, period. They almost never give any evidence or anything to substantiate their claims, and from the way they preface it, it looks like they are perfectly aware of that.
Nick Gotts
I can read a piece I disagree with, and still find value in it. In fact reading people whose views I disagree with gives at least some insight into how others see the arguments I do agree with.
For the most part I disagree with what she has to say about modern feminism, seeing it as very close to Dear Muslima, but I think her point on “Intent isn’t magic” is a solid one, it really does come off as an excuse to say “You mean what I say you mean.”
There has to come a point at which you can say “I think you’re wrong, but I don’t think you’re malicious.”
For another piece critical of that particular slogan: https://thingofthings.wordpress.com/2014/12/09/intent-is-in-fact-fucking-magic/
And that is an author I agree a lot more with. The reason I linked to the previous one is I thought her quote on the issue was better.
I don’t think Bey achieved much in her speech. I don’t think she threw anybody under the bus, it certainly wasn’t like Dave Silverman promoting an anti-abortion atheist group.
I don’t think she intended harm by what she did, and I am not convinced she actually did any. She may have been wrong, she may well have been mistaken in what she did, but I don’t think she is malicious.
She should have taken a survey after her speech to see how many people at that meeting would vote for her.
@Tony
Looking back I worded that poorly and inaccurately. I wouldn’t consider responding through the use of insulting terms to be lowering oneself to their level ( I was referring specifically to demeaning language, so in the case of opponents of gay rights, homophobic slurs for example) , but I’d still prefer that people refrain from doing so. Likewise for using such language for those opposed to gay rights. I don’t believe you have to be particularly nice to them; you can advocate strongly and effectively against their position, letting them know your intense dislike for that position, but simultaneously maintain a certain degree of respect for them as human beings, something that I believe is forfeited when phrases like ‘asshole’ and ‘piece of shit’ are thrown at opponents. I had this conversation recently with one of my best friends, who is gay and is active in advocacy for gay rights ( there’s an upcoming referendum on gay marriage here in a few months ). Despite being leftist himself he has quite a strong dislike for the behaviour of some on the far left ( though he does see them as a positive force ) sentiments which I echo.
I also note that degrading vitriol isn’t simply reserved for patent racists/homophobes/misogynists etc… it’s regularly employed against those with views don’t conform to what certain social justice advocates believe constitutes racism/misogyny etc…but who nonetheless occupy the same side of the ideological spectrum. Similarly, ‘bigot’ , from what I can see, is used as an exclusive synonym for homophobe, sexist, misogynist, racist etc… in many social justice spaces, being apparently divorced from its actual meaning of intolerance towards those of different opinions. Not that I have a problem with intolerance towards the notion that gay people, women, people of color etc… aren’t equal human beings, but my perception is that the term is used very loosely, against people who don’t hold those extreme views . Some of the worst bigotry I’ve seen has come from progressives.
@Saad
I don’t deny that using demeaning aggressive language can be effective, I just believe there are respectful alternatives, and I’m not too enamored with consequentialist approaches to activism. You can be an impassioned and effective activist, a combative activist even, without using demeaning language.
Rory O’Neill, better known by his stage name ‘Panti’ is probably the most prominent gay rights activist in Ireland, and last year gave a fantastic speech that was extremely well received and publicized not only domestically but abroad too. It was articulate, clear, impassioned and yet completely bereft of demeaning language; that’s the ideal kind of activism for me anyway.
Well, as long as corvidd has gay friends . . .
Citation motherfucking needed.
And what is your problem?
Whose opinions? Those who treat women, gays, etc, as second class people, which make it consistent with what a bigot is. More diversion from somebody who won’t admit women have the same ability to speak and be heard as they do. And wants to shut them up. That is bigotry, no matter what your reasons are.
Citation mother fucking needed, as your hyperbole is known to be excessive and misplaced. Your unsupported word is not to be trusted.
corvidd,
You didn’t address my question:
In the meantime, look at these Christian homophobic asshats being polite and civilized to gay people.
Bullshit. It’s used exactly when people are being anti-gay, misogynistic, racist, etc.
I think you are actually anti-gay. You’re taking this “be polite” to your oppressors angle because you don’t have the spine to “come out” as a homophobe. I mean you skirted around the edges of sexism and racism in the other two threads, so being anti-gay wouldn’t be that much of a surprise.
I can’t take someone seriously who is fully aware of the deliberate, systemic injustices being done to innocent human beings and then criticizes those people for using choice words in return.
Neither were most of the people who supported segregation. The result was the same regardless.
@corvidd
There is a reason we have this visceral response when somebody proclaims themselves conservative. What have conservatives done over the last few years?
Their science denialism on climate change promises misery and possible extinction for the human species. They proudly advocate lying to children in school so that the kids grow up believing false things about their history.
They tell us all about how they’re for the family, and they’re anti-abortion because life is sacred, and then they slam the single mother who has to work two jobs so her child can eat, for not raising that child right.
Do you want to help that single mother? They’ll tell you that just encourages “welfare queens”. They will tell you lies like the one about teenagers getting pregnant to get welfare grants.
They’re for the family, right up until a son comes out as gay or a daughter becomes atheist, then suddenly, well they aren’t always family anymore are they?
They will say they are for the workers, until the workers want to get paid. Then they tell us that unions, well unions are destroying the economy.
They don’t want to reduce crime, they want to punish it. Part of what you need to reduce crime you need good living conditions in your jails, a clear focus on rehabilitation.
Conservatives are for privatised prisons, putting the focus on making a profit. Crime pays if you own the local jail. But hey, what really matters is that the criminals don’t get away with it, not that the criminal don’t do it again.
Conservatives will say they have firm, objective moral truth on their side, that they know the difference between right and wrong, and they will support the torture of suspected terrorists on the off chance that they may know something useful, despite the fact that intelligence experts agree that torture worthless as an information gathering technique.
They will condemn in one breath the evils of the Islamic world, and in the next propose doing the exact same things they called the evils of the Islamic world “or the terrorists win.”
You are upset with Isis for killing civilians so your drones blow up 19 more. You are opposed to the oppression your religion faces in another country, so you oppress that religion here.
And that is what we associate with conservative nowadays, and it is all bigotry. It is driven by a hatred and fear that blinds against its own hypocrisy.
It is not simply racism and homophobia, but a hatred of the poor, a hatred of women, a hatred of foreigners, a hatred of mercy, often expressed in tones mimicking wisdom in order to make a travesty of it.
So yeah, give me the rough tone of liberalism. Give me the likes of Nick Gotts, and Giliell who won’t coddle me with false politeness. Better that than the type of person who would gladly sentence most of humanity to hell, but never utter the word “fuck”.
Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?
The difference in those mere “opinions” is that one side doesn’t think many of us deserve the same rights they do. They think alot of people do not deserve basic human rights. We don’t deserve health care. We don’t deserve to be served and protected by the police. We don’t deserve not to be treated like terrorists. We don’t deserve the right to marry. We don’t deserve the right to attend school safely and be recognized by our correct genders. We don’t have the right to make equal wages or the right to control what happens to our bodies. These are not things you ask people to respond to with tolerance.
You are telling us to tolerate kindly the denial of our equality as if it is only our opinion that we are human. Fuck no. What is wrong with you? Are you suggesting that we always provide a safe space for people to promote oppression? We should coolly and politely disagree that we are evil, lesser, murderous abominations that are ruining society?
I think you should take this to the Thunderdome. Continue your tone trollery there please.
Corvidd would you please fuck off and go tone troll to conservatives for awhile, I’m sure they’ll be delighted to diminish their hatred.
corvidd,
How much time do you spend on conservative forums chastising them for both using demeaning language and fucking up the lives of generations of people?
I ask because if you just spent, say, an hour these past two days telling us to use kindergarten language against Jesus-loving theocrats, then to keep it consistent and in proportion, you should be spending like 20 hours telling those other groups to watch their language AND actions. Have you?
brucegorton,
Here is your internet:
http://i.imgur.com/xfFw1au.jpg
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument
“A tone argument is an argument used in discussions, sometimes by Concern trolls and sometimes as a Derailment, in which it is suggested that feminists would be more successful if only they expressed themselves in a more pleasant tone.”
Tone arguments are exclusively to derail.
brucegorton
No, intent isn’t fucking magic. Do you know what else isn’t fucking magic? Everything!
Your intent does in no way mitigate the harm your action does. If you step on my toes they hurt.
Now, if you didn’t mean to hurt me, the decent person would
A) remove their foot
B) apologize for the harm done
C) be more careful the next time
Just imagine this very same situation. Except that this time the person leaves their foot where it is and declares
A) I didn’t mean to step on your foot, so stop whining
B) I didn’t mean to step on your foot, why are you being so nasty and impolite?
C) I didn’t mean to step on your foot. Do you know how much it would hurt if I stepped intentionally on your foot?
Intent only matters if you fucking live up to it and try to minimize the harm.
@corvidd
Are you for real? Do you actually want to be taken seriously? Because saying things like this makes me think you just want to play the centrist extremist. Denial of objectivity in favor of neutrality.
Do you realize that denying people rights is a real-world phenomenon? It happens in real life. Not some theoretical idea. It’s not a story in a novel. It’s about real people in the real world.
Yeah, that one made me laugh out loud.
corvidd thinks there insulting language from the oppressed can be greater bigotry than restricting women access to their own persons, making gay people live lonely lives, and keeping trans individuals from having a say in their own government.
It’s pretty much impossible to take xer seriously at this point. I think xe’s a misogynist, racist homophobe using don’t be rude as a cover.
Giliell, professional cynic -Ilk-
Okay, how about this: I’m willing to give Bey the benefit of the doubt for now. I mean it is a bit early to see what her intent is based just on this, and you’re right actions speak louder than words.
If more comes to light, if she starts pushing conservative ideals, pulling the same crap David Silverman did with abortion for example, then I’ll be with you on this, and feel damned embarrassed to boot.
Fair?
Here’s an interest take on CPAC: “It’s Easier to Get Laid at CPAC Than on Spring Break”
corvidd sez:
Oh good, so we have corvidd backing away from the position implying that proper tone is a moral issue on par with actual discrimination and bigotry. But they still insist that people adopt Proper Tone, because they would prefer it. Ummm….your preference is great and all, but I don’t know why anyone else should give a shit about what you would prefer and change our interactions with people who aren’t even you , so that we can meet your preferences regarding decorum.
Yeah. I think you are equivocating here. I can “respect” the fact that someone is a human being while also thinking that they are fucking horrible and not respecting them at all. If you are talking about actual respect, real respect of them as a person, instead of “respect” in the sense of simply acknowledging that they are person with rights and redeemable features even if they are awful, then you haven’t changed your position at all really, and are still basically calling for us to play nice with bigots.
So which is it? Which form of banal word game are you playing here?
Like what? Vague, mealy-mouthed accusations aren’t worth much, just for your information.
Merriam Webster website, italics was from them:
“a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance”
See also the free dictionary: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bigotry
That is how the word bigot is used. Dishonest fuckwad.
Yeah, I’m sure. First, great work with the vague accusations again. Two, anecdotes are not data. You can’t even manage to muster up anecdotes, of course, but it doesn’t matter because your personal experience isn’t worth jack shit.
As for actual data (!):
http://www.livescience.com/18132-intelligence-social-conservatism-racism.html
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2006.00284.x/abstract
See third chart here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/06/12/your-house-says-an-awful-lot-about-your-politics/
That’s great. Why should WE behave the way you would personally prefer? Why don’t you just act as you prefer and not force everyone to act in lockstep with you?
Lynna quoted:
I doubt this, considering the source. College Republicans are what you would get if you made Fox News less professional and polished.
Corvvid–you’re a bullshitter. A known bullshitter. Just wanted to add my voice to the conversation so that you and others know just how many people know you’re not a good-faith interlocutor.
You’re a bullshitter.
brucegorton@216
Only to those who don’t want to understand what it does mean (see Giliell’s #231 for a clear explanation).
Anyone announcing they identify as a conservative in today’s USA is either malicious, lying, or grossly ignorant and naive – and your own #225 shows that you know this as well as I do. Bey clearly isn’t the third, so presumably you think when she says she identifies as a conservative, she was lying.
Nick Gotts
That’s pretty much what I’m hoping.
brucegorton:
So, you hope that she’s lying and not malicious? That’s an awfully ridiculous thing to hope for. I don’t know why you would even bother with it, but what the hell would that mean exactly?
Do you think we should not be angry (or complaining/criticizing) when people representing American Atheists are liars? Because supposedly (maybe, you hope) they’re doing it non-maliciously somehow? Because they’re not lying to us (or we’re complicit in this scheme) but are lying to somebody else? What the fuck?
consciousness razor
It means I think she is trying to run something of the con on the Republicans, to get them to see her as one of them and thus give her a voice within their community.
By presenting herself as a conservative and her ideas as “conservative values” I think she is trying to subvert what those values are, given what I have seen her say on Twitter about this.
@216, brucegorton
Pretty much.
No, not pretty much, Brian or Bruce. She *did* do harm. She lent respectability to the horrendous fascist group that is the CPAC. And she did it under the banner of American Atheists. By doing this she signaled to many people that she’s willing to sell out the vulnerable.
You seem to be having difficulty (especially you, Brian, lately) in being willing to acknowledge things that you think don’t directly affect you.
If this were a case of her doing good subversive work, we wouldn’t have to parse this so finely or engage in special pleading (that’s what you’re doing Bruce, it’s textbook special pleading). I know you know better than this. It’s very frustrating.
I agree with consciousness razor and Josh, OSG. I don’t see how lying about your political beliefs, on behalf of an atheist organization, to a bunch of proto-fascists – if that’s what she was doing – is not going to do a great deal of harm, or how any decent and intelligent person could fail to realize that it would do so. OK, if she now comes out, admits she screwed up in an appalling fashion and apologises to those she threw under the bus, I’ll think better of her than I do now – although it would not be for me to accept that apology.
I’m about 99 percent confident she will not apologize. She had to be cognizant of what she was doing. Being that she was so cognizant, she thinks what she did was acceptable. We’re *never* going to see her take any responsibility. Silverman never does. Politicians don’t. They are liars by nature.
Did Jamila just shut down the comments section on her FtB blog?
I went to see if anyone had commented just now – as of early yesterday the comments were there; now they appear to be disabled. Unless I’m just a moron and have something mis-configured.
When hell freezes over. Seriously, get a fucking clue.
This isn’t just about her. She was not only lying (as you hope) about herself being a conservative. She was advertising my vote, as an atheist, to fucking CPAC. I’m not making that up: just look at the video, in case you haven’t been paying any attention.
And, just so it’s clear, that will not happen. I’m not voting for them. Nor will it happen for the majority of atheists in the country (who she claims to represent), who want nothing to do with these scumbags, much less for them to represent us politically. She is lying about us, dangling us in front of these assholes like a fucking doggie treat. I don’t appreciate that. If you were a progressive atheist, how do you think you should or would feel about that?
Besides that, I’m pretty sure these scumbags have no desire at all to think about any principle, much less a change of principle — they care about power and money and how such things can come in the form of votes. That’s what they’re doing. Changing hearts and minds, having a rational conversation, etc…. you’re definitely in the wrong fucking place for anything like that, when you’re at CPAC. Can you grok that?
Besides that, most of those scumbags will not fall for the dumbass Jedi mind-tricks you think she’s attempting, because it’s simply fucking unbelievable and contrary to all of the publicly available evidence. They know what they think and who they represent, and they know that we are not among that group. So basically everybody knows (or can easily check) that it is bullshit. So what good do you think it’s supposed to do? Nothing. If you want atheists to look like pathetic, hopeless bullshitters in front of conservatives — then okay, great, that’s a “good” thing that you got. Otherwise….?
Of course, she can pretend to lead the charge of reforming conservatism from the inside. Maybe that feels like a good thing to do to her. I don’t care. When the day comes that a black atheist woman manages to do anything remotely like that to the far-right conservatives at CPAC, I will eat my hat. Gladly. Not going to happen. But as whacky and as improbable as that is (even at an individual psychological level, much less the results that aren’t happening), it would still not involve me, or anyone like me, at all. It also would not involve the future of the society I actually live in, the one with countless people who suffer because of ludicrous bullshit exactly like this. That’s because we’re not living in a fucking dreamland, where somebody can simply wish that we all already agreed somehow, or tried to confuse or swindle people into momentarily believing that was the case, or that somehow nobody would notice the drastic fucking changes which would actually have to happen if people like me and Rush Limbaugh were going to have formed similar views about anything whatsoever. That won’t happen.
So, I’m not going to play this stupid fucking game, nor do I need to accept that it’s anything other than a stupid fucking game, nor do I need to think such transparent and pointless lies have any positive effect anywhere at all, even if somebody actually fell for it. I’m not fucking buying this shit at all. So fuck you. I don’t know why you’d want to defend her, but wake the fuck up and at least make some fucking sense before you try to do so.
I meant to add that if Jamila is being harassed, she has every right to close the comments.
More context for CPAC speeches. Sean Hannity of Fox News was there. He told some jokes, or what he thought were jokes:
Hannity was trying to make a joke about Bill Clinton getting all the “young, good-looking” CPAC female attendees pregnant. That joke fell flat. But the idea that Hannity can see into CPAC uteri is very creepy. There seems to have been some sort of slut reference there as well. Veiled Sandra Fluke references? Hows does Hannity’s mind work?
He also made some jokes about liberals claiming everything is Bush’s fault:
Wonkette link.
@244, Josh
Actually I’m not seeing how it directly affects anyone.
I can’t seem to settle the ambivalence inside my head. I was going to try to analyze this more, but, I dunno.
@Robert
yes, the comments seem to be closed. One dissaproving post by Nick is there in the “All in with Chris Hayes” thread though.
Fact checking the CPAC speakers:
http://www.factcheck.org/2015/02/factchecking-cpac/
Jeb Bush had a rough time at CPAC. Some attendees walked out, some booed Bush, and some cheered. In the bowels of the rightwing internet blogs I’m seeing a resurrection of the old complaint that Bush either hires gay people, and/or hires people who are tolerant of gay people.
Bryan Fischer is a religious rightwing guy with a radio program that is popular with Tea Partiers and with most of the conservative voters who are also fundamentalist christians. Fischer recently made a point of complaining about Jeb Bush’s supposed tolerance of gays.
anteprepro
And, funny thing, we see corvidd identifying as ‘socially liberal and fiscally conservative’. I mean, someone might start to get the idea that that’s just a dogwhistle or something, or maybe a way for people to justify their bigotry with a pretense of meritocracy.
brianpansky
What is the source of that ambivalence? Why is it so hard for you (and brucegorton) to accept that the parsimonious explanation (That Jamila Bey was telling the truth when she said she was a conservative and the attendees of CPAC are her people) is the correct one? What is it that sends you scrambling for pathetic excuses for her actions?
@225, Dalillama
Ambivalene is not a bizarre reaction here, it’s practically the name of the game when it comes to most political speeches that aim to pursuade.
I realize this is off-topic, but I need to say something to corvidd about tone. You won’t like it, corvidd.
Do us all a favor and fuck off.
When people’s rights are on the line, the last fucking thing that matters is their fucking language. Being a straight, white, cis-gendered, abled man, I don’t expect my rights to suddenly be in trouble any time soon. In fact, the only way I could see my rights being in any danger are as an atheist, assuming the Tea Party Dominionists get into power, and even then I still feel relatively comfortable in saying that my rights are basically safe.
Yet here I am, shouting “fuck you” to bigots, because I think that when your platform includes removing the rights of people not like you (read: people of color, women, LGBTQA, the disabled, etc), then you’ve lost the right to be respected. You’ve lost the right to have people be “kind” to you or respect you.
The vast majority of Republican policies will never effect me, and yet I still think they are, by and large, patently evil, and I have no intention of ever showing even a tiny smidgen of basic fuck respect to them, because fuck everything about them.
Here’s a lyric from a song I’m having trouble writing:
It’s okay to get angry
It’s okay to be mad
It’s okay to express your rage
In the vilest terms you can
Change isn’t won by meekness
Change isn’t won by being niceness
Sometimes you have to scream and shout
In order to win your rights
My point being this: when someone whose rights are on the line is angry and starts using “terrible words”, maybe shut the fuck up and listen to them, because what they’re fucking angry about is actually fucking real, and you’d fucking know that if you stopped fucking fainting every time the word “fuck” showed up.
Take your fucking clutching pearls and fainting couch and go scream at the privileged fucks who are trying to take others’ rights away.
Or just fucking shut up.
And listen.
And fucking learn.
“niceness” should just be “nice”
And that’s my whole rant ruined… fuck…
Not ruined at all, Nate.
Brian @ 252
Here’s one way–I feel less safe in atheist circles now than before this. I am an ex-conservative and ex-fundamentalism Christian. I know exactly how they think about people like me–women with active sex lives, kinky people, bi people, Marxists. And the idea that any prominent atheist group would stand at CPAC–for ANY reason–and tell Republicans that they can somehow court us sickens me. It makes me feel like my values don’t align with this community at all. It makes me feel like my right to exist will be sold out by AA if they see some political benefit to it.
This and Silverman’s previous comments make it clear that I am not welcome at AA. And this is really unsettling for me.
As an echo or amplification of what Allie Jones said in #260 – as a MtF Transwoman and Bisexual, I feel that “Atheists” are now one more group that I know I’ll never be safe in, just like Religious Fundamentalists, Republicans, and Cis-Gay/Lesbian people, so thank you all very much for that.
That you dunno is clear.
I’m real tired of your lazy shit, Brian Pansky. Real tired.
I’m sorry to hammer this some more, but…
corvidd… that’s yet another person openly stating that they no longer feel safe within atheism.
Going to fucking CPAC isn’t just fucking problematic. It’s not just alienating. It’s fucking DANGEROUS.
Here… more viewpoint from the windows of the privileged:
I have largely given up on atheism all together. No, I’m not a theist. That’ll never happen. I still do not believe in a higher power or powers, and I still dislike the idea of faith.
Feminism, equality, intersectionalism and so on are way more important to me. A major part of the reason for that is shit like this.
It is the Slymepit. It is David Silverman and American Atheists. It is the “Four Horseman of Atheism”. And I cannot express how immensely disappointed I am that I now have to include Jamila Bey in that. And I really don’t want to. I have the privilege to desperately want an explanation that I can forgive despite knowing, at the end of the day, that while her decision to go there and make this speech does not affect me directly, it hurts people I know and care about. I would do basically anything to forgive her if I knew it wouldn’t hurt others in the process.
But Jamila going to CPAC and performing this bullshit has alienated people. It has hurt people.
And yet you want to come in here and tell those who’ve been alienated and hurt by this that their tone is the problem?
Seriously… what the actual fuck is wrong with you?
You’re not the only one asking that question.
Allie Jones @ 260
One way to look at this is that Jamila Bey did you a favor by alerting you to a danger which has obviously always existed.
I’m not going to waste my time and energy as part of any official atheist movement. People like Jamila Bey are why. Just more asshole privilege without even the semi-justification of being touched by the holy prostate.
The extraordinary claim that a conservative did not intend harm requires extraordinary evidence. Conservatism is the ideology of harm.
NateHavens
It wasn’t until I read that, that I realised that is what I am feeling right now, and it has tainted my reasoning.
I don’t want to lose another good atheist voice that way, I want it to be some sort of gambit, some sort of attempt at doing some good, something I can at least say her heart was in vicinity of the right place…
But wanting something and it being true aren’t the same thing are they?
Thankyou Nate, I needed that to get past that block.
As to everybody else, I think I owe you an apology. What I said was fucking wrong, wasted your time, and I think possibly did more harm than good. I can’t take that back, but thankyou for arguing with me, I really needed it otherwise I would go on wasting my own time trying to excuse the inexcusable.
brucegorton@268,
Well, it’s tough to admit you’ve been wrong, so kudos for that. But as I said about Jamila Bey, it’s not for me (economically-secure able-bodied cishet white man, and not even American) to accept your apology.
Yes, Jamila Bey has disabled comments. Whether my relentless campaign of harrassment (one disapproving comment, without any naughty words) was responsible, I can’t say.
Oh. European-style xenophobia has finally arrived in the US. *slow clap*
In the real world, Gore won anyway – by any legal way to count the votes. I have no idea why so many Americans put up with a court stopping a count.
I hate to disappoint you, but you’re stuck with the two-party system. Unlike in the UK, it’s in inevitable outcome of the Constitution! Because it specifies that the head of state and the head of government must be the same person, the elections that result in a new government are elections for a person. Such elections tend to become duels. Each of the two candidates with a real chance then accrues a party behind themself for support, and then the parties continue to exist through the next election and put up the next candidates.
All you can do, without massively overhauling the Constitution*, is change which parties are the two parties. But that takes the complete collapse of one of the two. It has happened a few times in American history, but it’s extremely rare; off the top of my head only the Whigs and the Democratic-Republicans come to mind. It could happen to the Republicans, but hardly before the next election…!
So, here’s my wishful thinking: Republicans collapse, Democrats reign unopposed for 2 years, Democrats split, and then you have the two-party system back, but the Overton Window has shifted to something like its European placements.
* Long overdue for a long list of reasons, but ever since the demise of Yugoslavia the US constitution has been the most difficult one in the world to amend. That’s why you count your amendments; I’m not aware of anyone else even doing that.
That’s because she has said several times that she’s not running.
Of course a lot can happen in a year and a half; and there is a movement called “Run, Warren, Run”. Reportedly, however, Sanders is maybe going to run, and Warren and Sanders running against each other would not be a good idea.
David Marjanović
I think to some extent it is journalism at fault.
In politics the news focuses on scandals, and dismisses policies as being the boring stuff for egg-heads.
It puts the running of an entire super-power on the level of Kim Kardashian’s butt.
I guess I “harassed” Bey as well, she didn’t even allow my comment, which was simply ” yeah, I’m done with Freethought”.
What I have learned here is that there are *no* Allies. Trans* and Bi people are not wanted anywhere, we are the first to be disposed of, told that our tone is doing more harm than good, and shown that we will be and are thrown under the bus at the first sign of….anything, really.
Well, I’m a person that doesn’t believe in gods, a woman that was born in a man’s body, and a woman that is sexually & romantically attracted to adults that are male, female, and Agender, but I do *not* want to be identified with *any* group that would have all of you. I am not LGBT, I am not Atheist, Atheist +, or Freethinker. I am alone.
I am also far, far better off, alone.
Thank you.
Josh, you seem to have some dispute with me beyond this topic. Perhaps you could communicate it clearly in the Thunderdome. Otherwise I don’t really know what you’re talking about.
@254 Lynna
This is unsurprising. Not only on Gay Rights, but Jeb Bush has also talked about the need for sensible immigration reform. Actually, they gay thing is fascinating because he’s not even in favor of Same-Sex Marriage, he’s just not actively discriminating against gay people. But this is completely unacceptable at CPAC. Again, CPAC is not about the more moderate elements of the GOP. It’s the extreme right-wing elements, and anyone who is moderate on any issue will not succeed.
You have to understand that the Republican party has gone much further to the right of W Bush. Purity is all that matters now.
I put off coming back to this thread, because my experience is that when you criticize the Democratic party and call them tribalists, it gets the tribalists really angry. They double down on their claims that the Democrats are worth continuing to support, and tell you you’re crazy. I was not disappointed in this case.
@anteprepro, 134:
Items in the list you doubt:
Cutting social programs: Obama has been all about this, all along. Here is a blog post with facts and figures and links, but it’s merely one of many I found immediately when I started looking in Google. And it turns out that he wasn’t merely willing to do it, he was meeting with Republicans in secret all along to try and make it happen. In a broader sense, he (and the Democrats who have been supporting him, which is most of them) have always been willing to put social programs on the block right away — remember the “catfood commission”? Remember how even back as far as the Clinton presidency we were told about the “Social Security crisis”?
Starting new wars: Obama ordered the military to bomb Libya in 2011 even though Congress explicitly denied authorization. At first they claimed it was a “humanitarian mission” (because of course we all know how humanitarian bombs are) but they then decided they wanted “regime change”. Then in 2013, Team Obama threatened to do the same thing with Syria — remember John Kerry puffing and blowing about it? We have, IIRC, 7 completely new military operations (in Africa, Asia, and the mideast) under Obama which did not exist under Bush. I suppose that, being a Democratic tribalist, you’re going to pull the word game shtick and tell us that when we shoot and bomb people without Congress issuing a declaration of war, it isn’t a war. I’m sure that’s a comfort to the people dying — they would feel seriously unloved if we declared war before we killed them. That this is a Democratic Party thing and not just Obama being a right-wing hack in a Democrat suit is demonstrated by the way other major Democratic figures — John Kerry as mentioned and Hillary Clinton as well, along with Reid and Pelosi — are entirely supportive. And that’s without taking up the vote to declare war on Iraq; way back in 2003, even poor deluded me could tell that the Bush administration was lying out their assholes when they were ginning up a war in Iraq. For some reason, I’m supposed to forgive people like Hillary Clinton for not doing due diligence when it was their job? Fuck that.
Then there’s the drone bombing program. Just as a refresher: the CIA, which started the program under Bush, has admitted that it actually creates more terrorists. It has also been admitted that we don’t actually target anyone, we just kill random people. Then, as we have admitted as well, we send the drones back 15 to 30 minutes later to kill the people who are trying to rescue people and put out fires. Frankly, if I believed in souls, I would necessarily believe that every single person who is involved in that program or even approves of it was going to go to hell for eternity. Obama, however, disagrees — he defends them in public. (Oh, but when a non-bombing drone came down on White House grounds, harming nobody, it scared Obama so much that he suddenly called for regulations of drones — but only commercial and consumer ones. The military drone bombing will continue with his approval and command.)
Cutting Environmental Programs: if you deny this, give me a list of BP executives who went to jail for the BP oil spill. The list will be pretty damn short, so maybe you can pad it out with Hillary Clinton’s comments about how she thinks the Keystone XL pipeline is a good idea (although of course it was just revealed that this isn’t so much an opinion as a bit of paid shilling, since the Clintons are taking money from the oil companies). Of course, that’s not exactly new; Obama was on board with pushing forward Bush’s “clean coal” initiative… the one which was just a bunch of lies.
Making It Harder To Get Abortions: “nobody likes abortions” was one of the big things that Obama and Hillary Clinton* agreed upon during the debates for the 2008 primaries; the reason they fight for birth control is to reduce the number of abortions. Of course, they have to be careful on this one, because it’s something which some of the base gets whipped up about, but even Democrats from nice blue states like Minnesota sometimes show their true colors. Start searching on Google for “Democrats restrict abortion” or similar phrasings and you’ll find it’s not rare at all.
Handing Control of Things To The Rich: in 2008, polls routinely showed overwhelming majorities (90%+) in favor of punishing the banks for the financial meltdown, or at least letting them fail for their role. I admit that I can’t find sources for that, but it’s only because every time I try to search for the information, the older stuff is crowded out by newer news stories about how, in later years, that was (and is) still popular, and how most people think the bailout (created by Bush but implemented and defended by Obama) was a mistake, and how it’s an outrage that bailed-out banks gave their executives huge bonuses, and how the banks are back to doing the same things which caused the meltdown because they had no punishment. The Democrats under Obama have not seriously prosecuted any bank executives or banks for the meltdown; only one executive has actually been prosecuted, and he got a sentence of 30 months. By way of contrast, Chelsea Manning, who was also prosecuted under Obama, for exposing actual crimes committed by the military, which ought to have given her whistleblower protections, was sentenced to 35 years. Obama’s team helped with the prosecution, and there has been no pardon even though he could do so. (For additional contrast: under the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush, when the Savings and Loan scandal broke, over six hundred executives were jailed — and that was under a Republican president.) Clearly, the rich are rewarded and protect from prosecution at the highest levels, while the rest of us are punished for even perceived infractions.
Oh really? You know as well as I that the optimum route to “less harm” would be for people like you to vote for Greens until they were winning elections. But you won’t do it. Instead, you sit here and pretend that if the Republicans want to force-feed us all shit sandwiches, while the Democrats was to starve us until we have no alternative but to eat shit sandwiches or die, that’s a serious distinction. (And that’s ignoring the folks like, oh, Rahm Emmanuel, who was of course Obama’s trusted advisor for years before he left to
buy the Chicago mayoral racebecome mayor of Chicago, Democrats who are explicitly and directly opposed to the things you claim, at least, to support.)She’s supportive of our endless, pointless wars, of Obama’s drone bombing campaigns, and of continued “strong ties to Israel” (i.e. letting the Israelis carry out their own Holocaust against the Palestinians). She doesn’t get any enthusiasm from me, but she’s just barely good enough on domestic issues that your arguments about going with a winner to avoid harm would actually start making sense (they certainly don’t with Obama, and won’t with Hillary Clinton).
@Pseudonym, 139:
The judges have their various characters. But here’s the thing: the Democrats don’t stop right-wing judges from being appointed. Scalia got through without any objections. When Alito was put forward, they folded. I seem to recall that Roberts was actually welcomed at the time. If they can’t do due diligence, like Clinton on the Iraq war, what earthly good are they?
@consciousness razor, 145:
Way to try to do mental illness shaming. As it happens, I don’t have any mental illness (or — being fair — none diagnosed) but fuck you for suggesting it and trying to present it as something bad, and fuck the folks on this board who usually look out for that but look the other way when it’s being done to try and shut up an unpopular opinion.
Too many comments to make, but I’ll try to boil it down to just one. Mostly I dislike how so many readers misinterpreted what some of us said to be about tone.
I don’t give a shit about tone. I care about effectiveness. If research suggested that a gentler tone was more effective, then I’d care about it. (I haven’t seen any such research; I suspect a diversity of tone is most effective.) I have, however, seen some research. It indicates, to me at least, that saying: “You believe a fucking stupid thing that leads to immoral policies!” is more effective than saying: “You are fucking stupid and immoral!” If you disagree with me, show me some research regarding why. Thank you.
Slatham @276
And why didn’t you link to it? That makes your point. We haven’t seen much either. Without a link, nothing but another evidenceless personal view.
Vicar #276, your pathological antipathy of Obama is known. To date, you have failed TO PROVIDE A VIABLE, ELECTABLE ALTERNATIVE.. Which is why I don’t pay any attention to your polemics. Like the far right, all you have is your hate.
@276 slatham
I’ll just point out flaws with the research that shows a greater degree of intransigence when confronted aggressively. The problem is that none of it takes into account the phenomenon of re-evaluation after the initial confrontation when conditions have changed (e.g. once the person is no longer at risk of losing face). Neither do any of the studies I’ve seen take into account cumulative effects. Hostility may result in short-term defensiveness, but being called out (even by people being not so civil) multiple occasions over time or by many different people may be very effective at causing a person to reconsider their positions.
I imagine that most people in the midst of an argument are going to hear “You believe a fucking stupid thing that leads to immoral policies!” as identical to: “You are fucking stupid and immoral!” in any case. Most people even have a hard time distinguishing “That thing you just said was kinda racist/sexist.” from “You are an evil bigot with malice and hatred in your heart and you should be killed or at least silenced forever.” or “Guys don’t do that.” from “I hate men and sex and I’d sooner see the human race go extinct than allow people who fancy each other to flirt. Oh, and plus, even talking about sex with a woman is the same thing as trying to rape her.”
Finally, if you think a strategy is going to prove ineffective, don’t use it. There’s no requirement that you try to impose your sensibilities on others. (For those who think that’s hypocritical to say while critiquing Bey, as the representative of AA and FtB blogger, she has assumed a certain responsibility to consider how her actions reflect on others, not merely on strategy for its own sake).
The Vicar @276:
@Pseudonym, 139:
Way to move the goalposts, or is your reading comprehension that bad? Both Roberts and Alito were appointed by a Republican president and approved by a Republican Senate. Alito in particular faced quite a bit of opposition from Democrats including a filibuster attempt by well-known conservative John Kerry. Maybe they should have done more to oppose both nominees, but that wasn’t the issue in question, it was how the courts end up under each party. Your mention of two judges appointed by a president who snuck into office thanks partly to Nader’s vanity campaign and confirmed under a Republican Senate just strengthens my point.
If you actually want to change things, work for more Green elected officials at the local level and/or more leftist candidates in Democratic primaries. You can’t build a viable national party for the top down. You think that it’s wrong to vote for Democrats because they do terrible things, which is your prerogative, but the fact that you’re instead supporting an empirically nonviable national party and electoral strategy shows that this is more about purity for you than achieving real-world results, which is again your decision to make. If you think there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between the parties, just be aware that this means you think that voting rights, campaign finance, health insurance for the poor, and many other issues literally aren’t worth a dime.
Wow. Blockquote got screwed.
Trying again.
This is legitimately one of the saddest posts I’ve read here in a while.
Thanks American Atheists. Thanks Jamila Bey.
tvoyumat… I know it’s worth basically nothing, but still… I’m sorry.
Vicar, I’ll be up front and tell you directly what is required to change my mind on Obama.
First, direct evidence from the Rethuglican party platform that the areas you complain about, would not be the same or worse under a Rethuglican administration. In other words, the real and viable alternative isn’t worse than Obama.
Second, the the Green party, garnering less than half a million votes out of 1,280,000+ votes is viable alternative…..*snicker*
In terms of Obama… I’m trying to stay out of this fight, but it is very interesting watching his politics from the socialist viewpoint. From my perspective, Obama is just another conservative corporate shill, along with all the Democrats and Republicans and basically every politician in power in the United States.
I think all I can say further here is… I’m desperately hoping that Warren, and not Clinton, is the front-runner. I seriously don’t want to vote for Clinton. But I’m putting all of what little I have behind Warren. She isn’t the socialist that I want, and I’m honestly very unhappy with her foreign policies, but she’s probably the best person the Democrats have had in a very long time. I think she’d be incredible for this country right now, and might actually signal a push of the US political spectrum to the left, which would be amazing.
Dang, missed the decimal. Should be 128,000,000+. Still Vicar, you have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.
The Vicar @276
Manning wasn’t prosecuted for whistleblowing, she was prosecuted for security violations by releasing classified information to unauthorized people. Espionage is not covered under whistleblower protections.
Sorry, but this needs to be said:
What exactly do you think whistleblowing is?
They couldn’t prosecute Chelsea for whistleblowing because of the law, but make no mistake… that’s what she was prosecuted for, and that’s what Edward Snowden will be prosecuted for, and what the people (all of them) behind Wikileaks will be prosecuted for, if they ever make the mistake of coming back to the United States.
Obama promised greater tranparency when he first ran, and although this has been true in some cases, he paradoxically holds the record for cracking down on whistleblowing.
Glenn Greenwald and basically everyone who writes at The Intercept talks about this all the time. Obama’s legacy on transparency will be contradictory at best.
Actually, everyone here should see Citizenfour. It’s amazing and a bit disturbing.
Vicar:
Huh? … Reading my comment again to see what that’s about…. Still no. I don’t believe you’re from an alien planet either, you dissembling asshole.
Nerd of redhead @278, for example please see the debunking handbook (and refs therein) I linked to earlier in the thread. The most relevant section is the “Worldview Backfire Effect”. Direct link here: http://www.skepticalscience.com/Debunking-Handbook-Part-4-Worldview-Backfire-Effect.html
Ibis @ 280 … yes, as you suggest, I think it’s hypocritical. People said Bey’s & AA’s actions were “evil”. I said they could be clever/effective. And I complained of tribal, guilt-by-association on the part of some commenters here (those who are too focused on Bey’s ‘responsibilities’ to others). I’m not trying to impose my sensibilities on others. I’m replying to those who are trying to impose their sensibilities and judgments on Bey. And I’m warning them that their quest for ideological purity within their ranks could be counter productive. That’s it. You speak of people not understanding differences subtle (and not so subtle) differences in what is said — it’s ironic that anyone thinks I’m the one trying to impose my sensibilities on anyone else. I’ve mentioned that I favor diversity.
Thanks for the comment regarding short term / long term effects. You have countered good short term experimental evidence with long term conjecture. You could be right. But I could speculate that someone receiving hostility outside their social circle is more likely to run back to that social circle for comfort and reinforcement. Then your cumulative effect won’t happen, except in reverse. Which direction do you think is more likely? Looking at today’s media and politics, I strongly suspect the latter is winning out in the US.
slatham (#290)
Clever/effective at what? Be really specific.
AA wants to grow atheism. That’s fine. I don’t. I don’t if it means bringing in more assholes who only care about stroking themselves over how brilliant they are for not believing in gods. What’s the point? Atheism itself isn’t enough, so why focus on growing it. I don’t understand the endgame. At all.
Well, here’s Silverman explaining his position (from the article on Skepchick):
Noticably absent:
Paying for education, social security, healthcare, food stamps, programs that address systemic inequalities, etc.
In the end, it means: “I pay my taxes so you shoot the rioting starving masses and let me do so as well.”
If you still think you have anything in common with that guy except not believing in god, you have nothing in common with me or most people here.
@291: I’m not good at re-writing things, but I probably wasn’t clear the first time: at creating doubt, at creating a fissure into which facts and reality can seep, at disrupting the identity politics that generate useless deadlocks. The handbook (linked earlier) supports the idea that if you make individuals feel good about their good values, their identity, then you can make progress regarding the shit they’ve got wrong.
Indeed, or the more socially acceptable version “I support the bare minimum social safety net to avoid bread riots.” At this point, as an impoverished mentally ill radical socialist, I really couldn’t give a shit about “movement atheism,” or for that matter what any person thinks about the existence of god. I care about your politics, and if your politics are evil, oppressive, or in any way counterrevolutionary (I’m looking at you, Democrats,) then you are my enemy.
To all those bleating about the “lesser evils” I am one of those people who would be left destitute if the social security were gutted, and I happily take that risk by voting green. I will not endorse in the slightest way any capitalist political party and I spit on anyone who does. If they take away my benefits then I will take what I need from my rich neighbors or die trying.
slatham,
Children don’t go to college. Those are adult who vote and want to take my rights.
She sure does.
That’s the point. You aren’t. There is nothing lost by finding out who people really are. You’re only letting go of an illusion.
Those of us who started out indoctrinated into theism are probably acquainted with what you’re feeling.
@slatham (#294)
I’m asking for where you think this effective courting of ultra conservatives ends up. I’m not looking for vague shit like “create doubt” or “disrupt identity politics” or whatever. Tell me: Create doubt about what and to what end? Disrupt identity politics how and in whose favor? And just how are ultra cons supposed to maintain their identity after an injection of facts and reality when their identity is built around rejecting those things?
I just today noticed how often Silverman invokes “humanism.”
From Deb Goddard’s transcript: “What we’re finding is the atheists who are on our side, on the humanist side, they just don’t see the importance of it as to be as high as the other issues…”
The only way Silverman is not flat-out lying is if he only perceives wealthy, non-socially disadvantaged people as being “human.” Conservative Republicanism harms nearly everyone except for about 1% of the population. And if conservative Republicans are wrong about global warming, they’ll harm even more than that.
Forced birth is torture. There are atheists enthusiastically supporting people who want to torture me if I become pregnant.
I have four kids. One will be out of HS shortly. I’m not in perfect health. I’m working class. My grandmother is moving nearer to me so I can help her age in her own place for as long as possible. I’m functioning at full capacity.
If I get pregnant and cannot get an abortion I’ll have to check myself into a hospital for the suicidal depression.
I take that shit personally.
Jackie
I’m with you on that. Needing an abortion is one of my biggest fears. Let’s not forget, I live in a country where abortion isn’t even legal, just “not punished”.
And I’m telling you that I’m not in the same “ranks” as the likes of Silverman or Bey; I have far more in common with many Christians, Jews and Muslims – those who care about social justice – which it’s blindingly obvious Silverman doesn’t (well no, that’s not true – he’s agin it), and which this episode has made clear Bey doesn’t either – unless she’s unfeasibly stupid. Can you really not comprehend those simple facts?
dysomniak is done finding common cause with neoliberal stooges @295:
You seem nice.
This is cross posted from the Lounge.
Carly Fiorina spoke at CPAC, and she said a bunch of stupid stuff.
http://thinkprogress.org/election/2015/02/28/3628141/war-women-lie-anti-women-assertions-annual-conservative-convention/
Pseudonym at #302:
dysomniak is angry. Frankly, I don’t blame xir. Xe’s right, as well.
If Jamila Bey officially joins the Liars for Republicans club, as she seemed to indicate with her misleading – at the very best – CPAC speech, she will be very well compensated indeed. Good for her, I guess.
@302 Care to guess how much I care whether or not you think I’m “nice”?
@304 Furious, in fact. Thanks for the support, fellow Maniac.
It’s also worth noting that Bey has always been a self promoting hack, as evidenced by her frequent appearances on cable news.
Is the the meeting for angry maniacs?
Cool.
dysomniak is done finding common cause with neoliberal stooges @306:
If anger gets you through the day, I’m not complaining about that. The folks at CPAC are angry too, but unlike you and your Green friends, they actually accomplish things politically.
Wait, that’s not quite fair. Both CPAC and the Green Party helped put George W. Bush in power. Great job!
And the supreme court and poorly designed Florida ballots and the inanity that is the electoral college and its bestowing disproportionate power in the hands in small right leaning states and the medias willingness to play along with fucking idiotic smears of Gore (e.g. making “I invented the internet” into a joke).
Wasn’t the “Green party helped elect Bush” myth debunked in this very comment thread?
Guess how many shits I give about your electoral politics? But hey you go ahead and keep worrying about the seating arrangements on the the capitalism Titanic. I’ll be over here with the rest of the lumpen proles taking what I need to live the best life I can.
anteprepro @309: Yes, there were multiple factors. I don’t think anyone disputes that. Well, apparently Nate Carr @310 does, in thinking that Nader and the Green Party had no influence on the 2000 election. If the best you can say about your party’s accomplishments at the national level is that they might not be responsible for elevating the candidate on the opposite end of the political spectrum, you’ve already conceded the point. Some of us see politics as a messy but necessary way to accomplish real things. Others of you see politics as a relationship or a purity contest or a release for anger. But go ahead, spit in the face of people who voted for Democrats so that, say, their kids could have health insurance or they wouldn’t be denied the very right to vote in the future. They’re betraying the imminent socialist revolution. ¡Hasta la Victoria Siempre!
Are you experiencing oxygen deprivation up there on your high horse?
Nate Carr @313: You seem to have me confused with someone who spits in the faces of those who aren’t sufficiently politically pure.
Do you think it would it be morally acceptable to refuse to vaccinate your children because that would put money into the hands of the capitalist pharmaceutical industry?
Yeah, how dare people be disaffected with people that actively fuck their lives over.
The nerve of them.
Pseudonym, #314
I think the “spitting” is being done in the faces of those who want to lend a hand in oppressing the already oppressed. What the fuck are you on about with this purity garbage?
Okay, so dysomniak is allowed to spit in my face because of my choice of political tactics, but I’m not allowed to criticize theirs. Got it.
Nate Carr @316:
You mean like people who think I should work to take my family’s health insurance away by voting for a nonviable third party? Yeah, no shit I’m disaffected.
@anteprepro #309
Add to that Gore running away from Clinton rather than using Clinton and thus the economy under Clinton.
A minor quibble though, the right leaning small population states like the Dakotas are near balanced out by the left leaning small states like Vermont and Hawai’i. The electoral college is a ridiculous anachronism, but it isn’t as obviously right skewed as some seem to think.
Jackie @ #307:
(I am so sorry if you already knew this.)
“Maniac” is the nickname for fans of Allison Kilkenny’s and Jamie Kilstein’s Citizen Radio podcast.
Pseudonym… are you for real? If voting third party does not, as is believed, help the opposite end, then what’s wrong with voting for them?
Further, how does that work? If voting Green helps Republicans, does voting Libertarian help Democrats? Or does this only work one way? Does voting third party always help Republicans, period?
And how is that even possible?
@dysomniak #311
So what is your plan to actually effect change on a national level? How will voting green on a national level make things better in the US?
I do occasionally vote green on a local and state level when the candidate is good. Bottom up politics can make a difference. Local and state governments have MUCH more effect on your daily life and making the MUCH more realistic push to elect green candidates on that level can work. Voting Nader or McKinney for president will either do nothing, or if you live in a closely contested state help the much worse for you candidate get elected.
@Nate #321
Yes, voting libertarian almost always helps democrats. The vast majority of libertarians are economic libertarians rather than social libertarians, so those would otherwise be republican votes. Likewise constitution party votes help democrats and socialist party votes help republicans where they have any effect at all.
NateHevens @321: Really, this is pretty elementary political science. The Electoral College and the first-past-the-post system makes voting third-party in a presidential election counterproductive when compared to voting for the most ideologically similar of the two major parties. There have been several major party realignments in U.S. history but in every case the system has stabilized back into a two-party system. The 2000 election had no chance of being one of those opportunities for alignment. Voting Green instead of Democratic obviously helps Republicans, and voting Libertarian instead of Republican would help Democrats. I can’t think of a single issue where the Greens are closer to the Democrats than they are to the Republicans, though, so anyone who votes Green in a presidential election rather than going with the ideologically closer of the two major parties is helping to contribute to the victory of the opposite party. Which is acceptable, if you can’t bear to vote for a major party, but that means you’re treating voting as a matter of personal identity rather than caring about the consequences.
@Nate
It definitely goes both ways.
The logic goes like this: 1) if you were going to vote for a party that can actually win, who would you pick? 2) doing anything else (such as not voting, or voting for a non-winnable candidate) helps the winnable opposition of the party you picked in 1.
The logic kind of works. But making decisions like that can be skewed. It would require a poll done to determine who people really want in power. This non-compromised data would probably be needed to help you determine who the actual winnable parties are.
And at that point, you’re nearly employing a ranked multiple voting system.
I’m not saying that there aren’t places where the Dems are good. They are always the better choice in terms of social justice (it ain’t the Dems waging the War on Women, after all), of course.
Here’s the problems:
1) They work for the same corporations. Whether you vote Dem or Repub, the Market wins, and the worker loses.
2) The Dems aren’t any less war hawks than the Repubs. Even Elizabeth Warren, the person I’m desperately hoping beats Clinton to be the front-runner, has a disgusting, Islamophobic foreign policy.
3) They still support the War on Drugs.
4) Democrats tend to cave to Republican demands (I will grant, however, that Republicans appear to have caved to Democrats for once, on immigration; good).
5) They still largely support the Death Penalty.
I’m too tired to pull up any more examples right now, and frankly rather distracted by a Heavy Metal documentary… :D
But my point is this: Democrats are better than the Republicans, but we can and should do better. I don’t know what it’ll take. I mean, I’m personally a fan of redoing the Constitution from scratch, keeping in mind George Washington’s warning against political parties… but that’s a sadly supremely unpopular view. I want to see more action like Occupy Wall Street. I want to see Occupy the United States.
This country is not left-wing, and that’s the great tragedy, as far as I’m concerned.
I have a link-heavy comment in moderation… hopefully it’ll come out soon…
What brianpansky@325 said. I’m in favor of adopting instant-runoff voting or a single transferable vote system, but until that is adopted, voting for minor parties in a presidential election doesn’t achieve any desirable results.
I’m still interested in hearing any answers to the vaccine question if anyone’s up to it. Why would it be acceptable to pay capitalists in order to improve your family’s health but not to vote for capitalists in order to improve your family’s health?
@Pseudonym, 328
Well it depends what the best option is I guess. When people think that voting for capitalists is actually worse for the health (and/or multiple other things that outweigh health) than voting for someone else, then obviously it wouldn’t be a good option. Likewise if paying capitalists does less harm than unvaccinated diseases.
A lot of things could potentially be unequal between the two scenarios…
I think that Bernie Sanders’ approach to American politics has been a lot more effective than Ralph Nader’s.
And if you really want to overthrow capitalism and launch a revolution, why vote for Greens rather than actual Communists or Socialists?
Pseudonym
The trouble with voting for the most ideologically similar major party is that there are deal breakers involved.
For example Hillary Clinton received $81 million from clients of HSBC bank – which is to say the Clintons have fairly close relationships with tax dodgers (including Jeffrey Epstein.)
Also, the law that led to the Hobby Lobby decision was a Democratic one, and I haven’t seen anybody suggesting the Democratic Party learn from that and not make that mistake again in future legislation.
Then there is the torture issue – the Democratic Party hasn’t really stopped it. I wouldn’t say the two parties are the same, Obama has been much better on health issues in general (and not just healthcare, I am talking about things like the EPA publishing new rules for power plants for example) but there are deal breaker issues at play.
Less kids are going to get cancer because the Demcoratic Party beat the Republicans. That is not a small way in which the Democratic Party is better than the Republicans.
But I mean, when you’re calling people immature for saying no they won’t vote for the lesser evil if it is still using hose pipes to anally rape prisoners, that’s a problem.
http://america.aljazeera.com/blogs/scrutineer/2014/12/9/torture-illegal-thennow.html
So there are people for whom the option isn’t Democratic versus Republican, it is between voting and not voting. For those I say vote Green, at least something is reflected in the ballot.
Further I would say from the Democratic point of view, the current stance on the Greens by a lot of supporters is counter productive. You are not really arguing that the Greens are any worse.
You’re saying they’re bad for trying to run on the issues you agree with. That’s not very convincing if you’re wanting to win their votes for the Democratic Party – this talk of wasted votes, just encourages people not to bother showing up at the polls at all.
The big scary Republicans – if the Green supporters not afraid by now, they’re not going to be afraid. You need to offer something the Green supporters want in order to get their votes.
@322
It’s cute that you think I still care about how the chairs are arranged.
@328
You think it’s a good thing that life saving medicine is controlled by for profit corporations?
@331
Because they’re the ones on the ballot. I really wouldn’t bother if I had to actually turn up at the polls, but I live in Oregon and our elections are all mail in. Unlike you asssholes I have no illusions that voting will change anything.
http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/selected/asfuck.php
http://youtu.be/IlUKBSFnIRo
The arguments about who to vote for and whether Nader was responsible for Bush 2000 should really go to Thunderdome, as they’re way off topic here. I’ll make some comments there.
@334, dysomniac
I’d be interested to hear what you think will change things. I sometimes see revolutionary minded people complaining about imperfections in the current world. But I never seem to see their alternative plan of action, so I can’t even judge whether I agree or dissagree with it…
@336
You want a plan? I don’t have one. Plans are for those with the luxury to plan. I’m way too cynical to think capitalism is going away any time soon, or that I can personally speed up the process. I mean eventually we’re going to wreck the climate to the point that we’ll have no choice but to radically restructure our society. As a lumpenprole (mentally ill, unempployable) I already live on the fringes of your society and I will continue to do so, taking as much as I can from bourgeois and the petti bourgeois (yeah, that means you. guard your shit because I’m coming for it,) to keep myself alive.
Latest from JB: CPAC was Awesome”.
Latest from me: meh.