The word interrogation has a negative vibe because of things like police behavior, torture, and other legitimate abuses that deserve attention. But I see interrogation as a tool and a solution to our current political problems. There’s too much bullshit and bullshitters aren’t willing to back up said bullshit. Questioning, “grilling”, and other synonyms and euphimisms.
That is one of my primary political behaviors. An unapologetic willingness to interrogate the claims of people making strong, disparaging, and other claims. I want the behavior to be picked up. I want people on every political side to feel the pressure to back their shit up. It takes practice and mistakes will happen but that doesn’t stop me.
My failed country and culture really doesn’t like criticism like interrogation pointed in certain places. Places like ones in-group which switches from party to country depending on context. I don’t accept that natural behavior that feels negative is wrong just because it feels negative. It has a good and bad use like everything else.
The instincts in me smell prey, privilege sensitivity worthy of political pressure.
It’s in the whining about “civility” as if minority groups got that from history. It’s in “I/ authority/celebrity have the right to an opinion” bleating, as if my intrusive questions aren’t also speech. It’s in the claims that being negative won’t change anything, if so why was it used on minorities and why does the sensitive have to police it’s use?
So I took the tool for myself and I’m refusing to stop using it. The tourette syndrome is very much a benefit here. Keep in mind that you don’t want them to simply have an opportunity to air awful views. You want quotes, citations, sources, video time points and quotes, and especially the reasoning and logic between the claims and the sources. They will do work or they will be made to look like unreliable people.
- I interrogate the negative feelings of bigots and their disparaging characterizations and claims. From transphobes to racists if what they say was really real or important they would back their shit up. I don’t even accept that trans people as a set are like the group they were assigned to at birth. If “it’s biology” you can fucking show it and back your fear up.
- I interrogate the rape culture that appears when an accusation is made from the right (Caroline Ford) and the left (Tara Reade).
- I interrogate the claims of forced-birthers, if they really were trying to help someone they’d cooperate.
- I interrogate the claims that mental illness is involved in some act that someone is bothered by such as a mass shooting, or a rape accusation. Those people will show the abstract diagnostic criteria and concrete examples to match.
- I interrogate the claims about the need for civility since they seem unevenly applied. With the election of Trump I don’t really think this country cares about civility.
- I interrogate the idea that this is a good country, or that we’re good people. Good people don’t cover up and make excuses for torture. Good people don’t make concentration camps for migrant children. Good people don’t care about things more than people, failed fellow citizens.
- I interrogate the narratives around the value of the unstable magical token generator, the stock market. An expression of things being more valuable than people, it hurts people not even invested in it.
- I interrogate the support of the military in confronting protestors, such a fellow citizen should be ready with a constitutional justification to avoid being a failed fellow citizen.
And that’s just one form of criticism. Society should get used to it because rather than it being a bad thing, it should be evenly distributed and available for all. Trump and not-Trump both made to show where they got that bullshit from and why anyone should think it’s real.
Well said.
Statements about reality should be scientific statements. In science, anyone who asserts a claim is expected to provide evidence, and to explain their data sources and methods. Another way to describe this is that the normal behavior of real scientists is voluntarily to submit their work to a thorough scientific interrogation, just like every other scientific assertion has undergone.
While everyone has a right to have their own feelings unchallenged, things are different when one asserts a claim about reality, because others who may trust such statements can put themselves and others at risk if they take something as fact which is not actually true.
Also, in science, any claim about reality needs to include an implied or stated description of error bars or of uncertainty or of confidence levels. If I say a desk is three feet high, the truth and reliability of that may depend on if I mean 3 ft, 3.0 ft, or 3.0000 ft. These are different claims about the reliability and meaning of the central statement. Statements without confidence information are effectively meaningless, and do not even deserve the respect of being interrogated until they are described enough to even be a topic.
To put things another way, everyone has the right to their own opinions about topics such as their feelings or preferences. But nobody has the right to their own “opinions” about actual reality unless those “opinions” come with some basis of assurance that they are factual. That is, “citation needed.”
Basically. I want “citation needed” to become normalized.
To get to reality we need to get better at checking claims. I also demand that people show me the fake news, my post on political pajoratives include several examples where I’m interrogating political lables to test their quality.
I had misinformation in mind when choosing this approach. Interrogation of misinformation seems like a useful thing to do.
I don’t see a reason why I shouldn’t expect science and medicine level evidence out of fear claims about sex and gender issues. I’m not expecting error bars out of conservative parents terrified about drag queen story hour. But I demand the source of their fear, disgust, anger… and invariably there’s no harm.
Its been said that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. They are not entitled to their own set of facts. The facts are what the evidence supports. Anecdotes is not the plural of evidence either.
Driving them to the supposed set of facts is my goal. If there is no set people will see it.
@ 5.StonedRanger, 2 Bruce, & various Brony, Social Justice Cenobite : Seconded 100%.
I really wish more people knew critical thinking & logic and those subjects were taught earlier to everyone.
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“Enhanced interogation” being one that springs to mind as a commonish euphemism for torture with many in power and their sycophants keen to split hairs over holding people in long periods in physically stressful positions, uncomfortable temperatures extremes, water-boarding and the like as not “torture” when (as Hitchens to his credit noted – eventually after having to experience himself) they actually are forms of it.
The word “Interrogation” has indeed been rather tarred by association as a word and concept here and I don’t know if its evolved (if that’s the term) too far to save here or not?
Minor nit and putting separately here so you can fix and then delete this if you’d like but :
I think that should perhaps be the otherway round with the accusations coming from the left for, I think you probably meant Christine Blasey Ford against Kavanaugh and from the right by Tara Reade against Biden? Unless there was a separate case involving a Caroline Ford that I am unaware of which is also possible? FWIW I do believe the testimony of both women survivors here.
I meant what I said. I mean the people from the usa political left who shame Tara Reade and her supporters. The way people on the usa political right shamed Christine Blasey Ford and her supporters.
I should add the people who are on the political right making accusations like judge Roy Moore’s victims, and shamed by the usa political right too. I should not have left them out. That smells like a political bias omission I should think about.
That’s a good one as it includes the word “interrogation”. It directly affects the feeling.
For me it’s interrogation as a political skill and tool. Debating and arguing involve interrogation. It’s consistent with the behaviors related to tourette’s syndrome phenomena so it’s something I do whatever name you choose
Interrogation as a general human behavior.
@9. Brony, Social Justice Cenobite : Ah, okay I get what you you mean there now I think.
I think you meant Christine Blasey Ford against Kavanaugh and Tara Reade against Biden on the right.
opps
I’m glad to see that you have a unique way of writing the post. Now it’s easy for me to understand the idea and put it into practice
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