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This was posted a little while back and I didn't want to bring it up then because a different conversation was happening. Just wanted to point out that, as far as I know, Kamala did not really call for a ceasefire, she called for a temporary pause.
shockingly (/j), the jargon that politicians use has little to do with dictionary definitions.
"temporary pause" is the terminology used to refer to a short term pause of perhaps a few days or a week maybe a couple weeks at most, with the default being that the genocidal invasion would resume subsequent to the pause unless a different agreement were made in the meantime
a "permanent ceasefire" refers to ending the invasion and attempting diplomatic negotiations.
i think you are well aware of this difference and are j being manipulative again, but j responding anyway in case + for others
When people say they want a ceasefire for gaza, they usually mean a permanent ceasefire. This is also why some people don't use the term ceasefire (because it implies a temporary truce) and instead call for the complete stop of the war and removal of Israel instead, including Palestinian activists. A bit semantic, but words and goals can be important to people, especially with the topic being a genocide.
Anyway I find it hard to believe kamala will be any different than biden. She's spineless and probably only cares about being the top cop (why does she call herself that, she's not even a cop. Don't get me wrong prosecutors are just as bad as cops but like... girl... you got another job...). Also find hard to believe she'll be "pushed left" like some people are claiming. We've been through that, why are you doing this to yourself again. Stop trying to make fetch happen!!!
shockingly (/j), the jargon that politicians use has little to do with dictionary definitions.
"temporary pause" is the terminology used to refer to a short term pause of perhaps a few days or a week maybe a couple weeks at most, with the default being that the genocidal invasion would resume subsequent to the pause unless a different agreement were made in the meantime
a "permanent ceasefire" refers to ending the invasion and attempting diplomatic negotiations.
Yes this is what a ceasefire means. I feel like I shouldn't have to explain this but if you have to add the word "permanent" to the phrase "cease fire" you're talking about something different.
That's nice but also by definition not what a cease fire means. A cease fire is a temporary end to hostilities. What you want is a peace treaty of some sort, which pretty much everyone involved has refused. A cease-fire probably just means the conflict will erupt again in a few years.
Kamela has suggested a cease fire, end of story. If you want a serious peace effort say so, don't twist words around.
Maybe I am getting more grouchy in my old age (and as a published historian in my main line of work, a bit more irritable when it comes to discussions on historical matters) - but…
Virtually everyone has been at pains to distinguish between ceasefire and temporary cessation of hostilities (or whatever you want to term it) for the last ten months - mostly to appear to be sympathetic to the Palestinians in Palestine whilst also appearing tough on the people of Palestine and sympathetic to the people of Israel.
The mental gymnastics and political shenanigans that have got us to circa 40,000 dead plus 10,000 under the rubble, over 100,000 injured and maimed plus 2.2 million people displaced multiple times in an area of land the size of Sheffield in the UK that has received three times the amount of total tonnage of bombs dropped on it over and above Hiroshima’s H bomb, and more bombs dropped on it than Dresden had between 1941 and 1943, whilst also watching the limiting of water (less than 94% of what was there pre 07/10/2023 - and that was described as “not enough” by virtually every aid charity in the area before that date), the limiting of food and aid (to the levels that have forced actual death by starvation and now multiple medical illnesses on the population)…
…I mean I haven’t got onto the sniping and killing of children, the domicide, scholasticide, the environmental impact, destruction of farmland, mosques, churches, wells, the burning of crops and trees, the use of quadcopters to attack people…
…like, this is the worst “conflict” (not the word I would use, given the evidence freely available) I have seen in my lifetime, and I studied Srebrenica.
A serious peace effort requires Israel to pull out, which would automatically stop Lebanon/Hezbollah, and the Houthis, immediately, but it also requires the USA to stop providing weaponry and to step back from the brink of their own isolation. Even my country the UK is withdrawing support for this right now (restored UNWRA funding/stepping back from ICC interference).
At the end of the day, peace is only going to come to the Middle East when those doing the vast, obvious, majority of the killing, stop killing, and start offering olive branches instead of burning olive groves.
I've seen some of the "both sides" posts trying to defend certain right-wing ideas done very poorly. Anchor9 has one good "both sides" post, but I still have a few criticisms of it. I'm not an expert on politics, but I know how to understand and represent a person's ideas properly. I love learning about different viewpoints and ideas and forming my own opinions so I make sure to listen to different perspectives, even far-right ones. And since I am not as heavily biased and influenced as many people when discussing politics, I can represent the right's ideas well without mindlessly supporting or rejecting them. However, I still agree with many people here that certain "sides" and beliefs are better/smarter than others. Still, even though I believe that the right is generally "dumber/more evil/worse" doesn't mean that right-wing ideas should be dismissed, especially when they are so frequently poorly explained. I would show an example on how to properly state and defend right-wing ideas (which also applies to beliefs in general) without resorting to cheap, mainstream political arguments.
But before I start, I want to preface my post with these crucial points you should take into consideration before responding:
1. I would be steelmanning the arguments of the right. Yes many of them are bigoted, some to the point of violence. They also have many dumb people and arguments (though this is not exclusive to the right). I would be fixing and using their best arguments.
2. I am only looking at their arguments at face value. I will ignore their character, execution, or grift, and instead focus on the core of their ideas.
3. Just because the right has a point on a specific issue, doesn't mean that criticisms and counterpoints aren't any less true, nor does it mean that I support their stance. I am simply stating the right's best arguments worthy of discussion.
There is nothing wrong with a nation wanting to restrict immigration and proritize their citizens. There is also nothing wrong with a nation securing their borders and having specific entry points. That's it. That's the argument. I don't need to expound on this with racist, fearmongering points like "immigrants are stealing our jobs" or "immigrants are criminals" because even though many conservatives say those, not all conservatives use those arguments as those arguments are not necessary in supporting anti-immigration and border security.
Going back to my preface, I don't want to see easily refutable responses like "the wall doesn't work at stopping illegal crossing"¹ or any mentions of Republican racism². Similarly, I won't be dunking on poor pro-immigration arguments like "we need immigrants to do cheap, dirty labor."³
¹It may not completely stop illegal crossers, but it still hinders them the same way anti-theft laws don't completely stop stealing but hinders it. And if the wall is ineffective, other methods can still be explored to protect the border
²Just because there are racist Republicans that are against immigration doesn't mean that racism and anti-immigration aren't separable. In fact, I have seen a few conservatives support a near-complete ban on all immigration, even those from white countries.
³There is nothing wrong with Americans doing "dirty" labor. And whether the worker is an immigrant or not is not an excuse to underpay them.
There are two good ways to respond to this. The first is more of a philosophical response like "what gives nations the right to deny good people that want to live in their land entry? Why should your country of birth/ancestry decide where you can and can't go? Are national borders ethical?" These questions ignore present context and focuses more on the nature of immigration and borders.
The second way to answer it is to factor real-world context. But these are the more difficult questions "both sides" would have to answer and compromise their morals on, meaning neither "sides" are completely right or wrong when taking their best arguments. Those anti-immigration would have to ask themselves: "What about illegal immigrants who managed to make a good life as a citizen of that nation? Or asylum seekers who need protection from their country of origin? Is it right to deport these people back?" For those pro-immigration: "What will happen to our country if we let anyone freely enter our borders? If we continue to accept every asylum seeker and immigrant who wants to live a better life, what happens to their home countries? Is it right for people to leave their families and culture against their will and move to a new country rather than fighting for a better life in their home country?"
And this is just one issue where either the right has a serious point to consider and/or the left ignores or fails at. There are still many topics including, but not limited to abortion (I probably have the best stance on this from a bioethical standpoint), gender, crime, censorship, voter IDs, men's rights, and vaccine mandates. But for the sake of length I would instead continue it in another post if anyone wants to continue this discussion.
Modern politics, together with the people's use of statistics and other "studies" make the average person dumber. The way I see politics from the perspective of a person that doesn't really understand or overvalue the discipline is this. Humanity generally agrees on the same values. For example we can all agree that these four values of personal responsiblity, empathy, discipline, and helping the marginalized are inherently "good." You don't need "studies" to agree with this. But the truth is some of these values may go against each other, and corollary to this, we cannot execute all these values at the same time to the highest level. "Compromise" is then necessary. I placed compromise in quotation marks because if you are choosing between two values or "goods", are you really compromising when none of your morals are being violated? The right generally values personal responsibility and discipline more while the left values empathy and helping the marginalized more. Neither are wrong. Knowing when to apply personal responsiblity/discipline and empathy/helping the marginalized is what politics should be, at least for the masses. But instead a good chunk of politics has degenerated into "should we compromise with a senile, human rights violator to stop another senile, human rights violator fascist" or "how can x party/candidate secure more votes/positions of power" or "x,y,z is racist and leads to fascism".
When I say that politics should be for the masses in the previous paragraph, it is parallel to the "science for the people" movement. Apart from politics being used to serve the interests of the people, this also means that the average person's values should be mostly sufficient in making political decisuons and that the most relevant political concepts should be easily grasped by the average person. The average person shouldn't have to spend hours reading studies on why America is still racist and why many black communities are still struggling or have degrees to understand climate change or economics, especially when most media are extremely biased. The average person should instead intrinsically value helping the marginalized, reducing pollution, and working a job with a just wage. In fact, the average person who isn't that knowledgeable in politics should be asking political experts "why is it so frequent that we end up with two candidates with a realistic chance of presidency and how did it reach the point where Biden and Trump are the top 2 candidates for 2024?" Honestly, politics experts could better spend their time answering questions like this. Or focus on explaining to the masses what needs to be done by appealing to the average person's base values rather than "proving" to them that America is still racist or expanding tbe definition of racism. It doesn't matter if the average person believes that America is still racist or not, you can at the very least convince them that "struggling communities that happen to be mostly black" need more assistance to be self-sustaining. Let the political experts be in charge of the studies the same way scientists are in charge of researching climate change. Intervention is only necessary when one's beliefs lead to action that actively violates another person's rights (ex. one person believes that racism is good and starts attacking black people or one person believes that fossil fuels is good and burns fossil fuels purely for the sake of releasing harmful emissions in the air).
Philosophy, logic, and ethics > politics and handpicked studies/statistics. If you noticed the arguments I listed on immigration, they don't need sources to defend nor attack them. I did not need to research the effects of immigration of every country at every time period and understand the context of these nations to raise these points. A nation "prioritizing their own citizens" or "protecting their borders", or "is it immoral to deny entry to people" can be argued with axiomatic statements we agree on, unlike "immigrants are criminals", "the wall doesn't stop illegal crossing", or "immigrants make the economy better" which require empirical evidence and long hours of research and reviewing.
I would also love to make another more chill "politics" thread more suited to tackling political topics at a philosophical level. This thread is too application-focused and learning about modern politics is unnecessarily complex. There is a lot of human factors that affect a person's stance on an issue such as a politician's flawed character, propaganda through cherry-picked stats and resources, or playing the "political game" with leftists arguing over allying with Biden/Harris (even though I understand both "sides" of the issue). That way we can see "right-wing" ideas represented better and leftists would tone down the infighting. I would much rather discuss my views on abortion in a thread like that than in here because if I discuss it here, I might receive responses like "denying abortion would kill many women in need of it for medical reasons", which are important points to discuss in the real world, but takes away from the discussion of the morality of abortion itself. But I understand now may not be the best time with the election approaching. Having to moderate this thread with a semi-"political" thread, especially if this thread gets locked and people migrate over to the new thread, is not something I want to burden the mods with.
I've seen some of the "both sides" posts trying to defend certain right-wing ideas done very poorly. Anchor9 has one good "both sides" post, but I still have a few criticisms of it. I'm not an expert on politics, but I know how to understand and represent a person's ideas properly. I love learning about different viewpoints and ideas and forming my own opinions so I make sure to listen to different perspectives, even far-right ones. And since I am not as heavily biased and influenced as many people when discussing politics, I can represent the right's ideas well without mindlessly supporting or rejecting them. However, I still agree with many people here that certain "sides" and beliefs are better/smarter than others. Still, even though I believe that the right is generally "dumber/more evil/worse" doesn't mean that right-wing ideas should be dismissed, especially when they are so frequently poorly explained. I would show an example on how to properly state and defend right-wing ideas (which also applies to beliefs in general) without resorting to cheap, mainstream political arguments.
But before I start, I want to preface my post with these crucial points you should take into consideration before responding:
1. I would be steelmanning the arguments of the right. Yes many of them are bigoted, some to the point of violence. They also have many dumb people and arguments (though this is not exclusive to the right). I would be fixing and using their best arguments.
2. I am only looking at their arguments at face value. I will ignore their character, execution, or grift, and instead focus on the core of their ideas.
3. Just because the right has a point on a specific issue, doesn't mean that criticisms and counterpoints aren't any less true, nor does it mean that I support their stance. I am simply stating the right's best arguments worthy of discussion.
There is nothing wrong with a nation wanting to restrict immigration and proritize their citizens. There is also nothing wrong with a nation securing their borders and having specific entry points. That's it. That's the argument. I don't need to expound on this with racist, fearmongering points like "immigrants are stealing our jobs" or "immigrants are criminals" because even though many conservatives say those, not all conservatives use those arguments as those arguments are not necessary in supporting anti-immigration and border security.
Going back to my preface, I don't want to see easily refutable responses like "the wall doesn't work at stopping illegal crossing"¹ or any mentions of Republican racism². Similarly, I won't be dunking on poor pro-immigration arguments like "we need immigrants to do cheap, dirty labor."³
¹It may not completely stop illegal crossers, but it still hinders them the same way anti-theft laws don't completely stop stealing but hinders it. And if the wall is ineffective, other methods can still be explored to protect the border
²Just because there are racist Republicans that are against immigration doesn't mean that racism and anti-immigration aren't separable. In fact, I have seen a few conservatives support a near-complete ban on all immigration, even those from white countries.
³There is nothing wrong with Americans doing "dirty" labor. And whether the worker is an immigrant or not is not an excuse to underpay them.
There are two good ways to respond to this. The first is more of a philosophical response like "what gives nations the right to deny good people that want to live in their land entry? Why should your country of birth/ancestry decide where you can and can't go? Are national borders ethical?" These questions ignore present context and focuses more on the nature of immigration and borders.
The second way to answer it is to factor real-world context. But these are the more difficult questions "both sides" would have to answer and compromise their morals on, meaning neither "sides" are completely right or wrong when taking their best arguments. Those anti-immigration would have to ask themselves: "What about illegal immigrants who managed to make a good life as a citizen of that nation? Or asylum seekers who need protection from their country of origin? Is it right to deport these people back?" For those pro-immigration: "What will happen to our country if we let anyone freely enter our borders? If we continue to accept every asylum seeker and immigrant who wants to live a better life, what happens to their home countries? Is it right for people to leave their families and culture against their will and move to a new country rather than fighting for a better life in their home country?"
And this is just one issue where either the right has a serious point to consider and/or the left ignores or fails at. There are still many topics including, but not limited to abortion (I probably have the best stance on this from a bioethical standpoint), gender, crime, censorship, voter IDs, men's rights, and vaccine mandates. But for the sake of length I would instead continue it in another post if anyone wants to continue this discussion.
Modern politics, together with the people's use of statistics and other "studies" make the average person dumber. The way I see politics from the perspective of a person that doesn't really understand or overvalue the discipline is this. Humanity generally agrees on the same values. For example we can all agree that these four values of personal responsiblity, empathy, discipline, and helping the marginalized are inherently "good." You don't need "studies" to agree with this. But the truth is some of these values may go against each other, and corollary to this, we cannot execute all these values at the same time to the highest level. "Compromise" is then necessary. I placed compromise in quotation marks because if you are choosing between two values or "goods", are you really compromising when none of your morals are being violated? The right generally values personal responsibility and discipline more while the left values empathy and helping the marginalized more. Neither are wrong. Knowing when to apply personal responsiblity/discipline and empathy/helping the marginalized is what politics should be, at least for the masses. But instead a good chunk of politics has degenerated into "should we compromise with a senile, human rights violator to stop another senile, human rights violator fascist" or "how can x party/candidate secure more votes/positions of power" or "x,y,z is racist and leads to fascism".
When I say that politics should be for the masses in the previous paragraph, it is parallel to the "science for the people" movement. Apart from politics being used to serve the interests of the people, this also means that the average person's values should be mostly sufficient in making political decisuons and that the most relevant political concepts should be easily grasped by the average person. The average person shouldn't have to spend hours reading studies on why America is still racist and why many black communities are still struggling or have degrees to understand climate change or economics, especially when most media are extremely biased. The average person should instead intrinsically value helping the marginalized, reducing pollution, and working a job with a just wage. In fact, the average person who isn't that knowledgeable in politics should be asking political experts "why is it so frequent that we end up with two candidates with a realistic chance of presidency and how did it reach the point where Biden and Trump are the top 2 candidates for 2024?" Honestly, politics experts could better spend their time answering questions like this. Or focus on explaining to the masses what needs to be done by appealing to the average person's base values rather than "proving" to them that America is still racist or expanding tbe definition of racism. It doesn't matter if the average person believes that America is still racist or not, you can at the very least convince them that "struggling communities that happen to be mostly black" need more assistance to be self-sustaining. Let the political experts be in charge of the studies the same way scientists are in charge of researching climate change. Intervention is only necessary when one's beliefs lead to action that actively violates another person's rights (ex. one person believes that racism is good and starts attacking black people or one person believes that fossil fuels is good and burns fossil fuels purely for the sake of releasing harmful emissions in the air).
Philosophy, logic, and ethics > politics and handpicked studies/statistics. If you noticed the arguments I listed on immigration, they don't need sources to defend nor attack them. I did not need to research the effects of immigration of every country at every time period and understand the context of these nations to raise these points. A nation "prioritizing their own citizens" or "protecting their borders", or "is it immoral to deny entry to people" can be argued with axiomatic statements we agree on, unlike "immigrants are criminals", "the wall doesn't stop illegal crossing", or "immigrants make the economy better" which require empirical evidence and long hours of research and reviewing.
I would also love to make another more chill "politics" thread more suited to tackling political topics at a philosophical level. This thread is too application-focused and learning about modern politics is unnecessarily complex. There is a lot of human factors that affect a person's stance on an issue such as a politician's flawed character, propaganda through cherry-picked stats and resources, or playing the "political game" with leftists arguing over allying with Biden/Harris (even though I understand both "sides" of the issue). That way we can see "right-wing" ideas represented better and leftists would tone down the infighting. I would much rather discuss my views on abortion in a thread like that than in here because if I discuss it here, I might receive responses like "denying abortion would kill many women in need of it for medical reasons", which are important points to discuss in the real world, but takes away from the discussion of the morality of abortion itself. But I understand now may not be the best time with the election approaching. Having to moderate this thread with a semi-"political" thread, especially if this thread gets locked and people migrate over to the new thread, is not something I want to burden the mods with.
You’re right this thread tends to lean into real world applied politics rather than background theory— and sure there’s many including myself who prioritize that view because its consequences are material.
Real human freedom > Theoretical Morality is infinitely more important to me in the abortion case for instance.
And the philosophical validity in right wing arguments has little to no real world application in US electoral politics because the best version, the most steel-manned version of those arguments in politics AND policy proposals would be in the real world represented by— Conservative Democrats, not Republicans.
ie. We could debate it— but whatever the conclusions drawn, it would still point at “so vote Democrat” electorally.
But insofar as folks want to have philosophical discussion on the theory alone, with no bearing on actual policy— certainly not offensive to have; maybe if enough interest can be demonstrated here, you could get the mods to agree to split it out into its own thread.
On the immigration note, republican politicians have been using the immigration narrative as a pretext to even attack Mexico militarily. These freaks need to be crushed and defeated horribly, never to return
I've seen some of the "both sides" posts trying to defend certain right-wing ideas done very poorly. Anchor9 has one good "both sides" post, but I still have a few criticisms of it. I'm not an expert on politics, but I know how to understand and represent a person's ideas properly. I love learning about different viewpoints and ideas and forming my own opinions so I make sure to listen to different perspectives, even far-right ones. And since I am not as heavily biased and influenced as many people when discussing politics, I can represent the right's ideas well without mindlessly supporting or rejecting them. However, I still agree with many people here that certain "sides" and beliefs are better/smarter than others. Still, even though I believe that the right is generally "dumber/more evil/worse" doesn't mean that right-wing ideas should be dismissed, especially when they are so frequently poorly explained. I would show an example on how to properly state and defend right-wing ideas (which also applies to beliefs in general) without resorting to cheap, mainstream political arguments.
But before I start, I want to preface my post with these crucial points you should take into consideration before responding:
1. I would be steelmanning the arguments of the right. Yes many of them are bigoted, some to the point of violence. They also have many dumb people and arguments (though this is not exclusive to the right). I would be fixing and using their best arguments.
2. I am only looking at their arguments at face value. I will ignore their character, execution, or grift, and instead focus on the core of their ideas.
3. Just because the right has a point on a specific issue, doesn't mean that criticisms and counterpoints aren't any less true, nor does it mean that I support their stance. I am simply stating the right's best arguments worthy of discussion.
There is nothing wrong with a nation wanting to restrict immigration and proritize their citizens. There is also nothing wrong with a nation securing their borders and having specific entry points. That's it. That's the argument. I don't need to expound on this with racist, fearmongering points like "immigrants are stealing our jobs" or "immigrants are criminals" because even though many conservatives say those, not all conservatives use those arguments as those arguments are not necessary in supporting anti-immigration and border security.
Going back to my preface, I don't want to see easily refutable responses like "the wall doesn't work at stopping illegal crossing"¹ or any mentions of Republican racism². Similarly, I won't be dunking on poor pro-immigration arguments like "we need immigrants to do cheap, dirty labor."³
¹It may not completely stop illegal crossers, but it still hinders them the same way anti-theft laws don't completely stop stealing but hinders it. And if the wall is ineffective, other methods can still be explored to protect the border
²Just because there are racist Republicans that are against immigration doesn't mean that racism and anti-immigration aren't separable. In fact, I have seen a few conservatives support a near-complete ban on all immigration, even those from white countries.
³There is nothing wrong with Americans doing "dirty" labor. And whether the worker is an immigrant or not is not an excuse to underpay them.
There are two good ways to respond to this. The first is more of a philosophical response like "what gives nations the right to deny good people that want to live in their land entry? Why should your country of birth/ancestry decide where you can and can't go? Are national borders ethical?" These questions ignore present context and focuses more on the nature of immigration and borders.
The second way to answer it is to factor real-world context. But these are the more difficult questions "both sides" would have to answer and compromise their morals on, meaning neither "sides" are completely right or wrong when taking their best arguments. Those anti-immigration would have to ask themselves: "What about illegal immigrants who managed to make a good life as a citizen of that nation? Or asylum seekers who need protection from their country of origin? Is it right to deport these people back?" For those pro-immigration: "What will happen to our country if we let anyone freely enter our borders? If we continue to accept every asylum seeker and immigrant who wants to live a better life, what happens to their home countries? Is it right for people to leave their families and culture against their will and move to a new country rather than fighting for a better life in their home country?"
And this is just one issue where either the right has a serious point to consider and/or the left ignores or fails at. There are still many topics including, but not limited to abortion (I probably have the best stance on this from a bioethical standpoint), gender, crime, censorship, voter IDs, men's rights, and vaccine mandates. But for the sake of length I would instead continue it in another post if anyone wants to continue this discussion.
Modern politics, together with the people's use of statistics and other "studies" make the average person dumber. The way I see politics from the perspective of a person that doesn't really understand or overvalue the discipline is this. Humanity generally agrees on the same values. For example we can all agree that these four values of personal responsiblity, empathy, discipline, and helping the marginalized are inherently "good." You don't need "studies" to agree with this. But the truth is some of these values may go against each other, and corollary to this, we cannot execute all these values at the same time to the highest level. "Compromise" is then necessary. I placed compromise in quotation marks because if you are choosing between two values or "goods", are you really compromising when none of your morals are being violated? The right generally values personal responsibility and discipline more while the left values empathy and helping the marginalized more. Neither are wrong. Knowing when to apply personal responsiblity/discipline and empathy/helping the marginalized is what politics should be, at least for the masses. But instead a good chunk of politics has degenerated into "should we compromise with a senile, human rights violator to stop another senile, human rights violator fascist" or "how can x party/candidate secure more votes/positions of power" or "x,y,z is racist and leads to fascism".
When I say that politics should be for the masses in the previous paragraph, it is parallel to the "science for the people" movement. Apart from politics being used to serve the interests of the people, this also means that the average person's values should be mostly sufficient in making political decisuons and that the most relevant political concepts should be easily grasped by the average person. The average person shouldn't have to spend hours reading studies on why America is still racist and why many black communities are still struggling or have degrees to understand climate change or economics, especially when most media are extremely biased. The average person should instead intrinsically value helping the marginalized, reducing pollution, and working a job with a just wage. In fact, the average person who isn't that knowledgeable in politics should be asking political experts "why is it so frequent that we end up with two candidates with a realistic chance of presidency and how did it reach the point where Biden and Trump are the top 2 candidates for 2024?" Honestly, politics experts could better spend their time answering questions like this. Or focus on explaining to the masses what needs to be done by appealing to the average person's base values rather than "proving" to them that America is still racist or expanding tbe definition of racism. It doesn't matter if the average person believes that America is still racist or not, you can at the very least convince them that "struggling communities that happen to be mostly black" need more assistance to be self-sustaining. Let the political experts be in charge of the studies the same way scientists are in charge of researching climate change. Intervention is only necessary when one's beliefs lead to action that actively violates another person's rights (ex. one person believes that racism is good and starts attacking black people or one person believes that fossil fuels is good and burns fossil fuels purely for the sake of releasing harmful emissions in the air).
Philosophy, logic, and ethics > politics and handpicked studies/statistics. If you noticed the arguments I listed on immigration, they don't need sources to defend nor attack them. I did not need to research the effects of immigration of every country at every time period and understand the context of these nations to raise these points. A nation "prioritizing their own citizens" or "protecting their borders", or "is it immoral to deny entry to people" can be argued with axiomatic statements we agree on, unlike "immigrants are criminals", "the wall doesn't stop illegal crossing", or "immigrants make the economy better" which require empirical evidence and long hours of research and reviewing.
I read this but I'm not going to get into this except to say that you are essentially just asking for a safe space w contorted fantasy rules of argumentation to engage w ideas inextricably linked to histories and systems of racism and harm against women. What does it mean to need to talk about these ideas delinked from contexts and material realities in which they actually exist? You want a factless discussion where it suits you but then drag out random facts of your choosing like a few conservatives allegedly wanting a total immigration ban including 'white countries' (and what is a white country again?) to foreclose certain lines of discussion on the topic. For example if 'prioritizing a countries own citizens' is the basis of immigration or welfare policy it may turn out that a network of different pluralistic democratic non-ethnostates is the best state of affairs both in fact and in 'philosophy', where as 'prioritizing ones own citizens' by enabling dictators in other countries to operate against their own citizens without recourse to seeking asylum in other countries ( due to thode countries prioritizing their own citizens) may turn out to be a race to the bottom.
From just these things I've said it is evident that there is no difficulty in reconciling a pholosophical evaluation with a facts based discourse. We have serious discussions of current events and political ideas here where you will not be able to cherry pick which facts are centred in order to abstract ideas from the political reality. If you need special rules to make ideas seem palatable that is probably something worth reflecting on. Long walls of text are no substitute for rigorous arguments demonstrated w sources and examples and are a waste of time spent engaging.
Someone actually did try to make a republicans thread a few years ago to discuss right ideas - you can imagine how that turned out. It’s just not really possible to have the kinds of discussions you’re talking about on this forum. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing either.
There is nothing wrong with a nation wanting to restrict immigration and proritize their citizens. There is also nothing wrong with a nation securing their borders and having specific entry points. That's it. That's the argument.
I do agree with having a process for immigration, and having specific points for people to immigrate into a country, but I do not agree with the mindset that born citizens should have a higher priority in this case. If you were talking about something regarding "global police" things, sure, but immigration is people becoming citizens, and I view them, and potential immigrants, as equal members of society.
The only things that separate a child born in my country and an outsider trying to get in is that the child born here didn't have a say to want to be born here, and the immigrant wants to be here.
I'd also like to call attention to the fact that, for America specifically, we outright exploit "illegal immigrants" as a workforce, as people who are under threat at all times and will often do the work that natives don't want to, for less money. I don't see this as a competition between born citizens and immigrants, as the companies exploiting them were never intending to hire people who would do a normal wage in the first place- oh hey, some conservative states are also lowering the age requirement of child workers.
I think the concept of an illegal immigrant is kinda bullshit. If they live here, they work, they literally pay a shit ton of our taxes, then what makes them not a citizen? A law that I don't agree with? I don't care. I think that we should help them be less exploited by capitalists by legitimizing their immigration legally, even if this involves them having to go through a retroactive process.
I'd also like to say that the people up top also know this, it's why immigration is always on the ticket to scare racists, while it's never actually curbed down; the most open secret in politics is that "illegal immigrants" contribute immensely to the system and legitimizing their staying gives them more leverage as citizens (bad for their corporate donors), and that racism makes for easy votes.
People over borders, every single time. Life is too short to give a fuck about if someone was born over another imaginary line or not.
Putting my historians hat on again, perhaps if the countries looking to restrict immigration hadn’t made most of the major causes of immigration, such as armed conflicts, economic collapse, invasive wars, global warming, propping up various factions and basically colonising and asset stripping throughout human history, then maybe, just maybe, we wouldn’t have an immigration problem in the first place…
If you want to stop global migration, deal with the causes of global migration, not the symptoms. And for god’s sake, these are humans we are talking about, the vast majority of which are escaping subjugation/murder/war/economic hardship and their countries either burning alive or drowning.
Even if there were a sound, logical, non-racist argument to restrict immigration it would still be untenable due to the low birth rates in developed countries. Immigration is literally a need in the modern economic system.
I don't believe in god or anything but I'm literally praying that this was a poor attempt at an ironic joke. What does this even mean LOL did you solve the abortion argument like it's an endgame in pokemon???
The average person shouldn't have to spend hours reading studies on why America is still racist and why many black communities are still struggling or have degrees to understand climate change or economics, especially when most media are extremely biased. The average person should instead intrinsically value helping the marginalized, reducing pollution, and working a job with a just wage.
In a vacuum, maybe this might be the case, but you are ignoring that the average US person spent 12 years being misinformed about the history of racism in the US and, even if you were to assume that the US is no longer racist, how that historical racism still has massive impacts today. It is going to take hours to unlearn that bullshit (search up "Alabama textbook on slavery" to get an idea) but the problem lies with the indoctrination, not the correction of the indoctrination. The party that you are supporting to get an equal say actively attempts to legislate teaching of actual history (so called "CRT") out of existence. Where is the supposed intellectual fairness that you appeal to in that?
Same shit with climate change or economics. Companies like BP run propaganda ads shifting the blame for anthropogenic climate change onto other sectors or even you and I for using plastic straws, and any pre-college economics education (the average American does not study economics in college) emphasizes "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" type financial advice, which might work for a few people on the individual level but is so clearly not an answer to the systemic problems in our financial climate. It sucks that it takes time to unlearn this stuff, but the solution to that is not to let the same parties that are responsible for propagating the bullshit in the first place to have another chance at sweettalking it back into relevancy.
My High School was highly funded, and I live in one of the best states for education, and I still went 50/50 on history teachers.
One was a guy who we would see watching FOX news when we got back from lunch, who made us write an essay about why it was good that we nuked Japanese civilians, and the other was this old lady who was awesome about teaching us about the deeper history of feminism in our history as a state, made us read first-hand accounts of slaves, and really opened my mind up to how interesting history could be.
In both classes, the majority of students were disinterested... Still, at least I got something out of it.
My High School was highly funded, and I live in one of the best states for education, and I still went 50/50 on history teachers.
One was a guy who we would see watching FOX news when we got back from lunch, who made us write an essay about why it was good that we nuked Japanese civilians, and the other was this old lady who was awesome about teaching us about the deeper history of feminism in our history as a state, made us read first-hand accounts of slaves, and really opened my mind up to how interesting history could be.
In both classes, the majority of students were disinterested... Still, at least I got something out of it.
My AP US History teacher was a literal Marxist-Leninist and openly admitted to smoking weed to a bunch of high school kids, the type of teacher that the right tries to send all of us into a panicked frenzy about.
I could not believe it when he completely skipped over the My Lai massacre when we covered the Vietnam War. Whether he just forgot or was compelled to skip it by a third party, I don't know, but it's insane that we spend so much time hyper-analyzing all the faults of other countries (shoutouts Germany in the 1930s) but just "forget" to turn the mirror onto ourselves. What is the point of history
I had a High School History teacher who apparently played a lot of tabletop games, because the last 2 months of the school yeah we just played what I can only describe as "Warhammer with economics and base-building, in 1650s North America". He divided the class up into colonies, each one from a different nation (physically moving our desks together). The nations had abilities, for example the British had a stronger navy, Spain powerful ground forces, France had an economic advantage etc. Each kid in a "colony" was given a job, like admiral, general, town planner etc. There were random events with native americans, weather, and even gifts from mainland Europe.
I'm not sure how much educational value it had but damn it was cool.
Our World History 1 (different more milquetoast) teacher had us do the curiculum class experiment to show why socialism is bad, weh ad to take like papers and trade them around the room or something, and I still became a socialist lol. I remember making fun of the experiment and being like "But that isn't what socialism is" and my teacher was getting mad at me
To be fair, it was still definitely cringe of me to be talking and doing that, but I was like 14 so like Okay
My high school teachers never even approached the subject of economics in any context. Even conflicts like the Cold War were framed in very generalized "difference of ideas and leadership" terms. The term "communism" may have been used but was never explained, and I didn't have any conception of socialism, liberalism, etc. until after high school. I self-identified as an anarchist back then but I'd be lying to you if I told you I understood anarchist philosophy or history beyond a general distaste for authority and idea that all people should be equal, which was mostly a consequence of all the 1980s hardcore punk I listened to. Then did a weird arc where I became a liberal/centrist shithead for a little while before reading Capital and actually learning about socialism and left-wing movements and eventually coming full circle and ending up as an anarchist again, only with a better understanding of what that actually meant.
I did have a prof in college who gave a surprisingly very fair analysis of both socialism broadly and specific socialist, communist, and anarchist movements in turn-of-the-century Europe, despite being fairly liberal himself. It was very informative and I wish every student would be given a fair and unbiased explanation of these terms, even if they don't ultimately align with them.
My high school tried to teach economics and finance, but they were only minimally successful. The personal finance teacher had us watching Dave Ramsey, and I don't remember a thing from the economics class. Fortunately, I took a basic economics class in college that was much more informative. Many in here would find the professor appallingly liberal, but he at least seemed to understand communism as it was originally defined by Marx and Engels, rather than conflating it with the Soviet command economy like most neoliberals seem to. I think that all leftists should pursue a basic education on the subject, if only to better articulate their critiques of the current system.
We have a national curriculum so what I was taught in history was the same as everyone else in this country! And that’s run by a lot of experts from a diverse range of backgrounds so that even if what we’re learning isn’t completely optimal, it’s firmly adequate! Take the L nerds!
No but for real, the US education system is more dire the more I learn about it. It’s such an insane country to have school be both a prison and radicalised right pipeline. Y’all really synthesise having police officers in school to arrest teenagers for smoking weed with teaching students that slaves actually kinda liked being slaves so all this anti-racism stuff is just wild leftist bullshit like it’s normal. No comment on the average US citizen, it’s the societal situation you’re forced into, but on an international scale it’s downright crazy.
But it does intrigue me how “having a national curriculum” isn’t a mission I’ve seen any US people strive for. Perhaps it’s the YouTube algorithm, but the vast majority of states have a national curriculum which not only makes education streaming better (because all university applicants took the same test, for example) but also removes all of the “one teacher can fuck up your life” stuff that I’ve heard from Americans over the years. I am kinda curious if US activists are pushing for some kind of national curriculum tbh.
