http://tigron-x.livejournal.com/ ([identity profile] tigron-x.livejournal.com) wrote in [community profile] politicartoons2017-02-09 11:52 am
Entry tags:

[identity profile] hardblue.livejournal.com 2017-02-09 11:02 pm (UTC)(link)
In order to protect the fruits of the genocide of the Europeans against the Indians, it is important to prevent a sort of cultural genocide by multiculturalism, yes? And 'making America great' means keeping America white and white-led, right?

Women tend to be happier when they're participating in making a family.

And if they don't want to be childbearing housewives, they will just need to grin and bear it.

And the gays don't even make it in the equation, I suppose. Back in the closet?

[identity profile] not-hothead-yet.livejournal.com 2017-02-10 07:33 am (UTC)(link)
uh. no, Lefties glorify *people's right to choose* those things.

Lefties glorify the freedom of people to engage in whichever lifestyle works best for them on a private, non-invasive level. If they prefer to enact traditional roles and have traditional lifestyles in society, more power to them. If they choose to do otherwise, more power to them. Because the best society is one that grows with the people's directives, not some arbitrarily chosen set of mores that never change, never flex.

Our cultures have always been "multcultural" just now we do not criminalize it. We engulf it and reap the benefits of a happier, more inclusive group.

[identity profile] dexeron.livejournal.com 2017-02-10 02:40 pm (UTC)(link)
"Lefties glorify...

-unhealthy eating;
-numbing oneself with drugs and alcohol;
-self mutilation;
-rejection of the womb and childbearing;
-emasculation of men;


This is nonsense.

"Lefties" don't glorify eating one way or the other, any more than "righties" do. It's not a partisan thing. You have health nuts on both sides, as well as gluttons.

Lefties do not believe in "numbing oneself" with drugs/alcohol. They believe that we should start treating addiction like a disease and not a crime to wage war on. The recognize the disaster that the "war on drugs" has been and the vast damage it's caused to our inner cities, and want to reform our criminal code so that people committing victim-less crimes aren't treated like mass-murderers.

Lefties don't believe in "self-mutilation," but they do believe in the right to decide what to do with one's own body. Most lefties don't have multiple piercings and multiple tattoos. Most "righties" see nothing wrong with earrings or tattoos. Why is that not a "belief in self-mutilation?" Are you trying to take the example of a minority and apply that to the majority?

Most lefties want children. Most lefties also recognize that abortion is a necessity, and again, believe in bodily autonomy (and recognize the scientific facts about when a fetus is actually viable and can feel pain - "righties" reject science when it conflicts with their world-view.) Since the right refuses to consider the societal benefits (economic and in terms of crime) of widely promoting and funding comprehensive sex-ed and birth control, abortions will continue to happen. (The right's dismissal of those things proves that the right doesn't actually care about babies so much as policing sexuality. They HATE sex outside of marriage, and want to enact Puritan morality on everyone.) You don't like abortion? Support the things proven to actually work at lessening it: education and birth-control, and not abortion bans.

Lefties don't want the "emasculation of men." They want to show that "grunting beer-swilling muscle freaks watching NASCAR" is not the only way to be a "man" or masculine. Manhood is not a one-size fits all behavior model (that is only a couple hundred years old at most, for crying out loud.) I don't play sports, I don't really watch them on TV that much, I like musical theater, I display my emotions and cry when its appropriate. Guess what: I am every bit as much a man as some muscle builder or football player: but I stand for what I believe in, I support my family, and I work to make my world a better place. I'll have words with anyone who says that makes me "emasculated." I know who I am, and I'll not allow right-wing Victorian-era pigeon-holers to tell me what is, or is not, "a man."


"Multiculturalism is not and has not been the norm. The default has always been ethnocentricity. "

Babies and very young children can and do recognize differences in skin tone. But babies and very young children do not separate themselves accordingly. The separation of groups is something that has to be taught. Yes, there are certain tribalistic urges that come from our background as apes (which have more to do with group size than anything else, and we just decided to use physical characteristics as an identifier) but "we did it as apes" is no excuse if a behavior is harmful. Ethnocentricity is no more "default" than multiculturalism. We can decide which one we want by weighing the benefits and costs of each. I would argue that multiculturalism is, over time, the best road towards building a good society.

[identity profile] dexeron.livejournal.com 2017-02-10 04:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Unless you're arguing that people of different ethnic backgrounds are analogous to dangerous tigers, there's no practical reason to embrace "ethnocentricity." As our world becomes more interconnected because of technology of communications and travel, a multicultural approach simply makes more practical sense.

Of course multicultural attitudes are conditioned. As I already said, our ability to think abstractly allows us to decide which "innate" behaviors are beneficial and which are not, and to condition ourselves appropriately so that the beneficial ones are integrated into our societies, and the harmful ones are not.

We can condition ourselves to embrace tribalism, and an ethnocentric view, but it brings with it an inevitable tendency towards greater conflicts. This is the view we've adopted for much of our history, which has been rife with such conflicts.

Alternately, we can condition ourselves to reject tribalism, and to adopt a more multi-cultural view (not necessarily "cultural relativism.") This does not eliminate all conflict, because there are always deep long-running tensions and pre-existing conflicts that don't just go away because we've said they should, but walling up the world into enclaves brings more tension and more conflict in the long-term. Balkanization has always led to greater hostility and often open conflict.
garote: (machine)

[personal profile] garote 2017-02-11 01:43 am (UTC)(link)
It is the "tolerant left" that are pursuing the destruction of a "racial group", and you say that's bad and wasteful ...

... But if "tribalism is innate", then you have to accept that what the "tolerant left" is doing is natural, isn't it? It's racial group vs. racial group, always and forever, according to you, right? So how can you condemn the "tolerant left" on that score?

... but at the same time, the "tolerant left" is opposed to the idea that "tribalism is innate", and that makes them foolish ...

No, that's incoherent. They can't be opposed to it and exemplify it, and be perfectly acceptable yet also evil, at the same time.

How about if you just accept that the instinct for tribalism is subject to massive amounts of social conditioning? For example, back in jolly old Ireland, people were obsessed with the difference between redheads and the so-called "black Irish" (people with jet black hair). A lot of people were made miserable - or just plain died - back in Ireland, because of poorly shaped tribalism. Here in America, that's been reduced to a handful of toothless stereotypes (e.g. "redheads are fiery"). On the other hand, too many of us are stuck in the tribalism of skin color.

I don't know about you, but I'm interested in working towards a world where people are aware of the potential problems their inbuilt tribalism can cause, and work against those problems. I think a key to this, is learning what is and isn't a choice, and judging people based on choices.

For example, calling someone dumb just because their eyes are close-set (people of German descent often have this, I've noticed) makes no sense. But calling someone dumb because they chose to get a drawing of some boobies tattooed on their forehead ... that makes sense.
garote: (machine)

[personal profile] garote 2017-02-11 06:21 am (UTC)(link)
I don't think you should hold war as a good thing. I don't think anyone should. I also don't think it should be considered unavoidable. (E.g. "there will always be tribalism, therefore there will always be war".) I'm glad we agree there.

But you just accused the left of "actively pursuing the destruction of a racial group", and even of "genocide", in practically the same breath as declaring them foolish for opposing tribalism. That just does not make sense.

If your beef is with people walking into a room and saying, "This room is too white. You all need to diversify!", then fine. I agree, that just sounds silly. But it's also what they call reductio ad absurdum, and not helpful.

America has always been known as a "melting pot". That does not necessarily mean that everything in it must be cooked down to an undifferentiated paste. What it means, is that distinctions between groups can melt. Entire groups can melt into others. Culture and ideas and habits can mix, and in that environment, people can make choices. And so, we idealize a government that facilitates those choices.

That doesn't mean cultural relativism. It means we idealize equal opportunity. And equal opportunity is not the same as equal outcome. That would be "forcing everyone to integrate until they're homogenized", and that is a strawman.

Seriously. Do you think it is the goal of the people who protested Milo, to make everyone the same? How does the one lead you to the other??
garote: (machine)

[personal profile] garote 2017-02-11 11:39 pm (UTC)(link)
"Traitors to their own people" is not something you get to declare from outside a given group. And they would not place you in their group, I guarantee it. People on the left have A Thing about placing racists outside their in-group.

I see you vilify them for "being conditioned to ignore race". As I've said elsewhere, race is a malleable and subjective construct. Like language, we are not born knowing it, we are born with the capacity to construct it, as our current environment describes it to us.

What I really want to ask you though is, since you think there is some kind of race war going on, that all of the other races are eagerly fighting except for those gosh-darned leftists... What are the consequences of "losing" this war?

I mean, aside from what seems to be the obvious: The collective world population will have somewhat darker skin.

What else is at stake??
garote: (machine)

[personal profile] garote 2017-02-12 12:52 am (UTC)(link)
There you go using that word "genocide" again... I don't think it means what you think it means. Overwhelming one set of facial features with another through voluntary interbreeding is not "genocide". You're going to have a hard time finding enough people interested in redefining it that way. And ... the victims of actual genocide will probably be really upset at you as well!
garote: (machine)

[personal profile] garote 2017-02-12 01:58 am (UTC)(link)
I'm sorry, but every dictionary ever printed, and everyone else I've ever met, humbly disagrees with you.
You don't get that kind of victim status. Though you clearly prize it.
garote: (machine)

[personal profile] garote 2017-02-12 01:30 am (UTC)(link)
I think we're almost on the same page here with race. The language analogy is helping. But there's a crucial point that's missing.

Have you ever tried to learn a very foreign language? Like, as a native English speaker, tried to learn some form of Chinese? It's very difficult for two reasons. First, there are sounds the Chinese make that do not have analogues in English, and we tend to map these sounds onto ones we already know when picking up the language, and they get stuck. That leaves us with an accent that is very hard to eradicate and can even mangle our speech completely.

And second, Chinese is a tonal language. That means by varying the pitch of your voice between high and low, you actually change the meaning and structure of your words. We use tone to convey emotion and intent behind words almost exclusively, and using it to change meaning or grammar is a totally foreign idea to us, and to learn it we have to push aside a huge amount of our emotional expression, and re-learn it around the new language.

The point is, because we are already native speakers of another language, it is actually a big uphill battle learning this new language, because we have to redefine many categorizations of sounds (to reduce our accent) and we have to use sound in a totally different way.

In other words, we've been "calibrated" to communicate with one peer group, and now that "calibration" is working against us when we want to communicate with a different one.

This is different from spatial awareness. You learn spatial awareness once, and only tweak it as you go. Gravity is the same for everyone. Balance works the same way for everyone with four limbs and a spine. The length of your reach and the weight of your body changes only very slowly and that training is never an impediment unless there's some kind of accident (like you lose a limb) or you go into space, or go deep-sea diving without training first.

Race is like language. Not like spatial awareness. The shorthand and the distinctions you have learned to make with race are:

1. not universal, even across what you call "your own" race,
2. not always an advantage - and can be a huge disadvantage at times,
3. not subject to an objective standard for quality - only a subjective one.
garote: (machine)

[personal profile] garote 2017-02-12 02:09 am (UTC)(link)
Noooo, they were correlating chunks of the genome to facial features, with a suspiciously large margin of error. They are still way waaaayy distant from being able to alter DNA to give you those facial features.

And as I pointed out elsewhere. There are many many facial features, and shades of distinction amongst those features, and where you draw the lines to declare a race is not objective, "ontologically" or otherwise. The races defined even vary across different disciplines - forensic anthropology versus sociology versus archaeology for example - and are even contested within those disciplines, and are also in a state of flux.
Edited 2017-02-12 02:09 (UTC)
garote: (machine)

[personal profile] garote 2017-02-12 03:55 am (UTC)(link)
You like that word "suppressed". It's exciting. Makes you think there is something really valuable here eh?

Fun article. From page four, emphasis added:

- - -

Many scientists apparently worry that proof of divergent brain evolution could be so racially polarizing that we, as a society, would almost be better off in the dark. Hawks responds that the best safeguard against bigotry is educating the public. He thinks we understand enough about human genetics to know that the notion of racial superiority is absurd. Intelligence, he argues, is not a single trait but a vast suite of abilities, and each ancestral environment may have favored a different set of talents. What is sorely needed, he says, is “an ecological framework” to interpret the results. “Groups are best adapted to their own environment, which eliminates the question of superiority.” Even he concedes, though, that communicating the nuances will be no easy task.

“Whatever we find,” Wang says, “it would never be justification for abandoning the egalitarian value that all individuals, regardless of their ethnicity, are deserving of the same rights and opportunities.” Moyzis expands on that line of reasoning, putting a sunny spin on the group’s findings. “It would be boring if all the races were fundamentally the same,” he argues. “It’s exciting to think that they bring different strengths and talents to the table. That is part of what makes melting-pot cultures like our own so invigorating and creative.”

Of course, in melting-pot cultures all kinds of ethnic groups intermingle freely, and the children who result literally meld our DNA together. Even if those groups were diverging, international travel is now causing the diversity to get lost in the genetic reshuffling. “That’s the ultimate irony,” Moyzis says. “By the time we finally settle this debate, we’ll all be such a mixture of genes that we won’t care.”

- - -
garote: (machine)

[personal profile] garote 2017-02-12 04:30 am (UTC)(link)
Then why are you intent on fighting a war drawn across arbitrary lines?