Fighting The Fourth Reich

[Bob Butler 54]

(08-25-2017, 11:25 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: As for my empathy or lack of it.  I have plenty of empathy.  You're just not in my tribe so there is little reason for me to have any for you.  The only difference between me and others is that I'm honest about the limitations of my empathy.

I’ve had exchanges with other contributors.  During those exchanges, I collected a list of words that includes insane, stupid, brainwashed and evil, among others.  All these words label one as nigh on subhuman with a dysfunctional brain.  All of these words can dismiss what the other person is thinking, proposing or proclaiming.

It’s not just forum contributors that might exchange these words.  Partisan publications such as Breitbart and The Atlantic might attract them too.  They can be associated with an extreme partisan, a pundit, a politician, an editor, whatever.  If you are an extreme partisan, if you cling to a particular way of looking at the world, you often have to reject the opposite.  Words like insane, stupid, brainwashed, evil, etc… are handy go to concepts in such a case.  Eric’s ‘insane’ label will be attached to anyone who disagrees with him on gun policy.  Kinser threw such words at a blue tainted list of magazines.  It’s common.

I’ve been trying to strive for and advocate the opposite.  Major world views generally came about for solid reasons.  In places, and cultures such reasons are still valid, well regarded and taught at a core value level.  People hold and defend such world views with conviction, integrity and thought.  In general, one would say there is no reason to think one who holds such a world view, who seeks the corresponding values, is insane, stupid, brainwashed, evil, etc…

And yet, it is hardly surprising to hear someone suggest that if you read X magazine, if you profess a certain idea, that list is apt to come out.

Sometimes this is done in a sort of civil well thought out way.  Other times, the winner is thought to be he who types the most obnoxious insult soonest.  I don’t know that the insults are overly constructive.  I do know that if the other guy appears insane, stupid, brainwashed, evil etc…  reaching for the insult is tempting to irresistible.  Hopefully, there are enough people hurling insults that a few skipping the exercise sometimes won’t be missed.

But back to serious people.  If one professes, expresses, respects both both of the extreme partisan symptoms,  and the two systems conflict, what gives?  Or more likely, if one is heavily into a single system, what gives?

Occasionally it is up stated front.  Eric doesn’t read anything from the NRA.  Kinser claims a lack of empathy.  If one explicitly throws out part of the other guy’s world view, what the heck, it’s gone for the person throwing away.  At the values level, I cannot force Eric to acknowledge what he doesn’t want to hear.  I can’t force Kinser to feel for people he doesn’t feel for.  There is a sometimes appreciation, at least on my part, for those who can be brutally honest in admitting their limitations.

But this does not imply Eric speaks for all blues, nor Kinser for all reds.  It’s tempting so say so.  A lot of people regarding the gun policy question are just not listening.  A lot of red are uninterested in helping others.  It is tempting to take the brutal admission and honesty of a few and apply the ideas behind it to the many.

Now, my own values have been questioned.  I would like to say my values put science first, that any idea has to be double checked against reality.  I would put political thought second, leaning left, Whig in most to all ways, fond of the ideas of the Enlightenment.  I’ll pick up odds and ends from various religions, but often won’t claim to be able to apply science in anything like ‘proof’.  I’ll suggest you do as you will and harm none, but not propose and experiment to observe or prove such ideas.

On Whig ideas.  Are king’s powers diminished?  Are slaves freed?  Are human rights spreading?  Have robber baron’s increased their power at the expense of aristocratic landowners?  If you look at S&H crises in the Anglo American sequence over the last 500 years or so, can you not often find a progressive faction, advocating one or more of these ideas, and moving on to ‘win’ the crisis?

But is this universal?  Are these values often European-American, often missing elsewhere?  Thus, are Whig values triumphant in certain places and times, but far less relevant elsewhere?  One counter example of Whig values would be the modern middle east.  The West has shown middle eastern people mostly colonial imperialism.  Have many come to reject all western materialistic values to cling to an old agricultural age religious world view?

And are these questions testable?  Can one examine history and apply the label ‘fact’, or are these political values which have to be labeled ‘opinion’?  Me, I’m a Whig, and I’ll hold Whiggish things to be true with a fierceness similar to anyone else clinging to any partisan viewpoint.  Still, when I observe that kings have less power, Bills of Rights have more, Slaves are free, and the rest, are these things true enough in some historically observable way?

I think so.  Kinser doesn’t.  If he doesn’t care about folks outside his tribe, he seems to try to show that nobody else cares either.  Liberty, Equality, Fraternity!  It never happened?  Take the giant autocratic eraser to history, and change history as one pleases?

I can kinda, sorta, almost respect Kinser’s world view, but am not going to name him expert on everything blue.  To defend his own empathy lite perspective, he has to disparage those who do want to share and care.  To me it seems very clear that a lot of people do care more that he does, have for quite a time, to the extent that the Whig perspective has triumphed and is still thriving.  ‘Whig’ is no longer as popular a word.  Folks have seen one problem solved, and have moved on to the next.  The forces of change are (surprise!) changing.  The words change with it.

But you have to take a partisan’s straw man characterizations of opposing partisans less than fully seriously.  If you want to learn about the blue, ask a blue, not someone whose world view demands that he disparage the blue.  Nor is the above unique to the blue.  In many cases, you can substitute the word red freely.