Responding To Conservatives Who Are Disloyal Fans Of Darkmatter2525's Work.
DarkMatter25251 day ago
My next video is probably my most important ever (tentatively titled "Why Some Deaths are Celebrated"). Should be up Friday (trying for 3pm EST). I actually have a twinge of nervousness about posting it. Any potential enemies it produces will be powerful ones. Let it be known here and now that I have no desire to take my own life.
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@iama2427
You know I've been subscribing to this channel ever since 2016 can I say I don't really like the direction it's going. I think you're losing yourself in Hobris?
---------------------------
@iama2427
well I don't agree with some of these newer videos about being woke. You could be on the left or the right and be an atheist and still make a statement that's incorrect. His earlier video seemed to focus more on power corrupts and the dangers of religion but now it seems to be more focusing on political things. Back in the 2010s this channel seem to treat those things indifferently.
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@ApPersonaNonGrata
As I see it, it's an unavoidable shift of dialogue.
Authoritarian-religion is a redundant expression.
Religion is a form of government; which secular governments sanction to exist under their overarching authority.
All evangelizing religions are also colonizing religions.
Colonizing religions never miss an opportunity to infiltrate formal governments; towards the goal of hijacking those seats of power, towards the goal of dominating and re-shaping those societies, to the benefit of those religions.
At this point, in order to properly address the dangers posed by such religions, we simply must be paying great attention to what they're doing in the political arena.
It's also important to help everyone understand that our secular freedoms are being directly and greatly threatened by those developments; especially in America, because of the MAGA-Christian alliance.
Every vote cast to support MAGA-side politics ... is a vote against our own interests.
Why?
Because they intend to switch from:
a.) chipping away at our legally protected liberties, to
b.) stripping those completely away, quickly and systematically;
while making it harder and harder (possibly impossible) to get those back.
So even though many atheists are very "Conservative" in their opinions and theories about how to create the strongest and healthiest society, ... they are **correct** to realize that "now is not the time" for those efforts; no matter if they are right or wrong about their socioeconomic and legislative theories.
Why is this 'not the time' for Conservative-atheists to vote Conservative?
Because there's no way to vote and support Conservative political theories ... without giving power to the theocratic fascists whom Trump (despite being a closeted atheist of libertarian sentiments) had to form a dedicated alliance with just so he could attain and hold power.
We no longer have the luxury of talking about religion seperately from politics.
Although, I'd argue, we always should have been putting our primary focus at that intersection.
--------------------
@whatisupmyfellowamericans8808Your main conceit is the assumption that the only authoritarian influences we need to be concerned about right now are the religious ones.
In truth, secular authoritarianism is far more prevalent nowadays, even among the religious.
You say that evangelists always infiltrate political organizations, but the same exact thing has been observed in reverse more and more.
This isn't a problem of religion as a system, it's a problem of the establishment using whatever it can to control people, and the people being too braindead to criticize the actual problem, instead favoring what conforms to their narrative.
Beyond that, what "rights" are supposedly being stripped away?
The "right" to abort your child out of convenience?
The "right" to riot in the streets and burn down completely unrelated businesses?
The "right" to shut down any and all opposition with false accusations that you will never stand trial for?
The only thing I see conservatives wanting to get rid of is the spineless cry bullies who have never had any real problems but yet still insist on "fixing the whole world" no matter the cost to other people.
Maybe, if you don't want people to hate you and strip your "rights" away, maybe you don't side with the people who's only valid tactic is contrarianism combined with the abuse of others' sympathy.
Let's be clear here, the right wing bit its tongue for literally decades while the left got to romp and roam free, doing basically whatever they wanted, but now, when the left has brought everything crashing down, suddenly it's "everybody's" responsibility to prevent the loss of rights and liberties?
The right played along with black people's rights, women's rights, gay rights, trans rights, immigrant rights, and so on and so forth, and all the left can ever think to do is say the "the right wing isn't doing enough" and then they blame straight white men for every single problem.
Tell me, if bending over backwards to let you have your way at the express and objectively proven cost of the entire country isn't "doing enough," then what possibly could be good enough?
Progressives have been moving the goal posts since before we were both born, so I don't really get why you pretend to be surprised that the conservatives decided to just play a different game entirely.
---------------------------
@ApPersonaNonGrata
The first ~half of what you said ... were things I could respond to.
Interestingly enough, I understood what you meant about secular authoritarianism ... and I agree.
I just disagree about that being more dangerous than religious authoritarianism.
I also define "religion" and "religious" differently than you do.
However, I was able to set that aside and just focus on the substance of the issues.
Anything you might want to call a "religion" which does **not** make an appeal to any entities having rightful moral authority over us ... is just simply not relevant to the discussion.
Anything which DOES claim that anyone (real or imagined) has rightful moral authority over us ... is relevant, and is 'the problem'. Because that *is* "authoritarianism".
I really do condemn both secular authoritarian-ideologues and religious authoritarian-ideologues.
I also agree about the bigotries of (some) liberal-SJWs.
I just disagree that it's a "left"-problem.
It's only a far-left/alt-left problem.
Most left-siders refrain from blaming white straight men for the world's problems.
Although, the left does shelter and enable their extremists. -same as how moderate-conservatives shelter and enable theirs.
After those points, you did list a few specific complaints against "the left".
Here are my thoughts about those:
You asked:
"what "rights" are supposedly being stripped away?
My response to that is multi-faceted.
It will be so long that I'll need to list those as a separate response.
For now, let's move on to your other questions.
You asked:
"The "right" to abort your child out of convenience?"
--
My reply to that:
I am honestly surprised to hear anyone (at all) saying this, except for when Christian-religious fundamentalists say it.
It's such an egregiously unreasonable take about abortion rights that I'm half-tempted to just ignore it.
However, for now, I'll say this:
I doubt any abortions are ever sought for the sake of "convenience".
However, if any ever are, then:
That's their private business.
Logically, a fertilized egg is no more "a person" than an acorn is "a tree".
Left to develop, under the right conditions, it often would BECOME a person.
And yes, I DO think that's at least arguably serious.
Why?
Because abortions AND all forms of birth control (including abstinence) are ALL the
**ethical equivalent** to going back in time to ensure a person who MIGHT come into existence ... doesn't.
Although, as an anti-natalist, I'm fine with that.
Granted, it's fine-by-me if you are NOT fine with it.
But you, I, and our government should not be stealing such decisions away from women.
In fact, you know who agrees with me?
Almost everyone in better-educated societies.
Who, then, agrees with you?
Christian and Islamic fundamentalists.
Anyone else agreeing with you?
Only a small extra-following of people who had their views on this issue warped.
What warped their moral and rational lens on this issue?
That happened when they used-to-be religious-fundamentalists.
They later escaped FROM religious-fundamentalism.
But they still retained some of the warped moral-programming those religious insidiously wired into them.
Most anti-theists, atheists, agnostics, deists, pantheists, and even most Christians ... think your stance on this issue is absurd.
Now, I realize that doesn't prove who is right or wrong about it.
I'm not trying to commit a bandwagon fallacy here.
But when **almost** everyone who agrees with you is a religious fundamentalist,
that really should make you less confident about your position.
It was in the mid 1970s when Christian Nationalists hatched a plan to use mass-media to manipulate Protestant Christian fundamentalists into CHANGING from being pro-choice TO being anti-abortion.
And it worked.
Now, at the time, they only did that as a way to prevent Jimmy Carter from winning a Presidential election.
But once they realized how powerful that mind-hack was, as a way to politically weaponize Christian-fundamentalism to those politicians' and religious organizations' selfish advantage (for the sake of power and money), ...
they kept on using it.
If they hadn't hijacked our political system in that specific way,
you and I would not be having this "discussion" right now.
They have "Manufactured (your) Consent" to their wholly disingenuous political rhetoric.
-----------------------------------------------
Next, you asked
"The "right" to riot in the streets and burn down completely unrelated businesses?"
--
My reply:
Literally nobody on the left is asking for that to be a "right".
Nor have most people who are left-of-center ever behaved in such a way.
Nor did hardly-anyone left-of-center condone those behaviors.
In fact, there are known/verified examples of Conservative White Supremacists putting on masks, breaking windows, burning building, etc... at "Black Lives Matters" protests.
They were hoping to DE-LEGITIMIZE the entire left.
They were also hoping to set the stage where protests become illegal in our country, as a way to "Protect" the "sanctity" of their racist-authoritarian vision for America.
Mind you, I always thought (and still think) "Black Lives Matter" was a very unwise social-marketing slogan.
I also realized how that movement (in some ways) was working against their own interests.
I also realized it was billionaire puppet-masters who orchestrated the beginning of that movement, as a way to divide and distract America from what those billionaires were up to.
They were stealing from the poor people of America, in their political activities.
They didn't want "We, The People" to notice.
Billionaire mass-media puppet masters
were the unsung architects of the very movement they pre-planned to de-legitimize.
Meanwhile, no matter who started various fires, lootings, etc.,
I realize that many local residents (many of whom probably did hold BLM-views) seized upon those opportunities to STEAL BACK some of what large chain-stores steal FROM them every day.
They did so by joining in the looting.
That too was a strategic mistake.
So I'm not defending everything that a TINY MINORITY of BLM-protesters chose to join-in-on.
Nor do I think such large protests were a smart idea in the first place; given how that created an irresistible opportunity for social-saboteurs to manipulate Conservatives, by manipulating the media, by sparking unrest at otherwise-peaceful protests, by committing crimes while masked and posing as BLM activists.
Regardless, you really should be a lot more angry at the system which leaves those poor people with NO GOOD OPTIONS, ... than you are with the TINY MINORITY of liberal-protesters who
made poor choices at (some of) those events.
Nor should you be accusing the entire left of doing any such things; because they didn't.
Nor would they ever.
However, I do want to make one last point about that before we move on.
POWER is never given.
It is only TAKEN.
The ONLY reason that wide-scale VIOLENCE is NOT the solution is because:
There's no chance of it working.
For most of human history, it could and did work.
But that's no longer possible.
In fact, there's no chance of it being even adequately organized before it's discovered and shut-down by our surveillance-state's political and cooperate masters.
Thus, it's a mistake for anyone to try.
But IF it had a real chance of succeeding,
it WOULD BE the right thing to do.
It just couldn't work.
And yet, it is understandable how under-educated and DESPERATE people would think "it could" and thus to think they ought to try.
Also,
let's be equally clear about this:
The REASON we have such an under-educated, desperate, and divided society is because our government has been intentionally sabotaging our social, governmental, economic, and educational system(s) for generations.
The so-called "left" side of that system is actually moderately Conservative; posing as "the left".
They are ABSOLUTELY complicit in the gaming of those systems.
However,
the even-more-Conservative side of our government has always been far more focused and extreme in those efforts.
That's partly because of how much easier it is to dominate, manipulate, and exploit stupid, desperate, and divided people.
It's also because the even-more-Conservative side of our government wants to force our systems to fail, so that they can "rescue" those systems ... by privatizing, buying and owning all of it; to their own selfish advantage.
The political cult you've been duped into supporting keeps America stupid, desperate, and divided.
And then they complain when Americans do stupid, desperate, and divided things.
----------------------------------------------------
Next, you said:
"The "right" to shut down any and all opposition with false accusations that you will never stand trial for?"
---
Let's be clear about this.
He DID
everything he was accused of doing.
In fact, he did even more and worse crimes; which he was never charged with.
However,
non-MAGA people (which does include old-school Republicans) thought it would be a good idea to prosecute him for "election interference";
specifically for trying to hide what he did with a porn-star/dominatrix while he was married.
But I always disagreed with them about this.
It's not the American people's business that he cheated on his wife, or that he hired a hooker, or that he paid her off to keep silent about it.
-Well, except for how elites are allowed to hire hookers while "the common man" would be arrested and forced onto a sex-offender registry if they hired a sex worker.
That double-standard needed some attention. But I disagree that it should count as "election interference" or felonies.
---
As for the 2nd half of things you said,
...
you made a list of further accusations against the left.
But you failed to site examples, nor to offer supporting arguments or citations.
Thus, there's really no substance there to engage with;
except to notice that your ego is very wounded.
In response, you're lashing out in extremely disproportionate ways.
You're going full "scorched earth" about (incorrectly) perceived attacks against your cultural and political camps.
As for MAGA, I absolutely can provide a comprehensive list (along with sound arguments and citations) for:
a large hard-cover book's worth of extreme dangers they pose, intend, and will certainly succeed in carrying out.
Carrying out
against whom?
Against the American people (even against you personally), and against all of humanity, and against every living thing on this planet.
Even the cockroaches will be screwed, once they finally run out of traces of dead materials to eat.
MAGA supports are burning down the house they themselves live in (with everyone else).
They are the essential "domino falling" which absolutely will end all life on Earth.
--
--
[Further commentary will be offered seperately.
I only have so much time to spare for these discussions]
--
My reply to that:
I am honestly surprised to hear anyone (at all) saying this, except for when Christian-religious fundamentalists say it.
It's such an egregiously unreasonable take about abortion rights that I'm half-tempted to just ignore it.
However, for now, I'll say this:
I doubt any abortions are ever sought for the sake of "convenience".
However, if any ever are, then:
That's their private business.
Logically, a fertilized egg is no more "a person" than an acorn is "a tree".
Left to develop, under the right conditions, it often would BECOME a person.
And yes, I DO think that's at least arguably serious.
Why?
Because abortions AND all forms of birth control (including abstinence) are ALL the
**ethical equivalent** to going back in time to ensure a person who MIGHT come into existence ... doesn't.
Although, as an anti-natalist, I'm fine with that.
Granted, it's fine-by-me if you are NOT fine with it.
But you, I, and our government should not be stealing such decisions away from women.
In fact, you know who agrees with me?
Almost everyone in better-educated societies.
Who, then, agrees with you?
Christian and Islamic fundamentalists.
Anyone else agreeing with you?
Only a small extra-following of people who had their views on this issue warped.
What warped their moral and rational lens on this issue?
That happened when they used-to-be religious-fundamentalists.
They later escaped FROM religious-fundamentalism.
But they still retained some of the warped moral-programming those religious insidiously wired into them.
Most anti-theists, atheists, agnostics, deists, pantheists, and even most Christians ... think your stance on this issue is absurd.
Now, I realize that doesn't prove who is right or wrong about it.
I'm not trying to commit a bandwagon fallacy here.
But when **almost** everyone who agrees with you is a religious fundamentalist,
that really should make you less confident about your position.
It was in the mid 1970s when Christian Nationalists hatched a plan to use mass-media to manipulate Protestant Christian fundamentalists into CHANGING from being pro-choice TO being anti-abortion.
And it worked.
Now, at the time, they only did that as a way to prevent Jimmy Carter from winning a Presidential election.
But once they realized how powerful that mind-hack was, as a way to politically weaponize Christian-fundamentalism to those politicians' and religious organizations' selfish advantage (for the sake of power and money), ...
they kept on using it.
If they hadn't hijacked our political system in that specific way,
you and I would not be having this "discussion" right now.
They have "Manufactured (your) Consent" to their wholly disingenuous political rhetoric.
-----------------------------------------------
Next, you asked
"The "right" to riot in the streets and burn down completely unrelated businesses?"
--
My reply:
Literally nobody on the left is asking for that to be a "right".
Nor have most people who are left-of-center ever behaved in such a way.
Nor did hardly-anyone left-of-center condone those behaviors.
In fact, there are known/verified examples of Conservative White Supremacists putting on masks, breaking windows, burning building, etc... at "Black Lives Matters" protests.
They were hoping to DE-LEGITIMIZE the entire left.
They were also hoping to set the stage where protests become illegal in our country, as a way to "Protect" the "sanctity" of their racist-authoritarian vision for America.
Mind you, I always thought (and still think) "Black Lives Matter" was a very unwise social-marketing slogan.
I also realized how that movement (in some ways) was working against their own interests.
I also realized it was billionaire puppet-masters who orchestrated the beginning of that movement, as a way to divide and distract America from what those billionaires were up to.
They were stealing from the poor people of America, in their political activities.
They didn't want "We, The People" to notice.
Billionaire mass-media puppet masters
were the unsung architects of the very movement they pre-planned to de-legitimize.
Meanwhile, no matter who started various fires, lootings, etc.,
I realize that many local residents (many of whom probably did hold BLM-views) seized upon those opportunities to STEAL BACK some of what large chain-stores steal FROM them every day.
They did so by joining in the looting.
That too was a strategic mistake.
So I'm not defending everything that a TINY MINORITY of BLM-protesters chose to join-in-on.
Nor do I think such large protests were a smart idea in the first place; given how that created an irresistible opportunity for social-saboteurs to manipulate Conservatives, by manipulating the media, by sparking unrest at otherwise-peaceful protests, by committing crimes while masked and posing as BLM activists.
Regardless, you really should be a lot more angry at the system which leaves those poor people with NO GOOD OPTIONS, ... than you are with the TINY MINORITY of liberal-protesters who
made poor choices at (some of) those events.
Nor should you be accusing the entire left of doing any such things; because they didn't.
Nor would they ever.
However, I do want to make one last point about that before we move on.
POWER is never given.
It is only TAKEN.
The ONLY reason that wide-scale VIOLENCE is NOT the solution is because:
There's no chance of it working.
For most of human history, it could and did work.
But that's no longer possible.
In fact, there's no chance of it being even adequately organized before it's discovered and shut-down by our surveillance-state's political and cooperate masters.
Thus, it's a mistake for anyone to try.
But IF it had a real chance of succeeding,
it WOULD BE the right thing to do.
It just couldn't work.
And yet, it is understandable how under-educated and DESPERATE people would think "it could" and thus to think they ought to try.
Also,
let's be equally clear about this:
The REASON we have such an under-educated, desperate, and divided society is because our government has been intentionally sabotaging our social, governmental, economic, and educational system(s) for generations.
The so-called "left" side of that system is actually moderately Conservative; posing as "the left".
They are ABSOLUTELY complicit in the gaming of those systems.
However,
the even-more-Conservative side of our government has always been far more focused and extreme in those efforts.
That's partly because of how much easier it is to dominate, manipulate, and exploit stupid, desperate, and divided people.
It's also because the even-more-Conservative side of our government wants to force our systems to fail, so that they can "rescue" those systems ... by privatizing, buying and owning all of it; to their own selfish advantage.
The political cult you've been duped into supporting keeps America stupid, desperate, and divided.
And then they complain when Americans do stupid, desperate, and divided things.
----------------------------------------------------
Next, you said:
"The "right" to shut down any and all opposition with false accusations that you will never stand trial for?"
---
Let's be clear about this.
He DID
everything he was accused of doing.
In fact, he did even more and worse crimes; which he was never charged with.
However,
non-MAGA people (which does include old-school Republicans) thought it would be a good idea to prosecute him for "election interference";
specifically for trying to hide what he did with a porn-star/dominatrix while he was married.
But I always disagreed with them about this.
It's not the American people's business that he cheated on his wife, or that he hired a hooker, or that he paid her off to keep silent about it.
-Well, except for how elites are allowed to hire hookers while "the common man" would be arrested and forced onto a sex-offender registry if they hired a sex worker.
That double-standard needed some attention. But I disagree that it should count as "election interference" or felonies.
---
As for the 2nd half of things you said,
...
you made a list of further accusations against the left.
But you failed to site examples, nor to offer supporting arguments or citations.
Thus, there's really no substance there to engage with;
except to notice that your ego is very wounded.
In response, you're lashing out in extremely disproportionate ways.
You're going full "scorched earth" about (incorrectly) perceived attacks against your cultural and political camps.
As for MAGA, I absolutely can provide a comprehensive list (along with sound arguments and citations) for:
a large hard-cover book's worth of extreme dangers they pose, intend, and will certainly succeed in carrying out.
Carrying out
against whom?
Against the American people (even against you personally), and against all of humanity, and against every living thing on this planet.
Even the cockroaches will be screwed, once they finally run out of traces of dead materials to eat.
MAGA supports are burning down the house they themselves live in (with everyone else).
They are the essential "domino falling" which absolutely will end all life on Earth.
--
--
[Further commentary will be offered seperately.
I only have so much time to spare for these discussions]
Hello it's me again. Just wanted to preface this with a little bit of an apology, mostly for the fact that I drank a biiiit too much while surfing the web and that's why we're here at all. Usually I don't bother with debating strangers online (because it's a waste of life), but I get too political (and angry) when inebriated. That said, I made this bed, and I will lay in it, soberly this time.
ReplyDeleteBasically the main flaw I see in your view of the world is a confusion between "authority" and "authoritarianism." You seem to be stuck in the mindset of the 80s and 90s, where any and all control was seen as oppression. Though to be fair, there WAS plenty of that too, so at least back in that period, the confusion made sense.
Now your only examples of "oppression" are things like "please stop treating human life like it's a disposable commodity on the level of lumber" followed by literally no effective action for two decades. Yes, women are soooo oppressed by the idea of intrinsic human value being applied consistently without asinine exceptions. Also, on a related note, the vast majority of abortions are done just to avoid parenthood, to the point where "medical necessity" is so rare that it doesn't even REGISTER in a legitimate statistical analysis. The main reason women want to abort is that children are incredibly inconvenient to raise, and you'd do well to not pretend otherwise.
And yes, it is very much my business that women have the unilateral right to kill the baby without any kind of input from the father. As a prospective family starter myself, I'm very concerned about living in a world where I have essentially no rights over my own child, while some spoiled little girl's "feelings" can ruin my life with a single sentence because detached and lifeless idealogues like you don't understand the concept of "cause and effect." I am completely in the right to be angry about having no real parental rights because said rights are (again) inconvenient for modern people and their endless crusade of self destruction.
"Egregiously unreasonable take" my stark pale ass, maybe try talking to an REAL PERSON with ACTUAL experiences instead of a computer screen all damn day, and then come back here talking about who and what qualifies as "unreasonable."
You might be an anti-natalist, that's your prerogative, but when your insistence on everyone being just as indifferent to life as you leads to nothing but rejection on all sides, you'll have no one to blame but yourself. Life is fundamentally about procreation, and you can't pretend to be surprised that men like me care when you DIRECTLY THREATEN our RIGHT to defend our offspring, all while empathy bullying us with BS about "women's rights" when we all know damn well that "misogyny" has jack shit to do with this.
DeleteYou eventually have to contend with the real definition of "authoritarianism" being specifically "a system that convinces people to oppress themselves willingly," and not just "a system where restrictions on some behaviors are present."
Now, saying that, I'm sure you're thinking, "but I DO know that, after all, that's EXACTLY why I don't like religion! It encourages people to give over their free will voluntarily!" And that's fair, on this we can agree: religion is vulnerable to authoritarianism. Except, this is not a unique feature of religions (the communists proved this conclusively), nor does opposing religion automatically mean you are immune to that same corruption (just look at what the FBI has been doing to catholics, ILLEGALLY I might add).
Instead of criticizing conservatives for being authoritarian, you'd rather criticize them for BEING conservative in the first place, a la the slippery slope fallacy ("conservatism always leads to tyranny" or something along those lines). In fact, you seem to think of the two terms as essentially interchangeable (which they aren't, again, you're stuck in the 80s), which poisons the well of any conversation you ever have and renders all your political ambitions completely unreachable. Conservatives just want the world to stop getting worse, and granted, they might go about it stupidly and counter productively, but that's still better than the ad nauseum progressive mantra of "the right side of history, the right side of history, the right side of history..." followed by decades of failures stacked on failures wrapped in propaganda that insists that the failure was "actually the point" and how "you really need to be better educated."
Speaking of, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that all your "uneducated masses" drivel was made out of a genuine hope for betterment of the system and not the disgustingly hypocritical elitist slop that pours from the typical leftist pseudo intellectual, but here's the big question: How are you going to stop the spread of corrupt religious authority without an equally powerful (and corruptible) secular authority in place?
DeleteAnd before you try to say "but I can live with the existence of religious people so long as they have no power," no you actually can't. Your own argument states that, literally just by being allowed to exist, religious people and religions corrupt societies over time. And no amount of semantical gymnastics can separate the "religious" from their "religion" in this context. In order to get rid of one, the other has to go too. And you are under a moral/logical obligation to pursue the end of religion, at any cost.
The only solution I see for you to get what you want as a progressive AND as an atheist is to appeal to the same authoritarian systems and motives that you want to undermine, and that's why I can't get on board with the leftist atheist bandwagon that you like to pretend is necessary to call yourself an atheist. Either you're A) circle jerking about theory and accomplishing nothing (cough cough Darkmatter) or B) tacitly advocating for ACTUAL tyranny without even realizing it (cough cough Destiny). As exemplified by the lacking-in-self-awareness title of this blog, calling me and anyone with criticism for leftism "disloyal" to darkmatter and atheism as a whole, as if he (or more accurately you and the rest of the monolith) has any entitlement to my support for any damn reason, which is exactly how religious fanatics talk and act.
Not that he EVER wanted "loyalty" of that partisan kind from his audience, but that's neither here nor there.
Alright, I will leave it there. I'm not going to bother trying to justify or rationalize all the things I said at the end, because frankly not even *I* am sure what I was trying to say. Nobody speaks for drunk/exhausted me, not even sober me. All I can say is, damn that's embarrassing.
Also, to clarify, I just simply do not have the time to address every single point. I don't know how you managed it. I tried to be brief but still barely got halfway through your bullet points.
DeleteHi aaaaaa :)
DeleteSorry for the delay.
I didn't get a notification of replies.
I also never get replies. So I had to figure out how to read and reply to your replies.
Apparently, I can't do that while in 'edit' mode.
I have to log in as a viewer.
As for my definition of "authoritarian", I'm defining that as:
"favoring or enforcing strict obedience to authority, especially that of any government, at the expense of personal freedom."
And yea, that's fair that you barely had time to go through half of my statements.
This is why I prefer live, coffee-casual conversations; such as conversations I sometimes have at my Youtube channel.
I'll respond in pieces, whenever I can.
Thanks for all of this civil engagement. <3
"You seem to be stuck in the mindset of the 80s and 90s, where any and all control was seen as oppression."
Delete--
I don't think any of the sort.
I don't know what gave you that impression.
However,
here is what "oppression" means:
noun
Prolonged cruel or unjust treatment or control.
In other words, ...
any human social or societal system which
commits, causes, or threatens any significant negative effect upon any non-consenting person's health and function; especially when this happens disproportionately to persons within an identifiable sociodemographic.
This applies to
standards,
laws,
policies,
enforcements,
and living conditions.
"Living conditions" includes anyone given cause to *reasonably* feel physically or psychologically unsafe; anywhere in that social or societal system.
It includes "the state of being subject to unjust treatment or control."
It results in:
"mental pressures or distresses" which are significant enough to threaten substantial impairment of health and/or function of non-consenting persons.
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Note: This does *not* include
anything which is
a.) *unavoidably necessary*
and
which
b.) *equally* applies to everyone including all leaders.
Example of distressing situations which are unavoidable:
A natural disaster causing society-wide food shortages; resulting in EQUITABLE distribution of unfortunately-insufficient food.
This would NOT be an example of "oppression".
Now, are there any examples of oppression happening in the USA currently?
Yes.
Are any of those very serious?
Yes.
Is MAGA planning to make that worse?
Yes.
I'll post about this next.