woke

How should society be organised, if at all?

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Immanuel Can
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Re: woke

Post by Immanuel Can »

vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 6:21 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:15 am
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sat Dec 03, 2022 11:10 pm I'm left wing. Do you consider me a wokie?
Not necessarily. You could be something like an old-style Marxist, or you could just be unaware of the connection between Leftism and wokism. I can't say what you are. You'd have to tell us.

But if you were a wokie, you would, for sure, be on the Left.
Does everyone have to fit into one of your stupid boxes?
Hey, Left is Left. It's not my choice; it's theirs.

There are no classical-liberal Wokies, because classical liberals believe in freedom of speech and thought, and they believe in collectivist identity and politically correct ideology. That's not my doing. It's the Wokies.
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Sculptor
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Re: woke

Post by Sculptor »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 2:58 pm
vegetariantaxidermy wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 6:21 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:15 am
Not necessarily. You could be something like an old-style Marxist, or you could just be unaware of the connection between Leftism and wokism. I can't say what you are. You'd have to tell us.

But if you were a wokie, you would, for sure, be on the Left.
Does everyone have to fit into one of your stupid boxes?
Hey, Left is Left. It's not my choice; it's theirs.

There are no classical-liberal Wokies, because classical liberals believe in freedom of speech and thought, and they believe in collectivist identity and politically correct ideology. That's not my doing. It's the Wokies.
You are very good at inventing your straw man to knock down. I suppose it makes you think you have the world under control if you can lump everyone into some sort of box. It makes your prejudice so much more efficient.
Hitler would have had a great job for you in the New Reich.
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Sculptor
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Re: woke

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FlashDangerpants wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:29 am ScaryScaryWokies.jpg
Yeah poor rightards, they are so scared that their white privilege is being attacked.
We whities, Christian right are being systematically abused.

Tucker Carlson, Trump - they are all Wokies!!!
:D :D :D :D
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Immanuel Can
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Re: woke

Post by Immanuel Can »

Astro Cat wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 11:15 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 1:02 am
Gary Childress wrote: Sun Dec 04, 2022 12:55 am I guess if I want to avoid collectivist ways I'll need to not vote anymore. I'm sure only collectivists participate in the voting process.
Not at all. You can be an individual and vote.

But vote as an individual, for the candidates and parties that actually have the policies you regard as best. Vote for those that maximize opportunity and don't overreach. Vote for those with sane economic policies, good character, and a track record of success. Don't vote for a candidate just because he's red or blue.
I wish two things: one, that there *were* candidates I agreed with more readily.
Now, THAT, I agree with totally.

I find it quite astonishing that we have had, in the last few years, candidates of such low, low quality, either in your country or mine, or in other countries in Europe. In many cases, it's almost like we couldn't find anybody for the job, and just pressed into service anybody who would say, "Okay," rather than seeking out the best and most competent public servants.

We have a distinct lack of statesmen, and an abundance of politicians. That is to say, we have many who make decisions with an obsessive, myopic view to keeping themselves or their political party in power, and almost none who (regardless of their party) keep the interests of their countries in the forefront of their decision-making, and will make the sorts of tough, non-partisan choices that serve the true public interest.

And maybe that exposes a limitation of open democracy: namely, that if the greater mass of the electorate becomes undiscriminating about to whom they will assent, about the people they permit to hold office, then the majority -- being willing to accept a very low standard, it seems -- can pull down the available pool of candidates to the lowest level, giving nobody else any decent choice.

But what's the alternative? Elitism? Limiting the voter lists? A more vigorous republic? A renewal of public standards? It's a quandary, to be sure.
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Astro Cat
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Re: woke

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Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:11 pm But what's the alternative? Elitism? Limiting the voter lists? A more vigorous republic? A renewal of public standards? It's a quandary, to be sure.
I have no idea either. There are many times where I feel like things are already beyond redemption, or at least in a generational sense (that it will take a new generation that is more curious, cares more, is more informed, thinks more critically, etc.) But I don't know how to even get that done since the quandary is the existing leaders have to want that, and they apparently don't.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: woke

Post by Immanuel Can »

Astro Cat wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:25 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:11 pm But what's the alternative? Elitism? Limiting the voter lists? A more vigorous republic? A renewal of public standards? It's a quandary, to be sure.
I have no idea either. There are many times where I feel like things are already beyond redemption, or at least in a generational sense (that it will take a new generation that is more curious, cares more, is more informed, thinks more critically, etc.) But I don't know how to even get that done since the quandary is the existing leaders have to want that, and they apparently don't.
Right. They seem more and more determined to secure their own future positions, regardless of what it does to the country, and even regardless of whatever the public might actually want.

It's a strange paradox: the incompetents at the top are, without hesitation, elitist. They practice their belief that the right goal -- for them -- is the securing of their own futures and that of their parties, no matter what that entails for the democratic process. And they don't trust a free vote to produce a good outcome. They believe that the public has to be "managed" so as to "do the right thing." The irony is that they present as "democratic" that which is really paternalistic, patronizing and manipulative, on their part; and the public seems to be buying it.

And the democratic mechanisms are vulnerable to that sort of manipulation, because they require the public belief that votes are always fair and open. So the elitists can insist that the cardinal sin is the doubting of any vote that appears to be "democratic," whether it was or not. And they can even keep reassuring the public that some part of its own number are simply unworthy of being included in any genuine "democratic" reckoning. Meanwhile, they can keep extending the franchise to the groups that they find the most manipulable -- especially to constituencies of those who depend on government largesse or fiat for their own survival, or who have naive expectations of government generosity (the resentful, those in debt, the very young, those dependent on government programs, non-citizens, criminals, and so forth). This keeps the process looking ever more "democratic," but creates a majority that is more and more manipulable to the elitists.

What's particularly troubling is that governments -- under all parties -- seemed to have stopped seeing monolythic business interests as suspicious or contrary to the public interest, and have instead sought ways to ally themselves with those interests against the people. Out of that Faustian bargain, the politicians get power, and the business interests get money, and the mass media get a captive audience -- all three get what they most desire: the ability to more freely exploit the average citizen in the particular way each prizes most. So they've stopped fighting with each other, stopped criticizing and undermining each other, and have begun to coordinate their efforts. That's very ominous.

The only loser in the bargain is the average citizen.
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Astro Cat
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Re: woke

Post by Astro Cat »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:46 pm Right. They seem more and more determined to secure their own future positions, regardless of what it does to the country, and even regardless of whatever the public might actually want.

It's a strange paradox: the incompetents at the top are, without hesitation, elitist. They practice their belief that the right goal -- for them -- is the securing of their own futures and that of their parties, no matter what that entails for the democratic process. And they don't trust a free vote to produce a good outcome. They believe that the public has to be "managed" so as to "do the right thing." The irony is that they present as "democratic" that which is really paternalistic, patronizing and manipulative, on their part; and the public seems to be buying it.

And the democratic mechanisms are vulnerable to that sort of manipulation, because they require the public belief that votes are always fair and open. So the elitists can insist that the cardinal sin is the doubting of any vote that appears to be "democratic," whether it was or not. And they can even keep reassuring the public that some part of its own number are simply unworthy of being included in any genuine "democratic" reckoning. Meanwhile, they can keep extending the franchise to the groups that they find the most manipulable -- especially to constituencies of those who depend on government largesse or fiat for their own survival, or who have naive expectations of government generosity (the resentful, those in debt, the very young, those dependent on government programs, non-citizens, criminals, and so forth). This keeps the process looking ever more "democratic," but creates a majority that is more and more manipulable to the elitists.

What's particularly troubling is that governments -- under all parties -- seemed to have stopped seeing monolythic business interests as suspicious or contrary to the public interest, and have instead sought ways to ally themselves with those interests against the people. Out of that Faustian bargain, the politicians get power, and the business interests get money, and the mass media get a captive audience -- all three get what they most desire: the ability to more freely exploit the average citizen in the particular way each prizes most. So they've stopped fighting with each other, stopped criticizing and undermining each other, and have begun to coordinate their efforts. That's very ominous.

The only loser in the bargain is the average citizen.
I have had nearly conspirational thoughts at times (just silly musings) when I see things like insulin costing four times what other countries pay for it in the US (or really, our entire for-profit healthcare system in general). It seems like the political leaders in the US are less caretakers for their flock and more selling the world's fattest pigs to the highest bidder.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: woke

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Astro Cat wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:59 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:46 pm Right. They seem more and more determined to secure their own future positions, regardless of what it does to the country, and even regardless of whatever the public might actually want.

It's a strange paradox: the incompetents at the top are, without hesitation, elitist. They practice their belief that the right goal -- for them -- is the securing of their own futures and that of their parties, no matter what that entails for the democratic process. And they don't trust a free vote to produce a good outcome. They believe that the public has to be "managed" so as to "do the right thing." The irony is that they present as "democratic" that which is really paternalistic, patronizing and manipulative, on their part; and the public seems to be buying it.

And the democratic mechanisms are vulnerable to that sort of manipulation, because they require the public belief that votes are always fair and open. So the elitists can insist that the cardinal sin is the doubting of any vote that appears to be "democratic," whether it was or not. And they can even keep reassuring the public that some part of its own number are simply unworthy of being included in any genuine "democratic" reckoning. Meanwhile, they can keep extending the franchise to the groups that they find the most manipulable -- especially to constituencies of those who depend on government largesse or fiat for their own survival, or who have naive expectations of government generosity (the resentful, those in debt, the very young, those dependent on government programs, non-citizens, criminals, and so forth). This keeps the process looking ever more "democratic," but creates a majority that is more and more manipulable to the elitists.

What's particularly troubling is that governments -- under all parties -- seemed to have stopped seeing monolythic business interests as suspicious or contrary to the public interest, and have instead sought ways to ally themselves with those interests against the people. Out of that Faustian bargain, the politicians get power, and the business interests get money, and the mass media get a captive audience -- all three get what they most desire: the ability to more freely exploit the average citizen in the particular way each prizes most. So they've stopped fighting with each other, stopped criticizing and undermining each other, and have begun to coordinate their efforts. That's very ominous.

The only loser in the bargain is the average citizen.
I have had nearly conspirational thoughts at times (just silly musings) when I see things like insulin costing four times what other countries pay for it in the US (or really, our entire for-profit healthcare system in general). It seems like the political leaders in the US are less caretakers for their flock and more selling the world's fattest pigs to the highest bidder.
Yes. And I don't think it's "conspiratorial thinking" that's telling you that. I think it's something as simple as "recognition of the obvious."

What's occurred to our "public servants" in the last few years has been something that probably should have been obvious to them long ago: that in fighting against big business and big media, in the name of the public interest, they were undercutting the most efficient conditions of their own advancement.

To illustrate: government used to consider as one of its most important roles to be vigilant against monopolies, and bust them when they appeared. They created a whole caste of public officials to monitor, prosecute and eliminate things like the forming of trusts or the concentration of too much power in a single business entity. They fought to maintain competition.

But somewhere along the line, they realized that they could get much farther much faster by not doing this. For while a monopoly in a given area might not be in the public interest, or in the interest of competition of consumer choice, it was much easier to collude with big business if big business was concentrated under a single head -- essentially, a monopoly. So they quietly allowed particular businesses like, say, Blackrock, to grow bigger and bigger, so long as they continued to support their political interests. It's so much easier to negotiate with one corporation than three or ten. Meanwhile, the big corporations sensed the opportunity; fund the politicians, get them elected and secured, and the constraints on business would quietly reduce until they became merely symbolic, or disappeared altogether.

So there was probably never a "conspiracy." There was probably no secret meeting in which the heads of big business sat down with the politicians and talked this all out surreptitiously. (I suppose there might have been, but I don't think it was at all necessary.) More likely, the politicians and the businessmen just came to realize, about the same time, that they could help one another "manage" the public. And both could get the thing they most wanted, so long as they didn't fight over the less-important differences. Big business, always attuned to getting more money, could happily cede poliitical power to the politicians, and even help secure them, so long as the politicians, always attuned to securing power, didn't fight them over business's plans to bilk the public.

It has the sort of horrific, simple logic of a bad idea that has its own legs to walk on. I'll bet they never even had to discuss it. It was always obvious; the miracle is that they didn't realize it sooner.
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Re: woke

Post by Walker »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:24 pm
So there was probably never a "conspiracy." There was probably no secret meeting in which the heads of big business sat down with the politicians and talked this all out surreptitiously. (I suppose there might have been, but I don't think it was at all necessary.) More likely, the politicians and the businessmen just came to realize, about the same time, that they could help one another "manage" the public.
Yes, I hear Twitter employees are claiming government coercion for their Evil-Doing, but they were ever so eager to comply. The former-CEO who looks like a Gandalf devotee claims pure ignorance of the nefarious doings, and Twitter underlings will proudly fall on their swords of justification for doing what they knew was wrong.

However, Brandon does have a lot of unaccounted-for time. He visits one of his Delaware homes for every extended weekend of secrecy, which is virtually every weekend, and the Secret Service, in keeping with their name, claim there is no record of those who visit him there.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: woke

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Walker wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 6:19 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:24 pm
So there was probably never a "conspiracy." There was probably no secret meeting in which the heads of big business sat down with the politicians and talked this all out surreptitiously. (I suppose there might have been, but I don't think it was at all necessary.) More likely, the politicians and the businessmen just came to realize, about the same time, that they could help one another "manage" the public.
Yes, I hear Twitter employees are claiming government coercion for their Evil-Doing, but they were ever so eager to comply.
They certainly were. And while either party, or plausibly both, might have had opportunity to petition Twitter to suppress information, I see that Musk has also published the statistics on their donations to political parties, which included only 2.7% to the Republicans, and 97.3% to the Democrats. :shock:

To borrow a trope from the Left, opportunity might have theoretically been equal to both parties: but outcomes, well, that's likely to have been quite a different matter.
Walker
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Re: woke

Post by Walker »

Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 6:34 pm
Walker wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 6:19 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:24 pm
So there was probably never a "conspiracy." There was probably no secret meeting in which the heads of big business sat down with the politicians and talked this all out surreptitiously. (I suppose there might have been, but I don't think it was at all necessary.) More likely, the politicians and the businessmen just came to realize, about the same time, that they could help one another "manage" the public.
Yes, I hear Twitter employees are claiming government coercion for their Evil-Doing, but they were ever so eager to comply.
They certainly were. And while either party, or plausibly both, might have had opportunity to petition Twitter to suppress information, I see that Musk has also published the statistics on their donations to political parties, which included only 2.7% to the Republicans, and 97.3% to the Democrats. :shock:

To borrow a trope from the Left, opportunity might have theoretically been equal to both parties: but outcomes, well, that's likely to have been quite a different matter.
The Big Guy gets 10% ... the tithing of the Evil-Doers.

I know the language sounds simplistic, but Reagan's use of Evil Empire is proving metaphorical, that is, larger than at first literally interpreted, with tendrils throughout culture. Evil-doers tell the tale of The Evil Empire, while Bush's refusal to ever veto legislation is evidence of the current Republican progressive-compliance, if not downright Progressive-complicity, a view that it is necessary to go along in order to get along with the status quo that has been crafted to the personal benefit of the politicians, rather than adhere to the constitutionally-intended tempering of justice within the forge of political adversity. After all, Bush is now best pals with the Obamas, which could be either his delusion or reality.
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: woke

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Sculptor wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 3:10 pm
FlashDangerpants wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:29 am ScaryScaryWokies.jpg
Yeah poor rightards, they are so scared that their white privilege is being attacked.
We whities, Christian right are being systematically abused.

Tucker Carlson, Trump - they are all Wokies!!!
:D :D :D :D
How deliciously ironic. The biggest [invective redacted] on this site who epitomises the very essence of the 'IRONIC INSULT' that calling someone 'woke' is...
:lol:

{Edited by iMod]
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: woke

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Bob is a kristian. He loves to tell eveyone what a 'good kristian' he is at every chance he gets, especially on social media. He has photos of his (allegedly) sponsored African village chldren all over his house, placed stragically to be as prominent as possible, and delights in posting little anecdotes on social media about his good deeds, relishing all the 'hearts' and 'likes' he garners and keeping a tally of them in a little notebook. Now everyone who knows Bob knows that he's actually a really nasty piece of work. He treats his Mexican maid like shit and pays her a pittance because he can get away it. She's an 'ilegal alien' and totally dependent on him for her income. This is only one example of his many unpleasant traits.
Those who know him have taken to calling him 'Saint Bob-the-kristian'.
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vegetariantaxidermy
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Re: woke

Post by vegetariantaxidermy »

Of course, wokies are incapable of recognising themselves. They have 'wokie-blindness'. It's rare for someone to openly admit to being a wanker.
By the same token, right-wing 'conserative' kristians like IC are too stupid to even wipe their own arses properly, so it's hardly surprising that an ironic and layered insult is going to fly WAY over their heads.
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: woke

Post by FlashDangerpants »

Walker wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 6:19 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Mon Dec 05, 2022 4:24 pm
So there was probably never a "conspiracy." There was probably no secret meeting in which the heads of big business sat down with the politicians and talked this all out surreptitiously. (I suppose there might have been, but I don't think it was at all necessary.) More likely, the politicians and the businessmen just came to realize, about the same time, that they could help one another "manage" the public.
Yes, I hear Twitter employees are claiming government coercion for their Evil-Doing, but they were ever so eager to comply. The former-CEO who looks like a Gandalf devotee claims pure ignorance of the nefarious doings, and Twitter underlings will proudly fall on their swords of justification for doing what they knew was wrong.

However, Brandon does have a lot of unaccounted-for time. He visits one of his Delaware homes for every extended weekend of secrecy, which is virtually every weekend, and the Secret Service, in keeping with their name, claim there is no record of those who visit him there.
Why are you so obsessed wth seeing Hunter Biden's dick picks? That's what was purged from Twitter, a bunch of revenge porn.
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