I think this is less about left and right, and more about extreme elements on both sides arguing for actions supported by rhetoric use of factual statements that are easily questioned and where studies are available that would put their view into doubt.
I don't disagree with what you're saying, there are nutjobs on both sides of the aisle. Lots of them. It just seems to me that in general, the left is more about doing things that we know are beneficial whereas the right is more about various pointless irrational bullshit like anti abortion, anti immigration etc. It seems to me like they are actively trying to harm certain groups of people.
I also think the left will change their opinion based on science much more readily.
I think the left tends to deal in half truths or highly questionable interpretations of facts passed off as facts, while the right deals more in outright lies.
But the left has the ability to get you fired if you question their assertions too much. So their falsehoods are actually more effective
So, data-driven, factual research is the domain of the extreme far right wing these days? I mean, I knew the left was illogical, irrational, and irresponsible, but didn't realize leftists were admitting it.
But that’s because the right has become synonymous with, or at least tacitly supports, insane racists, fascists, bigots and more unpleasant adjectives. You can be pedantic about our wording and try and slide the issue but the data is there.
There are plenty of issues where you can have multiple sides or perspectives and want to allow debate. But that is not what is happening.
The "left" seem to be offended by facts too, which as a rational person, seems very strange to me. Like the guy who got fired from google by stating facts, etc.
Make no mistake, both extreme left and right are totalitarian dictatorships. With the extreme left even more dangerous, as history clearly shows.
You highlight the difference between zealous advocacy and debate. The advocate cannot admit the flaws of their own position, or the merits of the other position. You characterize the left in a moderate way, and the right in an extremist way, even though extremism exists on both sides.
I miss the cultural norm that privileged debate over zealous advocacy, leaving the latter to lawyers and politicians.
It depends on the issue (edit: and how it fits with their world view). The left can also be irrational when it comes to science on some issues as well:
>The bottom line is that the CDC data makes it very difficult to argue that conservatives and liberals share equal blame in the anti-vaccine war. Anti-vaxxers are clearly more associated with the political Left.
I would tend to agree the left's leadership, however, tends to be less anti-science.
Everyone seems to be attacking the arguments from the same angle and I feel it is wrong:
There are a few arguments going on:
- Is the left and the right really the same 2 extremes?
- Should we enable radicals on the platforms because free speech?
- Should we treat everyone with respect?
The problem is that what we really have is a few crowds:
(1) "They took our guns" people. Single issue, at the expense of all others. This unfortunately includes "the climate crisis is a hoax" and "COVID is a hoax" and "Vaccines are evil" crowd.
(2) Ensure human rights to all people of the country crowd. This is more of a social argument that conflicts highly with people who scapegoat. This is effectively the anti-scapegoat crowd, usually considered the "left".
(3) Social equality crowd (usually is a subset of (2)). This is all about people who are looking at patterns in society that elevate one group at the expense of another. This isn't rich vs poor, but rather for example looking at how school funding is set up to make sure certain community have terrible school and thus a perpetuating cycle of crime and poverty.
The problem is that the (1) crowd is being used to elect politicians who basically give no shit about society, and only focus on making the rich richer at the expense of everything else. I mean fucking pandemic and corporate bailouts, while most businesses collapse. These politicians vote directly against the (1) crowd, and everyone else, but push division.
We're no longer actually debating economic policies. We're debating racism and voting based on that. I am not happy with the democratic party in the US. They are pretty terrible. But the other side is literal Nazis.
The problem with "embracing" and fixing the (1) crowd is that a large number of people opposing (1) are directly harmed by (1). Very hard to forgive when the causes of the deaths of your family are asking for hugs caz "sorry I realized I am wrong". Many are not willing to do that. How do you ask someone to give up their trauma and find it in their hearts to forgive the other side? It can happen, but it is not "simple".
That's a very ivory towerish take. Most people know full well what the difference is between opinion and fact. They just choose to ignore it as it suits their purposes better. The big difference in terms of left and right politically in the US is that the right will buy into abhorrent behavior if it ultimately gets them what they want, while the left would still rather lose even if it costs real lives to pass their purity test.
Yes but here’s your right wing authoritarian lean; seeing this research as some form of truth and power to wield.
There’s absolutely no reason to see these authors as correct. In fact it appears to have triggered confirmation bias; the right in the US caged kids, confiscated land to build a useless wall, suspended Habeas Corpus over 9/11, both sides and the patriot act; no right wing voters stood up to stop them, and is often cheering on their book burning and gun waving threats. But this confirms to you the left are the vile aggressors of the last 30 years? When the politicians and their party cheer or idly ignore the platforms issues, calling everyone else fascist you jump the shark completely.
Appeals to far away high minded authority are pretty traditional human authoritarian. Researchers can show up and grow some potatoes, kill their next steak; contribute to the hands on mess. Their theories aren’t solving day to day issues for them, poorer workers are.
Otherwise this is merely leveraging the currently acceptable form of feudalism to command more attention than “essential workers”.
When the right is not batshit insane, violating others rights in a gaudy display of how free they are to do so, we can talk about others.
Frankly; both sides are apathetic cowards who kowtow to political tradition and have no clue how to work together freely; they bleat about one side or the other while circling around the same politically captured economic scheme with each other. The problem
is you all repeating there are two sides due to repetitive exposure, when it’s just other people.
It's often clear that one ideological disposition relies on laughably untrue rhetoric more than the other, but on their best days, the left and right both agree on facts, they just disagree on their interpretation of them and what that means we should do.
Debate doesn't work because the idea of the right is to restrict resources to the "deserving" (individualism, tax breaks, etc) and kick around everyone not in the in group. The left says that we can make a more equal society and so we should try to solve our problems by redistributing resources.
This is not a gap you can bridge with logic, it's a fundamentally different moral interpretation of reality. This is sharing vs defending.
EDIT: However, Noam Chomsky gave a very interesting talk about how moral senses develop and change. There is some flexibility in our moral systems. For instance, until like, a year or two ago, casual homophobia was acceptable in public, now it isn't amongst a growing swath of the population. It's kind of fun to look at old Tweets by media personalities and see how much they've changed their positions (something very desirable) either because their beliefs changed or because their audience did.
Or consider that perhaps the right in particular tends to harbor and support people who lean more towards disinformation, hate speech, and incitement to violence.
This is really not accurate. There are many topics where appealing to evidence or statistics is Not Allowed in leftist discourse. There are certain realities that are defined as not possible, politically, and permitted discourse flows from that.
The far right is even worse about this, appealing to braindead conspiracy theories, bald religion, fascism.
But the left is _really bad_ as well. Not “conspiracy theory gun nut” bad, but nowhere near “well balanced intellectual curiosity.”
It's also disingenuous to suggest the extreme left isn't dominating the messaging from the left.
The extremes tend to dominate the messaging on both sides. And frankly, the internet being dominated by younger people, there is a good case to be made that the extreme left's voices are louder.
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