Comment by clairity
3 years ago
no, you don't have to think in sides. you can have a position and discuss your position with others. you don't have to think of them as your enemy, but rather your conversation partner, someone who can help you expand your perspective and perhaps even change your mind.
At the end of the day, all those discussions still result in actual decisions. In some cases, those decisions affect people in a very negative way. Given that, why shouldn't one see someone advocating for decisions that will negatively affect them as an enemy?
because it doesn't help in the long run, even if it soothes the feathers in the short.
Someone being an enemy or not is a matter of degree of conflicting interests. Acknowledging that someone really is the enemy when they're actively trying to hurt you is just common sense. Whether you choose to fight them or not is a different question.
But practically, this is simply not true and the more important debate the less it is true.
Simple historical example: slaveholder says Frederic Dougles should be slave. Douglas does not want to be whipped nor slave again. They are enemies, full stop. Not partners. Same examples exist with any other country history.
Simple current example: Take the model abortion legislative currently proposed. It literally says that raped 10 years old must give birth regardless of threat to her health.
These people are not partners. They are in fact threats and if they win, actual raped kids will he harmed.
frederick douglass espoused exactly the type of cross-racial and cross-ideological dialogue i'm bringing up here. if he can do it, being the subject of real subjugation and hatred, we can do it too sitting alone together in front of our little glass screens.
please don't simply "think of the children". think both openly and critically.
Frederick Douglass very clearly seen slaveholders as enemies and talk about slavery as such. He was not seeking compromise at all, he was seeking abolition full stop. When young, he literally physically fought with his owner. He housed John Brown prior his final raid. He refused participation in Harpers ferry raid, because he seen it as suicidal. Not because he would had issue with taking on arms. He was not as violent or impulsive as John Brown.
Frederick Douglass represented the radical abolitionists of the time, not the mild "lets go listen to slaveholders" kind. Selected quotes from "cross-ideological dialogue" of Frederic Dougles:
> I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of the land. [...] I am filled with unutterable loathing when I contemplate the religious pomp and show [...] We have men-stealers for ministers, women-whippers for missionaries, and cradle-plunderers for church members
> If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning.
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