Comment by ToucanLoucan
8 days ago
> The insidious nature of this question comes from the false representation as earnest, intellectual discourse. Many who ask it may truly believe they’re engaging earnestly, but their responses quickly reveal an angle more akin to religious police. ... Most vulnerable to this behavior are the intellectually honest + socially clueless, who engage in good faith, unaware of the pending social ambush.
My favorite thing about this enlightened centrist/individual thinker line to kick off with is it's almost universally used by people who have one or more abhorrent viewpoints in their back pocket, and the "social ambush" described here would be much better phrased as, well, disclosing what that is and just saving us all some time. I personally am deeply curious what beliefs Ashwin has been ambushed about.
If you have thoughts on how tax brackets should be constructed, or whether we should move to flat taxation, whether highway budgets should include beatification or whether that should be up to municipalities, what zoning restrictions are used for a given area, all that type of what should be politics, neither myself nor anyone I know would "ambush" you for those beliefs. Discussing and rounding out those kinds of issues is the foundation of how a Democracy works. We have to discuss them, and you should have opinions on at least a few of them, and you should share them! That's how it works. And for what it's worth, I can't fathom a situation I would ambush anyone over those sorts of issues. I might disagree, and I might ask for elaboration or perhaps suggest alternatives to what you want to do, but I wouldn't shame you for them.
If on the other hand you think horrible things that for some insane reason have gotten traction lately, like that putting tariffs on foreign goods is somehow going to bring back American manufacturing (it isn't), that some of your fellow citizens who might be gay, trans, both, or something else shouldn't enjoy a full set of rights under the law for whatever cockamamie reason you'd like to cite (they should), that children should be re-introduced to the labor market to bolster the amount of cheap labor available (they shouldn't), that the government should be doing genital inspections on children who want to play sports to make sure no one's "cheating" (stupid, horrifying, illegal in several ways) and I could go on, then yeah, you probably will find yourself socially ambushed. And you should be. That's how shaming works. That's what we have done to one another for thousands of years when we behave anti-socially: if you act anti-social, you are not going to have an easy time being social. That's, again, just how that works.
I of course don't wish that fate on anyone, I have been spurned from communities and it sucks! But I did survive that process and a number of those experiences, awful as they were at the time, shaped me into a better person overall with a more internally consistent and defensible belief system than the one I was indoctrinated into as a child.
And yeah, a lot of this is also just "political tribalism sucks!" Cosigned, 100%.
The assumption that social ambushes only occur for horrific beliefs is an amazingly naive take on humanity. By this logic it's implied that the women burned in the Salem witch trials must've done something to deserve it.
I've been ambushed for explaining: - to right-leaning folk that most migrants are seeking a better life - to left-leaning folk that securing a border is not a crazy idea - to right-leaning folk that subsidies to help restore agency to people who've had a rougher start and benefit everyone - to left-leaning folk that merely allocating money to an government agency does not necessarily mean anything beneficial happens
Not even taking a stand, just pointing out opposing points -- hardly an anti-social, horrible act
> The assumption that social ambushes only occur for horrific beliefs is an amazingly naive take on humanity. By this logic it's implied that the women burned in the Salem witch trials must've done something to deserve it.
That is an incredible leap in logic with far too many layers to properly litigate.
> I've been ambushed for explaining: - to right-leaning folk that most migrants are seeking a better life - to left-leaning folk that securing a border is not a crazy idea - to right-leaning folk that subsidies to help restore agency to people who've had a rougher start and benefit everyone - to left-leaning folk that merely allocating money to an government agency does not necessarily mean anything beneficial happens
I think you're wholely unaware of the concept of dog-whistles and their role in our modern politics.... I mean not even modern, those go back centuries.
In any case:
- You were probably ambushed for suggesting migrants are seeking a better life because many right leaning people are propagandized so heavily into thinking every migrant is a rapist felon drug selling child molester.
- You were probably ambushed for endorsing border security for the same reason, because it's become a dog-whistle for unhinged levels of racism and nationalism projected by the right. And while I don't endorse that level of over-correction on the part of whoever ambushed you, I also don't not-understand it. The dehumanizing rhetoric around immigrants is fucking disgusting and shameful, literally the stuff of Nazi's, and especially given the ongoing abuses by border patrol, the active deportations of people who've committed no crime due to administrative incompetence on their and other agency's parts, again, I'm not surprised people might be telling you to can it about needing more of that.
- Again, this is a ridiculous amount of propaganda going back to the 80's, where the Reagan campaigns created outright fiction about "welfare queens" (and again, more racism there as they were always implied to be black) that's led to decades of "welfare reform" which is better stated as "fucking over the poor for profit."
- And you likely got ambused about the last thing because.... it's wrong, and again, not only is it wrong, it's a hot button issue that's been, again, ruined by the Reagan administration who, along with their compatriots in the Thatcher administration and similar austerity administrations and politics worldwide, have systematically defunded uncountable numbers of public services, which leads to a degradation in those services, which leads to more justifications for more cuts, which leads to a death spiral which is why virtually no government agencies anywhere are effective anymore.
> Not even taking a stand, just pointing out opposing points -- hardly an anti-social, horrible act
And like, I get that you personally aren't advocating for these things, but what you are doing, unintentionally, is invoking bad faith rhetoric that is, at the risk of sounding dramatic, behind the political movement that is more or less responsible for the fact that nothing works anymore and every government on Earth is struggling. And for you, that's probably a minor, or perhaps major annoyance. For other people, it's life threatening. For certain groups of people, they may not only find the actions of border control and immigration courts abhorrent, they might well be the targets of those actions relatively soon.
To put it another way, you may not have strong feelings about zoning regulations or deciding where a sewage line goes in your town. However, if you say that to the person who's back yard is full of overflow sewage and it's causing their family to become ill and their home to be borderline unlivable, they're probably going to be quite pissed off with you because just because something isn't a critically important issue to you doesn't mean it isn't to someone else.
Context is important. I would encourage you the next time you feel so ambushed, instead of getting defensive and/or running away, ask questions. Why is this issue so important to this person? Why are they so upset with what you're saying? Is there another angle to this that you're unaware of?
Ironically this seems another perfect example of the tribalism the article is about, saying:
- the right-leaning folks were just propagandized - the left-leaning folks were justified
- that questioning this at all is indirectly responsible for breaking every government on earth
- assumed politics must not affect me, or that I must get defensive, run away, or not ask questions
The opposition always being assumed ignorant and the tribe always being justified is a perfect example of tribalism
> I think you're wholely unaware of the concept of dog-whistles and their role in our modern politics...
I'd think the opposite actually. If you bring up border security, then the conversation can go in one of two ways: a discussion of the actual policies of border security, or a conversation that hears the dog whistle and proceeds under the context that you fall into the tribe that uses that dog whistle. The latter is an ambush. The policies themselves still exist even outside of their historical context as dog whistles. The question is if can you have a conversation with someone that talks about the policies themselves or not
You're doing yourself a disservice by creating a false dichotomy of "things that are okay to discuss" (tax brackets, zoning) and "things that aren't" (tariffs, manditory genital inspections), when it's very unlikely that anyone will have the exact same bifurcation point as you.
And, I have to say, I thought it was pretty amusing that you appear to treat someone discussing tariffs with the same severity as someone discussing mandatory genital inspections.
I am incredibly jealous of how eloquently you've put it...