Voicelessness and Emotional Survival > Voicelessness and Emotional Survival Message Board

Facebook post by Micaela (my daughter) on the day after the election

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lighter:
I watched NETFLIX documentary last night.....

Inn Saei is title, I think that's how it's spelled.

Timely watch for anyone with Netflix.  It speaks to this topic directly, IMO.

Lighter

mudpuppy:

--- Quote ---It is good to see a lively debate. I don't know how to do it properly but at least i get the ideas out there and they can get honed by wiser people than me. 

--- End quote ---

That's  not  a debate. That's having someone you assume is sharper than you confirm your biases.


--- Quote ---Personally, I don't go for parties and they seem more corrupt all the time....

..... AND I am joining the NDP party to try to get more votes in our election. 

--- End quote ---

One of these things is not like the other.


--- Quote --- ....using insanely triggering arguments to distract, and pit us against each other.... 
--- End quote ---

I'm  going to guess calling people who disagree with you greedy, rapacious, Nazi, fascist, racist, hateful, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic bigots are most definitely  NOT examples of insanely triggering arguments to distract and pit us against each other. They're just obvious facts every right thinking person acknowledges because there is only one right way to think, right?

I  would delicately suggest this kind of rhetoric and demonizing of anyone with the temerity to not toe the statist line is an impediment to political success and most of the reason those toeing it find themselves close to the political wilderness.


--- Quote ---... they are in quick sand because the government has failed them..... So much governmental policy seems to be initiated in a top down way. Just pushing people around and walking into their lives in such a glib and egotistical top dog way.

--- End quote ---

So the solution is more government?
Government is by definition from the top down. The perpetuation and growth of itself is its only core value and it is by its nature unreformable. And the greater its distance from the citizens the greater its arrogance yet the left demands every law and regulation be a national one. But even at the local level government is by definition some of the populace or simply unaccountable bureaucrats imposing by force policies on either everyone or those without a voice.
And contrary to what the left seems to think,  every one of the most destructive  acts perpetrated on the poor and minorities was done so by force of government; whether the statutory legality of slavery, the codification of Jim Crow and its support in the Plessey decision or the soul rotting and family destroying evil disguised as do-gooding called the welfare state.

A wise man once said government is the problem not the solution.

Hopalong:
I'm always saddened when I hear you generalize and seethe with sarcasm here, Mud, when no one here to my memory has ever treated you this way:

...calling people who disagree with you greedy, rapacious, Nazi, fascist, racist, hateful, xenophobic, homophobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic bigots are most definitely NOT examples of insanely triggering arguments to distract and pit us against each other. They're just obvious facts every right thinking person acknowledges because there is only one right way to think, right?

I don't know what it feels like to be "insanely triggered" but it makes me sad to hear you this way.

I disagree with your characterization of welfare. I don't need to call you names to say so, and I'm not thinking up some scathing way to put you in your place or condemn you to any kind of wilderness.

We need to put down the condescending explanations and contempt and listen to each other. Many of your points about government are well taken. Good people can disagree in good faith about how to re-balance this country.

I'm not content with the direction it is going, but am unsure whether this board is the place for politics. If there is more light than heat, I'm game, but much as I have always respected you, I feel intimidated and nearly silenced by your tone.

Sometimes I wonder if your feelings toward liberals have anything to do with your life as a logger. I don't know if that makes any sense but I know the work we do can get us into fixed mindsets as much as our faiths sometimes can. To me, it matters more that we always speak to and treat each other with dignity and respect. We don't have to think alike to love alike.

love,
Hops

mudpuppy:
I  didn't say you called anyone any names and I didn't call anyone any names.
However a good many of those labels I listed have been used in this thread and all of them are used routinely by the left to describe, not far right fringe groups, but elected Republicans and their voters.

Nor did I  condemn anyone to a wilderness.  I tried to helpfully point out the over the top rhetoric that I  listed is contributing to the  left and the Dems suffering historic electoral setbacks at every level of government. IOW they're condemning themselves to the political wilderness.

Disagreeing with my characterization of welfare is fine but pointless. One only has to compare the state of the  black family and inner cities prior to the welfare state and post welfare. You have to try to make a system with worse results than Jim Crow but the architects of our present system  were up to the task.

I  note your call for reasoned debate and to end the name calling, the first of which I  have engaged in and the second of which I have not, did not occur for instance after Bones's original comment which really was seething and filled with quite strident name calling. And you congratulated Sea after she reckoned Trump was elected by ignoramuses and Doc's daughter who equated people like me  electing Trump to sexual abusers.

I'm thinking maybe you are seeing things a bit less clearly than you think you are and maybe I'm seeing them a bit more clearly than you give me credit for.
If people don't like sarcasm then they should consider, if they're going to talk about politics maybe they should rationally discuss the issues rather than making either careless or malicious characterizations of the people they disagree with.
If you start off punching somebody in the mouth you shouldn't be surprised if they punch back. And if you engage in lazy thinking, who is at fault the lazy thinker or the person who points it out?

As to logging forming my political philosophy didn't you just inveigh against generalizations?
My political philosophy stems from my observations of the real world, my valuing of liberty over safety, free will over coercion and my comparison of the philosophical  root of  the  Founders and our Constitution and the ideological  roots of those who seek to fundamentally transform it, to quote the  recently departed president.

I  do agree this is not the forum for politics which is why I  don't start political conversations here. However when others do, particularly when views I  hold or people I voted for are being characterized as hateful fascists,  it  would be a little ironic if I  didn't  speak up on the Voicelessness  board, wouldn't it?

mud

Hopalong:
Referring to "ignorance" as a cause isn't the same as name-calling a person an "ignoramus." Sea did the former, and I agree. I also thought she expressed a lot of empathy for voters, how'd you miss it?

I think savoring anger isn't a good thing.

I am ignorant about a whole lot of things. And lucky, because I was born into the opportunity for an high-quality education. That should not be but IS an elite privilege--a class accident. I can never take it for granted. It was not earned...every child deserves great teachers in safe, well-funded schools. Because like health care, equal education should be a human right, not a privilege (yet evolved according to where power lived, thus becoming privilege). That education, in an environment where I could study and learn (in a well-nourished body that had plenty of wholesome food and easy access to health care) can lead to a peaceful home full of books, music and hopefully kindness. It's hard to create strong families and cultural awareness if one's never been exposed to them. But there are different kinds of knowledge. The knowledge I lack--many pragmatic strengths, huge areas of thought I wasn't drawn to--I'll never gain completely. I had the enormous gift of liberal arts. Just learning to think.

I don't know if I'm a lazy thinker. Probably I am. Or maybe a simple thinker is a fairer term. If fact + compassion guide a policy, I'm likely to favor it. If fact - compassion seem at play, I likely won't. I'm also drawn to common sense and when I connect the dots about what causes or has laid the groundwork for suffering, my awareness rises. Anyway, one thing I learned is that what we all have in common is much larger than what divides us. I'd rather focus on what we have in common.

Where I live, I experience people newly since the election. I wear a pretty BLM pin on my coat that I got at church; it's a simple thing. I've had small encounters in town that I would not have had otherwise, that have touched me. One young man who works in parking at the Medical Center asked me about it and when I promptly gave it to him he reacted with such emotion. A lady in the grocery beside me suddenly opened up and shared with me her sweet-potato recipe. A checker's face lit up when she saw it. And so on. Every day. Simple as this is, their reactions underscore for me how painful it has been for so many people to be guarded, careful, wary every day...because the assumption was their lives did not matter. Not as much. (Even as a child I saw evidence every day that their fear was reality based.)

I just realize, wearing my pin, that it is a tiny way for me to say, I see you. I have seen your unequal opportunities and struggles and suffering and mistreatment here, in my lovely town, my whole life. I understand your pain not firsthand, but because I feel it. And in this time, I'm going to say so.

I am Hops, hear me squeak roar.

Rambling on, I've never understood the absurdity of taking offense at the statement that Black Lives Matter (as though it states, Only Black Lives Matter, which it does not)...and the lack of empathy for WHY black parents live in terror for their children, a very specific terror most white parents can skip over...that absurd reaction saddens me. BLM is a positive message, and was a flash of brilliance, imo. Likewise, reading books about white privilege is a revelation I'm grateful for. It's so logical and even denial makes sense, too, when you understand how fearful everyone is of the Other.

Anyway, I realize in writing this ramble that I am just telling stories about people, and it all intersects. What you experience as "reasoned debate" to me just feels hostile and makes me sad. That's an emotional construct--I'm a poet partly because of it...and I can't help it, I'm wired that way. I've always been sensitive this way, no matter which political side I have been on. I've never, ever enjoyed passionate arguments that tear others down. Whether I think an argument is "correct" or not. I like light but recoil from fire. (There was hellfire-and-brimstone in my childhood, too.)

I know if we ever met in person I'd hug you and be happy to see you, Mud. Maybe we could volunteer together for some effort that makes sense to both of us.

I hope it happens. Countries do split, and wars happen, dictators rise and civilizations collapse. That's history. If love's going to win it needs to win everywhere.

Hops

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