TheRaven
Member
Yep, slavery was definitely a choice made by the slaves. I’m sure laws, lynchings, beatings and whippings had nothing to do with it.
In the same interview, West also briefly touched upon slavery. “When I saw Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill, that’s when I wanted to use bitcoin,” he said. “It’s like all the slave movies. Why you gotta keep reminding us about slavery? Why don’t you put Michael Jordan on the $20 bill?”
Also, wth is bitcoin?
Watch Ken Wilber speak about this at around 2h 31m 10s here:
The reason Trump was elected, even though people in general thought he wasn't qualified to be president, was because people wanted change; wanted to escape from the deadening hand of political correctness. The regressive left still hasn't accepted this and is doubling down on its message.
resorting to name-calling and shouting
-- even violence.
As for me, I'm neither left nor right. The nearest term I'd sort of accept is libertarian, which the progressive left used to be. Libertarians can be found both on the left (now quite rarely) and the right.
Hey, dpdownsouth, I don't deny that the right has its own defects. I'm not defending the right so much as focussing on the shortcomings of a regressive left that thinks of itself as whiter than white. It's very far from that, and at the moment, I see PC as the most insidious threat to the West, because it undermines free speech. Without free speech, we're all totally screwed, left or right.
So I take it you’re just going to keep ignoring my posts?
That’s generally what happens when you are added to ‘ignore’. I used to get mad at Michael when he ranted, but now? Not so much. It’s just his way, we all have weaknesses, I just see this as one of his. I wouldn’t take offence, but then, I’m not you. Come to think of it, I might, for a bit. ;)
I didn’t even know I was on ignore! What a shame. I’m not offended or anything, just confused? He complained about political correctness stopping debates/discussions, then he puts me on ignore so we can’t debate/discuss. Kind of ironic. It isn’t PC that is ruining this country, it’s an unwillingness to listen to the other side.
PC is a way of not listening to the other side!It isn’t PC that is ruining this country, it’s an unwillingness to listen to the other side.
OK I didn't have a vote because I am not an American, but honestly Hillary Clinton scared me - she wanted to intensify the war in Syria (maybe involving a war with Russia) - a war she had kicked off while she was Secretary of State. She had also cooperated with David Cameron to wreck Libya. If she hadn't cheated her way to win the nomination (see Donna Brazile), the Democratic party might have had a better candidate, so maybe I would have rooted for him/her. However, honestly, I don't think I can fault President Trump's efforts so far.Trump won because he used scare tactics and appealed to the ignorant.
OK I didn't have a vote because I am not an American, but honestly Hillary Clinton scared me - she wanted to intensify the war in Syria (maybe involving a war with Russia) - a war she had kicked off while she was Secretary of State. She had also cooperated with David Cameron to wreck Libya. If she hadn't cheated her way to win the nomination (see Donna Brazile), the Democratic party might have had a better candidate, so maybe I would have rooted for him/her. However, honestly, I don't think I can fault President Trump's efforts so far.
BTW as a moderator, I ignore nobody!
David
I don't want to discuss this particular issue with you because you said a few posts back you have a mental illness, okay? I didn't know that, and don't want to upset you any further. I've put you on ignore for a while to avoid any possibility of doing that.
OK I didn't have a vote because I am not an American, but honestly Hillary Clinton scared me - she wanted to intensify the war in Syria (maybe involving a war with Russia) - a war she had kicked off while she was Secretary of State. She had also cooperated with David Cameron to wreck Libya. If she hadn't cheated her way to win the nomination (see Donna Brazile), the Democratic party might have had a better candidate, so maybe I would have rooted for him/her. However, honestly, I don't think I can fault President Trump's efforts so far.
BTW as a moderator, I ignore nobody!
David
I also chose this option.I've put you on ignore for a while to avoid any possibility of doing that.
Obviously I may ultimately be proved wrong, but my feeling is that he actually wants to create a more contented America that is not interfering al over the world, and that he fundamentally dislikes war.David, my hand was heading towards the like button...then I read your first paragraph’s final sentence and I just had to carry out a missed approach. ;)
Not wanting to steal your thunder, TheRaven, but I've done a little digging into the YouTube video interviews posted by Michael and I figured I'd post a summary of what I've found.
Candace Owens seems to be a genuinely good, idealistic, well-intentioned person who wanted to fix online harassment. She came up with an idea that unfortunately was misconceived and counter-productive[*]: the "Social Autopsy" website, for which she sought funding via Kickstarter. She didn't realise that she was stumbling into the middle of a culture war on the internet. Both sides of the culture war saw that her idea was flawed, but two critics in particular seemed to catch her attention:
Zoe Quinn criticised Social Autopsy both privately by phone and publicly on social media, and Randi Harper critiqued it harshly in an angry public rant. Naturally, Candace did not enjoy that rant in particular. Her negative experiences with these two led her to form the theory that they orchestrated the campaign of harassment that she, her company, and her Kickstarter campaign subsequently experienced.
Her strongest evidence for this theory seems to be that Zoe had warned her over the phone about the likelihood of impending harassment, and that this warning soon proved to be accurate. Interpreting this warning as a threat, Candace seems to have come to the strange conclusion that she has "an open and shut case" against Zoe and Randi. She doesn't seem to take seriously the likelier possibility that Zoe's warning came out of experience.
In fact, Candace claims that Zoe faked, for notoriety and profit, the earlier harassment that she (Zoe) experienced. Presumably, Candace is (or was at the time) ignorant that chat logs had been publicly released in which 4channers gleefully, sadistically, and perversely described their orchestration of the campaign of harassment against Zoe.
Another problem for this theory is that Candace claims that her critics were motivated by fear that their (she conjectured) anonymous, double-agent harassment accounts would be unmasked by the Social Autopsy website, whilst also having claimed that Social Autopsy would operate only with publicly available data, such that anonymous accounts would remain anonymous. If Social Autopsy would respect anonymity, then it is hard to see how it could pose a threat to the (conjectured) anonymous, double-agent harassment accounts of her critics.
It seems, though, that at other times, Candace claimed or implied that Social Autopsy would dox anonymous users. Others, in critiquing it, have noticed these sorts of inconsistencies in the Social Autopsy proposal.
Kickstarter, sensibly, then, took the funding page for Social Autopsy down, apparently under pressure from its critics (according to Randi's angry rant linked to above). Candace seems, also sensibly, to have abandoned the project.
This is not to say that her two critics are unblemished. In the online culture wars, plenty of dirt has been dug up on them, and Candace too seems to honestly have had bad experiences with them. I don't know them personally, so can't comment on how representative this dirt and Candace's experiences of them are, but in any case, imperfect as Zoe might be, the idea that her harassment was (as Candace believes/believed) faked is demonstrably false, and the idea that it was (as the actual harassers believed) deserved is reprehensible.
Could Zoe and/or Randi have at the least tipped off the communities which ended up harassing Candace and Social Autopsy? I suppose it's possible, but, not knowing Zoe and Randi personally, nor knowing well the community of which they're a part, it's hard for me to judge - based on what I do know, though, it seems unlikely.
This is not to say either that the supporters of Candace's critics behaved well at all times. Candace documents that one media piece critical of Social Autopsy and her conspiracy theory was written by a journalist who privately misrepresented his intentions to her, failed to reveal that he was friends with both Zoe and Randi, and used his published piece to mock her on social media. Despite these problems, in my opinion the piece is cogent and well worth reading - it might even have been as informative to have simply linked to it as to have written out this post!
In any case, it seems that on the basis of her conspiracy theory and the unkind treatment she received, Candace has extrapolated that the left as a whole is corrupt, and picked her side in the culture wars, although as she admits she had conservative tendencies in the first place. And thus we get the sort of (in my opinion, unbalanced) views that she expressed in the entirely uncritical interviews of her by Stefan Molyneux and Dave Rubin. It's important to me though to emphasise that I think that Candace is a good person who means well. I like her and find her charming and engaging.
Because TheRaven has indicated that she's working on a blow-by-blow response to Candace's interview by Stefan, I won't attempt that myself, but before I end, here is a semi-related thought:
It's interesting that certain political and culture-war pundits are more concerned about the increase in power of, and (potential for) abuse of that power by, minorities and outsiders than about that of the corrupt hegemony.
The USA, a nuclear-armed state, maintains hundreds of military bases in dozens of countries across the world. It undeniably uses both overt warfare and covert agency to interfere in the politics of other countries, sometimes overthrowing democratically-elected governments. It does all of this in its own self-interest and that of its corporate accomplices, and not in the interests of the citizens of the countries in which it meddles - often directly opposed to their interests. Certain political pundits though are more concerned about the potential for abuse were the nuclear aspirations of smaller countries like Iran to be realised than about this existing and ongoing abuse by the nation that is the world's biggest bully.
In the same way, certain culture-war pundits are more concerned about the increase in power of, and (potential for) abuse of that power by, female and transgender social activists, who are vastly underrepresented in the cultural areas at issue (in particular, game development), than about that of the existing hegemony (in particular, gaming corporations).
Priorities?
[*] Social Autopsy was to be a website to which people could submit screenshots of harassment to which they'd been subjected by other people, under those other people's real names, so as to hold those other people accountable for their harassment. The fundamental problem with this idea is the lack of realistic and reliable means of verifying some given online account's real-world identity. This leaves the site wide open to abuse: anybody could create on some given public online platform an account under somebody else's real name, manufacture harassing posts apparently by that other person, and then submit them to Social Autopsy. Given what we know about online trolling, often motivated by no other reason than "for the lulz", this possibility would be bound to be realised. The site would then become a tool to facilitate the harassment it was intended to prevent. There are other problems with the idea, but given that I can't see a way around this one, and the length of this post, I won't go into them.
Obviously I may ultimately be proved wrong, but my feeling is that he actually wants to create a more contented America that is not interfering al over the world, and that he fundamentally dislikes war.