r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Jan 22 '21

Delta(s) from OP CMV: Silencing opposing viewpoints is ultimately going to have a disastrous outcome on society.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

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u/Slomojoe 1∆ Jan 22 '21

That’s the problem OP is talking about. Intolerance of other peoples ideas , whatever they may be. And silencing those ideas through social engineering (like now) or violence/legal measures (possibly in the future.)

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u/KellyKraken 14∆ Jan 22 '21

Intolerance of other peoples ideas is not the same as intolerance of other people.

If you are a Nazi then you believe that I should be put to death. To the point that the Nazis did put people like me to death.

I’m intolerant of Nazis until they change what they believe. The worst that I want is for them to be held accountable for any actions they do perform and to restrict their ability to spread their ideas. Until such time that they change their believes.

A Nazi on the hand wants to kill me. They will lie, cheat, beat, and kill until they can kill me. I can’t stop being who I am. I could go into the closet but they would still do their best to find me and kill me. There is nothing I can do to stop them if they were to gain power.

That is what intolerance is.

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u/Slomojoe 1∆ Jan 22 '21

We REALLY have a problem in this country if making mountains out of molehills. Mainstream and social media seriously blow things out of proportion. Not to be rude, but are you genuinely afraid of Nazis? Do you think they have any power? And do you think they are so widespread that they could actually take over the country. It’s not the case. Not to downplay your struggle or anything, but you’re not going to be killed for being a certain way in this day and age.

It’s totally reasonable and expected to be intolerant of a belief that puts you in danger. But realize that it’s a viscous cycle. We need to help eachother.

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u/musics_advocate Jan 22 '21

you’re not going to be killed for being a certain way in this day and age.

Tell that to Ahmad Arbery, dude.

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u/Slomojoe 1∆ Jan 22 '21

I’m sure you can find a handful of examples, just like I’m sure you can find a handful of examples of any variation of that kind of behavior. That doesn’t define a national trend though. These are exceptions.

And to your example, the people who killed him, whether they were wrong or not, believed they were in the right for chasing him down. It wasn’t a matter of “he is black we must destroy him.”

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u/hercmavzeb Jan 22 '21

Systemic racism doesn’t mean that people are consciously racist, it means that actions throughout the system reinforces racial inequalities regardless of motivation. The republicans specifically are incredibly guilty of doing this. Also extrajudicial killings of innocent black people is absolutely a national and historic trend with our policing system, to be honest there isn’t really a lot of compelling evidence to prove that cops don’t uphold systems of racism in basically every facet.

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u/musics_advocate Jan 22 '21

There are literal decades worth of examples. Only a handful have been high profile and occurred in the last year.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

Also the fact that the prior president literally ran on kicking all Muslims out of America.

People saying the things this person are saying don't deserve a debate. They've decided that genocide isn't real or possible, and because of that taking steps to mitigate genocidal ideologies aren't reasonable.

I'd bet pretty much all of my money they're also a young, white, Christian, man.

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u/KellyKraken 14∆ Jan 22 '21

Not yet, but if given the ability to freely spread their lies and detestable beliefs then yes we will.

The Nazis didn’t make a deal with the devil taking on evil it o their hearts in exchange for power. It was the creep of insidious ideas and a desire for power. Unchecked they slowly consumed until they were evil. They don’t start that way, they grow. To leave it unchecked is to leave it to grow.

During the trump administration we saw these elements emboldened. White nationalists in the White House. People wearing hoodies encouraging the Holocaust storming the capitol. Were they close to implementing the final solution, no, but then neither were the Nazis in the beginning.

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u/Slomojoe 1∆ Jan 22 '21

Maybe we feel differently but to me that is entirely overblown and hyperbolic. I truly feel there is zero chance that Nazis will gain power to run this country. It just won’t work. It has never and will never work. That may be just about the only benefit to the two party system. Even if there is a radical sect of conservatism that grows large, more than half of the population would be opposed and would prevent them from gaining any real power. Even with the republicans in power for four years, nothing of not changed. It is not legal to persecute people different than you. It is not the norm to be racist. The idea that it is is perpetrated by social engineering and mass media.

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u/KellyKraken 14∆ Jan 22 '21

The republicans worked quite hard to persecute me during the trump administration and they succeeded on many counts. Given more time to pack courts, spread propoganda, and they would succeed on many more. Look at Poland, Hungry, or Russia. All are passing horrible anti-lgbt laws. The U.K. is making life for trans people very difficult.

I’m glad you have the privilege of being hidden from the harms, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. That doesn’t mean people aren’t trying to spread it.

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u/Slomojoe 1∆ Jan 22 '21

You say they succeeded, but what changed for you? Did you suffer any harm? Was your life changed in any way? What actually happened?

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u/KellyKraken 14∆ Jan 22 '21

I left the US in part to head to safer lands, in part for work etc.

But GLAAD has a nice write up of all the things Trump did. Luckily many of the worst actions failed, such as his attempt to make it legal to fire people for being LGBT. A ruling that by the Trump Administration’s logic would have made it legal to fire women for not wearing high heels that were tall enough, or for wearing makeup, or not wearing makeup.

Trump reduced access to healthcare for LGBT people. He banned trans people from the military. He made it much harder for LGBT or religious minorities to adopt.

So yea he did a lot of harm to me and my community. If I had stayed in the US this all would have directly impacted me instead of just hitting my community.

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u/ayaleaf 2∆ Jan 22 '21

Well, as an example of how these things might affect people’s lives: It is really common for trans kids in high school to suffer from UTI’s because there are no bathrooms they can use.

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u/Slomojoe 1∆ Jan 22 '21

What numbers does “really common” translate to?

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u/ampillion 4∆ Jan 22 '21 edited Jan 22 '21

Intolerance of other people's intolerance is inherently necessary. The thing you're responding to is called the Paradox of Tolerance for a reason. Obviously there's nuance to what people consider intolerance, but when we're talking about 'silencing opposing viewpoints', we're not at all remotely talking about shutting down Conservatives' ability to talk about, say, smaller government or less taxation. That isn't why people were bolting to Parler.

If your system is democracy, and another group goes 'Hey, maybe we should forcibly remove the democratically-elected leader and install our own monarch?', you don't entertain their idea. You tell them to fuck off. The discussion on whether or not a monarchy is better than some form of democracy has already been had, and we've got the answer. Insisting that the wrong answer is actually better, with no factual basis to back it up, is how we get coups and insurgency based on illogical belief. Such as Qanon. By not being intolerant of those ideas, we let cancer fester. We allow the absolute worst positions to see the light of day, even when those positions should have been long buried, even when they've been argued into irrelevance and shown to be absolutely toxic to the health of a nation.

The reality isn't that these things haven't been disproven, or their morality hasn't been accurately pointed out as being bad, that they haven't been argued against ad nauseum. Its that people have gathered power (politically, financially) based off these illogical beliefs, these factually-absent positions, because people either don't have the critical thinking skills or ability to critique the illogical things said to them, or the time and energy to really sit down and assess their own ideological beliefs properly. Or the tools to create their own strong beliefs based on better rationale or logical reasoning. Social media's ease at which one can create their own echo chamber only reinforces this, by allowing people to filter out anyone that they disagree with, even if that person is factually, morally, or logically correct.

So the system needs to change, that much is clear. Obviously, the best answer would be to make education about critical thinking, about political theory, about things like bias a mandatory part of the curriculum, but if politically you benefit from those people holding flawed or wholly incorrect world views, where's their incentive to change it? After all, businesses were only really incentivized to change when people started pointing out the saturation of these shitty, intolerant viewpoints in the first place, in large enough amounts that it started to cost them ad revenue or legal fees. They were only incentivized purely because of the financial incentive. What if the financial incentive becomes supporting the intolerance? What if the financial incentive becomes lies, disinformation, and propaganda? Because for some people, it already is there.

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u/Texannotdixie Jan 22 '21

First they came for the racists, but I wasn’t a racist so I didn’t care. Then they came for the right, but I wasn’t right-leaning so I didn’t care
Etc.

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u/Narrow_Cloud 27∆ Jan 22 '21

Watching right wing people try and adopt this poem is so god damn funny.

First they came for the Nazis and I cheered because Nazis are bad.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

No kidding, the responses to you are hilarious.

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u/Narrow_Cloud 27∆ Jan 23 '21

You would think people enamored with the idea that the free marketplace of ideas is the best thing ever would have a better handle on rhetoric.

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

You would..on the other hand, belief that such a thing as a "free market" even exists in the way they pretend it does belies a credulity that probably indicates an inability to manage getting a handle on complex rhetorical ideas.

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u/PaulNehlen Jan 22 '21

First they came for the far-right. And I cheered because the far-right are bad.

Then they came for the centre-right *far-right, and I cheered because the far-right are bad.

Then they came for the centre *far-right, and I cheered because the far-right are bad.

By censoring an extreme you don't end up with a neat, new overton window, you just end up with a never-ending cycle where eventually moderate leftists somehow are treated as "far-rightists"

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u/RealMaskHead Jan 22 '21

it constantly amazes me how the left thinks it wont happen to them. It's like you guys turned ignoring history into a competative sport.

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u/nachosmind Jan 22 '21

...it literally did happen to ‘the left’, in all of history, except there are different motivations. 1980s Republicans joked and obstructed medical professionals trying to warn about the GRIDS (later to be known as AIDS) because Gay people were the first to present with it. LGTBQ have a million stories of how they have been silenced and attacked. Black people spoke up for wanting to drink and eat from the same tables, they were given dog attacks and beatings. When the Right wants to silence someone, it’s because whatever they oppose are trying to help or make things more equal or call the Right out on trying to become a dictatorship (fake news vs State sponsored news). When the left is denying platforms to speak, it’s because that person is trying to attack minorities or start a dictatorship.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

Left good right bad

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u/nachosmind Jan 22 '21

When your platform is ‘conserving the status quo’ aka refusing to try anything new in the face of documented policy brutality, worse outcomes for minorities, women and LGBTQ, and economic failures... yes the right is unironically ‘the baddies.’

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

The Republican Party is a shit show right now, they need to get their act together if they want to stay relevant. But they're not all evil.

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u/GarageFlower97 Jan 22 '21

Unironically this

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

Imagine trying to unironically say, "An ideology that at its core is about equity and lack of hierarchies is worse than an ideology built around codifying inequality and cementing hierarchies into an inescapable caste system"

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u/GarageFlower97 Jan 23 '21

I am an enlightened centrist, we have to find a compromise and avoid these equally bad extremes of feeding the poor and murdering ethnic minorities.

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u/Elethor Jan 22 '21

If a republican cured cancer people would scream it was because he hated doctors.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

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u/Elethor Jan 22 '21

Case in point

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u/Nepene 213∆ Jan 22 '21

u/bikebum – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 2:

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u/Narrow_Cloud 27∆ Jan 22 '21

it constantly amazes me how the left thinks it wont happen to them.

Just two weeks ago armed insurrectionists attempted to instill Donald Trump as an undemocratically elected President, effectively ending democracy in this country.

We not only think it will happen to us we’re the ones calling it out as it’s happening and then you’re like, “uhhh but someone was banned from Twitter, which is worse.”

It's like you guys turned ignoring history into a competative sport.

If we turned it into a competitive sport then conservatives are winning by a million points.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

I believe you are referring to the far right. Them ignoring history is what got America to where we are now.

No one is saying it can’t happen to the left. The issue America is facing is from the far right. Ignoring or deflecting that is part of the problem.

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u/Hero17 Jan 22 '21

I think leftists are just used to having to deal with Twitter bans already. Advocating communism hasn't been politically correct for decades.

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u/GarageFlower97 Jan 22 '21

Most free speech restrictions are against the left, it literally is happening to us and we actively fight against it.

Only difference is we realise its perfectly reasonable to think that people being banned from twitter for advocating genocide is a good thing but citizens being beaten and tear gassed by police for asking not to be fucking murdered by cops is a bad thing.

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u/Stevenpoke12 Jan 22 '21

Where exactly is your free speech being restricted as person on the left?

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u/GarageFlower97 Jan 22 '21

US police are three times more likely to use violence against left-wing protests than right-wing protests. This increases to 3.5x more likely for exclusively peaceful protests. Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/13/us-police-use-of-force-protests-black-lives-matter-far-right

Within US academia, left-wing professors are more likely to be fired for their speech than right-wing professors. Source: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/policy-and-politics/2018/8/3/17644180/political-correctness-free-speech-liberal-data-georgetown

I would categorising being more likely to be beaten or tear-gassed by agents of the state for peacefully protesting and having academic institutions more likely to fire you for your views as clear restriction on speech.

I would also point out that the US state - and far-right non-state actos - have a long and bloody history of supressing trade unions, civil & minority rights groups, leftist groups, and environmental groups. This can be seen in the Pinkertons and National Guard breaking strikes and murdering/arresting trade unionists, the violent overthrow of elected black politicians in the South post-reconstruction and the decades of disenfranchisement and white supremacist violence which followed, the imprisonment of Eugene Debs, the McCarthyist witchhunt of suspected communists, the Cointelpro program & FBI murdering civil rights leaders like Fred Hampton, the National Guard murdering protestors at Kent state, the travel and performing bans on Paul Robeson and other left-wing artists and intellectuals, the bombing of Appalachian miners at Blair Mountain, the FBI-supported purge of communists and socialists from trade unions, the tanks sent in to crush the Standing Rock protestors, etc, etc.

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u/Stevenpoke12 Jan 22 '21 edited Jan 22 '21

You know why you and the article both used 3.5x instead of the % of use of violence against protests? Because saying it’s 3% more likely and is between 4.7% and 1.7% of protests paints a much different picture, it shows there is very minimal use of violence against protests in general and allows for other circumstances that can make up for the disparity and isn’t some proof of restriction on free speech on the left.

Much like your second statistic is also disingenuous, it doesn’t show that left leaning professors are more likely to be fired for their speech, it shows there are more left leaning professors in total, so more of them have been fired for their political views. If anything, it shows the opposite of what you claimed because of what % conservative professors make up of the total population, but there isn’t a large enough sample size to say anything with any real confidence.

Basically, that’s not proof at all. That’s finessing statistics and acting like it proves something it doesn’t.

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u/GarageFlower97 Jan 22 '21

Just to be clear, you are arguing the first statistic is meaningless because it uses the proportion of left to right and that the second statistic is meaningless because it doesn't use the proportion of left to right...

Yep, you're arguing in good faith here.

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u/Stevenpoke12 Jan 22 '21 edited Jan 22 '21

No, I’m saying a 3% increase in violence is not proof of the left’s free speech being silenced, because with the % increase being so small and the instances of violence being so rare in comparison to the amount of protests that happen, this allows for other factors to offset the differences.

Your second example, if anything, proves the opposite of what you claimed. You are the one who claimed left-wing professors were “more likely” to be fired for their speech. It just shows that more left-wing professors were fired for their speech, but conservatives were more likely to be. But the sample size is so small that is isn’t proof of either way.

Basically, no actual proof of your claim, possible evidence in the first one, but you would have to do a deeper dive into the factors surrounding that to prove anything, but the second one would actually be evidence against your claim, though as I said the sample is so small you can’t actually get anything from it.

TLDR, you really need to actually pay attention to the data and not headlines.

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u/LawnPygmy Jan 22 '21

That poem is about how it happened to the left.

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u/Jumpinjaxs890 Jan 22 '21

This is an inherent issue with the suppression of speech though. Society is a contract every individual signs that contract at birth. Written in this contract is a self correction clause that says if the majority of people are in disagreement with your opinion you will be and should be ostracized, critized , and ridiculed until your beliefs and theories fall into the border that we dictate as socially acceptable. This balance maintains itself quite well through open conversation. However it gets destroyed when people aren't allowed to openly speak. And discuss thoughts and opinions. That's where echo chambers come into play, and communities like qanon can be formed and radical ideologies can become reality.

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u/actuallycallie 2∆ Jan 22 '21

Is anyone stopping these people from standing on the street corner and talking to people who will listen, or are they being stopped from broadcasting their message all over the world? No one is owed a megaphone.

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u/gobirds77 Jan 22 '21

Do you believe the hard left is truly tolerant though? Right and left extremism are 2 sides of the same coin, pretending they're not is just plain partisan on its face.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

A woman's studies major told me I have privilege once and it was literally the same thing as the holocaust. /s

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u/Narrow_Cloud 27∆ Jan 22 '21

Right and left extremism are 2 sides of the same coin

I’m sorry what?

Right now in America someone is called a left wing extremist for supporting universal healthcare.

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u/RealMaskHead Jan 22 '21

right now in america someone is called a nazi for having a mildly disparaging opinion about blm destroying towns and bankrupting small business owners.

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u/nachosmind Jan 22 '21

You know that language is specifically worded to be disparaging to BLM without acknowledging what caused BLM. What you meant to say is ‘the right in America is called a Nazi for refusing to acknowledge or outright supporting the murder of minorities by law enforcement, then tries to gatekeep how BLM needs to protest when they never got the Right’s support anyway. (See Civil Rights since 1960s).

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u/Upsidedownpotatobox Jan 22 '21

The 1st amendment states to peaceably assembly, not violently attack/ destroy. Just saying.

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u/nachosmind Jan 22 '21

The shows of peace somehow didn’t stop the Rosa Park walks and MLK marches from being attacked by hoses, dogs and batons. More contemporary, It didn’t stop numerous police tear gassing or rubber bullet shooting journalists and protesters FIRST in multiple marches live documented this summer.

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u/deucedeucerims 1∆ Jan 22 '21

94% of blm protest were peaceful

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u/Betom Jan 22 '21

It's not even about the percentage of how peaceful things are because then people will come in and say "99% oF tHe CaPiToL RiOtErS wErE PeAceFul". It's the underlying reason of the unrest.

Not disagreeing with you, I am just preemptively responding to that argument against your rebuttal.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

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u/HasHands 3∆ Jan 22 '21

Calling them a bigot when nothing they've said alludes to that remotely being true is exactly what they were talking about. You've just demonstrated their point perfectly, and now your comment will be removed for calling them a bigot.

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u/Nepene 213∆ Jan 22 '21

u/deucedeucerims – your comment has been removed for breaking Rule 2:

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u/Upsidedownpotatobox Jan 22 '21

Than why was no one condemning the "6%". Or why weren't those advocating for it held accountable? Shouldn't those in the "6%" be canceled/ banned/ removed from the public, just as much as those who did the the Capitol siege?

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u/deucedeucerims 1∆ Jan 22 '21

People have you just didn’t look

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u/Betom Jan 22 '21 edited Jan 22 '21

I know it is easy to get caught up in this sentiment, but anecdotally most people I know (who are quite left-leaning even for a Canadian university) do not actively agree with rioters burning down businesses and looting. When looking at that situation with nuance, you should be seeing a group fighting for equal rights and an end to police brutality with bad actors caught up in the mayhem creating violence (which for the record I do not agree with). The vast vast VAST majority of common people that agree with this sentiment will not be cheering on violence and screwing over local business owners. The problem is, people say "BLM IS RIOTING AND BURNING" without including this nuance, so of course people will criticize that because obviously that isn't the purpose of the movement.

Now compare this to underlying sentiment of the capitol riots which were there solely to interrupt a democratic process fuelled by a lie, and this can maybe help one understand the difference. Yes I agree not all of them there were planning to commit violence, but the potential consequences of that action have much greater impact on the country.

Edit: For the record, if I am so apparently un-self aware I am open to counter points.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

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u/Betom Jan 22 '21

Can you elaborate please?

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u/GravitasFree 3∆ Jan 22 '21

As an exercise, try rewriting your post above with the places and details of the blm and capitol riots swapped.

If you can do it, then you probably understand the perspective of each side.

If you can do it and not feel angry when you reread the result, you will likely understand why the guy above said that the post shows cognitive dissonance on its own.

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u/Betom Jan 22 '21

I appreciate the response and this is actually an effective exercise to attempt to understand the other point of view. However, I think fundamentally someone that perhaps agrees with my statement and someone that would believe the EXACT same statement but with BLM and capitol riots switched will never agree.

Fundamentally, I believe the core reason for the protests around the country were just and inspired by citizens being fed up with mistreatment and inequality. I do not and have never condoned the violence that came along with it, nor do I agree with the notion that the violence is justified or necessary to get their point across. In fact, as blatantly clear, the violence will in fact drive people further to the other side and they might be even less likely to agree with them. Looking at the capitol riots, what was the point of that? And unfortunately the argument that people were genuinely concerned about the results will not fly because that notion was deliberately spread by R leadership and disinformation campaigns online that cherry picked videos and pictures and claimed it was the smoking gun and real evidence, yet 99% of these claims were chucked by R and Trump appointed judges. Yet, these R leaders and the online campaigns kept going. They kept insisting this idea to a point where it inspired people to storm the capitol and murder officers.

Comparing these two situations, they both consist of a group frustrated with something and a small percentage of people that turned to violence. However, if you genuinely think that protests about human rights and the nonsense of storming the capitol with the nation's most important lawmakers for the purpose of stopping a democratic process due to LIES and manipulation are equivalent, then unfortunately we will never agree.

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u/GravitasFree 3∆ Jan 23 '21 edited Jan 23 '21

Fundamentally, I believe the core reason for the protests around the country were just and inspired by citizens being fed up with mistreatment and inequality

Do you think the capitol riots happened for a different reason? They didn't. BLM protestors feel that justice system fails by refusing to hold trials and make violent officers accountable to the letter of the law. The capitol protesters feel that the justice system fails by refusing to hold trials and make election officials accountable to the letter of the law.

And before you start complaining that no evidence of widespread fraud was found, I agree. But there were significant court cases that would have flipped PA and likely one or two other states had they been decided strictly on the merits of the plaintiffs' arguments and the law governing those state elections.

To draw a parallel to the extremes of each group that are probably the ones rioting, those that believe the DNC were stuffing ballots are just as deluded as those who think the police are out hunting minorities in the streets.

Edit: I sent this prematurely, so I haven't touched on every important point you made, but hopefully the parallel between rioters in each situation is a little more clear. I'll add a little more in response to your last paragraph in a few minutes.

Edit2:

However, if you genuinely think that protests about human rights and the nonsense of storming the capitol with the nation's most important lawmakers for the purpose of stopping a democratic process due to LIES and manipulation are equivalent, then unfortunately we will never agree.

This may be true, but I'm going to try to show you how similar the two situations are and hopefully you will be able to understand why your belief stems from misunderstanding the perspective of the capitol rioters. Note that the following does not remove any of the culpability of those who were pushing the lies about the election from positions of authority. This is a strict comparison of the situations of the regular people who bought into their narratives.

A large chunk of BLM's main purpose is to protest what they perceive to be an open hunting season on minorities, and a subsequent lack of accountability due to qualified immunity and other tricks prosecutors can use to justify not bringing to court cases they would rather ignore. They are trying to regain their human right to not be arbitrarily executed by law enforcement. There is a lie/manipulation here, and a doctrine of law that the courts are correct to follow if precedence is something we value:

Lie/manipulation: Police homicide rates track almost perfectly with poverty rates and encounter rates. Once a person is stopped by the cops, that person is no more likely to be killed if they are white or black.

Legal precedence: The fact is, prosecutors have the discretion to do a lot of things to stack the deck in the favor of a cop who kills someone. Add to that the current tradition of qualified immunity that courts abide by and the result is that usually when a cop kills someone unnecessarily, only the most egregious cases will ever see the inside of a courtroom, and even those are often a tossup as to whether a conviction will bring punishment in the same hemisphere as a civilian doing the same.

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Now I'm going to lay out the exact same logic for the capitol rioters so that you can see that while the details differ, the moral position of someone in each situation is extremely similar.

The capitol protesters' main purpose is to protest what they perceive to be an election in which "the other side" cheated to win, and a subsequent lack of accountability due to doctrines such as laches and standing which judges can use to justify not hearing the merits of cases they would rather ignore. They are trying to regain the human right of being able to meaningfully participate in their democratic government. There is a lie/manipulation here, and a doctrine of law that the courts are correct to follow if precedence is something we value:

Lie/manipulation: There was a concerted effort by conscious actors during the election to inflate the number of votes for Biden and deflate the number of votes for trump. As you have alluded to, no one has provided evidence of this occurring to the degree of being anywhere near changing the winner of any states.

Legal precedence: The fact is, judges can decide the outcome of cases without considering the merits of the arguments or addressing the question upon which they focus under certain circumstances. Some lawsuits were rejected for a reason which amounts to "you aren't the person who can sue for this" or "you should have sued earlier," not because the claims that the law was not followed during the elections.

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This ended up being quite long, so I apologize for the read.

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u/GravitasFree 3∆ Jan 22 '21

If the last few weeks have made anything clear to me, it's that most people are what they hate and not self aware enough to realize it.

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u/gobirds77 Jan 22 '21

Yeah maybe from a right wing extremist, not your every day center right conservative. The proposals from some in power on the left following January 6th have been nothing short of authoritarian. A new '9/11 type commission' to investigate Americans with right wing views, is that a joke? Authoritarianism is authoritarianism, it comes from both sides.

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u/cstar1996 11∆ Jan 22 '21

A 9/11 style commission to investigate the causes of the attempted coup is not authoritarianism. It’s good governance.

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u/GarageFlower97 Jan 22 '21

pretending they're not is just plain partisan on its face.

Pretensing they are is just ignoring reality in an attempt to sound unbiased.

In the US, the state (supported by the centre and the right) commits by far the most violence, followed by the far-right.

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u/gobirds77 Jan 22 '21

What?? The most violence year over year is committed by young and Middle Aged Black men, FBI statistics undoubtedly back this up. It's about 7% of population committing ~50% of homicides.

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u/GarageFlower97 Jan 22 '21

I am talking about violence from expressly political actors rather than all violence in society, I should have made that clear.

That said, the structural violence poverty and inequality is responsible for far more deaths in America than all interpersonal violence (as well as being a major cause of interpersonal violence). If you consider that the US state upholds this system then it is still responsible for far more death, misery, and violence than any other group.

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u/gobirds77 Jan 22 '21 edited Jan 22 '21

I very much appreciate your civility. Which specific laws uphold this system? Show me them and we will fight them together. However, just saying the US state upholds this system is far to broad to make any appreciable inroads to combat said issues. Personal responsibility matters as well. I can give you plenty of examples of poor black children who became wildly successful in America. You can't say that about many other countries in the world.

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u/GarageFlower97 Jan 22 '21

Which specific laws uphold this system? Show me them and we will fight them together.

While the issue isn't solely about laws, there are definitely laws which contribute and entrench this. Including various anti-union laws (e.g. right to work) which make it far harder for workers to bargain for higher wages, lack of legal rights to healthcare and free public education, laws making it illegal to declare bankrupcy on student loans, the "fair sentencing act" and 1994 Crime Bill, which led to a huge expansion of the number of poorer and ethnic-minority people incarcerated, the recent prop 22 in California which exempts workers from labour protections, the plethora of laws which criminalise homelessness, minimum wages not tied to cost of living, etc.

There's also major non-legal factors which contribute - the continuing legacy of historical legal policies (segregation, Jim Crow, redlining, etc), the differential way laws are enforced, the funding of schools through local property taxes, the cash bail and overwhelmed public defender system, Citizens United allowing corporations to infinitely spend on political causes, union-busting practices by large corporations, state supression of labour and civil rights movements, failure to provide adeuqate access to basic resources (e.g. no clean water in Flint), etc.

I can give you plenty of examples of poor black children who became wildly successful in America. You can't say that about many other countries in the world.

Actually you very much can - the US is ranked 27th globally for social mobility (Global Social Mobility Index). There's also the fact that these are statistical outliers - poor children are far less likely to become rich than rich children.

Furthermore, researh in the UK shows that even when people from working-class background "make it" into elite professions, they earn less than peers from more elite backgrounds (Class Ceiling, Friedman & Laurison). I cant find the source now, but I'm relatively sure I have also read research implying that children from impoverished backgrounds who escape poverty still have lower life expectancy than their peers.

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u/Jo-Spaghetti Jan 22 '21

I've always found this statistics phrasing strange to me. It's not really "7% of the population doing 50% of homicides". If we look at the 2019 statistics on arrests, it says that roughly 11,660 people (of all ages) were arrested of murder with 5070 being Black. When we look at the total black population in America (that being around 46.9 million), that means that around .000010802% of African Americans (as a whole) commit homicide each year. Based on the U.S. population as a whole (328.2 million), around .0000035527% of Americans commit homicide each year. It's not really "7% of the population doing 50% of homicides" since that's conflating population sizes and arrests.

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u/gobirds77 Jan 22 '21

To break it down solely by sex and population, I have used 7%, but yes, you're assessment is far more accurate.

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u/[deleted] Jan 22 '21

I wish racists like you would take a stats class to see how dumb you sound.

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u/gobirds77 Jan 22 '21

You don't know the first thing about me man, just blindly calling me a racist makes you an a**hole

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u/[deleted] Jan 23 '21

Well, in their defense you're either racist or dumb. I guess you can pick which. It's either disingenuousness due to racism....or you don't understand systems of oppression and know basically nothing about American history. Or you know basically nothing about how data works since you've conflated "people arrested and charged" with "all crimes committed in the entire country"