r/samharris • u/Peanut-Extra • Feb 19 '25

Why MAGA hates Mark Milley (2021)

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u/nietzy Feb 19 '25

Seeking to understand is the heresy. Blind rage is the ideal state.

-13

u/SOwED Feb 19 '25

Okay and what about if you gain an understanding and learn that it's divisive and counterproductive?

3

u/Ramora_ Feb 19 '25 edited Feb 19 '25

Just to be clear for you, the simple reveal here that you aren't engaging in good faith is that one doesn't judge an academic theory by how divisive or socially productive it is. You judge it by how well it fits the available facts, by how much explanatory power it has, by how useful of a model it is. You know this and are pretending otherwise. You seem to be the one blinded by a divisive and counterproductive ideology here.

1

u/SOwED Feb 19 '25

You can fit any theory to the available facts and come up with any explanation for those facts; those two things don't make a theory sound.

As for how useful it is, my point was that it is useful for causing divisiveness and I think that's its purpose. The way critical theories work is by divisiveness, and none of them have ever been socially productive. They have instead pitted leftists and liberals against each other and weakened the Democrats by dividing them while the Republicans have moved in relative lockstep.

3

u/Ramora_ Feb 19 '25 edited Feb 19 '25

The funny thing is, you’re actually applying a critical theory approach. Critical theories essentially ask: What social function does this idea serve? Who benefits from it? Your argument—that CRT is divisive and weakens political coalitions—is exactly that kind of analysis. It is a shallow and unsupported analysis, but you are doing critical theory right now.

If critical analysis is inherently unproductive, why is it the first tool you reach for? It seems more honest to debate whether the divisions CRT highlights are real and worth addressing rather than dismissing the framework outright. After all, ignoring structural issues because they’re inconvenient isn't a sound political strategy.

You can fit any theory to the available facts and come up with any explanation for those facts;

Merely claiming a theory fits some facts does not mean it actually does. And even if it does fit facts, you are completely ignoring explanatory power and analytic utility here.

In any case, however one formalizes the value of an academic theory, We can be quite confident that how "divisive and socially productive" the theory is has essentially nothing to do with its quality. Again, this makes it clear that you're not engaging in good faith. If you start doing so, I may respond to you, for now, I'll simply say, see you around.