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Open-minded and understanding?
This is an ironic comic. I'd say it's making fun of both sides, but you know that's not the intent so it's just super cringey.
Edit: Oh, it seems I've upset the open-minded and understanding. Perhaps the irony has flown over their open heads. Enjoy distancing your family this Thanksgiving and not understanding why you grow less tolerated and heard by uncles.
I saw several variations on this exact meme over the last days, and it is so insanely idiotic I'm halfway to thinking it's some sort of psy-op. Personally, I like shitting on conservatives as much as the other guy, and... do I really need to explain that one can't simultaneously talk about Haha How Dumb Those Guys and also call yourself open-minded? The moment you do the former you have given up on the latter.
Paradox of Tolerance
Reminder: there is no such thing as the paradox of tolerance.
The rules of tolerance only apply to the people who abide by them.
Therefore, you are tolerant of tolerant people if you abide by the rules of tolerance. You are intolerant of intolerant people if you abide by the rules of tolerance.
It is very straightforward, the only pathway to paradox is from a lack of lexical understanding of the rules of tolerance.
That's exactly my point.
It gets thrown around like any flavour of the year amongst American blues, but I am starting to realise most people have no idea what a paradox fundamentally is. Rather they think it's some sort of guiding idea because everyone keeps saying it and something about a philosopher—the entire premise whooshing over the heads of whichever tribalists "gotcha bombs" it entirely out of context.
Two comments of it here and I imagine at least one of you have never comprehended what it is and where they fit into it. Someone's the chicken; someone's the egg. A true idiot thinks they know the solution to that.
Where's the part you think we are getting wrong in the below?
The paradox part of the paradox is that the tolerant are the intolerant.
This is what a paradox is.
a situation or statement that seems impossible or is difficult to understand because it contains two opposite facts or characteristics:
i.e. the tolerant (A) are the intolerant (B); the tolerant cannot be intolerant. A = B while A≠ B, yet both appear true. A paradox.
The result is a cascade that divides further and shifts power based on which tolerant group becomes the most intolerant of other's ideas the most at the time; the ideologies meaning nothing in the end. The philosophy that the intolerant tend to have power.
In your cartoon, which starts with a question that immediately abandons any explanation of the paradox and then ironically just guides you on how to be participant in it, you eould see the paradox in effect if you go back just one step. Mein Kompf literally states how he was liberal and tolerant but had to cease that in order to stop the perceived intolerant for German nationalism. Is this a ideology you disagree with? Probably. But it doesn't matter in the paradox.
Then becoming the intolerant himself, we know what happened next; power. Then the tolerant no longer tolerating him—EU and friends; power shifts to them. That's the paradox. The intolerant is always the majority at the time; ideologies be damned. It's a repetitive cycle conflicting itself—a paradox.
If you are coming from the perspective of an opposing ideology, you will of course not tolerate it. But that's not the philosophical point. Subsequently, the red hats quote the exact same paradox inappropriately as well.
To approach it philosophically, as intended, you must first ask; what is currently considered intolerant in this society? You cannot have personal opinions influence it, else you have already missed the point. From there, you are able to ponder it appropriately. Philosophy is a thought exercise; not to be used as a ammunition of opinion battles. It is merely an observation to ponder and open deeper discourse.
Edit: Hey, y'all can oppose this comment, but in 1945 the conception of thought was established. If you have other ideas of that, you'll need to propose a new idea instead of raping someone else's idea as much as the other tribes
It's really not complicated. It's the point of it. You're encouraged to expand on it with new ideas, not trying to reshape existing ones to suit your narrative. Philosophy 101.
Fair, but if the cartoon is a rebuttal of the premise of the paradox, which would seem to be that we can't call it tolerance unless it's absolute, it's a rebuttal I accept.
Yes, yes, we should totally be understanding of the people who want to see my cousin dead and my uncle run out of the country.
/s because there are sadly a lot of people who legitimately think this way
What aren't we understanding about, eh?
That's exactly my point.
As someone who has no stake in this whole shamozzle, it sure does seem the red are stupid and the blue are cunts. Put those two around a dinner table and, yeah, you're really going to progress.
You'll continue contributing to your moments of fate. Next time the margin perhaps even worse; like missionaries washing your culture onto others with hate, spite, and narcissism..That'll keep working, just like always! Just like when they did it and you hated them for it.
Doibled-down on that Thanksgiving dinner stereotype. Do your country proud by "owning" your fellow American.
Any possible reason why anyone could have voted for Trump besides being racist or an idiot. That blanket labelling half the country as Nazis wasn't effective last time and isn't effective now. That a large portion of the populace feels so desperate for change that they were willing to vote for the fucking cheeto supreme.
I voted for Harris, and I completely believe Trump was the worst fucking choice the voting populace could have made, but unless you're actually calling for the extermination of roughly half the country there has to be some attempt at understanding or bridging the gap wherever it can be bridged.
If you were willing to vote for said cheeto supreme over egg prices, that makes you an idiot.
If you somehow think that those idiots are going to just magically disappear and we'll suddenly be able to vote all the right people in without making any attempts to engage with and turn them, that makes you an idiot too.
Self righteous elitism is cathartic but does nothing to move any of us towards a better future. Nine times out of ten when I bring this up, people ignore it or suggest we somehow get rid of the Trump voters.
If there were an ethical way to get rid of or away from them, Id be down. As for reaching out, thats all well and good but I am not a politician and am under no obligation to be nice
unless you’re actually calling for the extermination
Only one group wants to exterminate people, and it's not the folks avoiding their racist uncle at Thanksgiving.
What's the end game though? We have to find some way to communicate with and turn the Trump voters if we ever want any chance of moving past this shitshow.
And just because you personally are not calling for their death doesn't change just how fucking many people I've seen on Lemmy and elsewhere online openly call for it.
I see barely anyone willing to aknowledge the fact that roughly half the country voted for Trump. That can't be ignored and the general sentiment I see is that the Trump voters need to be eliminated or otherwise disallowed to vote, rather than any serious attempts to figure out what can be done.
Self righteousness may be cathartic, but it doesn't do anything for finding a fucking solution for this shit show.
I see barely anyone willing to aknowledge the fact that roughly half the country voted for Trump.
Half of voters who voted, not half the country. That's a pretty big difference.
We have to find some way to communicate with and turn the Trump voters if we ever want any chance of moving past this shitshow.
I've been trying to do that for eight years. As have most of those of us not in the cult. When does it get to be "on them", you know, the party of personal responsibility? Why is it always on us to mollycoddle them? I'm fucking done.
Self righteousness may be cathartic, but it doesn’t do anything for finding a fucking solution for this shit show.
My solution is that no Republican gets one ounce of interaction with me that I'm not legally or contractually obligated to give them. My maga relatives will get the degree of courtesy and interaction required by our relative positions within the family and geographic proximity.
Maga service providers or vendors will get none of my money if they make me aware of their alliances, which most of them are very happy to do.
The only remaining endgame is riding out the four years of shit they have handed us, hoping we actually get another election, and going to my grave without voting for a Republican or conservative for anything.
I'm beyond done with these selfish(edit - and hateful) assholes.
And by the way, I appreciate your kinder gentle approach.
Although I'm just going full "these people will receive nothing from me", and I have no intent to consider any other approach, yours is the healthier way no doubt. 🙂
Is it the tankies? I see them talk about killing people a lot, last time I mentioned it cowbee or whatever his name is (he'll comment under this with enough time I swear he uploaded his consciousness to lemmy) basically just said "well yeah, they deserve it," they aren't even trying to hide it anymore. And by their standards, many of us on lemmy are "liberal" enough to be considered by the tankies to be nazis, who they say they want to kill, meaning they want to kill many of us (possibly you included, if you're not a hardline Marxist-Leninist, i.e "left enough to live for now").
OH you meant racists. Well then, no there's two groups. My mind went to tankies because we're on lemmy so surely you haven't missed those. OH .ml, I see..
My mind went to tankies because we’re on lemmy so surely you haven’t missed those. OH .ml, I see…
Don't forget the group that assumes they know everything about everyone based on their Lemmy instance. Those folks can eat a bag of dicks!
I'd say we're about 70 million short of there being enough tankies in the US to worry about. Magas on the other hand... So yeah, the racist magats and the rest of us cover all the cases being discussed here.
My point wasn't that tankies are more numerous than racists, my point was that "only one group" is not accurate, being that there are "at least two groups."
Furthermore, being a murderous dickhole is only a problem in sufficient numbers? Well by your logic I guess we don't have to worry about the KKK then, there's about 3k of them, which without checking I'm betting is less than grad+bear+ml users.
Sorry, I can't subscribe to that, murderous dickheads and their ideologies are bad be they one or one billion.
LOL you want so bad to have a fight about tankies because I'm on ml so you think that's something I like to fight about.
I have magas in my family I need to avoid for Thanksgiving. I don't have any tankies. Neither, I can say with almost complete certainty, do you. Neither are they pictured in OP, because they don't factor into the dynamic being satirized. In fact, I'm 95% certain no one reading this thread has a tankie in their family they need to try to avoid on Thanksgiving. Nor do they exist in sufficient numbers in the US to impact our nation or its politics in any substantive way. Inserting them in this discussion is a non sequitur at best and a troll at worst.
Please go find a tankie or someone who feels like defending them for the argument you want so badly to have.
Goodbye! 👋
Don’t forget the group that assumes they know everything about everyone based on their Lemmy instance. Those folks can eat a bag of dicks!
Thankfully the family tankie does seem to have grown out of it by now, but they're out there in other families, your experiences don't define everyone else's.
But again all of this is besides the point, your claim that "there's only one group" is factually incorrect.
Bye indeed.
your experiences don’t define everyone else’s.
If you closely read my words you'll find I didn't say they did.
Plonk.
Nobody mentioned trump but you.
I mean, they're wearing red hats in the second panel. They inferred Trump.
Are you kidding me? No one is really that stupid. We all know what the red hats in the second panel are supposed to be.
For one, the snide "tolerant left" comment is never about any particular person or party - it's a bad faith attempt to discredit valid critique of hateful or harmful actions, unreasonably demanding universal tolerance of everything, including intolerance.
Second, the comic is explicitly about racists, basically all of which are going to be trump voters, but that says nothing about any other part of that group. Extrapolating that to be an attack on all of those voters is flipping the equation to fit your own outrage.
That you're putting so much effort into defending trolls and racist is certainly interesting.
That you're putting so much effort into defending trolls and racist is certainly interesting.
If you want to imagine that I'm part of that group, despite me clearly saying otherwise across many many comments, I can't stop you.
Claiming that I'm trying to defend "trolls and racists" when I've been direct and specific about my points across my many comments on this post is also flipping the equation to fit your outrage or point of view.
As succinctly as possible: Denigrating, insulting, putting down, and condescencion towards people with differing political beliefs (especially when it's a group as large as the Trump voting base) is not a recipe for successful movement forward towards a better future for the United States. Whether that's fair or not doesn't matter to this point. Whether they're all the fucking worst or not doesn't matter to this point. You cannot ignore or other a group this size and then be surprised when they react negatively back towards you. Who started it also does not matter to this point.
It sucks that this is the case. It's a great big pot of unfair bullshit stew. Why should anyone have to even give those assholes the time of day, etc.
But unless you expect these people to magically stop existing, some way to work with or around them will need to be worked towards. I'd prefer to think that we're better than advocating for a purge or removing peoples' rights en masse, so that means that some amount of meeting people where they are and engaging with them as other people will need to happen.
The only one who can decide if they're up for that effort is each individual person, but if no one even tries this shitshow won't change.
One last time - the post is about racists. The comment is about racists. You're the one trying to make it about anything else, which only serves to enable and legitimize racists. If that's not your intention, I'd recommend changing your game plan, because so far, you look like an apologist for racists at best.
I'm familiar. I don't know how anyone on Lemmy would not be familiar with it by this point as it's one of the main go to justifications people use for treating others like shit.
An astoundlingly important quote from that very Wikipedia article you linked:
In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.
(Emphasis mine)
I'll also point you at Daryl Davis, a black musician who managed to turn multiple KKK members by simply engaging with them as human beings.
My whole point being that when roughly half of the country voted for Trump, it is an absolutely insane idea to just decide it's ok to treat all of them intolerantly and also expect things to just magically change for the better. Feels like I'm taking crazy pills when everyone tries to self righteously justify not making any fucking attempt to reach these people and turn them.
TL;DR;
Hyperbole and "black and white" thinking aren't a good foundation for claiming moral superiority.
I’m familiar. I don’t know how anyone on Lemmy would not be familiar with it by this point as it’s one of the main go to justifications people use for treating others like shit.
That's....certainly....one of the takes of all time.
I'm personally astounded you chose that particular quote, but i'll highlight an important part for you as well.
as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion
I personally wouldn't attribute "open to rational argument" and "kept in check by public opinion" as hallmarks of a majority of trump voters, but that's just me.
Daryl Davis, a black musician who managed to turn multiple KKK members by simply engaging with them as human beings.
A good example of a single person making a difference.
I'm genuinely not sure how you think this can be applied at scale, are you expecting all the people who didn't vote for trump to dedicate their lives to reforming the people actively trying to do horrible things to them.
My whole point being that when roughly half of the country voted for Trump,
Roughly half of the people who voted, but ok.
it is an absolutely insane idea to just decide it’s ok to treat all of them intolerantly and also expect things to just magically change for the better.
A few things:
"Just decide" implies it was a sudden decision with no lead up, that is incorrect.
Where are you getting the idea that people are expecting trump voters to magically change for the better?
It sounds like you would like them to, which is nice, but that's a broad generalisation for no citation.
My whole point being that when roughly half of the country voted for Trump, it is an absolutely insane idea to just decide it’s ok to treat all of them intolerantly and also expect things to just magically change for the better.
That's an extreme amount of projection.
Broadly claiming that everyone is the maximum amount of intolerant to anyone even slightly of the grouping you've specified is disingenuous at best, further claiming they are all doing this to magically change the minds of said group is equally ridiculous.
and further down :
self righteously justify not making any fucking attempt to reach these people and turn them.
If you genuinely think no attempts have been made up to now, I'm not sure how you came to that conclusion, but I'm sure it's an interesting story.
Self-righteous, like "nobody but me is doing the thing i think is right, in the way that i think is correct" ?
Feels like I’m taking crazy pills.
It feels that way because you've set up a catch-all scenario which encompasses your specific perspective and doesn't allow for perspectives that don't align.
If you remove the ability to handle nuance from your perspective then any nuance that arises will seem crazy.
Example of nuance.
"A non-trivial portion of this group of people have voted a specific way, with the understanding that doing so will materially endanger people i love, I have a limited amount of energy and I'm choosing not to spend it sorting through who are the 'saveable' bigots and instead direct that energy toward protecting my loved ones (and myself) from the consequences of their actions."
Bro thought he could speak freely here lmao 🤣
Haha, I can. Thats the beauty of it. I can express an opinion. I'm well used to this place fallaciously assuming that a single opinion against the grain must mean an all out attack against the tree.
It's a funny little tree that thinks itself the centre of the forest.