sideshow.me.uk/annex/defeattheri … inutes.htm
There might be a little hyperbole in this, but the general observations seem to fit a pattern understood by most center-left Americans. Let the umbrage and denial begin…
That was better than i thought it would be - Spot on, actually.
The title is arrogantly egotistical and centered on a very narrow view of what is “right wing”.
Obviously in this it is the Neocons and the Republican party platform they are reffering to.
While it touches on some points, others are just strawman claims and just negative presumptions on the motives of these “cheap labor conservatives”.
As someone that others consider “Far-right” the argument and it’s author are as politcally shallow as their “opposition”.
For the purposes of contemporary US politics, what they characterize as “right wing” is actually remarkably accurate . . .
If one rises above any of the specific examples and looks at the proposed policies pushed by the “conservatives”, and then asks, who benefits? the rest falls neatly into place. Like all generalizations, there are hits and misses and is never an accurate picture of any individual, but in the main, it’s a pretty good summation.
I think the title is off. It shouldn’t be ‘how to defeat the right’. Nobody ends up defeated with tactics like this. Nobody changes their mind or admits they’re wrong.
It should be called, ‘A fully general reason to reject anything a republican says.’
There’s identical shit about the left. Breaking down the left into some one-dimensional straw man so that republicans can cleverly come up with ways to not listen to someone else. This is why politics is the mind killer. Both sides just want to come up with better reasons to ignore each other. It’s just children fighting, ‘nanana’.
Yup. I’ve seen both sides over the years. But the fly in the ointment is that people vote. Romney and the whole GOP establishment couldn’t believe that they hadn’t won - and still don’t. 2014 is going to be another “lesson” that the ultra conservatives will continue to ignore. 2016 is very likely to be the death knell. Not of reasonable conservatism, but the GOP that was hijacked by tea partiers and Koch money. Anyone under the age of 40 better hope so.
Yeah, this is the party line for people who don’t like to think about the dirty business of politics. Those who give a shit are like children. By extension, apathy is the mature, sophisticated response. But given you mostly hear that from the apathetic, it’s not entirely convincing.
i don’t blame people for not giving a shit about politics, but politics DO matter nonetheless.
You’re correct that it’s really a mistitled article, because it’s not about how to defeat the right. It’s actually about how to effectively match and challenge the rhetoric of the right. It’s certainly not about getting people on the right to change their minds. It’s about countering the effectiveness of other peoples’ labels and slogans using labels and slogans of your own. It’s dirty business, agreed - and it can get petty - but labels and slogans matter too, and not just in partisan politics. Think marketing.
I don’t want to think marketing. That’s my whole point. If I want to think about how to better the world via political progress, I don’t want to think like you people think. I don’t want to think, ‘How can I best figure out how to ignore anything my opponent says?’ I don’t want to think, ‘How can I best get other people to ignore anything my opponent says?’ This is political thinking, and I don’t want to think like that at all.
The problem with this sort of thinking, for both sides, is that once you’ve figured out how to reject anything the other side says, then when the time comes that the other side says something right, you already know just how to reject it. In that way, politics has become more faith-based than religion itself. And I don’t want to think like a religious person either.
Political problems are important. But thinking like this guy is thinking is not important. It is only petty. It only accomplishes petty or counterproductive thinking. If I want to think about politics, I’m not going to think about republicans, and I’m not going to think about democrats. I’m not going to think about marxists or libertarians. I’m not going to think about obama, romney, or anybody else. I’m going to look at the problem, the specific problem, and completely without reference to republicans or democrats, think about the proposed solutions and what they might result in. All the better if, as occasionally happens, science might have something to say about the issue as well.
If one of the proposed solutions comes from a republican, I’m not going to automatically think, ‘Oh, he’s clearly just arguing for cheap labor’. If one is from a democrat, I’m not going to automatically think, ‘Oh, he’s clearly just arguing for more government control over our lives’. It’s narrow, it’s silly, it is childish. Republicans are not always wrong. Neither are democrats. And neither group is always right, that’s for fucking sure. Sometimes both are wrong.
Articles like this serve to ingrain [republicanism/democratism] into your identity. And that’s a really, really bad idea. It’s a lot harder to get something out of your identity than it is to get it in.
Political issues are important. It’s not important to train people how to blind themselves to the other side. That’s exactly what we shouldn’t be doing. Fuck ‘marketing’. I’m not interested in weakening minds just as long as they take my side. That’s exactly what this sort of political marketing is.
No it’s not about rejecting everything the other side says (which is essentially what you’re doing right now, btw - re: “i don’t want to think the way you people think”). Rather, It’s about challenging the rhetoric of the other side, because political issues matter, and the rhetoric surrounding them makes a difference, whether you eschew it or not.
Even if you can’t, I think other people will see this article for what it is. It’s more of the same. More of the same partisan preaching. If you think it’s wise and virtuous to convince your fellow democrats that anything any republican ever argues for politically is a priori rejectable, then so be it, but you’re not fooling me.
FJ,
It would be wonderful if people could enter dialog with the only agenda was how to help one another get through the day. It’s truly what is needed. BUT… We live in a commodities society where everything - including people - are judged by their “value” as a commodity. Even words and slogans have become a commodity. I agree that throwing round buzz words accomplishes very little of substance, but when buzz words are controlling policy, what would you like to do with that? We have very good science and global warming is no longer a question even though the consequences are arguable. But when fux news continues beating the climate warming “hoax” drum, somehow that message has to be countered - even if it is diametrically opposed buzz words. That’s just one of many issues where used-to-be conservatives could not only be right, but knew how to compromise in order to get things done. That’s a far cry from what we see coming from the extreme right in today’s politics.
What I valued most in the link was regardless any position on any issue, it prompts that rubber-meets-the-road question: Who benefits? It’s a nice sorting scheme to look at the diatribe from left or right. It’s a way to shovel out from under all the nattering from either side.
I think most young people who claim to be right wing, usually don’t realize what they’re actually claiming. When you tell em what “right wing” actually means these days, they always wanna say it means something else.
I’m with you on hating the tea party and the Koch brothers. Those guys are like honest to god super villains. Paying a bunch of scientist to review each others work and then go public with their “consensus” about everything from global warming to pollution. It’s disgusting. Most young republican types have no idea what’s going on behind their party and when you try and tell them it’s like they just don’t wanna believe it.
I think the question ‘Who benefits’ is an absolutely great question one should ask oneself (or whoever you’re talking to) when analyzing the merits of any policy. Of course and without a doubt. And that nugget of wisdom within this trashily presented article is something to take note of, surely.
But pretty much all articles with the title ‘how to defeat X group in debate’ are meant…well…as the title portrays. Literally, they’re meant to give people on your side ammo against people on the other side. Just ammo.
People go on philosophy or political forums, I’ve seen this countless times, and they ask questions like “How do I win this debate against this guy?” I’m sick of that shit. This is a philosophy forum, ‘How to win debates’ is anti-rational. Of course, any talk of how to win debates will usually have some nuggets of rationality in there, just as this article does – it’s hard to win a debate while being entirely irrational, after all – but those nuggets of rationality are surrounded by this meme of ‘Your opponent is wrong, and before you started the debate, you already knew he was wrong. It’s now just your job to convince him he’s wrong, or at least refuse to be convinced that you’re wrong, and hopefully get the last word in’. Which is anti-rational. Maybe you’re fucking wrong. Maybe you shouldn’t be asking ‘How do I win against this guy?’ and start asking, ‘How do I REALLY win? Ie, how do I actually improve my beliefs to become more correct,’ which is the only genuine victory as far as I’m concerned.
When a christian ‘wins’ a debate against someone arguing for evolution, has he really won? He’s embedded himself a few more inches into the quicksand of the beliefs he already holds, so he might have some shallow victory in the realm of debate-club, but he’s losing in a much more important way.
When we talk about winning, do we want to talk about winning in the shallow way, even if it’s at the expense of losing in the more important way? Is winning debates more important than learning how to be more rational? If I start out with an incorrect belief, and win a debate defending it…I’m not a winner. I’m a loser, and I’ve just potentially helped someone else become a loser too.
We need to stop focusing on shallow winning, and start focusing on really winning. And really winning doesn’t take the form of ‘How to debate an evolutionist in 5 seconds’ or ‘How to beat anybody of political standing X’ or anything like that. That’s fake winning, and that’s real losing.
Hey flannel, now that you’ve given us your take on people who just wanna win arguments rhetorically, would it be possible for you to address our concerns that the right wing of american politics is controlled by a very small minority of people who are trying to get around the concept of democracy by leveraging the majority in the ways that were pointed out in the article? 
If you can’t I totally understand.
Also, on a vaguely related note, I think it’s funny that I’ve been categorized as a “leftist” here, occasionally. I mean, I’m just not a leftist. You see what I think happens is that the minority on the right has gone so far down the rabbit hole that people who are actually in the center are being called leftists, and people who are actually leftists are being called communists and stalinists and nigger and moocher and all kinds of horrible things.
Well, partisanship is a reality one has to deal with if one wants to effect policy change. Yeah, it would be great if everyone lived in a totally enlightened world where every political disagreement reaches a peaceable resolution without any rhetoric or taking of sides, but as a moderator on an internet message board, i would think you’d know that’s not the world we live in.
i don’t think everything any republican ever argues for is a priori rejectable. However, after having considered certain issues for a long time, i do reject any number of things they commonly argue for. Of course as you point out neither side is right all the time, and sometimes they’re both wrong. So yeah, ive even been known to reject things people on the left argue for as well. i may not be above it all like some, and i may agree with one side more often than the other, but contrary to the implication, i can think for myself.
Most conservatives aren’t wealthy, as far as I’m aware (although they may, on average, have a higher income than non-conservatives, but I have no idea about the statistics on that way, it’s just a possibility). So, when you’re having a conversation with a conservative, and he supports policy X, and you do your little connect-the-dots thing that this article suggests and realize, HEY, THAT CAN POSSIBLY HELP CORPORATIONS, first step is to realize (a) you’re not talking to a corporation, you’re talking to a human, and (b) [where applicable, which is usually] this person doesn’t personally benefit from making corporations richer.
Which means that he must be arguing for that policy either (a) because he just really loves corporations and wants policies to benefit them, even if it doesn’t benefit him, or (b) he believes policy X is a good policy for some reason entirely separate from what you perceive as the corporate benefits. If you imagine your opponent as this extremely abnormal, non-human, barely sentient entity, then ignore the possibility of b.
On the other hand, if you want to have an intellectually honest conversation, try to figure out exactly why he believes policy X is a good policy.
Don’t worry about your conspiracy theory about conservativism. Just talk to the human in front of you.
Corporations are people, thanks to the funding of the citizens united fight by a small minority of right wing interests.
Since that actually happened, is it still a conspiracy?
There’s no way you can shove me in the hole that gobbo and staid are in. I’m just not actually thinking that way. So, again…do you think that it’s ethical to fund a bunch of scientists, present them as though they are independent of one another to the public, then have them corroborate each other’s conclusions? Because this is what the Koch funded think tanks do my friend. I’m not giving you conspiracy talk. I’m telling you a fact. The tea party are the lemmings. They’re just following along because they like the slogans and are flattered by the marketing campaign.
I don’t know what you’re on about anymore. I’m not talking about siatd, gobbo, or the koch brothers. I’m talking about having a potentially productive conversation with a conservative. It won’t happen as long as you come up with your own reasons for why they believe what they believe. It might happen once you’re willing to listen to their reasons. Until then, you’re just losing. You might feel like you’re winning, because you’re able to come up with witty remarks to anything republicans say that may shut them up fairly efficiently, but that’s fake winning.
So learn how to talk to the human in front of you, or learn how to dig yourself deeper into your quicksand pit.
So no real defense? Why not give us a list of reasons that you support right wing policy so that we don’t have to guess? Wouldn’t that be easier?
Lemme know if I’m pissing you off, I know you green-names have that iron fist, and I haven’t talked to you enough to know if you’re gonna go all sensitive on me. I’ll stop for real if you want but I mean you could just as easily put fourth a description of how you justify so many things without reference to the consequences that accompany every single one of them.