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  1. Forum:General Discussion

    Thread:TRUMP TEARS THREAD

    Thread Author:oops_ur_dead

    Post Author:yzb25

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    ►►Re: TRUMP TEARS THREAD◄◄

    Quote Originally Posted by oops_ur_dead View Post
    What a touching end to a contentious thread.

    Let's turn this tears thread into a tears of friendship and happiness thread instead.
    <3

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  2. Forum:General Discussion

    Thread:TRUMP TEARS THREAD

    Thread Author:oops_ur_dead

    Post Author:yzb25

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    95,013

    ►►Re: TRUMP TEARS THREAD◄◄

    Quote Originally Posted by Stealthbomber16 View Post
    It's interesting because it's a way for me to talk to someone who I normally would never associate myself with, and there's no strings attached. Either one of us can leave at any time with no consequence.

    It's a way for me to see a completely different political mindset and I can choose to adapt or adopt the things that I like and I can just laugh at the ones I don't.

    He's made a couple of interesting arguments before, and he's making me do my research. If nothing else, I'm educating myself and that's never a bad thing.
    I feel exactly the same way
  3. Forum:General Discussion

    Thread:TRUMP TEARS THREAD

    Thread Author:oops_ur_dead

    Post Author:yzb25

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    ►►Re: TRUMP TEARS THREAD◄◄

    I don't know, 60 years is pretty good for a soft authoritarian regime not to collapse into a hardcore authoritarian regime. It's bleak, but most democracies collapse sometime before 50. Western Europe and the US are exceptions not the rule and even Western Europe's democracies have come within a hair's width of collapse multiple times in the last 100 years. I'd of course argue that there are economic factors driving that instability, but we really have no place to look down on them lol.
  4. Forum:General Discussion

    Thread:TRUMP TEARS THREAD

    Thread Author:oops_ur_dead

    Post Author:yzb25

    Replies
    193
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    95,013

    ►►Re: TRUMP TEARS THREAD◄◄

    Quote Originally Posted by rumox View Post
    With a hypothetical 'public' social media platform, what jurisdiction would it fall in?

    this is literally becoming the last free speech thread lol

    Quote Originally Posted by rumox View Post
    First law of mega government is:

    Magoroth is banned from talking politics. A handler will be with him 24/7 ensuring he doesn't partake. If discovered to have made another political thread, he is to be immediately shot into the sun.
    nvm, we're finally making progress.
  5. Forum:General Discussion

    Thread:TRUMP TEARS THREAD

    Thread Author:oops_ur_dead

    Post Author:yzb25

    Replies
    193
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    95,013

    ►►Re: TRUMP TEARS THREAD◄◄

    Spoiler : quotes :

    Quote Originally Posted by thedougler View Post
    You're damn right I would lump all of those countries in together, at least when it comes to free speeh. The UK and Canada may not have the same human rights abuses and oppressive regimes that prevail in Iran or North Korea. But when it comes to free speech we are not much better.

    The United States is just about the only country on earth with functionally absolute freedom of speech and expression. The president may not like it when Collin Kaepernick kneels during the national anthem. It is somewhat idiotic that someone would use the right to free speech guaranteed by their nation in order to disparage said nation. But ultimately neither the president nor anyone else in government can do jack shit about it, because the 1A very clearly protects free speech. Once you start adding too many politically motivated ifs ands or buts to your "free speech" protections in the way Canada, Germany, the UK, etc. do then you no longer have free speech. You have quasi-"""free""" speech with multiple asterisks and addendums.

    As to your second point, are you seriously arguing that hate speech laws are okay just because they are rarely enforced? That just seems like a "worst of both worlds" solution. People who want free speech will feel they are being oppressed just because the laws are in place, whereas totalitarians who want to limit what we can say will get mad because the thought police won't arrest that guy who said we need less immigrants.
    Quote Originally Posted by thedougler View Post
    I will agree on this point. Freedom of speech has at times been endangered in the United States. Before McCarthyism, you had the Alien and Sedition acts passed by the Federalists and supported by John Adams, the Comstock Laws, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Palmer Raids, etc.

    But these are the exceptions that prove the rule. And while you might argue that due to these exceptions free speech is a useless ideal to strive towards, I would argue the opposite. America needs a firm commitment to free speech more than ever. We are currently living through a second McCarthyism, only this time it is coming from the left. Right wing ideals are stifled and censored, or blamed on "Russian bots." Democrats in congress like AOC openly discuss creating blacklists of former Trump "collaborators and apologists." Tech giants and the legacy media blatantly tried to burry news stories about Hunter and Joe Biden's dealings in Ukraine. Now they are hiding all evidence of possible voter fraud without even doing their journalistic due diligence and investigating the claims themselves. The trends are not looking good for the last bastion of free speech on this earth.


    I don't normally get invested in arguments about definition. I just feel that, in this context, it's worth arguing about given how much power the phrase holds.

    It's interesting that you should bring up the term "human rights abuse", because I feel that is a phrase which has been made totally vapid and redundant over time, in exactly the same manner the phrase "violation of freedom of speech" is losing any sort of meaning. The issue is overreach - if you try to make your term include every minor infringement of human rights then, hey what do you know, suddenly almost every nation on earth has committed some violation of human rights in the last 20 years. in 2016, the UN human rights council passed a resolution declaring all citizens to have a right to internet access, declaring all of humanity to have been constantly oppressed up until the 1990s. Granted, it is true that authoritarian countries suppress internet and that should be acknowledged. However, this is the same human rights council that allowed Saudi Arabia to become Chair of the UNHRC Advisory Committee in 2015 (the panel that chooses people to write reports on violations). On what grounds was Saudi Arabia, one of the most perversely inhumane nations on earth, appointed to the position? Naturally, it was because all countries make human rights violations, and it's not our place to judge because we're not perfect either. It's a binary, after all. And if it's a binary, then we all get to be equal in our failure to live up to perfection. At this point, the term is solely a cudgel to beat countries you happen not to like this thursday morning.

    I don't mean to sound uncharitable, because you certainly don't think a failure to live up to an ideal renders all attempts futile. And I'm sure you can recognize when some countries are closer to the ideal than others. I'm just trying to illustrate how this way of defining terms has, is, and will be used to obfuscate the conversation by people acting in bad faith. While it is true that my attitude can and does open the door to notions of "quasi-free speech" and some of the impact of the term is lost, it is much better to bend and to retain something than to break and lose everything. Incrementalism is not very glamorous, but it is an important component of a healthy democracy.

    You can reply to the argument above if you like, but I probably wouldn't respond to that reply because I don't want to get too invested in an argument about the term, honestly.

    I resent the fact that many people on the left have started to rally for more authoritarianism or restrictions to free speech, particularly in the context of corporations firing people or in the context of social media sites using hard censorship like facebook taking down pages or softer censorship like when youtube fudges its algorithms to drown out dissenting voices. This will inevitably backfire when some of these lefties learn the hard way that these corporations don't like them very much either, and are merely using them and their ideals. This has already started to happen with anti-war pages getting taken down, for example. There is a gravitation on the left towards using authoritarianism to act as a shortcut to social progress, which should never be the case.

    In the short term, we can point out and criticize cases of it happening on the right or the left. But I think it's symptomatic of more systemic issues, such as the lack of accountability of these corporations and the media. When a company reaches a certain size, it should be subject to stricter labour laws and be unable to fire people for things like political views, ethnicity, sexuality etc. - such laws exist but are imperfect. "Major social media platforms" should be classified and subject to laws limiting their ability to "customize their algorithms for the user" and forced not to censor content aside from the obvious cases. Legacy media is awful and perhaps unsalvagable. It's not clear what the solution is there. Perhaps cooperative non-profit media organizations like the Associated Press should get more love and be encouraged, by stimulus packages or otherwise.

    The issue with America is that some people are so uneducated that conversations about freedom of speech become much harder. The country has a proud anti-intellectualist streak, too. We really shouldn't need to discuss whether people should be free to argue against evolution or for the flatness of the earth on prime-time TV. People should just know these things are wrong. An educated populate that can actually think is critical for a functional liberal democracy. It does not make sense to even talk about such a political system without a very well funded education system to back it up. That is a point that is often taken for granted.
  6. Forum:General Discussion

    Thread:TRUMP TEARS THREAD

    Thread Author:oops_ur_dead

    Post Author:yzb25

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    ►►Re: TRUMP TEARS THREAD◄◄

    Quote Originally Posted by yzb25 View Post
    You're also leaving out that free speech in the US has also historically been negotiable - like everywhere else it's a constant ongoing battle. During times of war or crisis or great fear, free speech has been tightly controlled in the USA, as it has everywhere else. I presume you've heard of Mccarthyism - when 1000s of people in academia, the media and politics were prosecuted in Kangaroo Courts or silently sternly warned for ALLEGED ties to socialism. That can hardly be regarded as the behaviour of a thriving bastion of free speech. I believe some limits on free speech were placed during the Patriot Act, but I may be confusing them with limits on the right to privacy.

    Furthermore, members of BDS, a Palestinian rights organization, is literally banned in several US states. They are not particularly violent, but I believe they are banned with the excuse of racism or anti-semitism. They've suppressed BDS activism in other ways I believe, but I don't want to say smth wrong. I can get back to you on that if you care.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...enied-entry-us
    This isn't to say the US doesn't have great freedom of speech. I'm merely making saying it has great free speech "with limitations" or "with caveats", much like Canada, the UK or Germany.
  7. Forum:General Discussion

    Thread:TRUMP TEARS THREAD

    Thread Author:oops_ur_dead

    Post Author:yzb25

    Replies
    193
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    95,013

    ►►Re: TRUMP TEARS THREAD◄◄

    You're also leaving out that free speech in the US has also historically been negotiable - like everywhere else it's a constant ongoing battle. During times of war or crisis or great fear, free speech has been tightly controlled in the USA, as it has everywhere else. I presume you've heard of Mccarthyism - when 1000s of people in academia, the media and politics were prosecuted in Kangaroo Courts or silently sternly warned for ALLEGED ties to socialism. That can hardly be regarded as the behaviour of a thriving bastion of free speech. I believe some limits on free speech were placed during the Patriot Act, but I may be confusing them with limits on the right to privacy.

    Furthermore, members of BDS, a Palestinian rights organization, are literally banned from entry to the US. They are not particularly violent, but I believe they are banned with the excuse of racism or anti-semitism. They've suppressed BDS activism in other ways I believe, but I don't want to say smth wrong. I can get back to you on that if you care.

    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...enied-entry-us
  8. Forum:General Discussion

    Thread:TRUMP TEARS THREAD

    Thread Author:oops_ur_dead

    Post Author:yzb25

    Replies
    193
    Views
    95,013

    ►►Re: TRUMP TEARS THREAD◄◄

    Quote Originally Posted by thedougler View Post
    Totally misread your comment and took it to mean that people are fired for NOT supporting Trump. My bad lol.

    And if you view free speech as a gradient then I guess you could say Europe (as well as the rest of the Anglosphere) has "less" free speech than the U.S. Personally, I view free speech as a binary. It either exists or it doesn't. As a Canadian if I, say, argue that gender dysphoria is a mental illness and that trans women are not real women (just a hypothetical, not saying that is my real view), then I could be put in jail. Saying something which was the common view of most of the population just a decade ago could now land you in jail. The laws aren't often enforced because they are ridiculous, but the fact that they exist at all is enough to stifle most people from saying what they really think and unwittingly committing a thoughtcrime.
    Viewing free speech as a binary is profoundly insane. You lump together Germany which has banned the drawing of swastika due to historical sensitivities with Iran which imprisons people for legitimately protesting a theocratic state and then you lump both of these with North Korea - the apex of authoritarian censorship, where every microscopic piece of information is tightly controlled.

    I urge you to reconsider such a black and white view of the world. Imagine you're a developing democracy in North Africa or the Middle East and you're told you have absolutely no freedom of speech if you maintain some speech barriers due to religious baggage? You're telling them to throw any effort out the window and be like North Korea. You're telling the world stage to treat them as equivalent to North Korea, and destabilize their attempts at serious government as we would with North Korea, because their free speech is indistinguishable. On the other end of the spectrum, you're simultaneously undermining criticism of these same countries for their their free speech limits because, hey, not even Germany or the UK truly has freedom of speech, right? Criticizing them for not attaining such a lofty principal seems hardly fair.

    I fear you only take such a hardline stance to justify to yourself why you care so much about anti-trans laws in Canada that noone has actually been imprisoned for. If they're anything like the hate speech laws here in the UK, I know they're all bark and have absolutely no serious bite.
  9. Forum:General Discussion

    Thread:TRUMP TEARS THREAD

    Thread Author:oops_ur_dead

    Post Author:yzb25

    Replies
    193
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    ►►Re: TRUMP TEARS THREAD◄◄

    Quote Originally Posted by Helz View Post
    I never understood people being so emotional about an election or sports. I get that theres shared emotions tied to seeing 'your team' win or loose but when it causes some emotional breakdown and becomes the most important thing in your life I just don't understand. Maybe its a thing for people that don't have anything else in their life?

    Or more likely some people just crave drama.
    It's partially an American thing, if my understanding is correct. You guys have a really dramatic culture. You love bombastic movies and documentaries. It's interesting that you naturally draw a connection between elections and sporting events, because the rest of the world doesn't necessarily make that sort of connection. When I watch American news coverage of elections, it feels very reminiscent of a sporting event. There's also a really powerful sense of national identity, which doesn't always exist elsewhere, and much more investment in what happens to the country.
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