I could see myself 25 years ago making such a statement in completely good faith, trying to see both sides and all that. But I was naive to think that both sides were also arguing in good faith.

But to be fair, that naive messenger would still be repeating an argument that originated in bad faith.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Heck I still find myself thinking this on a subconscious level. I can't let go of the sense that we should be able to discuss things in good faith and make change through civil discourse.

I have to remind myself that history does not support my blind faith in the goodness of humanity like this.

Even people who have less than two seconds ago proven they are arguing in bad faith, my gut reaction is to give them another chance to come to the discussion properly.

It's like pathological naivety, and yes, it's just as harmful as the original bad faith argument when all it's doing is echoing the bad faith argument.

I have been booted from many communities for asking what I thought was a genuine question. And at first been left wondering why a community would ban someone for asking questions and trying to learn. I've experienced this my entire life and only recently began to understand that it's not some personal slight against my curiosity and ignorance. It's a necessary safety measure for that community.

I'm just an idiot, questioning an asshole, but from everyone else's perspective there's two dumb assholes over here.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 2 months ago (2 children)

That s my issue with Lemmy. Why do we stick so hard to "the left" when we see daily reminders that "the left" has plenty of bad faith actors as well? Just look around on lemmy.ml or better yet hexbear.net

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Well... Short answer talking about "the left" and "the right" is effectively doing something called "constructing a public". These are are not just political constructs, they are political constructs that do certain things. Neither of these constructs have hard boundaries and throughout time they shift.

But there is a distinct difference. When you look at the right, while the presentation changes they have a fairly straightforward citable group of guiding philosophy traceable through a small handful of writing. If you read Thomas Malthus and Edmond Burke they will sound like slightly more archaic versions of modern pundits on the right. When you listen to the modern pundits you will notice that they are very repetitive and what differentiates one from another is more or less just presentation style. That repetition of talking points changes it's arguements but never it's foundation. Since it's mostly in service of protecting a status quo where hereditary privilege is upheld it doesn't have to get complicated. It just has to justify the world as it has been and that humans are sneaky, fundamentally flawed and morally defunct but that by structuring society as a winnowing process where playing the game the rightful and just few will rise to the top.

But when you look at "the left" it's not an easy gradient, it's a loose scattering of little clusters of very different ideologies and guiding philosophies. Since it largely works of a guiding concept of dissolution of established aggregated personal fortunes and radical anti-supremacist framework of various forms it's not uniform. There's anti-colonialism, anti-racism, anti-monopolist, anti-capitalist, anti-discriminatory, pro-neurodiversity, expanded personal rights, pro public service, pro democratic and anti democratic groups, pro freedom of movement, anarchists, and acedemic political theorists each with individual theories about how to bring about a state of all these things when none of this has in living memory existed. It's not generally trying to defend a status quo but trying to feild test different ways of doing things... So basically everybody and their dog has a slightly different opinion of what is a good idea.

It's kind of hard to see " bad faith actors" as it were because any two leftists might have almost no ideological overlap as far as praxis. They might not see each other as being part of the same tribe even if outsiders looking in would classify them as "left" and they might all claim to be "left" themselves... It's not that it's contradictory, it's that the branching paths of divergent evolving philosophies have rambled off in a whole bunch of different directions and effectively become whole other creatures entirely.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

It's almost like it's a multi dimension spectrum with axis like left<>right, conservatist<>progressive, liberalism<>socialism and more... but simply "the left" and "the right" are popular (but problematic) terms that everyone recognises but everyone has their own interpretation of. However, if you want to be more accurate in you political discussions, you'll have to write full page monologues and that is often not the way of the Internet. It will more often fall on deaf ears than not. And therefor the louder voices with the simpler terms get a bigger audience and reach eventhough the things they are saying might not be as good.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

That is actually one of the major issues at play. One of the kind of predatory things about right wing politics is it plays into a fallacy that the truth is simple, easily recognizable and can be rendered down into axioms a child can understand. Anything that doesn't fall under these parameters cannot be the truth.

But science moved away from big axiomatic stuff like 50 years ago. It became the study of variation and nuance.

The left attempts to have a aspects of this simple explanation stuff in sections by adopting almost slogan-like things - take "Trans women are women" as an example. That easily digestible slogan sits on top of a whole bunch of consequentialist based philosophy, psychological research with a focus on harm reduction, a history of uphill public advocacy to just put trans issues on the radar and being trans itself isn't easy to explain. It is simple and quippy - but not axiomatic. So a lot of people on the right tear into it as a target because the optics of defending a short quippy but nuance laden argument in slogan form while keeping it short and easily digestible is basically impossible.

This issue is throughout progressive political thought. Any short form word we use to describe practically anything has a whole swack of addendums, hidden complications, edge cases and multiple historical definitions. If you use very technical language you can be more specific but then you can easily talk over the heads of your audience.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Because “the left” is a set of principles not a group of people?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Same can be said for "the right", so I'm missing the point.