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BillBrasky Memorial Political Chat Thread

myDeaconmyhand said:
Appreciate you jumping in, please remind me what solutions I posted for this issue?
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Not sure what you mean by "this issue." So, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and let you pick an important problem and give us your proposed solution.

On a side note: Feel free to ignore my request. Your pissing contest with our very own sophist in residence is a lot more entertaining, and I did not mean to distract from that. Sorry.
 
Liquid Karma said:
It has to be exhausting going through life so perpetually angry. It's like an infinite set of windmills to tilt at.
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myDeaconmyhand said:
You understand that in your clumsy Don Quixote allusion, Quixote was imagining things? Do you believe that I am imagining the problems that I post about? To be more specific to the post you referred to, do you believe that the defense attorney I quoted was lying? Or do you just not consider the treatment of incarcerated pregnant women to be a “real” problem?
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While the allusion is deployed clumsily (do y'all not remember my rant about this idiom years ago? Stop using it) it's not necessarily as simple as accusing you of imagining things.

DQ sees giants instead of windmills because he's been so thoroughly indoctrinated into an ideology that that's all he *can* see. His idealism is explicitly political and a response to what he understands to be injustices in society. Seems apt.

But the book, especially part one, satirizes that very idealism. It's about someone believing so desperately that they're right and everybody else is wrong that they'll ignore or even perpetuate some of the very injustices they seek to eradicate
 
Slavoj should be giving credit where credit is due for these thoughts: Gramsci, the Frankfurt School, and most immediately to Marcuse.

The cure for your false consciousness is to adopt the ideology of the left. In other words, you must serve the left's ideology at any cost. That's the meaning of your life.
 
Political Chat Thread - All Topics & Rants Welcome

wakephan09 said:
While the allusion is deployed clumsily (do y'all not remember my rant about this idiom years ago? Stop using it) it's not necessarily as simple as accusing you of imagining things.

DQ sees giants instead of windmills because he's been so thoroughly indoctrinated into an ideology that that's all he *can* see. His idealism is explicitly political and a response to what he understands to be injustices in society. Seems apt.

But the book, especially part one, satirizes that very idealism. It's about someone believing so desperately that they're right and everybody else is wrong that they'll ignore or even perpetuate some of the very injustices they seek to eradicate
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I can’t comment on Cervantes interpretation of idealism/realism, but I always bristle at my POV being dismissed as idealistic because that implies I don’t “see the world as it truly is” whereas I believe I do see the world as it is and I am very dissatisfied with it. Perhaps it’s not fair of me to assume other people are satisfied, but that’s how I interpret their actions - as satisfied, or if not satisfied then resigned.

Honestly I disagree with entire idealism/realism dichotomy, I think it’s extremely reductive and condescending.
 
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myDeaconmyhand said:
I can’t comment on Cervantes interpretation of idealism/realism, but I always bristle at my POV being dismissed as idealistic because that implies I don’t “see the world as it truly is” whereas I believe I do see the world as it is and I am very dissatisfied with it. Perhaps it’s not fair of me to assume other people are satisfied, but that’s how I interpret their actions - as satisfied, or if not satisfied then resigned.

Honestly I disagree with entire idealism/realism dichotomy, I think it’s extremely reductive and condescending.
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I understand what you're saying about idealism vs. realism/pragmatism and point taken about why the implication is condescending that you're not seeing the world as it is. I also agree with what you've said in the first paragraph. It's an easy way for people satisfied with the status quo to ignore their own privileges and to justify not helping others.

When it comes to DQ, which is the part of this conversation I care about even if nobody else does: we're (ostensibly) talking about a piece of literature (and importantly fiction), so realism is about representation and not reality. I also didn't use that word or rely on the dichotomy because a piece of literature (esp. one as metafictional as DQ) is much more complex than that. It can't simply be idealism/realism because it's satire. But also pastiche. But also about reception and how the stories we tell ourselves sometimes become more real than what we see with our eyes.

Most dichotomies are reductive, but structuralists found that binaries in language and culture are fundamental to the way humans conceive of the world. That notion has been productively challenged (to say the least), but if you think about the language of "pre-" and "post-" and rich and poor and east and west and us and them we see that these are still central to our way of thinking. I don't think resisting these is a bad thing.

All that to say everyone should stop saying "tilting at windmills". Not least because it doesn't just mean "attacking an imaginary enemy". Better than the way we use "strawmen", I guess.
 
Can we still say “Don’t go chasing waterfalls?”
 
PhDeac said:
Can we still say “Don’t go chasing waterfalls?”
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Why couldn't you say that? I think I remember the TLC song being about street culture and drugs and money but I suppose it could be used more generally to describe an unrealistic dream? Idk
 
MDMH and PHD committed to a death match yet? Two undepheated records only one winner.
 
Political Chat Thread - All Topics & Rants Welcome

WFcatamount22 said:
Of all the races whites have to be the most miserable.
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There is a group of you who very often respond to my posts like that, questioning my happiness and I honestly don’t understand it. Just because I am outraged about politics on a board dedicated to politics doesn’t mean that I don’t live a happy full life elsewhere. Being a white cis het man with a college degree and no criminal record, like most of you here, I am privileged enough to compartmentalize most of the grievances I have with our society, besides you know the whole poverty and fat shaming stuff for obvious reasons. I might be the furthest left shit poster in a small group of wake grads, but that doesn’t mean I walk around in sack cloth and ashes. I put on my YB cashmere jogger pants 1 leg at time, same as the rest of you yuppie fucks.
 
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Yeah, but I think the point is that you spend a lot of time on this message board pissed off about stuff instead of enjoying you life in some other way. You’re not the only one, but you know you’re not affecting anything or changing anybody’s mind posting here.
 
Political Chat Thread - All Topics & Rants Welcome

BiffTannen said:
Yeah, but I think the point is that you spend a lot of time on this message board pissed off about stuff instead of enjoying you life in some other way. You’re not the only one, but you know you’re not affecting anything or changing anybody’s mind posting here.
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When you say I’m not “affecting anything” I disagree with you. I know there are a lot of things I have posted here: news articles, tweets, even my own experiences, that have informed people and broadened their awareness. Is there a point to you being so discouraging towards me? If you personally don’t think what I post on the boards is worthwhile, I respect your opinion, but you don’t speak for everyone. Personally I don’t think being snarky and uncaring all the time is a worthwhile addition to the politics board, but it’s a free country - we all participate in our own way.
 
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Tobacco Road said:
I’ve learned from mdmh and others on here. I appreciate the perspective.
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Same. Just because people argue with each other doesn't mean they can't learn from each other.

I find it interesting that so many people are stuck on this narrative that no one can change each other's mind when we have plenty of examples of people changing their minds and even political affiliation. There are quite a few former Republicans here. Of course, BSF went from card carrying socialist to Trumper.
 
myDeaconmyhand said:
When you say I’m not “affecting anything” I disagree with you. I know there are a lot of things I have posted here: news articles, tweets, even my own experiences, that have informed people and broadened their awareness. Is there a point to you being so discouraging towards me? If you personally don’t think what I post on the boards is worthwhile, I respect your opinion, but you don’t speak for everyone. Personally I don’t think being snarky and uncaring all the time is a worthwhile addition to the politics board, but it’s a free country - we all participate in our own way.
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I mean in the larger scheme of things. If you think an occasional incremental change in opinion of a handful of posters on a message board is a big deal, I'm not going to argue with you about it.
 
That sounds like a pretty big accomplishment for a single person speaking to randos he never met in person.

To Ph’s point, I learn more listening to people I disagree with. I never thought I could know so much about bird poop.
 
I certainly didn’t mean it as a resin Al attack against anyone. Just my perspective.
 
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