started thinking about it unironically in the shower, but then it all spiraled till I got this.
Throughout the whole history of humanity, most of the language and information were passed through personal one on one interactions. Where disagreement was personal. In the modern age of the internet. Both right and left, rich and poor, have destroyed that. To be a successful scientist before, you needed to learn how to transmit your ideas not only on paper, but also in a conference room filled with tens of people. Nowadays, modern scientists are struggling to even speak, as social anxiety induced by the social separation of the internet makes them publish any of their studies on online platforms. This involves costs not only for the scientists but for the society as a whole. As simply using a source of a science article that is published by a big name now makes you right and the other person wrong. I myself am still debated on this issue.
But what touches me the most is the political debate. Both right and left have sunk into the deep pit of awful, gut wrenching, poisonous and hazardous debates that do not impose a greater meaning than to gain a popular majority. People such as Vaush, Hasanabi and many others construct themselves on the basis of debating on the internet. Most awful detail being that their debate is mostly just critique of a video. While the right in what I’ve personally seen is just as awful, or in my opinion even more. They use nonsensical, straw-man and other logical fallacies filled arguments that do not impose or add anything to the greater picture. Even debates in real life are now a vomit-fest. Biggest example being the Trump and Biden debate. People didn’t even consider it as one and turned it into a joke. Real life debates are now filled with either animalistic screaming or the unacceptance of either one’s platform. It leads nowhere and the result of it is minimal at best. I’m afraid for the future of debates and what it might lead to. Debates are dead and we killed them, but what shall we kill next?
Please prove me wrong, I’m going to sleep with this horrible thought that I hate.
Well, here is the problem: the right wing has made it their platform to go after certain classes of people. I can debate you all day long about the economy or gun control or taxes. I should not have to debate you on my right to exist and thrive as a citizen.
And it’s not even so much the fiscally Right as it is the social ideas held by most of that side. I value personal rights, small, less involved government, and most of their other fiscal platforms. But they happened to be the side the got infiltrated by the Christian theocracy that calls for dehumanizing LGBTQ+, restricting abortion access, and calling out anyone not in their cult as demonic… it could have been any side economically, but when the put their roots down and started the ‘Christian conservative’ movement, they destroyed any possibility of more than to-party politics by turning it into the ‘party of basic human rights’ vs the ‘party of the Christian theocracy.’ I agree with classical liberalism. I agree with modern liberal social / human rights policy. I do not agree with the Democrat Party’s fiscal and economic policies. But you can’t dissent without being associated with the bigots and cultists (‘conservatives’) who took over the other side. For obvious moral reasons I’d have to vote Democrat. But I do not support their economic policies.
I totally understand that feeling. The lack of representation by the Republican Party due to social conservatism hurts everyone.
And then what sucks is that they’ll try to debate reasonable things after saying horrific dehumanizing shit. And you don’t want to engage them, since they are being dehumanizing, but then they’ll say they won because you won’t debate them on the normal stuff. It’s just so damn tiring.