Black Lives Matter plan to 'completely dismantle' society

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Something Wicked This Way Comes
by Ray Bradbury (c1962)

Crystal water turns to dark
 Where ere it's presence leaves it's mark
And boiling currents pound like drums
 When something wicked this way comes...

A presence dark invades the fair
 And gives the horses ample scare
Chaos rains and panic fills the air
 When something wicked this way comes...

Ill winds mark it's fearsome flight,
 And autumn branches creak with fright.
The landscape turns to ashen crumbs,
 When something wicked this way comes...

Flowers bloom as black as night
 Removing color from your sight
Nightmarish vines block your way
 Thorns reach out to catch their prey

And by the pricking of your thumbs
 Realize that their poison numbs
From frightful blooms, rank odors seep
 Bats & beasties fly & creep

'Cross this evil land, ill winds blow
 Despite the darkness, mushrooms glow
All will rot & decompose
 For something wicked this way grows...

Unfortunately, neoliberal economists (AKA supply-side economics) have all kind of excuses why you cannot raise the minimum wage, the biggest myth is increasing cost (unless of course it is for the CEO, then the argument seems no longer to apply). But cost goes up all the time for overhead. Business just uses that as an excuse for labor. They know those at the bottom don't have a lot of choice and so exploit them.

There have been lots of minimum wage studies. The general consensus if you read a lot of them is that raising the minimum wage brings a net benefit to society. Most studies see a short term effect on young people. If you study the opposite condition were no minimum wage is used and is just left to the "market," then you just have an abusive system that sees wages fall and poverty increase (check the history of Chile).

Naturally, a society with poverty has increased cost because of that poverty. Neoliberal economists don't like to think about that as their theories cannot copy with that.

It's hard to sell your good in markets where you're no longer present so I think you overestimate the ability of businesses to just up and leave. They're already invested in their current location, are familiar with the local market and unless they view the changes as damaging the reaction you propose is unlikely. Maybe some real hard-line ideologues would move to make a point, but they're unlikely to have the impact you suggest.

How?

Yes there are some people here who express some rather un-empathic views, but are there proportionately more of them here than in the NT world?

Or are we just less siloed here? Perhaps WP is one of the few places where left-wingers and right-wingers actually talk to each other?

Seems to me there are plenty of right-wingers on mainstream social media too, but Facebook groups et al tend to be echo chambers, limited to just one part of the political spectrum.

At the moment things are pretty tense. The problem is lefties here on WP ask for reasons. The right answers with riddles and obfuscation to conceal their prejudices.

they only will talk honestly among themselves. the rest of us are outsiders, "us vs. them."

Here in the U.S.A. at least, not all POC live in cities.

Slavery was mostly a rural thing. After the Civil War, until the 1950's or so, most American black people still lived in the rural South. During the early-to-mid 20th century and especially during the 1950's and 1960's, the advent of farm mechanization resulted in a catastrophic loss of rural jobs, forcing more and more black people to move to cities, including northern cities. There are still plenty of rural black people, although the majority now live in urban areas.

Meanwhile, indigenous Americans are still mostly rural.

For detailed current statistics, see Racial and ethnic minorities made up about 22 percent of the rural population in 2018, compared to 43 percent in urban areas.

My point here had nothing to do with the quality of the conversation, but only with the mere fact that we are talking to each other at all. Recall that I was responding to:


I doubt that WP actually has a larger fraction of people with un-empathic views than can be found in society at large.

There's just more interaction between people with different views here than can be found in mainstream social media. Facebook groups et al notoriously tend to be echo chambers where even small deviations from the owner's opinions (whatever those might be) are unwelcome.

So, while there are probably more right-wingers here on WP than there are in whatever mainstream social media groups (if any) Jiheisho might also hang out in, this doesn't mean there are proportionately more right-wingers here on WP than there are in the world at large.

I think if you look at any social media site, there's plenty of dialogue between lefties and righties. But mostly arguing.



Given the most radical groups are on the right, there is a risk this is the case
https://theconversation.com/are-autisti ... ised-76726

^"Confession through projection"?

I've found that the more moderate members from both sides tend to have reasons behind their questions (whether or not those are correctly understood by their counterparts on the other side of the political spectrum is a different matter - the further from the centre either person is, the harder it seems it becomes for the respondant to correctly understand the question\questioner).

The real problems are the extemists at either end of the spectrum, as the greater the distance between them and those they are "judging"\"communicating with" on the other side, the harder it is for them to understand those people (minimal\no "common ground" between them). The further apart the people involved are, the greater the liklihood that those extremists would make baseless assumptions (and judgements) about those from the other side (and their beliefs\motivations\actions\reasoning) which support their own prejudices\biases towards them, rather than reflecting those people's true beliefs\motivations\actions\reasoning.

There's also a "Dunning-Kruger" type effect as well, as the more political "extreme" a person is, lacking common ground with their "adversaries" (and so having limited\no understanding of them\their beliefs\motivations), the more "confidently"\forcefuly they will tend to try and push their "knowledge"\"understanding" of that side, projecting beliefs\motivations onto those adversaries which do not match (or at the very least, severely distort) the other side's true beliefs\motivations. They are also more likely to push negative stereotypes of that "other side" - For example, the more likely a person is to make statements\claims indicating a belief that "the left are all communists", or "the right are all bigots", the greater the distance from the "centre" that person is likely to be (If a person is unable to find any "good" in the other side[1], the more "extremist" they are in their views), and so no value should be placed on their commentary regarding the "other side" as it would consist (almost?) entirely of bias\prejudice\personal desires, rather than facts.

[1] They don't need to agree with the other side's position - simply be able to recognise\explain it in a way that those from the other side would agree\recognise, and potentially how the aims\desires could be improved to achieve a stated result\find a compromise position with regards to their own side's position.

While such "dialogue" does exist on Facebook, Facebook users are much more likely to be aggregated in like-minded clusters and segregated from opposing views. (See, for example, Facebook, Twitter More Likely To Create Echo Chambers: Study.) And, where interaction between opposing views does occur on Facebook and Twitter, I'm not sure I would call it "dialogue" or even "arguing" -- more like dogpiling. No wonder most users seek to avoid it.

Reddit is less echo-chamber-y than Facebook and Twitter, according to the above-linked study, but even Reddit tends to be at least somewhat echo-chambery -- and less conducive to reasoned dialogue than an old-fashioned message board like WP. Here's an explanation of how this works on Reddit. Very different from the kind of dialogue that we have here on WP.


You've changed the subject from right vs. left to extreme vs. moderate.

The more extreme right wing views, e.g. neo-Nazism, are not allowed to be expressed here on WP. So any extreme right wingers here are presenting only a toned-down version of their views.

It's probably true that autistic people are more likely than NT's to be drawn to oddball subcultures of all sorts, including political extremism, but more often harmless oddball subcultures such as SF fandom.

Anyhow, it doesn't seem to me that there is a disproportionate number of right-wingers here on WP. Fox News has plenty of NT fans after all, at least here in the U.S.A.

Possibly an example of "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter", where the closer to the fringe people get, the more "forgiving" of those on their own side they become, and the more hostile to those on the "other side" they are: A person who shares views with another wouldn't consider them "radical", whereas they may consider the views of those they don't agree with as being "radical".



From what I've observed here, the majority of the "regular" posters in "news" and "PPR" appear to align with the "left" (ranging from near-centre to extreme), with considerably fewer from the right (again across a wide range)[1] - Given on most other sites people tend to join groups\associate with those who share the same views, to those who were towards the "extreme" end on the groups they participated in, the rest of the group would "feel" like it was from the "other side" of the political spectrum (Or they would tend to believe the "centre" for the group reflected the world outside the group), and so on this site, where members of all sections of the political spectrum have to interact in one location rather than being able to isolate themselves to only communicating with groups of people sharing their beliefs, the addition of members of "the other side" to those more moderate members on the same side as the observer, would appear to make the site look disproportionately made up of the "other side".

I have also noticed that the majority of "aggressive" posts\threads on the site tend to come from a selection of members on the left - Not neccesarily agressive in terms of "we should do XYZ to those on the other side", or "I did XYZ to a supporter of the other side", but more wishing harm on their "opponents" ("Someone should do XYZ to those people"), or during a short period of time last year, associating their "opponents" with (saying they members of) a particularly evil former political party based in europe, whilst at the same time in a different thread talking about how they saw nothing wrong with commiting physical violence against that same former political party (which, when combined - 'All on that side are members of "XYZ"', 'There's nothing wrong with commiting physical violence on members of "XYZ"' - could easily be interpreted as endorsing violence on those on the "other side").

This can also be seen in the difference between how members of each "side" treated the death of a prominent member of the "other side" in the past year (both of whom were seen as prominent\important to their own side, and disliked by members of the other) and the respect (or lack thereof) shown for those whose views\beliefs they may have disagreed with:
https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=390680
https://wrongplanet.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=394576

[1] Given I don't jump into many threads, It's possible my observations around the threads I do join into\"lurk" in don't match the "news"\"PPR" when the threads I don't look at are factored in. I'm also categorising "left" and "right" based on the political situation in the USA (as closely as I can) due to most discussions (and members) being located around topics there, rather than some arbitrary scale where the centre for the USA is considered to be skewed in a given direction.

The reality is that political and social policy in western democracies is largely centrist and very slightly to the right in the United States (particularly with guns and race) whereas in Scandanavia, Australia, Canada and NZ due to subsidised health care, minimum wages, free education, climate action and anti-vilification laws we are very slightly to the left of centre.

The war on the left is therefore much more vociferous in the US where the right holds sway.

My views (and probably most of the lefties here) aren't that extreme because I'm not a card carrying communist or openly socialist for that matter. However I align with policies that are more left-leaning.

The people you label as "extremists" either on the right or left on WP can be collectively counted on one hand. Your labelling is misdirected.

I've observed on WP most Autistic people tend to be fixed in their views and less likely to be flexible. But then the percentage who post on politics here is probably not representative of all members so I should reserve judgement.

Would hoping for the death of MAGAs be counted as extreme, or negated because you're not a card carrying communist? Because you said that today on another thread... and Admin didn't ask you to take it down.

Taking some fantasy "central" position, and using it to judge political situations may have its use when comparing individual countries, but is meaningless\a distraction when discussing internal politics within those countries themselves (there is a hint of autoritarianism behind the suggestion that all countires should be internally aligned\judged around that fantasy "central" position, as it indicates a potential for the belief that individual countries should have some form of force applied to them\their citizens in order to conform with this fantasy position, rather than be allowed to come to their own "central" position which may differ from that fantasy global "centre").

The policies within a country (from either side) are based around an individual country's citizens and designed to appeal to their own side, whilst either trying to get acceptance of those on the other side closer to the middle, or at the least not cause them to turn against the policies, in order to gain support for them. A "War on the left" (or "war on the right") is the result of those on one side pushing too many policies which alienate the moderates on the oposing side (or pushing too hard in a given area), causing the entire other end of the spectrum to remove support for those propsing the policies, as well as the members of their own side who are situated closer to the centre deciding to take a "neutral" position (or turn against it), rather than providing support... Consider politics like a pendulum - the further the political situation moves in one direction, the smaller the distance (amount of support) it has between itself and the "extreme" in that direction, whilst there is much more between the "centre" and the opposite extreme seeking to pull it back (war on the other side) toward the "neutral" state (which it will almost certainly overshoot, perpetuating the swings back and forth).

In this way, your sugestion that the political\social situation in the USA is to the right would indicate that a "war on the right" would be more likely, given the country alternates between "left" and "right", so as it moves "right", a larger portion of the country would therefore be to the "left" of this, and so likely to initiate a "war" to reclaim\"re-centre" the political situation.

Of course, there is also the contribution of a person's political views - the further "right" (or "left") they are, the further the "centre" moves from them, and so the more likely they are to see moderate policies from their own side as instead belonging to\representing the other side instead, as a result of their distorted view of the political situation.



There's no need to be a "card carrying" member of anything to be at the "extremist" end of a scale (nor did I suggest this).

Politics in any country covers a range of views from "left" to "right". A country will have it's own "centre" position around which moderate people of both sides will congregate.The further a person's views move from this "centre", the more "extreme" their views become, and the less they are likely to approve of (or associate with) those holding opposing views.

A moderate person would have little problem with those from the other side, being happy to have a discussion with them, and showing no\minimal hostility towards them. They would also recognise that their own side isn't always right, and not take offence at others highlighting areas to which they did not agree.

At the extreme end, however, you have people who reflexively attack\denigrate those from the other side, rather than seeking to find common ground with them (frequently referring to all those on the other side in collective, derogatory terms such as "communists", "Socialists", "Nazis", "MAGA's", etc.) - These are the "extremists" I was referring to, who hold a "my side, right or wrong" mentality. A person making comments that suggest a desire for harm (or worse, death) to come to those from the other side (merely for the act of belonging to that other side, or holding different\opposing political opinions\beliefs) would be considered as being toward the very extreme end of their particular end of the political spectrum, for example, regardless of their personal policy position (or "card carrying" status).