Quote:
Originally Posted by
Enoch the Red
This is not an imaginary conversation. This is actually happening, whether your choose to acknowledge it or not. Public figures are or have openly called for violence. It has become the story.
If you think you're speaking to public figures, I think I need to tell you something right now, so that you don't waste any more time: you're speaking to a non-public person on an internet forum, and I haven't called for violence against these kids. If you believe I have, then you're imagining things.
Quote:
The only reason we are talking about what turned out to be a tempest in a tea pot is because you and Loki brought it up, and the only reason you knew about it was because it was already a fire storm. In reality, it was a nothing story, blown way out of proportion, and the consequences for those involved are still unclear. For someone who is harping on context, you seem to pick and choose when it applies very selectively.
It's perfectly reasonable to disregard context if it can be determined to not be salient or alter the analysis substantially. I note that you've lost your shit over a "nothing story", to the point of making up nonsense and trying to pull me into an imaginary fight.
Quote:
As you have noted, you can form any bad opinion you want. What it gains you to jump to these conclusions without evidence I am not sure, but I suppose there is something to be said for smug righteous judgment, perceived moral superiority, and indignation. If there is evidence for a pervasive culture of bigotry, please provide it. What I have read from you are individual accounts, often times involving extra curricular activities, of students.
That is evidence supporting a pervasive culture of bigotry: a series of individual students' accounts of the treatment they were subjected to by other students, a series of accounts of the behaviour of Covington students during encounters with students from other schools, and the school's apparent failure to do anything about it, despite their much-vaunted ideals. I'm not particularly surprised someone like you would reflexively reach for a convenient "just a few bad apples" kind of argument; that's what makes you so useful to those who benefit from the protection of society's willful blindness. But that is beside the point; my reason for posting that link was to add nuance to Loki's assertion in the Trump thread about the behavior depicted in the video being an illustration of "Trump's America". My view was and still is that, though many of these people may have fully embraced Trump, their behavior predates Trump. They represent a contingent of conservatives that may always be drawn to Trump-like demagogues, so long as those demagogues have the right enemies and support the right kinds of bigotry.
Quote:
I am open to the possibility I have an incomplete picture of the school, (from what I have seen the black face claims seems flimsy, but is probably the most troubling). In fact, I know I do. I am not arguing is that the school is perfect, it's students and staff blameless, their motivations pure - all I am comfortable saying is that I don't know - and neither do you. I haven't interacted with anyone at the school, I am not privy to the inner workings of the school, I am not aware of the consequences and punishments that might or might not have been meted out for student behavior. Because there is so much that is unknown, what is gained by jumping the gun and painting everyone with the same brush? A fleeting feeling of disdain and the approval of your tribe? Do you somehow believe that guilt must be shared in order to make change?
You've spent the past few posts engaging in a classic display of tribal aggression, and you've repeatedly attempted to rope me into your imaginary tribal fight, so I suggest you do something about the beam in your own eye first.
Quote:
I am open to the possibility that my intellectual framework is deficient in identifying larger structural or institutional issues. It is not just possible, it is a certainty that there are systemic injustices that need to be addressed. What I am not comfortable with is claiming systemic injustice without proof. Perhaps my standard is too high - but what I think is more likely is yours is too low, or non existent.
I have my priors, and you have yours. The videos--and even the accounts of the culture of the school--don't really move the needle in any particular direction for either of us.
Quote:
Let me get this straight. Your argument is I should have known that you didn't perform even the most basic fact check of what you were saying, and then when I went back and showed you what it was that you were tacitly agreeing to support, that somehow it was my fault for not knowing that you couldn't be bothered to make sure you weren't making an idiot out of yourself.
No, my argument is that I hadn't seen OG post anything of that sort, and I was focused on the claim about the kids ending up surrounding Philips. Having been contradicted, you obviously felt the urge to move the goalposts so that you could find something--anything--to punish me for. Then you flipped out like a little baby and decided to continue making an idiot of yourself when I said that I disagreed with the account posted in the thread OG linked to, after reading it, because obviously that didn't satisfy your primitive tribal need to punish the enemy.
Quote:
Not only that, but by doing so I was claiming that you and OG were the same liberal hydra-person, and that I am delusional
That is certainly how you're acting.
Quote:
and have no concept of how time works - instead of the reality of simply taking what you had written at face value at the time you said it.
I said you're acting like you don't know how time works when you tried to continue berating me, accusing me of dishonesty and of endorsing a view that I disagreed with even after I'd offered my explanation and also expressed my disagreement with that person's account. This latest remark of yours makes me wonder, once again, whether or not you know how time works. Once you know something, it's really dumb to pretend to rewind the clock so that you can pretend you don't know.
Quote:
Luckily, as you have said prior, we have a record of what was actually written, and when.
Clearly not advantageous to your case.
Quote:
I understand that you seem to make a habit out of jumping to conclusions and not performing even rudimentary checks as to the veracity of what you are posting when it confirms your biases. That you think that somehow is a defense and a failing of mine illustrates just how little you care about accuracy. Best of all is attempting to gaslight the forum into accepting that you hadn't in fact said what you said - well, I suppose that's why I have no problem thinking you are not only not arguing in good faith, you are purposefully being dishonest. We know you aren't stupid Minx, quit pretending to be.
At this point, it's clear you yourself have lost track of what it is you're trying to argue. It is hilarious to see you pursuing this line of attack, by the way, given your own asinine defense of the analysis presented in the melodramatic fanfic video you posted.
Quote:
Absolutely, most of my statements are a sincere expression of my views, feelings, and thought processes. The ones where I make overbroad statements, while calling my opposition childish things like asshats and pieces of shit are simply (bad?) caricatures of what you have consistently written in these forums.
This may be difficult for you to understand, given that you perceive everything that happens here through your tribal lens, but snark and caricatures are both more effective when they're somewhat accurate. I generally don't make overbroad generalizations from N=1, except from the perspective of someone who is either extremely skilled at disregarding evidence, or extremely skilled at eliminating evidence by conflating it. Nor are any of my priors based on a single anecdote. In the context of an informal discussion, a large number accounts should be regarded as N > 1, or at least equal to however many accounts can be found or implied (ie. if one person's account describes several cases of a particular kind of behaviour). I frequently post links to stories about individual anecdotes that I consider to be illustrative, but if I post a hundred such anecdotes it's kinda dumb to then suggest that they amount to a single piece of evidence. Forests are made up of many trees; if I post ten thousand different photos of individual trees from different forests, that doesn't mean that there's no such thing as a forest.
Quote:
Again, you willfully choose mischaracterize both my argument and me. Even after the facts came out, OG was still saying that the students surrounded Philips and were getting up in his face. The news media reported the same thing. I am not privy to what you knew and when you knew it. I am privy to what was being reported at the time, and what was said here.
Yes, the students appear to have surrounded Philips, and gotten up in his face, shortly after he walked up to them. You keep trying to pretend you're agnostic while implicitly demanding we accept your subjective categorical interpretation of the facts, but we clearly disagree about what the facts are--and, in your case, what the facts are alleged to be.
Quote:
Being surrounded by students when you walk into their midst is not the same as being surrounded by students while minding your own business, or in the middle of a march. Students getting into your face is not the same as approaching them, squaring off with them, and beating a drum in their face.
Even in early reports it was clear from Philips's own words that he chose to intervene, for reasons he himself provided, and the mob-like behaviour of the students is apparent in all the videos. A mob doesn't stop being a mob just because you approach it. Their mockery isn't less distasteful because Philips walked up to them. More importantly, what Philips says he heard the students say doesn't become less distasteful because Philips made the decision to intervene. Some no doubt disbelieve him, but I currently have no compelling reason to not believe he heard what he says he heard.
Doesn't appear to dispute that he was basically surrounded by the kids.
Carelessly ambiguous reporting about exactly when it happened (claiming it happened during the march rather than shortly after the march had concluded) and about Philips's service record, but does not dispute the mockery.
Which they appear to have been. More importantly, the part about being surrounded formed part of a quote: HH stated that they were kind of, like, surrounded by the kids.
Quote:
Right - you have never once said that, "there was a Catholic boys' school--full of racist, homophobic and sexist bigots,"
Oh, I see what you're doing. You're taking "full of" to mean "100% filled, exclusively". That is certainly one way to interpret what I said, but, tell me, if I were to tell you you're full of shit, would you take that to mean that I believe you're a walking, talking, typing human-shaped bag full of nothing but feces? In informal conversations, saying that a Y is "full of" X is, more often than not, another way to say, "There are a lot of X:es in Y." Since you clearly have a problem with my phrasing, allow me to clarify my previous statement: there is a Catholic boys' school by the name of Covington High School, where there are a lot of racist, homophobic and sexist bigots.
Quote:
or for that matter that the entire country of Britain, made up of millions of individuals with all manner of different beliefs, are on aggregate assholes.
Even if one's position is that supporting Brexit makes a person an asshole, one must concede that 48% of UK voters did not support Brexit. Around half or more of the people in UK are deeply opposed to Brexit and disapprove of its consequences, especially for themselves personally but also for others. Unfortunately, a majority of active British voters ultimately did join forces with racists, xenophobes and other assholes, enabling these groups and giving them their tacit approval, while a plurality of voters ultimately persuaded a party (later, govt) to commit to xenophobic policies such as the hostile environment--which has had a tremendous human cost--and the promise to severely restrict immigration to just tens of thousands per year; and such a large portion of the British public favours jingoism, racism, and xenophobia that such things have become the bread and butter of the most successful members of the British press, and viable platforms for too many British politicians and pundits who now openly engage in the most despicable rhetoric. Just a few bad apples, no forest to see here.
Quote:
Nothing to see here folks. Minx would never make sweeping generalizations of large swaths of people in order to justify his frequent raging outbursts.
Again, what you said was:
Quote:
The unfortunate corollary to what appears to be your position is that people can be 100% guilty without evidence or reason. I would guess that boy was already guilty in your mind because he wore a red hat. He was guilty because he was protesting abortion. Sadly I suspect what he did or did not do, does not really matter to you. He is guilty because the mob said so.
If you can't keep up with your own remarks, I don't know how to help you.
