Conspiracy lunatic thread - people who believe in absurd nonsense are dangerous

[Xaaron]

I did not intend to justify, okay, or rationally explain her position at all. I'm sorry if it came across that way.

My intent was to articulate how distorted modern American thinking is on issues. This woman is approaching the topic from a completely foreign POV to how we're used to discussing the issue.

"Slavery should be legal as long as everyone's okay with it" is a repugnant and contradictory statement to us, because we think slavery is objectively wrong. This woman and people like her, though, have NO CONCEPT of something being objectively wrong. She sees the world purely through the lens of "As long as everyone involved consents, it's fine". This is a very prominent sub-culture, at least online, and it shows how broken our system has become.

 

[NovaSaber]

No, she said if everyone wants something, they should go ahead and have it. If they had gone a step further and asked "so if everyone in the nation wanted slavery, that should be okay too?", you don't think she'd triple-down?

This woman has no concept of what slavery is.

No, the context was defending abortion bans that actually happen in real life, so when she said "everyone wants" she only meant "a majority wants" (or even "the legislature wants"), not literally "everyone".

She's not a Constitutional scholar with an informed opinion about states' rights vs. federal oversight.

Whether her opinion is informed or not doesn't change what subject it was an opinion on.

My intent was to articulate how distorted modern American thinking is on issues. This woman is approaching the topic from a completely foreign POV to how we're used to discussing the issue.

Except that's the opposite of what you're saying. You're saying she has a good, normal concept of morality based on rights and consent, but somehow that led her to a position that doesn't give a jive about protecting people's rights at all.

It doesn't follow.
She's saying something that only the most extreme authoritarians (either racist fascists or religious extremists) ever do, and you're just baselessly claiming that it somehow comes from literally opposing beliefs that there's no sign of her even having.

This woman and people like her, though, have NO CONCEPT of something being objectively wrong. She sees the world purely through the lens of "As long as everyone involved consents, it's fine".

VIolating another person's rights, especially consent, is what makes something objectively wrong.

Anything that is consented to by literally every person involved is not objectively morally wrong. (Making it illegal can still be justified if it is dangerous.)

But that's definitionally impossible with slavery just like it is with rape.

And honestly, the only people I ever see complaining about people not having "objective morality" are the religious apologists who somehow fail to understand that "God says so" is a subjective reason and not an objective one.
You know, the same dipshits who defend Biblical slavery, and claim a God who made rules for slavery that weren't "never do it" isn't objectively evil.

 

[Xaaron]

Nowhere did I say she has a good, normal concept of morality. I very specifically said it was a distorted way of thinking. I even said she has no objective concept of right or wrong. I don't understand how people keep interpreting any of that as me defending her, in any way. The fact that I put effort into explaining her warped perspective is completely separate from excusing it.

Comprehending how people you disagree with reach their conclusions is essential to getting them to change those conclusions.

 

[Pocket]

And honestly, the only people I ever see complaining about people not having "objective morality" are the religious apologists who somehow fail to understand that "God says so" is a subjective reason and not an objective one.

Yeah, this feels very similar to the evangelical preachers who have so thoroughly encased themselves in a religious bubble that they're still going off what the Greatest Generation said about hippies in the dusty old books they read in seminary and believing it's not only an accurate reflection of modern social mores, but that it's somehow a new development.

I don't know nearly enough Kids These Days to generalize about what they're up to, but going off the blogs I've read about them, they're more into the exact opposite of what Xaaron was talking about—cultural policing from a narrow-minded viewpoint, and getting into huge arguments and trying to get each other "canceled" when insular groups with clashing viewpoints interact. Take the "puriteen" movement, for example, a form of gender- and orientation-neutral* sex negativity fueled by a backlash to the hypersexualization we grew up with and the idea that any public displays of sexuality are violating to any observers who didn't explicitly consent to seeing it.

* In theory. In practice, all orientations are equal, but asexuals are more equal than others.

 

[NovaSaber]

Nowhere did I say she has a good, normal concept of morality. I very specifically said it was a distorted way of thinking.

The view you ascribed to her was "She sees the world purely through the lens of "As long as everyone involved consents, it's fine""
Basically a variation of the same principle also expressed by the Wiccan Rede or the Golden Rule.
A good and normal moral principle, whether you called it one or not.

The fact that you called it "distorted" says more about you than about her; as does the fact that you claim it somehow leads to awful places.

I even said she has no objective concept of right or wrong.

But then contradicted that by saying she sees consent as an absolute, which is literally more objective than treating a list of more specific rules as absolutes.

I don't understand how people keep interpreting any of that as me defending her, in any way. The fact that I put effort into explaining her warped perspective is completely separate from excusing it.

Comprehending how people you disagree with reach their conclusions is essential to getting them to change those conclusions.

I didn't say you were excusing it, and no, you haven't been explaining it.
You've put the blame on a view which she hasn't been established to have, and then not even attempted to explain either of the following:
1. Why you made the assumption that she has that view at all.
2. How holding that view could actually lead to statements which so blatantly contradict it.

 

[Xaaron]

I am. literally. quoting her from the article. How have I NOT explained how I'm making the assumption that she holds a view when I am literally quoting her proclaiming that view?

It sounds like you're hung up on the idea that Slavery cannot be consented to, which is factually untrue. The institutionalized, generational enslavement of a particular racial group like the American South did fails any test for consent, true. But definitionally slavery is merely "the owning of another person as property." People can consent to that, and did, in Ancient Rome and other societies throughout history as a way to resolve outstanding debts. Archaic, yes, enlightened, no...but not comparable to rape, as you mentioned, which IS definitionally "without consent".

So when I quote her saying "As long as everyone involved consents, it's fine", that's me presuming slavery is something one could consent to. And when I call her view a distorted one, that's me rejecting the idea of slavery (even with consent) being resurrected even under the absurd hypo that "everyone agreed it's okay".

 

[NovaSaber]

You're not "literally" quoting her, and since how literally she meant "everyone" is a point of disagreement, I don't consider pointing that out to be nitpicking.

"As long as everyone involved consents, it's fine" is not a sentence that appears in the article or video.
(And frankly I didn't recognize it as a paraphrase because it's not close in meaning to what I think she meant by the superficially-similar phrase she used.)

The closest to that was saying

"I think if everyone in a state wants something, go ahead and have it."

about banning abortion, and

"Sure. If everyone in the state wants it, go ahead. What do I give a sh*t?"

about allowing slavery.

The context for the first was not some absurd hypothetical in which the "everyone" was literal. It was about the actual and likely results of Roe being overturned.

So I assume the "everyone" in the second was, obviously, equally far from from being literal.

 

[Xaaron]

Okay.