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

Xaaron

Active member
Citizen
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

NovaSaber

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Xaaron said:
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.
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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".

Xaaron said:
She's not a Constitutional scholar with an informed opinion about states' rights vs. federal oversight.
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Whether her opinion is informed or not doesn't change what subject it was an opinion on.


Xaaron said:
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.
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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.

Xaaron said:
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".
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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.
 
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Xaaron

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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

Pocket

jumbled pile of person
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NovaSaber said:
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.
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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

NovaSaber

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

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


Xaaron said:
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.
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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

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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

NovaSaber

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

NovaSaber

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tribune.com.pk

Alleged leaked sex tape of streamer Destiny and Nick Fuentes surfaces online | The Express Tribune

Explicit video allegedly shows Destiny and Nick Fuentes in an intimate act, fueling rumors of their relationship.
tribune.com.pk tribune.com.pk

Steven Kenneth Bonnell II, known online as Destiny, is a 35-year-old live streamer and political commentator. He became one of the first full-time streamers in 2016 and is well-known for engaging in political debates, where he advocates for liberal and social democratic views.
Nick Fuentes, 26, is a far-right political pundit notorious for his extremist views, including white supremacy, misogyny, and antisemitism. His YouTube channel was permanently banned in 2020 for violating hate speech policies, and he has been labeled a neo-Nazi by several sources.
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One of these men is a lying grifter, and it's not the open Nazi.
 
Rhinox

Rhinox

too old for this
Citizen
I've been seeing a lot of videos talking about Destiny streaming and it's been pissing me off because it's not about the video game I love.
I don't know who this guy is but I still don't understand why I should care about any "controversy" around him.
 

Xaaron

Active member
Citizen
Remember when Fox News said, "Some of our programming is just the opinion of the one guy who's saying it, and it's not our fault if people mistake it for actual news"? Now imagine an entire generation of teens and 20-somethings whose political opinions are shaped by an ecosystem of commentators based around that idea.

Streaming platforms have leaned heavily into ongoing political commentary from talking heads like Destiny, Hasanabi, and others who, at best, aspire to Joe Rogan levels of competence. Basically, they watch a bunch of news clips and spend hours giving their opinion to audiences who fully internalize it without any bit of real journalism, the slightest fact checking, actual life experience, etc.

So, who is Destiny? Nobody. He has nothing important to say. Except that nearly one million people subscribed to his channel on YouTube to hear him say it.
 
Rhinox

Rhinox

too old for this
Citizen
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm just the old guy in the room. But I can't keep up with every internet personality, commentator, "influencer", and what have you.
This guy has a million followers? Cool, so does how many people nowadays?

Considering we're living in a post truth society, where honesty is punished and lying continually gets you the presidency, why does the lying of one of these influencers move the needle any? How does this controversy(?) matter at this particular point? Why should we give a damn, be outraged, or whatever emotion we're supposed to feel about this guy shacking up with a closeted gay whose an open nazi?
 
wonko the sane?

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
Laugh and get some popcorn my friend. Fuentes is about to drop from the rights highest circles, cause they do hate them some gay folks. As you stated, the truth of it doesn't matter, but the accusation of homosexuality is (should be.) enough to destroy his credibility with the cultists.
 
Ungnome

Ungnome

Grand Empress of the Empire of One Square Foot.
Citizen
Can't say I'm surprised. Looks like we have the first person Trump is gonna try to pardon(hopefully the charges are state level and no federal.)
 
wonko the sane?

wonko the sane?

You may test that assumption at your convinience.
Citizen
Huhn. Given how the cop reacted the first time I read the story: I figured he got away with it.
 
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