Please see Styx thread on the Registered Shipmates consultation for the main discussion forums - your views are important, continues until April 4th.
Purgatory : Where is the Ship going?
Robert Armin
Shipmate, Glory
On one of the Trump threads I posted this, and some folk felt it would do best as a separate thread:
It worries me that the Ship is becoming monochrome. We're overwhelmingly anti Trump, anti Johnson, anti Brexit, and the list could be extended. And, as the last few posts have demonstrated, many are quick to ridicule those who go against the stream. The Ship is meant to be about Christian UNrest. Are we in danger of losing that?
(I'd like to add that I think the Ship was more diverse politically in the past. The current status quo suits me fine, but I think it's dangerous to only talk to people who agree with you, pleasant though that is.)
It worries me that the Ship is becoming monochrome. We're overwhelmingly anti Trump, anti Johnson, anti Brexit, and the list could be extended. And, as the last few posts have demonstrated, many are quick to ridicule those who go against the stream. The Ship is meant to be about Christian UNrest. Are we in danger of losing that?
(I'd like to add that I think the Ship was more diverse politically in the past. The current status quo suits me fine, but I think it's dangerous to only talk to people who agree with you, pleasant though that is.)
Comments
You've hit the nail on the head. Personally I would like to see a Purgatory thread defending Trump's views, policies and practices, with the ground rule laid that any discussion, pro or con, must be serious and based on fact and may not denigrate simply for the sake of denigrating.
Now, that would be very hard to do since his views, policies and practices are not based on fact. Just saying.
Nor are his supporters--or at least the ones I interact with--are able to base any of their arguments on sound facts. As one of his supporters has been known to say, "There are facts and there are alternative facts." No, there are only facts. The interpretation of those facts may differ.
I don't worry that much about the Ship's anti-Trump sentiment, because that seems to be shared pretty much across the board by reasonable people. (I'm not particularly a fan of Brexit, or Boris Johnson, but I don't understand UK politics well enough to say the same necessarily applies.)
I do sometimes worry about the heat-to-light ratio in Purgatory, and the possibility that it may be turning away people with intelligent alternative viewpoints who decide it's just not worth the hassle.
It's a source of regret for me personally that we have lost some highly intelligent Catholic voices.
But so far as political opinions are concerned, I'm less concerned.
And I suspect I'm probably a minority among Canadians in thinking that Trump did nothing wrong in merely suggesting(without success) that 3M not export masks to Canada. Surely, in a time of national crisis, a government has the right to try and redirect resources as needed. (Whether Trump himself has the authority to do so is anothet matter, but issues of US federalism are not what most Canadians were whining about.)
And I'll also repeat what I've been saying since the election: the worst things about Trumpism are not down to Trump, but to the Republican policy book. No one who thought John McCain was a good man has much right to complain about what Trump is doing.
And I'm not interested in debating any of this here, just thought I'd enter it into the record since people were worried the Ship is an anti-Trump echo chamber.
I remember Ship of Fools during the Bush Administration, and the majority of posters were critical of GW Bush, there were maybe a few who supported him, but the difference may be is that most of the heated debates were over actual policy, bar the occasional jibe at Bush's intelligence, technically many could grudgingly admit that Dubya wasn't a terrible person, if however he was a terrible president.
With Donald Trump, it is much more personal because he really is a terrible person and a terrible president. And the energy I suspect in the opposition against him online on and on the streets stems from the fact that he is not held accountable at all by traditional means. Not even the American media is really that critical of Trump, if he complains about the treatment of the American media, he should wait for the liberal-to-left British ad European media who will chew him in shreds.
SofF may be engrossed by opposition to Trump in the same way that other forums are, but that's because we know the terrible effects of his policy and his personality and fear, that things will get much, much worse, especially if he wins a second term,
I think once you move off politics, there are plenty of substantive and very interesting discussions. I don't visit dead horses often, but I understand people are still actively debating those topics.
Trump has more stated policies than a weathervane has compass headings in a tornado.
I agree with the last paragraph. Intelligent people voted for Brexit and Johnson. I think they are wrong but I don't think they are indefensible.
I'm pretty sure they have continued to test and launch missiles.
The assumption that everybody who doesn't support such positions is stupid also bothers me, because it seems to breed intellectual arrogance which, apart from anything else, doesn't go down very well in the real world; it takes more than being right to make a difference.
Many of those with other views have not lasted long here, not necessarily because they are not intelligent but, ISTM, because they are not used to having their assumptions challenged and/or finding themselves among people who are as smart or smarter than they are, and regretfully they retreat rather than take up that challenge, which does the community as a whole a disservice. They are often more used to winning arguments by hubris or insult - the latter being one of the reasons I'm so keen to avoid the systematic use of derogatory names for politicians in Purgatory.
Really? Not quite sure what port and starboard mean here but, as a gay man, I find the Ship incredibly positive and affirming. My impression is that it is consistently anti racist as well.
My dilemma here is that I really like the Ship as it is. My views are those of the majority, so I feel very reassured here. My worry is that that may not always be a good thing. I need to be challenged at times, especially on a site devoted to unrest.
Which was immediately answered by @Arethosemyfeet thus
So we have the answer. Anyone who is conservative - even with a small 'C' - is automatically wrong. The personal vitriol directed at anyone who dares to see some good in any action of the current, or any previous, Conservative government, is horrible. Moreover, the blithe assertion that anyone who is less than enthusiastic about either the Labour Party or any of it's policies, is reminiscent of Orwell's 1984, as is the automatic denigration of Tony Blair.
To answer @Robert Armin's original question : IMO the Ship has already become politically monochrome.
The problem is that easily becomes recursive. No reasonable people support those things. How do you define a reasonable person? Well, it means someone who doesn't support those things of course.
Yes, me too. "Intellectual arrogance" is an apt way to put it, as if people believe that they're so Smart or Right that nobody of any intelligence whatsoever could possibly disagree with them, therefore anyone stating such disagreement is either lying, stupid or both and thus not to be treated with respect.
@Marvin the Martian off-Ship I was thinking of Didier Raoult, French champion of chloroquine who bears more than a passing resemblance to the druid in the Asterix comic books. The narrative virtually writes itself: the plucky, indomitable, non-traditional maverick holding out against the evil profiteering Roman Army Macron government, hailed early on as a Messiah and proof by all anti-Macronites of the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the government.
Raoult's research is looking increasingly discredited, but what struck me was that even if he had been right, his character, a blend of hubris and arrogance (plus a backdrop of allegations of harassment in former positions) made it virtually impossible for him to get a fair hearing - and even if he is wrong, his folk hero status is virtually assured.
We have in the past had a sizeable number of more conservative members (theological as well as political), but they were always in the minority and so were generally always having to work hard with their views being challenged more than less conservative members (it's quite obvious that if more people agree with what you've posted it's not going to be challenged as much), but also providing a challenge to the less conservative. In the last few years our active membership has significantly declined, I think in part because when we started online communities were centred around the sort of bulletin boards we have here but now social media provides a much broader range of options and the "community" aspect of the Ship is something that probably would work better with the short post + photo format of Facebook and Twitter than the text-only discussion format here. If all you want from your online experience is somewhere to post what you think without necessarily having to defend it then FB/Twitter would be more suitable than a forum like this, FB/Twitter aren't designed to allow extended discussion. I think that means we're self-selecting for those people who want to have extended discussion of ideas rather than a more hit-and-run style of posting, the question is has that self-selection also biased contributions to the less conservative? It would if the more conservative people tend to prefer hit-and-run posting or less conservative prefer longer in-depth discussion, but I'm not prepared to make such a generalisation.
I think Gramps was being sarcastic.
All nations are allowed to have a military, and I'm not versed enough in military matters to know if the recent missile tests count as as a step toward nuclearization. But I do wonder what the alternative to Trump's dovish approach would be.
And as I've said before, on peninsular issues, I tend to take my cues from the Korean centre-left, whose main political vehicle, the Democratic Party, support Trump's outreach. The only other options being put forward are from the Korean right, whose idea of getting tough with the North is to arrest more SOUTH Koreans for saying pro-North stuff. (Slight hyperbole, but really, things were no better under the conservatives than under the liberals.)
Removed duplicate quote. BroJames Purgatory Host
Port=Left
Starboard=Right
nautical terms The Ship is anti-racist, but when it comes to what black and brown people go through, the level of understanding is not as consistent. The Are you Woke thread as an example.
I did read it carefully and no, I don't. @TheOrganist used my post as an excuse to make ludicrous, sweeping generalisations and denounce people (by clear implication including me) as Orwellian. And this is a common tactic on the right. It's the same nonsense behind the alleged "free speech crisis" at universities.
My point being both the perception of what is the middle ground has moved quite a bit.
How are you defining "viable"?
Is that any different to the regular denunciations of anyone who dares to show support for the Republicans or Tories as fascist/racist/evil/stupid/etc.?
You mean the one that started because some Student Unions were literally banning the expression of certain points of view? Or does free speech not apply to opinions with which you disagree?
See, this is what I was talking about earlier on this thread. People go on about how there's no rational or viable or whatever argument to support Trump/Tories/Brexit/etc, but it turns out that's that's because they've already decided that any argument that supports those things is not rational or viable.
To put it another way, you're defining an argument's viability or rationality not by its own merits or even by the exercise of logic, but by whether it results in an answer you like or not. And because a lot of people here agree with you you get to pretend that that's a fair approach to debate.
It's the very definition of an echo chamber.
Anything else is merely Christian collaboration with a form of leadership that by no means can be described as God's will for his creation.
However. I am open to the idea that at some stage Johnson, Trump and their ilk will produce a stable of ideas, policies and examples which will reflect the light of Christ's work in the world; in which case Christian unrest could be said to be alive and kicking, in new ways.
In a state of quantum superposition. He's Schrödinger's dictator.
I've always been frustrated by implicit claims that all positions are always equally valid and equally deserving of public advocacy. This kind of thinking leads to the misleading "Shape of the Earth: Opinions Differ" style of journalism. In a recent example the New York Times tweeted out that Donald Trump advocated using household disinfectants to treat COVID-19, while some experts disagreed. They later deleted that tweet and posted a correction saying that there was no actual disagreement among experts that household disinfectants were potentially lethal if injected, ingested, or otherwise introduced into the human body.
Sometimes there actually is no controversy and one side is just wrong.
Student Unions don't have the legal authority to ban anything. What happened was that student unions decided not to offer a platform to transphobes and other bigots in places that are actually the homes of their students, a number of whom are trans (and this has been the case for decades; when I was at university it was in regard to the BNP). No-one's free speech is denied by not being offered a platform. My free speech isn't denied because I can't get the Daily Mail to print my articles. Free speech is a legal right that means you can't be subject to legal sanctions based on what you say (with a few exceptions). It doesn't require anyone to provide you with the opportunity to share your opinion with others, much less listen to you, nor does it protect you from private actions such as individuals choosing to boycott your books or your company and nor should it, as those are equally valid forms of free expression. Student Unions are in exactly the same position as owners of this website - in control of a platform and with the right to decide that some views are beyond the scope of civilised discourse.
@TheOrganist - most Christians are, at the core, conservative with a small c, when it comes to their beliefs. I don't have to cross my fingers when I say the Creed (any of them) and am a member of a lightly Charismatic Evangelical CofE congregation. As to the Conservative with a big C - you stand or fall on the strength of your argument. If you support a policy, then you have to explain why, and be prepared to take criticism. I come not to praise Caesar.
Given all these other restrictions colleges put on the free speech of their members, which as a voluntary association they're allowed to do, I don't think it's beyond the pale for them to say that calling someone a racial slur to their face is outside the code of conduct.