#sorry i had to rant about this its just. that man is an actual fascist and the reps favor him for president

[memecatwings]

idk if anyone has been paying attention but desantis fired hillsborough countys attourney general bc he made a statement saying he'd refuse to prosecute abortion cases except after he got fired tampas mayor made a statement saying she wouldnt direct the police to arrest violators of the state abortion law and just today the tampa city cousel passed a resolution to respect the privacy of people seeking abortions in the city. desantis is probably gonna try to fire the entire city government over this. this is both terrifying and exciting to watch

[dahniwitchoflight]

Homesquared Chapter 14 part b

Alright time for more reactions to Homesqaured- oh jeezus

the last one of these I did was from october last year, hoo boy alright brain time to get back on the time train things are happening fast

we last left off with me thinking they just fucking hilled Harry but I remembered the wrong house so Harrys fine, John not so much

Yeah, John sad but ooh Karkat shows up!

They seem to have a mutual conversation about lost youth and stuff, really makes these characters feel oold

“JOHN: jeez, i'm sorry karkat.

JOHN: i had no idea how much time had passed.

JOHN: i must have gotten a bit distracted by my house being blown up.“

Oh man, John thats a whole ass MOOD

lol at sburb allocated blow job

yeah Karkats right tho, John does kind of need a kick in the pants to see how he might have been useful here, but Johns still stuck in this rut of not seeing anything around him as Real real, so hes blind to all of the consequences of inaction

John its called derealization and depersonalization, you can get help for that yknow

But I mean, cant really blame him, hes being smothered by the fires of Doom all around him

Its interesting to see that Karkat, a Blood player, is more comfortable navigating through things that constrain them and tie them down, since constraint is something Blood and Doom have in common, Chains and Barriers and Laws and etc

Whereas John the Breath player, just gets bogged down, hes totally out of his element

so it ends up being like John: “Id like to cling to some funny moments of my youth pls and try to lighten the situation up a bit because I cant do anything when so heavy”

versus Karkat being like: “BUCKLE UP FUCK TITS THIS SHIT IS YOUR LIFE NOW GETS USED TO WADING KNEE DEEP IN THE SHIT LIKE THE REST OF US GROWN ASS ADULTS”

John: ):

Hmm, both Vriskas have been captured, but Annie basically rescued herself, knowing Vriska Prime she probably has a plan or an idea about that, see well see how that goes

“KARKAT: JANE'S PLAN FOR THIS CONFLICT HAS THUS FAR CONSISTED ALMOST ENTIRELY OF KIDNAPPING VARIOUS HIGH PROFILE CHILDREN.

KARKAT: IT'S BIZARRE.

KARKAT: AS THOUGH WE ARE FIGHTING A WAR OF ATTRITION, WHERE THE MAIN RESOURCE BEING UTILIZED IS THE OFFSPRING OF THE MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE ON THE PLANET.KARKAT: IF IT WASN'T ONE OF THE CORE TENETS OF HER FASCISTIC PHILOSOPHY, I'D BE TEMPTED TO SAY THAT CURBING REPRODUCTION MIGHT HAVE BEEN A GOOD IDEA, IF ONLY TO PREVENT THIS KIND OF FUCKSHIT NONSENSE FROM HAPPENING.

Oh. Well I guess that was Dirk’s “plans” for Jane all along. Obviously he was using Jane as a vehicle to gather “players” for his eventually next session, interesting

But who has Jane kidnapped in total thus far?

Does Tavros count? he was certainly trapped with her for some amount of his life, but I dont know if that counts as a kidnapping, John certainly tried to kidnap HIM though from the epilogues

Annie certainly counts as being kidnapped

Vrissy has JUST been captured so that counts, and Harry so far is still fine

Which bodes so well for Harry’s future Im sure

Yeah, Vriska should have been able to not outwit any capture attempts, but my guess is either Vrissy got capture and Vriska dove in, OR, Vriska’s doing an inside job so to speak and got caught on purpose, dragging Vrissy along as well

I guess we’ll see when we see their “prison”

Anyway John, don’t get so down on yourself, you’re just ignorant to everythiong around you! thats why nothing makes sense and you can’t connect to anything, easy fix! Just try to learn more and care more about stuff lol

Man does this feel like a strong metaphor between people who are into/care about politics and people who feel like they can’t get into it though

Crossing that hurdle from one side to the other is rough

“KARKAT: BUT NOTICING THE PROBLEM AND MAKING MEANINGFUL PROGRESS TOWARDS SOLVING IT ARE TWO COMPLETELY DIFFERENT THINGS.”

yup

man, this is all feeling startlingly relevant to the current times, I should have read this sooner

“ KARKAT: PLEASE DO NOT TELL ME YOU JUST HAD ANOTHER EMOTION THAT WE NEED TO DROP EVERYTHING IN ORDER TO DISSECT. “

hah, oh wow, Karkat when you phrase it like that, it’s almost as if you’ve become self aware of your tendencies to Moirail people out of their problems

Not really that out of character for a Blood player to end up being the Therapy Friend though lol

Just don’t burn yourself out on that though

JOHN: karkat, we still haven't spoken about *you*!

KARKAT: ABOUT ME?

JOHN: yes.

KARKAT: ABOUT *ME*?

JOHN: about you.

KARKAT: WHAT THE FUCK ABOUT ME.

JOHN: well...

JOHN: you know, how you feel!

KARKAT: HOW I FEEL.

I know Karkat has probably matured past misunderstandings like this now given he’s really come into a great understanding of his Blood aspect, but by golly do I wish Karkat would misunderstand this as John’s attempts to be Moirail-reciprocal sdkjfhwlijebr

What a perfect way to continue their relationship, on top of more misconstrued romance quadrants XD

Spades is old Hat, Diamonds are in now babey

Oh

this started out funny, but Karkat’s emotional rant just ended up being depressing not funny ):

I have to say though, it is REALLY interesting to see John’s depression manifesting in a very breathy sort of way

Karkat in these panels was more closer together, connected, but as John gets more and more depressed over the course of Karkat’s rant when he realizes Karkat doesn’t know dave died, the panels get seperated by lines of blue, and slowly drift off away from John and from eachother

but thats basically been hows its been manifesting all along

the more John feels Disconnected and Seperate from the reality he finds himself in, the more he finds his will untethered, the more depressed and unable to act he gets

and right now its so much so that even a fuller fledged Blood player is having trouble grounding him back down

I don’t know, I always viewed the depression metaphor as a dark watery void to sink into and feels heavy and encapsulating (but probably thats just my Light-y interpretation of it)

so its interesting to see the depression metaphor as this floating disconnection instead, so much that it leans towards derelaization/depersonalistion/dissociation as well

I wonder if John will start dealing with bouts of actual full blown dissociation as this gets worse?

I mean, Breath aspect has given the literal ability to ghost around wherever he pleases in all other ways, why not literally and physcologically as well?

So John seems to be fully overembracing his aspect here, to a very unhealthy degree here, which I see you asking “aha Dahni, but hes doesn’t have overblown self esteem here, quite the opposite, is this not an inverted state instead? or something else because hes acting like hes inverting to Breath?”

and I say not so! reader, for overembracing is the idea that through your aspect, your will is overwriting the wills of others, and in someone like Vriska, this manifests in a very selfish and over self esteemed way

but is not John’s will overwriting Karkat’s here? Through Breath? And isnt John also being a little selfish here? Considering how he feels about things, more important than how anyone else feels? How Karkat feels?

John is too dissociated to understand that this reality is Real and has Consequences he needs to care about, and Karkat is trying to fight against that, trying to instill his belief that no, this shit is real and it Matters Why Don’t You Care, trying to ground him, trying to give him that dose of Blood he needs

but John’s overembracing Breath is just, blowing that all away, its becoming too strong

Roxy in the epilogues dealt with this as well, when John was really in the shits with it and started to believe Roxy’s whole personality was somehow fake and his own construction, because he convinced himself Roxy would never choose to do the things she did, but Roxy was able to snap him out of it and make him understand and respect it was her own choices that led down his path, not the idea that John’s choices are somehow overriding everyones

But man, John sure is riding that Breath train way too hard, and he keeps snapping back into it as well

Further and Further

[thefabulousfulcrum]

You Are Not a Rebel

via The Baffler

by Laurie Penny

IN REAL LIFE, nobody has the decency to realize that they’re the bad guy until it’s too late. The worst thing about the historical record is that it is usually written after the fact. Just think, if we could only get our hands on advance copies of tomorrow’s historical bestsellers, we could work out once and for all how we fit into this cruel and anxious age we’re living through, and get a sneak peek at the ending to see who ends up dead, decked out with medals, or living incognito in South America. Sadly, that would hardly help those of us who are most dangerously confused. The people who most urgently need to consider which side of the moral ledger their story will be written on tend to read few books in which they are not the hero.

It’s hard realizing that you’re the bad guy, because then you have to do something about it. That’s why the most aggressive players on the gory stage of political melodrama act in such bad faith, hanging on to their own sense of persecution, mouthing the plagiarized playbook of an oppression they don’t comprehend because they don’t care to. These people have a way of fumbling through their self-set roles till the bloody final act, but if we can flip the script, we might yet stop the show.

Let us remember, then, that in the violent psychodrama going on in their own minds, modern reactionaries, almost to a man, think that they are the hero. They think they’re the plucky underdog. They continue to think this even with their tiny-fingered mascot bellowing over the White House lawns and their agenda ascendant around the world, and I know, I know it makes no sense. But dogma doesn’t have to. And one of the articles of faith uniting all our modern proto-fascists, crypto-fascists, baby-fascists, whining 4chan fascists, and the growing number of fascists for whom any sort of prefix is redundant is that they all think they are rebels. 

The new far right has recognized the enduring appeal of adventurism and appropriated its rhetoric for reactionary ends.  Propaganda hubs like The Rebel repackage far right ideas as edgy and avant-garde, reassuring recruits that they are hip outsiders in a mass of squares and normies. This is a time-worn trick. As George Orwell observed in a review of Mein Kampf, “whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people ‘I offer you a good time,’ Hitler has said to them ‘I offer you struggle, danger, and death,’ and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.” 

This is what happens when we fetishize the romance of rebellion while making actual social change impossible.

Fighting for people who are less privileged than you to become even less privileged than you is hardly a revolutionary mission. CEOs do it all the time. Last year I was interviewed for a Vicedocumentary about the relationship between Gamergate and the new far right. I remember that to get the shot at the right level, I had to half-sit and half-stand on a fancy sideboard. While I was engaging my core muscles trying to balance, the affable hipster doing the interview asked, “But aren’t the guys a bit underground? Aren’t they a bit counter-culture?” I was so flabbergasted that I fell off my perch. Yes, I told him, they are underground, a bit. But even Vice magazine, which is woke enough as long as woke sells ads—another Viceeditor told me authoritatively a few years ago that “it’s not cool to be stupid anymore”—even they can surely see that simply being “underground” does not make something fit to dredge up. A lot of things run underground that would be better off staying there. Sewers, for instance.

This is what happens when we equate “anti-social” with “anti-establishment.” The far right think they’re the resistance. They think they’re Mel Gibson in Braveheart, when they’re actually just regular old Mel Gibson, screaming about bitches and whores and Jews and then wondering why no one answers their phone calls anymore. Well played, Rob Roy. 

The Shitler Youth come in many flavors of plausible deniability, but none are quite so woefully iconic as everyone’s favorite ship of fools: the fake pirates of Defend Europe. 

In case you hadn’t heard, a few months ago some white supremacists decided that the rescue boats trying to save desperate people from drowning in the Mediterranean were a threat to “European” way of life. (I will not dignify them with the term “activists,” because activists have meetings and have read things that aren’t spittle-flecked sexually paranoid internet retro-rants about white people being bred out of existence.) They decided to solve the problem by pursuing a merry life of adventure on the high seas. No, really. These rudderless twits went ahead and chartered a boat, with the initial, unabashedly evil intention of impeding the rescue ships, a plan which was quickly changed to “monitoring” said ships, as apparently nobody had any idea how to do actual sea battle, because whatever the copyright people told us, downloading a lot of free porn does not, by itself, make you a pirate.

They got a lot of press, of course, which was part of the idea—there’s no point being a rebel if you can’t get your picture in the paper. They even got Katie Hopkins, Britain’s own dollar-store Eva Braun, to come along for part of the ride, presumably as some sort of totem against shipwreck, because any self-respecting god of the ocean would spit Hopkins right back out again. Deliciously, before they had even managed to embark on their main voyage, they accidentally smuggled twenty-one Sri Lankan asylum seekers into Europe. Then their boat stalled in the middle of the Mediterranean sea. The founder of the Sea-Eye, the NGO ship that was sent to offer aid—the pouting stalwarts refused help—told the public that “to help a ship in distress is the duty of anyone who is at sea, without distinction to their origin, color, religion, or beliefs.” Hopefully the Sea-Eye was also stocked with burn cream.[*] 

The very worst part about this entire episode is that an actual rescue ship was diverted to help these cretins, a rescue ship that could have been saving people who are really fleeing for their lives, rather than simply fleeing reality. I’m not going to permit myself to wish the baby-fascists had fucking drowned, but I do hope the stalled vessel gave these quisling Quixotes time to check out their own reflection in the surface of the sea and wonder whether being “underground” was quite so much fun anymore. I also hope that when they make the movie of this, every single one of them is played by Nicolas Cage in a variety of unconvincing wigs.

Claiming that anti-fascists are morally equivalent to fascists is a little like claiming that, as both take a toll on the body, cancer and chemotherapy are basically the same.

In the United States, radicalized extremists on the far right are also due for a rebrand, having been embarrassed on the international stage in Charlottesville by fellow travelers who took the street-fighting-Nazi live-action roleplay too far, marched around screaming about being replaced by Jews, and murdered someone. The Shitler Youth are now going through desperate conniptions trying to claim that anti-fascists are morally equivalent to fascists, that “all sides” are aggressive and forthright, which is a little like claiming that, as both take a toll on the body, cancer and chemotherapy are basically the same.

Shit got real, eh? One minute you’re a nice normal boy with hobbies and internet friends, and the next, your picture’s all over the place holding a torch and doing the Nuremberg uglyface and your parents won’t talk to you because everyone thinks you’re a militant racist, and they’re right. If I may talk directly to these self-deluding subterraneans: I’m sorry to be the one to point this out, but you have been radicalized. There’s a reason people call you Vanilla ISIS. ISIS think they’re rebels, too. Have a good hard look at these Defend Europe twits with their rickety armada. These are your people. They’re your compadres. You are paddling beside them in the shallow end of political discourse, screaming when anything living nibbles your toes. 

This is what happens when we fetishize the romance of rebellion while making actual social change impossible. My guess is that the ruling class, the people whose agenda these people’s mean-spirited credulity serves, aren’t standing about with flaming torches screaming that they’re about to be replaced by Jews. They don’t spend their time harassing girls on the internet. They outsource that shit. To suckers. For free. Meanwhile, the ruling class is just writing the speeches and jerking the strings and watching gullible, self-anointed rebels make fools of themselves on television.

These are the very people whose names the Shitler Youth wear on their unbelievably ugly hats and t-shirts, which incidentally is exactly what happens when you let straight white guys who consider gold a neutral design your neo-fascist aesthetic. The one problem with calling these faux-rebels Nazis is that it suggests they know how to goddamned get dressed in the morning. The left are out-styling them as well as out-thinking them right now. The left! Some of us wear hemp! And t-shirts with weak science puns! And we let our flatmates cut our hair! And we spend half our time fighting each other over tiny ideological debates that started before we were born, and they still make us look good. They make us look good because they’ve swallowed the fake oppression story cooked up by propagandists on the right to recast their most reactionary opinions as risqué. 

So let’s be clear: getting fired because you hate women is not an equivalent hardship to getting fired because you happen to be one. People who have been disowned by their parents for being gay or transgender aren’t going to have sympathy when your mum and dad find your stash of homophobic murder fantasies and change the locks. Getting attacked for being a racist is not the same as getting attacked because you are black. The definition of oppression is not “failure to see your disgusting opinions about the relative human value of other living breathing people reflected in society at large.” Being shamed, including in public, for holding intolerant, bigoted opinions is not an infringement of your free speech. You are not fighting oppression. You are, at best, fighting criticism. If that’s the hill you really want to die on, fine, but don’t kid yourself it’s the moral high ground. I repeat: You cannot be a rebel for the status quo. It would be physically easier to go and fuck yourself, and I suggest you try.

The fact that some people—the women, people of color, immigrants and queer people you want put back in their proper place—disapprove of you does not make you edgy. A bag of cotton wool is edgier than you lot. Fighting for things to go back to the way they were twenty or thirty or fifty years ago does not constitute a bold resistance movement. It constitutes the militant arm of the Daily Mail comments section. Fighting real oppression involves risk, and before you start, I’m talking about real risk, not some girl on the internet calling you a cowardly subliterate waste of human skin, like I just did.  

This was gig-economy bigotry from the beginning, every bedroom hatemonger his own self-facilitating media node.

Of course, the fragile self-image of American nationalism has always been grounded in the idea of rebellion, in an aesthetic of protest and struggle for individual liberty powdering over the ugly worship of authoritarianism andhierarchy that was also baked in from the beginning. The United States has never truly stopped fighting its civil war, but the tropes and language of that war have been re-appropriated by net reactionaries in an effort to dress up their racism as rebellion, which by coincidence was part of what the war was about in the first place. That’s why there’s such attachment to the confederate or “rebel” flag among conservatives, even in states which fought for the Union; even in states which did not exist at the time. And this investment in maintaining a state of permanent rebellion is why net reactionaries have no idea what to do now they’re technically in power, like the confused golden retriever who finally catches that Ford Focus, except far less fluffy. 

Mewling subluminaries have, for years, approached backyard fascism as a growth industry—why stop now? These enterprising intellectual bantamweights did not wait for the mechanisms of state and party to show them how to goose-step or gather seed money—this was gig-economy bigotry from the beginning, every bedroom hatemonger his own self-facilitating media node, like a sort of fascist Nathan Barley. The millennials among them have merely done what the television told us all to do as kids: find your passion and make it your career. It’s just a shame that their passion happens to be the creation of a white ethnostate with a stack of sexually frustrated video rants as a transitional demand.

So propping up the establishment does not sit well with their sense of themselves as brave, entrepreneurial outsiders battling the forces of something-or-other. Perhaps it feels strange to be told you have won when nothing in your own actual, material life has changed. Perhaps winning didn’t taste as good as the picture on the package. They were promised thrills and spills and danger and adventure and instead they’re on the haunted teacup ride through the wreckage of civil society and they’re feeling a bit sick but they’ve given the man their money, so they can’t get off.

And in any case this is not the sort of game you just win or lose. Politics doesn’t work like that, although in fairness, the sense that it does is one of several delusions they share with the political elites they claim to despise. Playing by those rules is a great way to make sure that the house always wins. What’s changed in the world in the months since their team supposedly won? The rich are still running things, they’re just a lot less shy about it. Living standards have gone nowhere but down. The planet is still sizzling towards climate collapse, and I know they think that’s not real, but you don’t have to believe in a train to get run down by it with everyone you care about while you stand in the middle of the tracks screaming about cucks and Jews like a prize prick.

One major thing, however, has changed, and that is that an awful lot of people who happen to be foreign, or female, or members of a different race or faith from these fools are suddenly living in fear of violence, violence the Shitler Youth and their crewmates helped whip up to make themselves feel like big damn heroes. Because they wanted to feel like they were fighting the power without actually having to challenge anyone who had it.

If you’ve a niggling suspicion I might be talking about you here, it’s time to take a look at your own reflection in whatever screen you’re reading off. If you want to cosplay as a revolutionary from a made-up time before brown people and liberated women existed, go and drink mead at a Ren fair like a normal person. If you just want to be famous on the internet, go and make some porn. If you can’t get over your fetish for fake oppression, go and hang out in a club where people wear expensive black rubber and get yourself consensually flogged by someone with legitimate rage to work through. But don’t call yourself a revolutionary just because you can’t stop running in circles.

[*]  Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly suggested that the crew of the Defend Europe vessel had been rescued by the Sea-Eye. Although the Sea-Eye was temporarily diverted to travel toward the Defend Europe boat and offer aid, the latter crew refused help and the rescue ship carried on its operations. The fascists’ boat later restarted.

[originalcontent]

On the Topic of Logic

Uuuuuugh okay. I don’t want to write a whole fucking essay in Skype of all things so here we go. Plus, I’m sure everyone is fucking tired of hearing from me rant from my polarizing anti-fascist biases. I guess I’m writing this here instead because while I will defend my ideals to the grave, it can get pretty exhausting.

If there’s something that I find morally objectionable, I have to go out of my way to argue it. I mean, I don’t always, I don’t even as much as I should, but leaving things unanswered gives me a gross feeling for a number of reasons. It’s fine if you’re looking to discuss things with me, but please, please, please actually look at my responses if that’s what you want to do? I can’t let other people in my direct circle of influence spread harmful ideologies in good conscious, I’m sorry. Something that people like to do is take my arguments and assume I’m making absolute statements, so I just want to say I’m not saying to never use logic, I’m not saying don’t call bullshit when necessary, I’m not saying violence is good. I’m sure you were all abundantly taught the merits of the converses by society already. You don’t need me to explain those to you. This isn’t a condemnation of well-accepted ideas, it’s just saying that there are flaws to them as well.

Part 1: Ethics do not follow formal logic

Before I start, I would like to ask a general favor. Please for the love of god, stop trying to explain logic and fallacies to me. I fucking know what a fallacy is. I’m especially partial to the straw man, or I must be, because that’s the one that I find used against me the most often. Some other fallacies that deserve honorable mentions. The slippery slope fallacy, that I may often seem to fall into. Except that historically, things actually are slippery slopes to bigger things. Plus, if you’re not going to speculate on potential consequences, what’s even the point of analyzing current events? I personally think it’s best to prepare for the worst case scenario, especially if the things you do to prepare are good and revolutionary acts that our society probably needs anyway. I know that I cannot predict the future. Next honorable mention is proof by repeated assertion. I will say statements and then a couple days/hours/minutes/whatever later, I will see the exact same arguments, again, that I had already refuted in the first place. I’m glad you like the nonviolent movements of the past in India and 60’s America! I’m glad you’re happy with the results! I hope that you can acknowledge that these movements were only successful because they were partnered with more radical, violent movements! Like, I understand that you don’t always want to read through all of the links I post, but in that case take my word for what they say, don’t just ignore them! And then there’s ad homenim. You know what, I think that itself needs its own section so let’s shelve that one and come back to it later. Same with false equivalencies, I’ll get to those soon. Point being I know what fallacies are. I know what logic is. I’m betting on the fact that most other people can conceptualize basic logic as well. They may not show their work every step of the way, but assuming that they don’t and that they need you to explain logic to them is incredibly disrespectful. If you’re telling someone to “be logical” then you’re really, really an asshole. If logic is flawed, sure, you can point that out, but that doesn’t discredit a whole argument, nor does it replace a counterpoint.

The title pretty much says it all here, but I’m currently taking philosophy classes, so let’s talk about formal logic.

First off, logic should not be your gold standard for truth. The (albeit very, very simplified) way that logic works is you take a set of precedents and deprive other statements from them. (You know, Socrates was a man, all men are mortal, therefore Socrates was mortal. Not rocket science.) The way you measure logic is if it’s valid or invalid, not true and untrue. That’s right folks, just because logic is invalid, that doesn’t mean the conclusion is false! And the reverse is also true. Assuming that logic and reality match up is my actual, absolute, personal favorite fallacy, the fallacy fallacy, the assumption that imperfect logic leads to a wrong conclusion. For example: “others using formal logic as the end-all of discussions frustrates 312, 312 is frustrated, so others must be abusing their abilities to cite formal logic.” There are plenty of other things that could have frustrated me, the logic here is unsound, but the conclusion is still true. (Apologies for passive-aggression, although to be honest I’m not feeling all that kind right now.) Furthermore “312 enjoys debating ideas, 312 is currently debating ideas, so 312 must be enjoying this!” Here are some true premises with perfect logic and a false conclusion.

You might argue for the first case that the result was just come up with by chance, but it can’t be independently accepted as truth because the premises didn’t contain enough information to form a valid conclusion. For the second you might argue that my issue is in my premises here. My statements were true, but they weren’t universally true. And then I would congratulate you on having come up with such a great and original points that had in no way ever occurred to me before you so graciously enlightened me. Then, we can proceed to break them down. The first example was in fact a case where precedents didn’t fit together into a clear message, and the second indeed did not have precedents that always held. But I can’t possibly think of a real-world example that doesn’t have clear and objective premises. Oh wait, now that I’m typing it a few examples are coming to me.

Am I straw-manning your argument? I’m very sorry. You know what, to clear up the confusion, why don’t you send me all of your opinions on these issues and logically why you have them, fully explained and everything. If anyone needs that from me, message me because I’ve literally already done that on several occasions.

In the meantime, I’m going to do my own little logical proof, right here.

Premises:

There is no objective moral truth

Logic without inherently true premises will never lead to inherently true conclusions

Conclusion: You can’t use fucking logic to discuss moral issues and have it be correct.

I may have skipped a few steps there, but I don’t have the patience and I think you get the idea. When discussing ethics, you have to make up your own criteria, your own precedents, because nothing about ethics is logical. Sure, you could argue lots of things. For example, that if people are good to each other then that helps society which therefore benefits the people, but not all people benefit from society, and who’s to say what makes any society better than anything else? I have a set of premises that I deem to be correct. They basically boil down to “A fair and just society for all people is good.” And how about “all people deserve basic human rights.” I don’t know what yours all are! I do know that I don’t have any rational explanation for these ideas aside from that I believe them to be right. Because that’s how this whole thing works. There’s no formula for right and wrong, so stop trying to find one. Instead just do your best to make the world a better place however you feel that’s possible.

Part 2: Ad homenim does not necessarily apply in cases of politics.

Well, if that isn’t a provocative title. As I stated above, nothing in ethics is right by any objective measure. I really wish we could set down some objective truths, like say, genocide is a bad thing, but apparently that’s fucking controversial. So here we go.

I do need to put a huge disclaimer on this to say what I am not saying. I am not saying I think you can just take anything that anyone you don’t like says is false. 7+5=12 no matter who the person who says that is. As much as I hate it, you can’t always just listen to assholes and take the opposite of whatever they say (although honestly that’s not as bad a strategy as one would think.) I’m not saying that it never applies, I’m saying that it doesn’t necessarily apply.

For anyone who doesn’t know, ad homenim is the practice of targeting the person who made an argument rather than the argument itself. It is my belief that that should be reserved for purely logical debates, not as applied to society at large.

Some context for what specifically inspired me to make this post, earlier this week there’s been a theme of discussing violent resistance to nazism and fascism. On Wednesday someone posted, in response, “‘An eye for an eye and the whole world goes blind’ -Mahatma Gandhi.” I made a comment that we should keep in mind all of the bad things Gandhi had done. The response was of course “ad homenim.” I had to go right then, but when I got back there were a shit ton of messages. One person said that I hadn’t argued with the quote, I had just made a statement, to which his response was “why bother putting that there in the first place.” Someone (bless her soul) cited the fallacy fallacy at him, and he responded with “well yeah but this was a very simple case of ad homenim. You shouldn’t use fallacies like that because they’re very easy to refute.” The two who had tried to defend me started trying to address him and the quote, and they kept getting the response of “well what 312 said wasn’t even relevant to the quote, you need to argue with the quote itself.” They were effectively shut down in terms of having an actual discussion, and I’m sorry for that because I had supplied him (and one other) with the means by which to do that. By the time I was online again I scrolled up to read the whole exchange, but everyone had moved on from this topic and it was abundantly clear that no one wanted to return to it, so I let it be. Then of course, I did as I do and grew bitter that I hadn’t been there to argue and started to stew in my bitterness until this post came into being. There we have it, the secret origin story of my unbridled rage.

Call that bullshit for unreliable narration, whatever. I’m not here to talk about that exchange any more than I’m going to express my pissed-off-ness at a couple people. I’m going to talk about why my original statement did not qualify as ad homenim!

I stress, earlier this week we had already been discussing violent resistance. We had already made all sorts of arguments on both sides. We had already pointed these people to a number of sources discussing why nonviolence is objectionable. Posting an image with this quote that all of us probably already knew added nothing new to this discussion. This quote did not stand alone in place of arguments. All it really managed to achieve was bringing famous people into the midst, in this case Gandhi. Whether or not you realized it, posting that quote was an entirely ethos-based argument. Ethos, for those who haven’t taken an english class, refers to an rhetorical tactic that appeals to authority. Thus it’s separate from pathos, emotional rhetoric, and logos, logical rhetoric, aka the literal only one of these three where logical fallacies apply in the first place. Like actually. The only response to appeals to authority is attack of character? How do you even expect me to argue with that quote? There’s nothing to argue! All the quote is is a baseless claim making a general statement meant to be inspirational. Which is great if there’s something new to take from it, but there’s not. Seriously, the fuck do you expect me to say? “No, actually the first person would lose an eye, then the second person would lose an eye, and then everyone else would be left alone”? Oh huh, I guess there is a logical response to that quote, my bad.

Actually, if you’ll indulge a tangent, remember when up there discussing fallacies I said I’d come back to false equivalencies later? Specifically the whole “eye for an eye” or “hate breeds hate” kind of thing. Other people on this website have stated that you can’t equate the hate of oppressors to the hate of the oppressed for their oppressors in far more eloquent terms than I can. Nazis hate jewish people, for instance, because they view them as inferior and inherently deserving of death. Jewish people might hate nazis because they literally want them dead. That hate is not just as bad! Violence coming from jewish people is self-defense! They can’t make a choice about their ethnicity, and nazis will want them dead regardless, whereas nazi ideologies are absolutely a choice, it’s people choosing to believe they’re superior and everyone else should be killed.

Back on the topic of ad hominem, in terms of politics and social change, everyone has an agenda. Many quotes seem very reasonable if you just take them at face value. You need to look at who’s saying them and why they’re saying them to understand what they mean. For example, the statement “Make America Great Again” might not sound too bad in of itself, but when you look at the platform associated with that line, you’ll realize that that’s a white supremacist statement. There’s nothing about that statement that’s white supremacist. It’s advocating for greatness, that’s all. I’m sure you know that to not be true. Political figures do this all the time, where they make a general, wide-reaching statement that you can critically analyze to see it doesn’t necessarily benefit who you think it would. (Such as conservatives calling for “safer neighborhoods,” when really what they want is stronger police forces.) Or where they call an initiative something seemingly unprovocative while including not-so-great policy in it if you bother to look past clever wording. Who says things matters. Who pushes things matters. Freedom and opportunity mean very different things to me then they do to libertarians, for instance. We could say the exact same sentence about wanting to protect freedom and opportunity, and it would still mean completely different things. So I’m just saying that if you decide to focus on statements themselves rather than who’s saying them, especially in the case of anything even remotely having to do with politics, you’re blind sighting yourself.

I had more to say, but to be honest I’m somewhat tired. Sorry, I’ll try to write more later.

One more thing:

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/09/playing-devils-advocate/ Normally when I send this one to people I make sure to do it very nicely, but you know what? Right now I’m not feeling very nice. The role of a devil’s advocate is to represent perspectives not present in order to get somewhere constructive from a different angle. The role is not to argue against any points brought up. Read this, memorize this, love this, learn to live by this, I am actually 100% serious here.

That’s it for now.

Hope you got something out of it. I’ll probably write something about opinions, that’s another important issue. Well, 312 out.