This is a LRP article about President-Elect Donald Trump. It’s also about why we argued about blacking up to play drow. It’s really about why a bunch of LRP communities have constant flame-wars about politics these days and what we do about that. Trust me these things are linked. Lets start with Trump.
In case you’re unaware, something extraordinary has happened in America. The Democratic party chose the second most unpopular candidate in electoral history as their nominee. She was widely expected to win despite many many flaws – because she was running against the most unpopular presidential nominee ever. A racist, sexist, lying bigot with no redeeming features that around 70% of Americans hated and felt was manifestly unsuitable to be President. Americans hate Donald Trump almost as much as many of the rest of us do – and yet he won. That in itself is extraordinary.
There’s lots of analysis about why he won; there are socio-economic factors, the failure of globalisation to produce tangible benefits for white working class voters. There are electoral college factors – Hillary won the popular vote and still lost because she lost the rustbelt states after utterly ignoring the voters who lived there. But one of the important reasons that she lost is that a large number of Republican voters who hated Donald Trump and thought he was appalling voted for him anyway – an effect that social observers call the rise of partisanship.
Partisanship is the idea that people become fixated on the political perspective of their party and unable to consider ideas that come from outside that group. Basically if you’re a Republican you vote Republican and you only listen to Republicans. In Britain if you’re a Labour voter – you vote Labour. There are lots of fascinating indicators that partisanship is on the rise and the Americans have a unique way of measuring it; vote splitting. In America when they vote for a president they vote separately and independently for a senator, a representative, various legislation, and some other positions as well. Historically there used to be significant amounts of ballot-splitting: Americans might vote for a Republican for President but nominate a Democrat for senator if they thought those candidates were strong. That ‘splitting’ has reduced markedly over time and now the majority of Americans pick a party and just tick their way down the ballot slip. They have become partisan.
Lots of people lament this change but I’ve seen relatively little explanation for why it might be happening. I think one clue can be found in another measure of partisanship – inter-party marriages. In three key states that they looked at, Five-Thirty-Eight (a well respected American political statistics website) found that rates of inter-party marriage (that is a Republican voter marrying a Democrat voter) were about double the rate of inter-racial marriage (although both were extremely low). From the opening paragraph of the article: ‘Researchers have found that [people of opposing political ideology] avoid dating one another, desire not to live near one another and disapprove of the idea that their offspring would marry someone outside their party.’
That last line really resonates for me. I’m not bigoted – some of my friends vote Conservative – but I wouldn’t want my daughter to marry one.
I think identity is a pretty profound thing. It is your sense of who you are, of what you are is important to your sense of well-being.
My contention is that political identity is close to being as strong as racial identity. I think identity is a pretty profound thing. It is your sense of who you are, of what you are is important to your sense of well-being. And it’s really important in how we treat others; we habitually favour people who share our identity over those who clearly do not. This aspect of human socialization is a key aspect of various bigotries but the obvious ones are racism and religious intolerance. For many of us, our politics has become our identity.
Why might that be? Well one reason might be that we’ve had at least two decades of educating ourselves that racial, religious and sexual discrimination are irrational. Of course racism still exists, but individuals who openly argue for it are rare. Openly racist statements receive wide-spread social disapproval. Lots of us are trying really hard not to be racist anymore but political discrimination, the idea that people who vote for the other party are bad people, isn’t irrational! They hold bad views, they’re wrong on…. everything! So it’s rational to dislike them.
Nature abhors a vacuum and if we work hard to try and stop ‘othering’ people based on their race, maybe we just left a gap for a different identity label to fill. Conservative really is the new black.
But I think there is another important factor. The two big political issues of my childhood were the Poll Tax and the miners strike. There were major political protests, there were riots. These were huge issues that divided the country. But if you think about the way they divided people, the politics was economic. The Poll Tax was ultimately about your preferred form of taxation, whether you wanted flat taxes or redistributive taxes. The miners strike was very personal for the miners but for everyone else it was a conflict about resources, how we employ people, where we get our energy from, and how we handle union-labour relations. They were big political issues about work and society and economics. What they weren’t about was you.
Some of the big issues of modern politics are very different. If you’re American right now, one significant issue is where you stand on transgender bathroom access. That feels initially like a social issue, but the debate really comes down to how you feel about transgender individuals. Black Lives Matter, another major protest movement happening in America right now really hinges on how you feel about race. There are big economic issues still being fought over here in the UK, and Brexit is a great example. But even so, how much of the Brexit vote came down to British vs European identity and immigration and how much of it was based on the advantages of access to the European market vs the inability to negotiate our own trade deals?
The political fight is about what you say and do.
In fact a lot of the political fights that I see these days come down to issues of language and how we treat each other. We passed the abolition of slavery act in 1833 and we passed equal voting rights for women in 1928. The big political issues of what the basic laws should be were settled a long time ago. But racism and sexism still exist and the modern focus has shifted from how society treats people to how you treat people. People will examine the language that you use and call you out if they feel it is prejudicial against groups perceived to need protection. A lot of modern politics is not about whether or not gay people can serve in the army, it’s now about how you treat gays. The political fight is about what you say and do.
I think when the politics becomes personal in this way then it’s not surprising that people become more partisan. When the argument is not about what laws society passes but instead about how you act then I’m not surprised that people’s identity becomes more tightly entwined with their views. You’re literally arguing about who you are as a person and how you should behave.
Where is the relevance of any of this to LRP? We recently experienced ‘Drowgate.’ I have seen relatively little active racial discrimination in our hobby (although sadly I can’t say none), but it’s impossible to conceive of an active LRP society or organization that publicly said ‘No Irish, no blacks, no dogs’ as the potentially apocryphal signs of the post-war era supposedly did. I contest that there is less overt racism in LRP than in society at large and yet we totally lost our shit over whether or not it was ok for LRPers to paint their face black to play Drow.
The arguments for and against Drow turn on offence – how and when causing offence is acceptable. There were historical elements, blackface does not have an endearing history, but at its core this was a political argument about how you should act when you LRP. A lot of the flames roared with accusations of white privilege. Just about the only thing we could all agree on was that the other side were very clearly in the minority and that they were ruining the hobby. It was not the hobby’s finest hour.
In most towns in Britain you can find Labour and Conservative clubs. These are social rooms and bodies that exist to ensure that you can meet up with friends without the terrible risk of running into a member of the other party or a view that disagrees with your own. There is a time and a place for politics, and for many people that time and place is not when they’re socializing. Politics is divisive by its nature so we often exclude it from our social activities precisely so that we can enjoy ourselves without falling out. That actually makes a lot of sense. If you don’t actively enjoy political debate then it’s not unreasonable to ask to be allowed to enjoy your social free time without having to engage in arguments.
That kind of unspoken agreement survived for a long time in LRP. Live roleplayers don’t come together to share political views, we come together to dress up as elves and goblins and cast spells at each other. Why risk falling out with each other over opposing views of how to resolve the Israel-Palestine conflict when we’re here to slay imaginary monsters? Lets just get on with the adventure! It’s not that people on the internet were any better behaved in the past; Godwin’s law was invented because when people of different political views get together then hyperbole and flames quickly followed. But it didn’t happen so much in LRP.
Not that we didn’t have our arguments of course. I can remember tearing into Ian Andrews about his views on the role of story vs players in LRP two decades ago. But at the end of it I like to think both of us had more respect for the other, not less. Because our arguments were esoteric, they were external. They were about how to create great LRP games and how to structure plot. They weren’t about each other. They weren’t about how we act and treat people. They were structural, not personal.
The fact that a lot of modern politics is personal has two striking consequences. The first, as I’ve already claimed, is a rise in partisanship. We feel more closely allied with our political beliefs than ever before. They have come to define a core part of our identity and so we instinctively react negatively to people who don’t share those views.
Politics now is personal. It’s about how people act when we socialize.
But worse for us as LRPers, our games are all about creating or recreating worlds. It has become increasingly difficult to avoid political issues about the representation and language around race, gender and sexuality. We turn up with different views on how to handle issues like blackface, gendered language, homophobic language. We have different views on causing and taking offence, on safe spaces and so on. This is all personal. Politics now is personal. It’s about how people act when we socialize. Since LRP is the ultimate social hobby it is increasingly difficult for us to separate the politics from the LRP.
We’re not the only people with this problem — #gamergate happened for a reason. Gamers get together, they play big social online games together. They have a community discussing games. Politics happened… bam! The world lost it’s shit.
My point really is simply that I don’t think that the arguments in our hobby are going to go away. I think the debates in our hobby are going to get more political not less. The LRP game I’m involved with, Empire, publicly takes a stance on some of these issues so it is always going to have a high level of debate associated with that. But I think the hobby in general is going to face these challenges for years to come. Politics is personal now, so it is so much harder to just not talk about it. ‘It’ keeps coming up – it’s bound to when the way you speak and the language you use is a political statement.
I’ve been trying to write this article for a while now. I wrote half an article on ‘Drowgate’ when it happened and then abandoned it. I’ve been toying with the themes on and off for a while. I’m interested in them for two reasons. The first is that I love politics. I like politics a lot more than I like LRP. The second is that I earn my living from LRP so my livelihood depends in part on my players getting on with each other. That gives me two very conflicting feelings. In the 90s I sometimes got bored talking about LRP and wanted to talk politics with my friends. Now I try and discourage anyone discussing it, because it always ends so badly. But what I really want is for those discussions to be less heated, more thoughtful and more productive.
And I thought of all of that when I read this article on Vox this morning. It’s an article about a study about how to tackle bigotry in America and the article looks at that study in light of the recent Presidential election. At it’s core it expresses an idea I think is both incredibly valuable and incredibly relevant to how our hobby tackles these kind of political issues. It’s a great article and I recommend you read it but for the hard of clicking I’ll summarize:
Basically what the study finds is that calling people racist does not make them less racist. If anything it has the opposite effect. Calling people homophobic doesn’t make someone less prejudiced about sexuality. Calling people misogynists doesn’t make them less sexist. In fact it probably makes them more sexist. ‘What’s more, accusations of racism can cause white Americans to become incredibly defensive to the point that they might reinforce white supremacy.’ If you’re a liberal prone to throwing those kinds of labels at people perhaps think about the fact that this research suggests that calling people racist makes them more racist. Is that the outcome we wanted?
The research that Vox cherry picks which supports my own preconceptions suggests that the way to persuade people is through empathy. Effective debate, communication that actually challenges preconceptions and changes minds, requires two things. The first is that you try to empathize with the person you’re talking to. That you try to imagine how they think and feel about the issues being discussed. The second thing is to try to get them to empathize with the subject. To imagine how they would feel in that situation. The research suggests that these approaches are much more successful at changing views and my experience is that they’re also much less likely to leave us hating each other.
The last part is the real key. If I’m right and these political arguments aren’t going away anytime soon then we’d all benefit from being more civil about them. We can’t agree on the issues and the principles but it would help to try and remember that these are political issues. That people disagree and that being wrong doesn’t make someone a bad person. We can all strive to be less partisan. If someone in the ultra-conservative American commentariat at Redstate can attempt it, then so can we.
Further Reading:
Five-Thirty-Eigh: Inter-party marriages
Five-Thirty-Eight: Ballot-splitting
The Guardian: No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, No Proof
Redstate: The End Of Partisanship. The Rebirth Of Persuasion
Addendum:
Many thanks to Kol Ford for pointing out that the Guardian article No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, No Proof’ has been subsequently refuted. You can read more about it here:
7 Comments
All good words. To reinforce your last point, speaking in my professional capacity as a teacher, I agree and do not think it is possible to easily change someone’s mind by direct challenge. You do create a ‘Us or them’ field in this way. Instead I have always with students questioned them on why they believe that and presented alternatives – opening a debate in the class. The point being is that you cannot change their opinions but you can present them with evidence to allow them to come to their own conclusions if they are open to it.
There is also the fact that ‘evidence based politics’ is less a thing these days (or was it ever? I may be using rose tinted spectacles of the days of yore but then at the last but one election I remember seeing David Steele and Neil Kinnock debating and they were a breath of fresh air after the banality of the modern politicians). Opinions rule. Or rather, there is evidence but there is so so much of it and many digest it uncritically and automatically accept that which fits their opinion that it basically comes down to just opinions.
Not sure how to fix the issue in LRP… except maybe continuing to moderate fairly to prevent flame wars where possible. But I know how much of an Aegean stable that is…
Good article, but I contend that you simplify a lot of opinions down to ‘how you really feel about X’. Would you be comfortable saying your opinion Mao Tse Tung’s murderous regime comes down to “how I really feel about income inequality”? Or my feelings about Saudi Arabia come down to “how I really feel about Islam?” Or am I allowed to take issue with their *behavior*. their *actions* and their *tactics* despite what they *say* they stand for?
I’m sure you’ll agree in those two cases, my inferring that you are ruthless capitalist because you don’t support Mao’s legacy; and you are an anti-Islamic bigot because you don’t support Saudi Arabia; is deeply unfair. So, why are there no good faith objections to particular groups and tactics, even if you agree with their supposed cause and the people they claim to represent?
Maybe I’m in favor of international trade, but have been left with no option but to deal with a flawed institution that shows no promise of reform in Brussels or a hard cut until something better comes along. Maybe I’m in favor of racial equality, but see Black Lives Matter of having the opposite effect and increasing racial animosity, but support other policies and tactics.
Psychoanalyzing one’s opponents is a dubious proposition, and has left us in a situation where we can no longer have discussions, but rather just be judged as bad people who must repent.
off opic but how was the map made in the cover photo?
I believe it was laser cut, but I’m not entirely sure.
I have a lot of problems with this article.
Matt Pennington has a genial demagogue image problem. This is not of his own making as his points are rational, but they are supported and perceived through a rose tinted lens, which limits the necessary criticism of articles like this from larpers in the UK, who perhaps see support of Matt as being support of the hobby. I get the feeling Matt is not particularly enamoured with this perception of him either, as it hinders any robust debate on things he elects to write about.
I like Matt. I don’t like this article. I’ll explain why.
Firstly, “Why is LRP so Political These Days?” In the United Kingdom, it really isn’t in comparison to other entertainment mediums. I spent Thursday morning reading recently commissioned plays for the Soho Theatre, they dramatised Brexit, a leadership coup in the Labour Party, how people react to being told their loved ones have died in war through a mechanical process/ritual and other important issues of the day. I’m afraid I don’t see LRP/LARP dealing with much of this and in fact, I don’t see this article doing much to justify its headline. There is a mention of the drowgate issue here, but no real stance.
Secondly. Speaking as a white male, I wouldn’t dream of comparing political partisanship to racism. I wouldn’t dream of trying to define the prejudice another person experiences. Whilst I can see the rational correlation, its a false comparison to suggest these things meet the same levels of discrimination. Additionally, alling someone a racist might not change their attitude, but calling them a racist does not suddenly make them go out and become racist. The Jane Elliot experiment from the 1960s is certainly relevant in recasting racism into a segregation that children can understand, but one of the key learning factors for adults who undergo the experiment is acknowledging how their limited experience in that moment is no comparison to that of others who go through marginalisation for any reason, every day of their lives. That said, the marriage analogy is an interesting point, similar to Elliot’s in that it makes people think. This is probably the highlight of Matt’s article.
Thirdly, there’s a lot of well written sentences here that lead us to small beer conclusions. Asking people to be more civil in their discussions of political standpoint and holding up a single example of a right wing politician for doing this is not really justification for people who have been genuinely marginalised by those they are protesting against. There’s no equality between someone who has committed a hurtful act and the victim, because the hurtful act exists and where its demonstrable and proven to be hurtful, equality of treatment is not justifiable. Equality is reserved for the moments prior to the act proven. Perhaps there is a room for civility and empathy in debate between those who all remain outside of the decision making process of government, but those within it, who actively misrepresent themselves are being disingenuous and should be called out for it. There’s no respect for the public from someone who actively chooses to do this, there’s a wilful desire to mislead and deceive. Accepting the deception and having it revealed to you is not going to be an easy experience and many blame those who do the revealing.
Fourth. There’s an inference in this argument where “the political left created the political right” in that advocating fairness and equality is in some way to blame for the rise of partisan politics. I’m not convinced that it is. People who are reactionary to fairness or don’t recognise their privilege are as responsible for their actions as anyone else. Striving towards equality and equity of opportunity is not wrong, nor should it be hidden under a bushel, its a basic principle. Perhaps, as some suggest, a hectoring culture helped nuture a reactionary culture, but the motive towards preserving privilege was already there.
Finally, just become a random politician is prepared to have a rational discussion doesn’t mean all are, nor does help with the deconstruction of a binary by starting from accepting the binary premise in the first place. In reality, there are a multitude of complex issues going on every day that people make decisions on and the casting of a red vs blue, right vs left partisanship on all of this is habitual and denies the fundamental principle that people are making decisions and must have an individual reason for the decisions they make. I understand why Matt’s used the binary, the “them/us” moment is now and the way people are feeling. It’s also reinforced by the political parties, by the prominent philosophies, by the voters, by everything and has been brought into a sharp focus by Brexit, Trump, and more, but in reality, the issues themselves and the individuals taking a stance on them are far more complex. The only way to deal with this is in a way that gets to the heart of any specific problem is to understand the problem, discuss a solution and implement it. Granted, some issues are not straightforward and require strategic thinking, but people are intelligent, they can understand this. The partisanship when accepted, can get in the way of tackling a problem at face value because motive is projected.
I think this latter point is what Matt was getting at when talking about discussing things in a civil manner, but it is important to recognise this is the responsibility of anyone and everyone in a discussion and that this is only a start towards a solution. The very real problems of society require action and most action requires consensus. Can we find this by talking and reasoning with those who have already revealed their agendas? Or does that give them too much credit? Are we living amidst only the first part of a change, the moment where the reaction happens and demonstrates itself to be a false solution? Only time will tell. What we can’t do is disarm ourselves in holding people to account for their decisions in the name of ‘being civil’. That isn’t about accepting a binary, its about engaging intelligently with the issues and calling out unfairness as and when it happens, not for some coloured tribe, but because its the correct thing to do.
Thanks for taking the time to respond Allen – it’s appreciated. I’ll try and respond to your points as best I can.
1) – Simon Brind quite correctly called me out for the opposite reason – for pointing out that LRP is actually much *more* political than either of us give it credit for.
Ultimately though I think both his point and yours are irrelevant to my central assertion – it’s not really a question of whether LRP is or is not political. Political compared to what? Of course is less political than theatre – or less political than political referendums! It’s also considerably more political than lots of things. Trying to measure these things in the absolute is a bit meaningless.
This piece is titled “why is LRP so political THESE DAYS”. The point was to look at the *changes* that have taken place. I may be wrong, but my memory of the British hobby was that it was much more apolitical in the 80s and 90s than it is today. What interests me is why it has changed – and what that means for us as a community in terms of how we handle that change.
2) Speaking as a straight white male I would cheerfully compare political partisanship to racism if I felt it was relevant. I’ll compare racism to the side of a double-decker bus if I thought the comparison had meaning. I just don’t believe intelligent discussions are had by individuals ruling themselves out of the debate on the grounds of their ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or shoe-size. Ideas are important – ideas are worth articulating – and ideas don’t have identity.
Of course I *must* be alert to the fact that my personal experience with discrimination is almost completely non-existent. I can’t make any meaningful assertions about what discrimination feels like, about how common it is or how prevalent it is. That would be insane. I can’t possibly have first-person experience of those things – and first person experience is powerful in shaping views and viewpoints – and it’s important to acknowledge that. But equally I’m not going to refuse to speak my mind on theories of why things happen and the way things should be just because my skin is the wrong colour, or I fancy the wrong kind of people.
Sadly though as far as I can tell you have misunderstood the point I was making comparing levels of inter-racial marriage with levels of inter-political marriage. The point was not to compare the experience or impact of these things – the point was simply to show that levels of inter-political marriage have fallen substantially – to levels comparable with levels of inter-racial marriage.
That’s interesting to me – and I think it’s noteworthy. Imagine if someone discovered that shoe-size was correlated with partner choice. Imagine if we ran the data and it showed that people with large feet overwhelming choose partners with large feet. That would be fascinating – I can’t think of why it would be – and that would be intriguing. We might compare the levels of inter-feet-size marriage with those of inter-racial marriage and say “look – look how low they are”. That’s not the same as saying “having large feet is every bit as bad as being black in modern life”.
So you’re certainly right that it would be a false comparison to suggest that these things (partisanship/ethnicity) meet the same levels of discrimination and I’m very comfortable in my mind having reviewed what I’ve written that I did no such thing. That would certainly be pretty dumb.
You assert “calling someone a racist might not change their attitude, but calling them a racist does not suddenly make them go out and become racist” without presenting any evidence for that assertion. The Vox article I quote is about some research done which basically shows that that is exactly what *does* happen. Of course it’s cherry picked – as I very openly said I’ve picked data that conforms to my own experience with handling these issues in the games I run – but it is a piece of research. I’m all in favour of ripping sources apart – it’s good! But I don’t think you’ve adequately supported your rebuttal of my central assertion – that calling people racist does not make them less racist – if anything it makes them more racist.
3) I’d agree on the point of small beer conclusions – in hindsight I should have made this section of the writing much stronger (Ah hindsight, you are so 20/20). The part of the debate in LRP that interests me strongly at the moment is around language – the language we use – how that empowers people – how it identifies them and crucially how it discriminates against some participants. I talk a bit about the drowgate thing – and while I think all the same conclusions are valid – the one that interests me is the use of language in LRP.
In the course of running a lot of LRP games in recent years, I’ve had cause to talk – at length – with people on both sides of the debate on language choice. Those who want to tackle language use head on – and those who kick-back hard against any challenges to the language they use. I have a personal position on the issue – but I also have a dog in the game – it’s in my financial interests to try to get both parties to play nicely together. So I try to mediate.
In doing that – what always comes across very strongly whenever I talk to individuals privately is that the positions they express in public represent the far extreme of their views. When we debate in public – we come out fighting for the moral high-ground. Talk to people privately and they’re much more amenable to looking at the issues and what personal accommodations they can make to make things better for everyone.
A lot of people have tended to respond to my piece on the grounds of either “there’s no compromise with the far-right” or as I’ve also seen “there’s no compromise with the SJWs”. And yet I know of vanishingly few individuals in LRP that I would even suspect of membership of a far-right organization and “SJW” is a stupid acronym that basically means political troll – and I don’t believe in trolls. The point is… the arguments don’t actually involve SJWs OR members of the far-right. They’re just regular people – with very slightly different views on how to handle the complex issues of language in everyday life and in LRP.
We make a mountainous conflict out of this online – because that’s how online arguments go. I’m arguing that it’s a mistake to do that. That a little empathy for each other would make us realize that we’re not arguing with imaginary keyboard warriors and likewise there aren’t any significant number of neo-nazi LRPers shouting back at us.
What the article really would have benefitted from was more of an attempt to explain the position of both sides – explain why the issues are emotive for both sides – and explain the limited successes I’ve had in talking to members of both sides – where being polite and civil have been essential in getting any positive outcomes. But it was 3000 words already or something like – and it’s arguably another article completely to talk about just that issue in more depth.
You *seem* to be implying that since there isn’t an equivalence between being impolite to someone and being discriminatory – then therefore there isn’t a requirement to be polite to people who are discriminatory. That in effect they lose the privileges that normal people are entitled to by dint of their act. I don’t accept that – I’d rather treat everyone in a civil manner – regardless of what they’ve done. But crucially – and I’m not sure I can reiterate this point strongly enough – the research cited suggests that not treating people in a civil manner is counter-productive. It’s all well and good to say “I don’t see why we need to be civil to people who have violated the social norms we think are the right ones” but if not being civil makes those people worse… then that is a good reason not to do it.
I can’t really follow what you’re saying about people in government, I’m sorry but I don’t understand what you’ve written. But crucially I was talking about the LRP community – and about how we handle debates among ourselves. Last time I checked the LRP community involved zero members of government – a handful of civil servants is the closest that I’m aware of. Nothing that I’ve written here has anything to say about how we handle discourse with public figures, especially with public political figures. This is about us as individuals – and as a LRP community.
4) Hmmm… I’ll be honest – it looks strongly like you’re arguing that political partisanship is something that has happened to the right – and that I’m claiming the left are to blame for. What I tried to express in my writing is that partisanship is something that has afflicted both left and right. The people who characterize the debates about language as “SJWs” are every bit as partisan as those who suggest that folks who don’t agree with them are neo-nazis. Neither is a reasonable picture of the views of the other. The partisanship is happening on both sides of the debate.
In a sense though (and because I think it makes my response more interesting) I do think the left have some culpability for the partisanship that I think has derived from our attempt to move the political debate from one of how society is run to how individuals think and speak. In the sense that conservatives with a small c are by definition opposed to change – while progressives seek change – then I think change and how we manage it is our responsibility. If you want change… then it’s down to you as a progressive to make that change happen – and the responsibility for what happens when that change is manifest – or starts to become manifest – are down to you. The conservatives don’t want anything to change… that is their manifesto – so I’m prepared to give them a pass when shit happens when things change!
Crucially I think there is a failure of empathy on the part of many progressives to appreciate why people find it difficult to accept the need to change the language they use. That failure tends to make them much more confrontational than is appropriate – because they’re incapable of inferring any reason for resistance other than racism/sexism/whateverism.
Now there is an equal and opposite failure by the cultural conservatives – they are guilty of failing to appreciate the experience of marginalized individuals and why their actions hurt them. And as a result, they are just as inappropriate in their response – because they assume that the criticism is personal – and that it is driven by a desire to humiliate people on the internet (or whatever people imagine motivates SJWs). They don’t see the need to change the language – and that failure of empathy makes them resist the call to change – and crucially assume the worst of those who request it.
But like I say… I’m prepared to give the conservatives a free pass on getting the process of progress wrong – since I think it’s kind the job of the progressives to manage progress!
5) It’s not a politician I was citing, it’s literally a random nobody on a far-right poster on an American politics blog site. You’re certainly right that just because some random right-winger is prepared to do it – doesn’t mean anyone in the progressive movement is! (though in fact I have seem similar sentiments from a number of American progressives, perhaps I should have cited them also). Nor does it mean everyone on the conservative side is. All it demonstrates is that someone somewhere in the world is prepared to say they will *try*. Still I think if more progressives and more conservatives make that effort (I can’t quite pin it down but some of your response seems to indicate that you feel the real problems are just on the cultural conservatives side) – we’d get more progress and crucially more harmonious progress.
One thing that I think is unfortunate, and again I should have been clearer in hindsight – is that being polite is not meant as a euphemism for being silent. It’s difficult to get people to change their views on the issues, and the only effective mechanisms I’ve ever seen involved a combination of engaging with people and challenging people. Sadly though I’ve never see the latter approach work by itself – challenging people is simply not enough – you have to engage.
I’m afraid I think “calling out unfairness as and when it happens” is the literal definition of small beer conclusions. Everyone I’ve ever spoken to genuinely thinks you should do that – on both sides of the conservative/progressive divide. The problem is that nobody agrees what constitutes unfairness and thus nobody agrees what should be done about it.
Calling things out is crucial – but if that’s the totality of our response then we’re doomed to do it forever. What I was is *change* – I want progress dammit! And my argument is that my personal experience – and the research I cherry picked with Vox – shows that empathy, understanding how the other half thinks and feels – is the best starting point to break down partisanship and achieve real progress.
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Dear Matt
You are very long winded, may I suggest if you are not getting paid by the word to use the 5 paragraph essay format, state your point, give your 3 strongest reasons why and summarize.
By the way you are wrong about America, you ain’t even close.
Robert.