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Post by Christine on Jun 25, 2018 18:58:11 GMT -5
So, thought exercise: Substitute "abortion" for "child-separation policy." There are people who really do feel as strongly as you do about Trump's immigration policy that abortion is murdering babies. Does that make it fair game for them to harass Democrats and other pro-choice politicians? This is a much better comparison than the baker, thank you. (I brought him up as a comparison for consistency, not legality, in case that wasn't clear. I.e., if I don't respect the baker's beliefs as an excuse, must I also not allow for the Red Hen proprietor's beliefs, when it comes to denying service, even though I happen to agree with the proprietor.) And to your point, plenty of people would argue that *killing* babies is worse than taking them away from the parents. They truly believe this. Abortion is worse than what's happening on the border, in their minds. Regardless, as far as the poor politicians on either side getting turned away, I'm still leaning toward meh, but I take your and rob's points. What I think is more important to maintain than civility toward politicians is civility with each other.... and that's already down the tubes, at least on social media. Not so much in real life, though. It seems.
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Post by GilroyC on Jun 26, 2018 4:25:17 GMT -5
Regardless, as far as the poor politicians on either side getting turned away, I'm still leaning toward meh, but I take your and rob's points. What I think is more important to maintain than civility toward politicians is civility with each other.... and that's already down the tubes, at least on social media. Not so much in real life, though. It seems. Oh I don't know. It feels like civility across the board has died a horrible, painful death due to the focus on the narcissistic need to one up people on Facebook and Twitter.
And our present Chief (I don't feel he qualifies as Commander or any other such lofty titles) does nothing to bring civility back.
This is also why I point out that the money angle is the one I'd consider with regard to the restaurant. A heckling may seem like something harmless to certain factions. But it's triggering to others, downright stomach churning to others, and violence inducing on still others. Something that starts as a simple verbal jab could escalate quickly. The one restaurant got lucky it stayed as heckling. But how much money did they lose, because of the actions of their patrons? How much money are they losing because of who they served? If the owner of the Red Hen felt it in the greater interest of his bottom line to NOT serve Sanders, that's his choice.
Perhaps now, which the clean up efforts, he may have to rethink which costs him less, but he still was thinking of the money angle of it all.
I imagine his insurance payments just ballooned after this incident too.
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Post by Don on Jun 26, 2018 5:08:04 GMT -5
From an earlier post upstream...
I think that if "polite society" had responded appropriately to Bush's torture policy and Obama's drone policy, "polite society" would have never put Trump in office.
And I'm absolutely amazed at the attention separating brown children from their parents is getting today, when Obama's policy of murdering brown children if they happened to be attending the wrong social event in the wrong place at the wrong time essentially got a pass. Those children will never be reunited with their parents; indeed, their parents are quite likely some of the terrorists we're dealing with today.
I see murder as a more heinous crime than kidnapping. Kidnapped children may be reunited with their parents one day. Their lives may go on.
I still see partisanship all the way down here.
But pile on. Tell me how kidnapping children on US territory is less heinous than blowing them to bits in their own country.
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Post by robeiae on Jun 26, 2018 8:43:05 GMT -5
I think you're begging the question, rob. (The same question I was actually trying to address.) There are, I'm sure, administration policies you'd consider so abhorrent you'd support public shaming and shunning and harassment - like, say, if the Trump administration were literally trying to bring back slavery, or create actual, non-metaphorical concentration camps. Right? On the other hand, we probably all agree that public shaming, shunning, and harassment because you don't like the administraton's tax policy is over the line. So per that Twitter thread Cass posted, the question is whether we're in Category 1 or Category 2 - which will be subjective, per person. I don't think we're in Category 1 yet, but I can sympathize with those who do. On the other hand, I think a lot of people who do think we're in Category 1 now are unwilling to recognize that their position is subjective and that there are people on the other side who see a lot of "liberal" policies as being in that Category. So once you declare that we've crossed that threshold, the other side is going respond in kind. Since there are people who think tax policies they don't approve of are Category 1, I am very reluctant (less reluctant than you, but more reluctant than Cass) to pull that trigger. Not just because now the other side will do it too, but also because you can only cry Hitler so many times before that level of outrage loses its power. Well look, policy is the realm of the people at the top, of elected officials. So again, I think there's an argument to make when it comes to telling such people what you think of their policies/actions, even when they are not "at work." Indeed, as I alluded to, one might fairly argue that they're always at work. But people like Sanders are doing the job they're paid to do (and the turnover in the Trump admin indicates how hard these jobs are, simply because Trump is a jackwagon). There is--imo--a very clear line here. It's the same sort of one that exists in other realms, for instance in law: defense attorneys are paid to represent their clients, but I'm pretty sure most people would agree that accosting such people in public--because, say, they successfully defended someone accused of murder--is over the line. Maxine Waters, in case anyone missed it: www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/06/25/maxine_waters_god_is_on_our_side.htmlThat's waaaaay over the line, imo. People who don't think it is, who would heed her advice, are part of the problem, not the solution.
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Post by Christine on Jun 26, 2018 9:06:17 GMT -5
Regardless, as far as the poor politicians on either side getting turned away, I'm still leaning toward meh, but I take your and rob's points. What I think is more important to maintain than civility toward politicians is civility with each other.... and that's already down the tubes, at least on social media. Not so much in real life, though. It seems. Oh I don't know. It feels like civility across the board has died a horrible, painful death due to the focus on the narcissistic need to one up people on Facebook and Twitter. Agree as to Facebook and Twitter, but do you think this is also the case "in real life"? Things are pretty civil, everywhere I go, but I don't get out much, either. My point is that I think it's important to remain civil with our neighbors, as much as possible - but when it comes to politicians and, really, people like Sarah Sanders and Sec. Nielsen who are promoting Trump's loathsome policies toward immigrants, and at the same time, lying to the American public about how fine everything is? I'm not so sure it's a bad thing for them to not be insulated from public scorn. Kind of like, punching up, not down (or across). Agree. It was a her and she stated that she asked Sarah Sanders to leave because her employees wanted her to do so - not only because of the immigration policy but also because of the recent ban of transgender people from the military. I assume she's being honest here. I agree that all business owners will consider their bottom lines, and most will probably make it their first priority, whether it means excluding certain patrons, or not.
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Post by Deleted on Jun 26, 2018 9:10:48 GMT -5
Don -- "Partisanship all the way down" -- when a yuuuuge pile of the people denouncing the zero tolerance policy are Republicans, including a ton of prominent ones -- and some are leaving their party over it after a lifetime of devoted service?
Unless the GOP is in fact now defined as "Trump diehard cheerleaders", it simply isn't so.
Rob -- are you seriously suggesting that there is no line at all between a restaurant owner quietly asking high level government officials to leave their establishment because they believe the official is enabling or committing human rights violations, and mobs accosting hapless file clerks in the streets because they don't like a tax policy?
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Post by Amadan on Jun 26, 2018 9:12:21 GMT -5
Well look, policy is the realm of the people at the top, of elected officials. So again, I think there's an argument to make when it comes to telling such people what you think of their policies/actions, even when they are not "at work." Indeed, as I alluded to, one might fairly argue that they're always at work. But people like Sanders are doing the job they're paid to do (and the turnover in the Trump admin indicates how hard these jobs are, simply because Trump is a jackwagon). There is--imo--a very clear line here. It's the same sort of one that exists in other realms, for instance in law: defense attorneys are paid to represent their clients, but I'm pretty sure most people would agree that accosting such people in public--because, say, they successfully defended someone accused of murder--is over the line. Maxine Waters, in case anyone missed it: www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2018/06/25/maxine_waters_god_is_on_our_side.htmlThat's waaaaay over the line, imo. People who don't think it is, who would heed her advice, are part of the problem, not the solution. You're still begging the question. To go full Godwin, if Sanders was literally working for Hitler and literally doing the job she was paid to do by sending Jews to concentration camps, you wouldn't think Maxine Waters was waaaay over the line in advocating that we tell her and the rest of her administration she's not welcome, right? Now, obviously Sanders is not working for literal Hitler (and if she was Maxine Waters would already be in a concentration camp). So don't beg the question again. Is there anything the White House could do, short of turning into literal Nazis, that would get you to concede that social disapprobation for public officials doing their job is appropriate?
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Post by Christine on Jun 26, 2018 9:26:13 GMT -5
It is way over the line, if only because she's a politician asking the public to rally against her political opponents. Of course, Trump essentially does this every fucking day.
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Post by robeiae on Jun 26, 2018 10:39:35 GMT -5
Rob -- are you seriously suggesting that there is no line at all between a restaurant owner quietly asking high level government officials to leave their establishment because they believe the official is enabling or committing human rights violations, and mobs accosting hapless file clerks in the streets because they don't like a tax policy? No. I'm talking about the latter, not the former. They're very different things, quite obviously.
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Post by robeiae on Jun 26, 2018 10:47:39 GMT -5
You're still begging the question. To go full Godwin, if Sanders was literally working for Hitler and literally doing the job she was paid to do by sending Jews to concentration camps, you wouldn't think Maxine Waters was waaaay over the line in advocating that we tell her and the rest of her administration she's not welcome, right? You're late to that party, as Cass already went there. And it's not an apt comparison. Can you guys make your points without inane comparisons to Nazis, or not? First, define "public official." But no, generally speaking nothing that could reasonably occur in what is the current reality is going to get me to agree with the idea that employees should be accosted in public when living their private lives. What about you? Outside of fantasy comparisons to Nazis, do you actually think going after people in public like Waters is recommending is a good thing? Is that the new normal you'd like to see? Because if you're going to insist on the hyperbolic comparisons to Nazis, there's no reason I shouldn't posit a slippery slope here, is there?
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Post by markesq on Jun 26, 2018 10:51:37 GMT -5
I sometimes wonder how I can read a thread like this and still come out wondering where the disagreement lies. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like we all agree there could be a time and place where a member of the public is justified (in terms of law, morality, and civility) in confronting a member of the ruling government with regard to a policy they (the confronter) see as so unjust as to require an abandonment of normal public behavior.
I think the disagreement lies in: (1) how bad the policy has to be (which is subjective), (2) who the person being confronted is (merely a salaried underling doing his/her paper pushing as opposed to a policy-maker), and (3) what form that confrontation takes ("I say, old boy, that's a little much, how could you?" versus a punch in the face).
To summarize: we all agree it could be appropriate, with three variable: the reason for the confrontation, who's confronted, and the form of the confrontation.
Am I missing some nuance?!
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Post by robeiae on Jun 26, 2018 11:00:03 GMT -5
No, I don't think so.
(1) is not really an issue for me, however. I don't think it really matters; if it's okay for me to shout at my local politician because of a policy/action, then it's okay. Doesn't matter how critical/significant the issue is.
(2) is what I'm really talking about. Per my lawyer example, people just doing their jobs in advocating for an admin shouldn't be fair game. PR firms fit in there, too.
(3) matters to some degree I think, only insofar as actual assault ends the discussion, since it's criminal. Anyone who wants to justify physical assault can try doing so from a jail cell, imo. And someone exercising their rights to not do business with a given individual isn't really engaged in public confrontation imo, even if it gets spun up that way from others getting involved.
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Post by Amadan on Jun 26, 2018 11:17:54 GMT -5
You're late to that party, as Cass already went there. And it's not an apt comparison. Can you guys make your points without inane comparisons to Nazis, or not? "You guys"? I criticized Cass for the comparison because I agree it's not apt. However, with you I am not addressing the particulars of this case, but the principle. Nazis get used as a comparison (hence Godwin's Law) because they are a stand-in for "Infinitely Evil" - i.e., at the far extreme of the spectrum of any slippery slope. So let's stipulate that no, we are not talking about literal Nazis. What I actually asked you was: To which you said: Fair enough - you don't see it remotely plausible that the Trump administration could ever enter the Godwin Zone. But a lot of people do. Cass does. I think it's plausible, though I don't think we are there yet. Frankly, I don't find your position, that nothing short of literal death camps merits that sort of public censure, to be very respectable. I could think of lots of examples from actual U.S. history - what about slavery? During the slavery debates, would it have been "waaaaay over the line" for abolitionists to publicly censure pro-slavery public officials? (Pretty sure that happened, and the reverse.) In that era, a lot of people were probably like you and me, thinking that slavery was obviously an emotive issue but gosh, do we really want to be uncivil about it? Of course it did get pretty uncivil, didn't it? How about the internment of the Japanese? Would you have been disgusted by a restaurant owner, opposed to the internment, who kicked out one of FDR's staff over it? Maybe because she had Japanese-Americans working for her? It's not some wild, fringe, lunatic extreme to say that at a certain point, you equate flipping the bird to Trump's people with civil disobedience and resistance to tyranny. I am not personally there yet. But I'm less cavalier than you about labeling people who are as beyond the pale. Read my previous posts. I specifically pointed out why I am concerned about making this the new normal. And I have no respect at all for Maxine Waters, who has always been an idjit and an embarrassment. That said, as Christine pointed out that's more troubling because it's one politician trying to sic the public on another politician. If it were someone with more credibility arguing that we should "make Trump officials unwelcome," I might not agree with them, but I get why more and more people at arriving at that position. You don't, because you still don't have the spirit to muster more than tepid disappointment at Trump's toupee.
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Post by robeiae on Jun 26, 2018 11:21:19 GMT -5
Nah, I just have an actual sense of history and am firmly grounded in reality.
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Post by robeiae on Jun 26, 2018 11:27:33 GMT -5
On this: How about the internment of the Japanese? Would you have been disgusted by a restaurant owner, opposed to the internment, who kicked out one of FDR's staff over it? Maybe because she had Japanese-Americans working for her? As I said, the owner here was within their rights. And I'm not disgusted by that decision at all, I just think it's a dangerous game to play, as it invites retribution. At the end of the day, however, it's the owner's choice, and their business may benefit or suffer (or neither). But it's not the same thing as going after government employees in public--when they're not on the clock--because one doesn't like an admin policy/action, imo.
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