RE: Trump and Conservatism As A Threat: What Should Be Done?
December 29, 2016 at 1:55 pm
(This post was last modified: December 29, 2016 at 1:56 pm by Amarok.)
(December 29, 2016 at 1:49 pm)Asmodee Wrote:(December 28, 2016 at 2:56 pm)Secular Elf Wrote: Yes, sue people behind fake news and hold them accountable. We are going to have to do more than just that though. When people become so willing to believe a lie over a fact that facts do not matter to them anymore, you are going to have to do something that gets their attention and snap then out of it. And when they refuse to snap out of it then you will have to do something more drastic. They then become too dangerous for the survival of a society to continue to have around.That's some pretty radical thinking there in the first paragraph, and I certainly don't agree with it. People, unfortunately but necessarily, have a right to be stupid if they choose to. We do need some laws to protect the rest of us from mass-supidity, but that's easier said than done. Even if you could get such laws passed, you would have to spell out each possible stupidity and how we are protected from it. That would have to be written by a bunch of lawyers, who take pride in the cleverness of the loopholes in the documents they prepare and finding the loopholes in the documents others have prepared. You would have to remove the human element from it completely, so even an ass like Scalia couldn't re-interpret it to say what he wanted it to say. This is essentially impossible.
I suggest that what we need is for Progressives and Secular people to wake up, take these threats very seriously, and join together to form an anti-Conservative movement. It should be a movement with attitude and teeth, and have more power and influence than the enemy. Conservatism is that enemy. It has become a threat to everyone, it is dangerous, and it needs to be put down. I have ideas for the formation of this movement. But it will never take off unless people are willing to do the work that is necessary to make it possible.
What we need now more than ever in the Progressive-Secular community is a discussion about exactly this. But we should not take too long. Time is ticking and the Inauguration is around the corner.
What you need instead is a massive public education campaign. We need to start dumb-shaming people instead of coddling their ignorant asses. If someone says something about a link between immunizations and autism, rather than calmly explaining how science shows no such link, we need to point and laugh and post videos on YouTube of them crying. And it can't just be us. That needs to become the norm. Right now dumb is sexy and THAT is what needs to change.
here here idiots need this
Seek strength, not to be greater than my brother, but to fight my greatest enemy -- myself.
Inuit Proverb
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