July 28, 2008
Curious George: Intelligent heterogeneous political forum? Is there a forum (in the Interwebs sense, with threaded messages) about politics featuring an intelligent user base, made up of people with varying ideologies?
I find I'm not getting the level of actual political discussion I'd like to have, but of course so much of the "discussion" online is yammering idiocy, name-calling, and Godwin's law.
Where can I find – aside from here of course – a decent town square online?
Go fuck yourself, you Nazi cocksucker.
Serious post: I don't believe that such a thing could possibly exist online. You are Kevin Costner searching for Dry Land, Coronado pursuing a dream of Hidalgo, the Man of La Mancha looking for... all that... crazy shit he was looking for.
As for Monkeyfilter...Fes is gone, f8xmulder is like a comet that appears every 16 months or so, which probably leaves me as the least lefty regular monkey...which is pretty sad because I voted for the goddamn NDP in the last election.
The forums at hard-men Trot site Red Action used to be great if you cared about UK working class politics - open to all and very civil considering that included the fascists etc they'd be giving a kicking if they met in the flesh. Sadly closed now but the archives are still up if you care to Google, though I suspect it's not what you had in mind.
Such a thing would have to be very heavily moderated, so you'd either have to have very dedicated volunteers or a payroll budget. And the mods would be under constant accusations of censarship for trying to keep it civil.
/is pessimist
I'm giving it a try at PoliticsForum. They have a ban on one-line posts, so we'll see. My Carlinesque realist pessimism often comes into conflict with my Gandhian faith in humans.
Good luck. Don't know of anything, mainly because I'm all meh about trying to discuss anything anymore. Seems like every conversation is so drastically polarized within minutes.
One thing I find is a terrible amount of cognitive dissonance about people's political beliefs. I'm sure I have some, also, although I really try to make sure everything fits together. Is it because the world is so complex? Because it's hard to stand a reasonable middle ground without straddling the fence? Because people are too lazy to think things through?
MonkeyFilter: yammering idiocy, name-calling, and Godwin's law
MonkeyFilter: My Carlinesque realist pessimism often comes into conflict with my Gandhian faith in humans.
I like that, scartol.
Oh, yeah, I almost forgot.
Hitler.
And kittens.
Monkeyfilter: Hitler. And kittens.
Metafilter.
Oh, sorry, not threaded.
As soon as I stop laughing at the very idea of discussing politics srsly, I will post my reply that there is no such place in which to do it.
I mean, look what the bastards did to Socrates.
A small price for Socrates to pay for the example he set, eh?
BH: I think many people are afraid to be caught in a contradiction, or forced to re-examine their assumptions. Especially in the US (where I live), there's a nearly absolute refusal to get past the most surface-level dissection on why people believe the things they do. This makes meaningful discussion about most things – especially politics – very difficult.
A professor I had in college once put the importance of dialogue thusly: "You and I have a conversation. We may not change each others' minds. But if it's a true dialogue, we can exchange information and possibly plant seeds for reconsideration – which usually happens after the discussion is over."
I think that's a great way to look at it.
Beautiful, how the brain-dead filtering system here at work blocks art sites ('nudity'), tech forums ('discussion'), and language translation sites ('proxy/anonymizer') but that supremacist site is wide open. Damn.
Arbeit macht frei.
Das ArbeitInternechtfilter macht frei.
Schultz! I'll put you in ze koolah!
"My Carlinesque realist pessimism often comes into conflict with my Gandhian faith in humans"
My money's on Carlin in this cage match. He's got (had) a slight weight advantage and a longer reach. Gandhi could use hair pulling with immunity, but Carlin's street fighting moves will find no protection worn under that dhoti. Also, Gandhi's dedication to a principle of non-violence isn't going to help - eh?
What is Devoter up to these days? Has it developed a strong leaning one way or the other?
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