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Originally posted by tee rex View PostOf course no politician should be elevated to sainthood, that only leads to disillusion when s/he shows fallibility later.
But you're wrong about "a few good speeches". Reagan or Clinton or Obama could deliver those, as long as Peggy Noonan or whoever is on staff. The test is when you see Ardern - or any leader - speaking without the script. In numerous media conferences she has taken heaps of questions, not been "managed", and has answered with the clarity of conviction. So often you can see a politician's poll-driven wheels spinning behind the eyes, and you know they're trying to remember the lines. She doesn't need to remember because she is clear in her own mind. Hence the effortless put-downs of Trump, Zuckerberg, etc.
The other point I'd make is that she has been compared to Trump on gun control, but if anything the gap is even wider. She said immediately "the gun laws will change", when the constitutionally correct response would have been "I lead one party, we have a coalition, no promises because no majority, I'll see what we can do". Instead she simply got out in front, used her political capital, effectively daring other parties in Parliament to challenge her on this. (Whereas Trump had a majority in House and Senate for two years).
Her political instincts are not cuddly-saintly-nice, they're damn sharp.
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This has got me blubbing ...
https://twitter.com/AngelaCuming/sta...95269120090113
Students in Dunedin, silent walk. Very moving.
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Canterbury Crusaders consulting with the Muslim community over a name change.
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...tchurch-attack
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I ended up reading replies from US gun types to a post by a guy running something called Kiwi Farms which seems to be a repository of fuckawful gun nuts and nazis, telling the NZ police to fuck off about a request for help (tbf, the scope of the request was rather overambitious). It brought home the message that there is probably a lot of people out there who enjoyed every second of that video....
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Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
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Originally posted by BrunoI don't think they're "only" reflecting general ignorance. The point is that they find the ignorance worth exploiting for their own gain. They make life worse by convincing voters of "threats" that they wouldn't otherwise be conscious of.
We see many examples of this with the anti-Muslim agenda.
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Originally posted by BrunoPeople are naturally prejudiced, yeah, but it would be much less toxic if politicians and "journalists" didn't abuse their influence.
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I'm not convinced the "PC" movement didn't have a positive effect. You could argue that by suppressing the expression of hate for others we are simply doing that, suppressing it, and not eradicating it. But I think that despite the recent resurgence of openly stated racism in the last few years, that the overall benefit of making it clear that it is not acceptable to a larger number of people . Obviously it is not the be all and end all, but it has made a difference. albeit not as great as some would have hoped. The example of Islamophobia actually is instructive here - it was the one form of racism which never really got called out, to the point where national newspapers in the Uk can be openly islamophobic on their front pages and the President of the US can introduce a blatantly Islamophobic travel ban.
The rise of Trump and the aftermath of Brexit have encouraged the racists to put their heads above the parapets again, but I think (or at least i hope) that they are a much smaller percentage of the population than they were before. (In terms of casual racism - the structural systematic stuff is still there)
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Agreed.
The difference is particularly notable among young people (though obviously profoundly prejudiced young people continue to exist).
The exploitation of fear of the other for personal gain has been an essential element of US history since white people first showed up.
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Originally posted by ad hoc View PostI'm not convinced the "PC" movement didn't have a positive effect. You could argue that by suppressing the expression of hate for others we are simply doing that, suppressing it, and not eradicating it. But I think that despite the recent resurgence of openly stated racism in the last few years, that the overall benefit of making it clear that it is not acceptable to a larger number of people . Obviously it is not the be all and end all, but it has made a difference. albeit not as great as some would have hoped. The example of Islamophobia actually is instructive here - it was the one form of racism which never really got called out, to the point where national newspapers in the Uk can be openly islamophobic on their front pages and the President of the US can introduce a blatantly Islamophobic travel ban.
The rise of Trump and the aftermath of Brexit have encouraged the racists to put their heads above the parapets again, but I think (or at least i hope) that they are a much smaller percentage of the population than they were before. (In terms of casual racism - the structural systematic stuff is still there)
The difference is that people needed to be politer in the open and they resorted more to using codewords like Immigrant, Asylum Seeker, Urban, Benefit Scrounger, Welfare Queen and Super Predator.
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Originally posted by BrunoI'm inclined to agree that demanding politeness and shaming turned impolite people subversive more than it cured them. But I'm speculating without data.
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Yeah, but that is forgetting that a lot of the PC movement didn't come out of nowhere, but was the result of people demanding that they not be treated or spoken of in a particular way. That's the thing that has pissed people off. And pissing those people off is fine. They'll mostly be dead soon, but not before they have their revenge. Even calling it political correctness seems to help paint this as just a liberal white fad, when it is also the result of 'out groups' demanding to be treated equally. Some people aren't going to like it, and they need to be fought, not understood, or treated as reasonable.
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I doubt that we will ever fully agree on this, in part because the places in which we live (and therefore our personal experiences) differ so much, and also (perhaps more importantly) because it is a hypothesis that is virtually impossible to test with rigour.
That said, I thought this was the essential ground on which the 2018 midterms were fought, in which the Republicans lost 40 seats and control of the House.
It is of course absolutely true that Presidential elections are fundamentally different from midterms, but 2018 did happen, and we would manifestly worse off had it not.
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When people randomly give out about PC, they often quote things that are urban myths or were limited to late 80s US academia. Basic human decency is probably a better term. My dad at least thinks a minute before describing the local corner shop or Chinese restaurant, even if in his heart of hearts he still thinks Paki or Chinky, his not saying it even in a closed non public family environment is a big fuckin improvement.
In Ireland and Scotland at least, life for women, LGBT, BAME folk is immeasureably better since PC started "Intruding" into folks' lives somewhere in the 90s. I realize typing this as a straight white man devalues the above tae fuck, but am basing on what gay, female, ethnic minority friends and acquaintances have told me.
folk that rail against PC Gone Mad, from edgelord comedians to yer man in the pub, seem cunts in the main.
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Spoony, Berbs and Ursus speak for me. If people get upset about someone pointing out that they are being damaging offensive arseholes, then tough shit. Even if they lash out and vote for dangerous racists. The alternative, which is to let damaging offensive arseholes just continue to be damaging offensive arseholes lest we upset them, does not seem palatable.
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Really, it's not ineffectual. As has been pointed out on this thread, a huge amount of really damaging language and behaviour has been removed as people have been shown why and how it is damaging over the last 20 or 30 years. PC - if that's what you want to call it - has made lives better by making sure that the vast majority of us are more aware of what language is racist and what behaviour shouldn't be tolerated, by reminding us that politeness extends to people of other genders and races and not just old white dudes.
(And there shouldn't be a choice between being polite and trying to get democracy to work. Nor do I think that there's really many people voting for Trump or Brexit or Bolsonaro or Orban just because they're irritated by people pointing out that the N word is inappropriate or that grabbing a woman's arse isn't a sign of charming affection).Last edited by San Bernardhinault; 26-03-2019, 14:21.
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I live in a part of the world where casual racism is still the norm (as it was until much more recently than you suggest in the UK and US). I can see the change already in young people around here as they become more and more familiar with the way things work in "the west" and it is all good. I think to suggest that "PC" is behind Trump's rise is nonsense. there are a tonne of reasons why Trump (and Brexit) happened, and PC is fairly low on that list.
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Chaps, head over to the White Supremacy thread where there are numerous examples of people using the N Word and most of them are relatively young.
Many of these people wouldn't use that word in public 10 years ago due to PC, but they still maintained their bigoted views and no doubt put it into practice at every opportunity.
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