863
Pete Buttigieg forced to explain that lead is poisonous to obtuse Republican
(www.lgbtqnation.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2024
863 points (97.6% liked)
politics
19088 readers
4137 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I was listening to Know Your Enemy's recent podcast titled Why the Right Loves Foreign Dictators (would definitely recommend a listen), and I came to a realization:
American conservative beliefs are not based on reality. That seems obvious, especially to this crowd, but like, the conservative dispossession of reality-based beliefs goes deep. Their version of rationality is adherence to an ideology and that is how they interpret the beliefs of others.
In this case, it manifests as opposing the removal of lead water pipes in the honest belief that, regardless of their danger—which is speculative to this idiot—it's too expensive and "infringes" on rights. The value of lead pipe removal derives from whether its economically beneficial and its comportment with his idea of what infringes on rights, rather than on...you know...the scientifically proven damaging effects of lead.
Because he interprets the beliefs of others as perceived adherence to some ideology (which he almost certainly doesn't understand), he dismisses the solid scientific evidence as speculative. It's ideology vs ideology for him. Scientific claims are just another ideology.
To generalize, that's why the pro-life movement "helps" women, that's why be against welfare "supports" the nation, that's why supporting Putin "defends" liberty, and that's why voting for Trump makes America "great". It's not about real results, it's just pure ideological adherence from the bottom to the top. It's fitting that Trump is their messiah. He's the greatest bullshitter modern politics has ever seen.
You lost me here. Could you explain?
I’m guessing they meant to say supporting
Oh, whoops! I meant supporting.
Motives is a better word than beliefs. Other than that I've come to the same conclusion.
Conservatives deeply depend on ideology. This is why they say everything is a slippery slope, because their own plan is to keep going with their ideology. They can't understand that others want to do one action, without some secret grand plan to ____.
Why do you help moderate the largest conservative Lemmy community then?
It seems you’re just helping legitimize their beliefs.
I came oh-so-close to moderating a conservative community and I am quite vocally opposed to conservatism.
I'm hoping that maybe some conservative communities on Lemmy are moderated by normal (non-conservative) people who can keep the conservatives within the bounds of their instance's guidelines. Perhaps this is one such moderator. That would certainly be better than letting conservatives moderate a community. We've seen how that turns out.
I hear what you’re saying but I disagree.
I think that is the instance’s admins responsibility to deal with a community’s moderators.
I believe that moderating an extreme community’s view to make it more broadly accessible is not helping anything.
Moderating herein means kicking and banning people whose behavior is unacceptable or locking and removing individual posts and comments that are unacceptable. For instance a conservative sub may have threads on the virtues of tax cuts for the rich by relatively normal folks and threads calling for lynching black folks for imaginary crimes.
I believe the rich should pay their fair share but I sure hope someone normal is willing to allow the former and ban the latter even if the would be lynch mobs threads are couched in polite and indefinite language while they spread their lies and hate. I feel like a normal fellow might be better situated to make such a distinction than someone of a conservative bent who is looking to follow the bare letter of the law so to speak.
In theory that sounds great but if you visit the community they moderate you'll see that they are the token leftist to legitimize them.
Well, we're on Lemmy, so the attraction to conservative views, extreme or moderate, is often few and far between.
Also, I'm not moderating for the purpose of making their views appear more moderate. To his credit, the main mod asked me to mod because he understood he was biased against leftist views and would ban them even if they were in good faith. I basically protect leftists that show up and participate according to the rules. And I ban the hard headed ones that don't.
I also have the opportunity to confront the misinformation that so often comes from conservative communities almost immediately. I might have to leave the post up, to my chagrin, but by being among the first comments, I can leverage how people use social media (see headline, read comments) to better inform folks.
In other words, for those that tldr: Conservatives could be incredibly kind and might often actually do the right thing, if they weren't total idiots. Problem is: They believe too hard literally all the time and base their self off an ideology built on narratives, true or false.
They could be decent people, but aren’t.
Got it.
Actions speak louder than words. If you say you love and support children, but vote to take away their rights to be who they are and read what they want, you're a bad person. If you say you support women, but vote to take away their bodily autonomy and voice, you're a bad person. If you say you support helping the poor, but vote to decrease or eliminate social programs meant to help the poor, you're a bad person.
But they'll never realize that.
When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. -Maya Angelou
I don't think that's a conservative specific thing there, and if you do odds are you're doing the same thing but privileging the ideologies and narratives you are using in a way that you don't think they count as narratives or ideologies but as either facts, justice or something along those lines.
To put it another way, I suspect if I asked for a list of your ten mostly firmly held and allegedly defensible political beliefs and we really drilled down to the bedrock on them we'd hit some bits that are more ideology or narrative than you'd be readily comfortable to admit. Or cases where you built the position around a principle that only applies when it otherwise neatly aligns with your preferred ideologies and narratives.
For example, pro-choice people tend to be able to invoke one or more general principles that they often claim being pro-choice is an example or expression of (bodily autonomy is a popular one), but it's shockingly common for nearly the only controversial case where they'll apply those principles to be abortion (and I say this as someone who is pro-choice).
Kelly Oliver (philosophy professor at Vanderbilt specializing in feminism among a few other topics, ironically including ethics) once argued that feminist theory isn't about producing true theories or false theories but rather strategic theories - in other words it's not about whether or not it's true but whether or not it is useful for activism. This sounds shockingly like something conservatives might say about some of their hot button claims of the moment if they were being unusually honest.