I’m not sure if updating our tools is moving goal posts- what goal are we aiming for? I understand the frustration with seeing the measuring stick change to make the reasonable seem unreasonable, but I would say that the same measuring stick is now misrepresenting where people fall.

If we are talking political spectrums, there already are plenty of tools used: the linear left right, the horseshoe, the fishhook, the quadrant visualisation, etc. I’d say the data is now leaving the paper. We need new tools to make sense of it.

Much to your point though, I think it’s valuable to ask “what are we measuring, who’s doing the measuring, and who benefits from the answer?”

We will never have the satisfying answers to our questions, but hopefully we can find better questions to ask.

I think that the left/ right spectrum is outdated, or at least the definitions we give to each.

I mean, originally the left/ right divide was about whether to keep King Louis XVI around or to have him beheaded.

The spectrum we know as a communism vs capitalism scale really was useful in the cold war when those were the two sides of a bipolar world. When we still use this as the measuring stick, things become super confusing in the 21st century. Our world is no longer a communist vs capitalist struggle. Russia and China aren’t communist like the Soviet Union. The United States isn’t the same democratic state that it was in 1960.

I don’t know what our new spectrum is, that’s going to be the research of the next great political scientist, but I do think the old tools we’ve used are no longer helpful. Some are saying “woke vs unwoke”, some are saying “populism vs. globalism”, and some are saying simply “chaos vs order”. Perhaps it’s a little bit of all, or perhaps we should throw spectrums out altogether. Either way, if we use old tools for modern problems, we will end up confused. It’s like how jazz is seen as a super complex genre- it may simply be because we still use the music theory of 18th century European composers to try and understand Miles Davis. Of course it’s going to be a wild ride.

Oh of course, person by person there are folks who wouldn’t hesitate to grab a machete and get to work.

Hell, there are people in leftist camps who decided to join when they heard the word “guillotine”

I mean that’s what I assumed it meant. I didn’t think we were actually going to come out murdering people.

Ah I see.

Maybe this can help.

I’m happy to clarify, what part do you find confusing?

How can we be sure you’re not the secret billionaire!? 🤔

Best eat both of us just to make sure.

Edit:

Also OP and anyone who read my post because they said they might agree with me on this meme. Gotta root out enemies of the people.

Edit edit:

If anyone actually follows the line of any revolution, this is how it always goes. The guillotine will eventually kill the ones who bring it out.

Yea that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.

I’m anxious that all the praise for the CEO shooter is revealing that “eat the rich” wasn’t a euphemism for “tax the rich” but that people actually want the streets to run red with blood and cranberry sauce.

Cook me daddy

100%

I know I’ve even taken more extreme stances outwardly than I actually believed because I didn’t want to be outcast by my friend group.

Oddly enough when I became more comfortable to speak my mind in a non-threatening manor to those who trust me, I did get my close circle to show that they weren’t as extreme as they presented themselves either.

It’s almost as if social media has only intensified tribalism by giving us two dimensional views of the people we interact with. Our in-group has a diverse set of reasonable ideas, whereas the outgroup is a brainwashed monolith of everything we hate.

I would also consider the logistics of war. There’s a military saying: novices study tactics, experts study logistics.

How long would it take to train a wizard to get to that level vs. a muggle with a gun? It feels like the classic knight vs. armed peasant situation.

That plus being able to cut off food supplies or infrastructure- just saying the US military was able to take out sadams military capabilities faster than he could react.

The reason Hermione is sworn to secrecy about the wizarding world is that they know if muggles found out there was a deep state, the revolution would be swift.

I’m in this photo and I don’t like it

Idk, meeting an absolute stranger that you texted with for a day or so with the pressure and expectation of romance just sounds like a recipe for failure.

Starting a romance with someone you already have some history with or share a community with seems more plausible. I used to click with someone and then immediately run home to find out if they were available or not so I could find out if it was safe to develop a crush.

How was eHarmony different that tinder or bumble? I never used it.

Twisted a vertebrae and broke a collarbone here.

I get that cramping feeling you get in your neck when you run in crisp cold air and are filling your lungs completely and quickly because you are so out of breath but you are pushing yourself to just get up the hill and down the driveway so you can get home and slam the door behind you, lock the top dead bolt, lock the door knob, drag your prized armoire to block the door, it needs to be firm. Then take all your other furniture to baracade the back door, garage door, and the door to the garden. You desperately begin taking apart chairs and taking cubbards and doors off their hinges. You need any extra piece of wood to hammer into the wall to block the windows. You are panting and heaving, feeling nauseous from exhaustion, but you know stopping is not an option. You cannot slow down, you need to make the most of every second, he who hesitates is lost, but he who rests is dead. You keep thinking “10% faster, 10% faster, please God not like this, 10% faster”. It’s at that moment, when you feel that aching and pulling of your collarbone that you realize you were too late. The pit in your stomach filling like a water balloon, your throat tightening and eyes beginning to water. You were no longer keeping him out, you were now keeping him in. You knew he was faster, stronger, and more cleverer than you, but you had to at least try. Any glimpse of survival is extinguished, your fate was all but sealed long ago. It was always going to be this way, it was always going to be Shia LaBeouf.

Also it feels like someone stabbed me in the back from time to time. Thank God for weed.

Yes, but all Minecraft villagers are also war criminals.

All Texans are war criminals

Israel is defeated like the US was defeated in Afghanistan. It’s not that the Taliban managed to get tanks rolling through DC, but they killed our international image and took away prescious time, money, energy, and lives. They suffered magnitudes more than us, so just like in any war, there were no winners.

We keep saying “we don’t negotiate with terrorists”, but I’m starting to think that we should consider negotiating with terrorists*.

'*Understanding the definition of terrorist is very subjective

Yup. The good part about it is that if I know the trip wire words to avoid, I can get him to agree on some really progressive things.

Like I got him to agree that history is uncomfortable and that victors tend to write history, so we should be critical in how we learn it and teach it. We should consider the perspectives of who “the losers” are to get a true grasp of what actually happened, and that the society you grow up in will shape your world view. Our history classes should confront these issues and teach events with consideration of different groups of people and how they were affected, even if it may make us uncomfortable.

Hmmm what does that sound like?