If recycled policies from the UK Tory party can pass for left wing in the US (and they do far too often), then your political system is horrifically broken.
Fix it!
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No. No smug feelings. I also am not sure where I put words in your mouth, but I think disengaging now is probably a good idea for both of us. Good day.
Oh, absolutely, I agree fully. Those of us who want change are having a lot of difficulty doing so at the moment; being outnumbered with internet trolls in charge of things who seem to delight in cruelty doesn’t make things easy. But it’ll swing back if we keep trying, I have faith.
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My linked post was about the history of their studied opposition to aluminium (and water fluoridation). Surely that qualifies as “general ignorance”!
Sorry, I meant ignorance that didn’t have serious real world consequences. Opposing fluoridation isn’t entertaining because it has an adverse effect on public health. Not knowing that the Bible was originally written in Hebrew and Greek, not English, isn’t something that can adversely affect public policy.
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Years ago, the word “homosexual” was used in scientific papers. The term was an attempt to use a latin prefix and be scientific. Unfortunately, that word became loaded with so many irrelevant and confusing connotations. It was a big improvement when scientists switched to terms like “MSM” or “people who self-identify as ******” and other terms that precisely communicate the facts without the loaded term “homosexual”. Clarity is achieved and misunderstanding avoided. Terms like “privelege” have entered the political arena and taken on so many extraneous connotations that they lose their precision, and therefore their utility. These terms have already been “taken away” by their use and abuse in the popular culture and lay discourse.
JonS BBS Commander
December 16 |
In technical fields, jargon is vitally important for correctly and accurately conveying the intended information. That’s why, for example, your anterior temporal lobe is your “anterior temporal lobe”, and not “that lumpy grey bit beside the squidgy thing that ends up going down the middle bit of your back”
Science is a technical field. Jargon is the language of science. Taking away someone’s language is always a great way to disempower them.
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In Reply To
cre8love4all
December 16 |
At the end of the day, what we need are science-based best practices that break down the silos and really move the needle. Our results-driven focus on our core competensies for mission-critical diversity initiatives for vulnerable populations will leverage synergies with thought leaders… Seriously, …
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I remember seeing that there was a Posadist table at a recent socialist conference. It may have been a joke though.
Yeah, I don’t know why this is much of a surprise, a good chunk of our current situation can be explained using the argument from privilege that vaccine deniers have employed.
First, there are multiple “lefts”, as there are multiple intersecting ideologies that make up the left coalition. The idea that people who identify as leftists will all be at the same spot in these intersectional ideologies is fantasy. Some people are further left the environment, others are farther left on class, still others are farther left on foreign policy, rinse and repeat with other ideological stances, and you have basic intersectionality.
So, among the people on the left, there are some people who feel that the demonstrated risk of vaccines is too significant for them to subject their kids to. Built into these parents’ rationale is the assumption that everyone else will still be vaccinating their kids, so that herd immunity keeps the risk of disease low, while also allowing these parents to further hedge against the risk of vaccine side-effects. Let’s be clear about this: the risk of side-effects from vaccines is not zero, however, it is very small, so these parents are reaping a marginal benefit at the cost of undermining herd immunity by a likewise marginal amount. The problem is that the vaccine risk abatement is largely a personal benefit, while herd immunity is a socialized benefit, so sooner or later, the cumulative effect of people not vaccinating undermines our herd immunity to the point where the social risk far outweighs the very small personal benefit of avoiding potential vaccine side effects. Privatizing profit while socializing risk is something that’s associated with markets and capital, but it’s a behavior that you can find throughout the political spectrum.
This formulation drives other behavior of ostensible leftists. You see it in how people treat education; hollowing out public schools in favor of charters, minimizing the risk for their own kids while sending public institutions into a death spiral. You saw it in last year’s election, where people who were privileged enough to not be on public benefits or not in some sort of contingent immigration status were drawing all sorts of bright lines that clearly illustrated how we couldn’t support the Democratic candidate, because of superdelegates, or one of the other manifold compromises that made the selection process less than pure–nevermind how clear and present the danger to our institutions was should we choose to protest vote, or not vote at all.
In short, privilege drives this sort of behavior, and the right doesn’t have a monopoly in privilege.
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It’s not privilege, it’s ignorance.
Respectfully disagree, it is privilege that says “So what if a whooping cough outbreak occurs, I have immediate access to doctors and medicine. If they didn’t want an outbreak, which, by the way, will certainly effect people without ready access to doctors and medicine, the establishment should have made a vaccine with 0% chance of side-effects, not 0.001%!”
You’re giving anti-vaxxers too much credit. Sure, a certain (small) percentage may be engaging in the kind of selfish arithmetic you’re suggesting, but mostly it’s down to their profound ignorance about the actual dangers (or lack thereof) of vaccines, and an unfounded paranoia about the medical establishment in general. Many of these people do not have ‘immediate access to doctors and medicine’ either, the lower end of the economic spectrum is well represented in their ranks.
I’m not sure that poor people really have the means to go doctor shopping…
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