Dave Rubin is right wing, he pretends to be in the middle. Every interview he has with a right winger ends with him completely agreeing with what they said, like it was the most eye opening thing he has ever heard.
Also this...
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Sam Harris has pulled a Boogie (again)
- Thread starter UnpopularBlargh
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Also this...
The arguments of the left being out of control and just as bad and intolerant as the right got a lot of play in 2014 and 2015. I thought it was obvious at the time that his social relativism was dangerous but it was definitely a popular idea for awhile. Then people saw what happened when that shit was actually put into practice.
No one who is not complete trash is going to take these arguments seriously anymore.
No one who is not complete trash is going to take these arguments seriously anymore.
Rubin calls himself a "free agent (in the market place of ideas)" which makes me laugh so hard. Dude is a blatant libertarian now.
His views on religion is full of BS but this is irrelevant to the topic
My point was some people love to defend an icon in their view just because they relate to him (being an ahiest) or he attacks what they dislike/Hate
Just see milo and his crappy views yet got lot following from gays too or those who hate the left
Or jordan peterson with his recent remark where every woman should be forced to marry/settle with 1 man instead of jumping from a man to man etc (which is fucked up and lame view from him. Why should women settle with a man who happen to be a loser just so each man get a girl)
Yet he got insane following too
WOW, well there it is.
Im gonna save that to post it at anyone who tries to argue that civility is the answer or that we arent in a situation similar to the rise of the Nazis.
Its amazing and surprisingly scary how many times we see that human history really is just a circle and most of what we are going through has happened already just on a smaller scale. The only thing we have going for us now is the vast and easily available records of the internet but of course in a world where facts dont matter im not sure if this will be enough to stop this endless cycle.
This quote makes it look like he's comparing leftist reporters to the KKK.
"I'm meeting someone who essentially has the intellectual and moral integrity of the guy in the white hood over on the right. And that asymmetry is totally alarming to me."
He uses the same intellectual dishonesty when talking about religion. He's been showing his ass for years.
He was making good points and then went into hella hyperbole territory with that white hood/kkk comment.
It's been a snowball effect. He got some pushback after making disparaging comments about Islam. Assumed the criticism was from malevolent actors. Began to invite and associate himself more with right-leaning "thinkers" to show how crazy the left had become. Made friends with Charles Murray and had a show about the genetic inferiority of black people. Received criticism from the left and again assumed the hive mind was out to get him. Mustered support from the right to legitimize his actions and show how wrong anyone who criticizes him is. So on and so forth.
His trajectory seems completely ruled by his compulsion to bolster his ego.
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Oh shit ok I definitely didn't catch any of that. Goddamn. Ty for that, a good summary!
I miss the days when I was a kid, when fascism seemed to be dead and gone, and the scariest things in the world were fictional monsters and things going bump in the dark.
If anyone would like to teach me how to embed tweets, or embed this for me that would be appreciated.
This is the kind of post you make when you're on a high legless horse.
I'd tell you to get off but if ya did you'd actually be taller than you are right now.
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The thing is that most people still go ahead and think that these issues arent around anymore when that clearly isnt the case.
Most people have no idea about whats going on in the world today, they simply see a few headlines and thats the bulk of their knowledge of the news of the day.
I always end up coming off sounding conspiratorial to people because of the warnings that i give them and the ideas that i talk about (be in climate change, social change, gov. actions etc.) are things that most people dont spend time thinking about or at least know nowhere near as much on the subject as they thought they did.
The world is a scary place and there are multiple aspects we need to be concerned about: Climate change, loss of democracy, rise in dictatorship and totalitarian regimes yet for the majority they probably only know about one of those issues and dont pay too much attention to it.
Oh, I know. But as a kid I was sheltered from all that, and it was a nice feeling is what I'm saying. I don't have the luxury of fearing the dark these days when the monsters are out in the open, in the limelight.
Thank you so much!
Let's be honest, the left can and does act like far right on many occasions and have throughout history. It's mostly been the right stealing tactics from the left most times. As far as them being mirror images I think one can easily find some semblance of truth there. It is what it is..
And that's Harris' fault. Maybe don't say something as monumentally stupid as this...
...and all the attention won't be brought to it.
User Banned (1 Day): Trolling and antagonizing other members
Nazis didn't steal their way of dolling out punishment from the Cheka? Either way, whatever, I'm not going to argue on the internet about it. Have a good day! Smooches..
Nazis were inspired by the left? Both sides are the same? Please continue talking out of your ass.
Really?
Lets look at just the past two years in America and you give me the examples of the lefts mirror image of the same.
Muslim ban
Normalization of neo-nazis (see charlottesville)
Actively trying to separate refugee parents from their children to discourage further refugees from attempt to cross the border
The forceful and disgusting response to BLM (a non-violent protest against police brutality which for some reason made conservatives lose their minds, or what was left of them)
The embrace of Russia at the expense of long term allies
I am going to patiently wait for your response and some examples of how they are mirror images of each other.
So you've got nothing. Thanks for confirming you're a troll.
"Both sides are the same. In fact, the left is worse since the right is copying them. I don't have any examples, but believe me because."
"I'm going to drop this hot take and refuse to defend it because lol internet why bother"
Why bother coming into the thread into the first place if you had no intention of defending your position?
Sam really needs to let the beef with Ezra go.
There is nothing to be gained in this analogy. Only false equivalencies and gross mischaracterizations.
He would have a point if the extreme left had any kind of platform whatsoever to mirror what the extreme right has right now in Fox News, Breitbart, Alex Jones\Rush Limbaugh, and the fucking White House.
There is nothing to be gained in this analogy. Only false equivalencies and gross mischaracterizations.
He would have a point if the extreme left had any kind of platform whatsoever to mirror what the extreme right has right now in Fox News, Breitbart, Alex Jones\Rush Limbaugh, and the fucking White House.
They've been at this a while. They always have to go "no u" because they can't defend their reprehensible shit, so therefore they do nothing but prop up false equivalencies. They know Fox News is shit propaganda, so they pretend CNN is the same, even though it's centrist at best. They know Breitbart is trash fake news (but they still believe it despite knowing it's fake, go figure), so they go around trying to find left leaning sites like Huffington Post to claim those are somehow the equivalent on the left.
That time when they tried making "alt-left" a thing despite that making no sense because alt-right was a specific movement formed recently, not just a descriptive term, encapsulates their whole shtick. They assume, or wish, that because they have something shit that there must be some equivalent on the left because durrrrr that's how pendulums work right? It's also why they try to prop up antifa so much. They can't defend neo-nazis, not without coming off as ridiculous and terrible, so they have to try and drag the other side down to their level with fiction.
That time when they tried making "alt-left" a thing despite that making no sense because alt-right was a specific movement formed recently, not just a descriptive term, encapsulates their whole shtick. They assume, or wish, that because they have something shit that there must be some equivalent on the left because durrrrr that's how pendulums work right? It's also why they try to prop up antifa so much. They can't defend neo-nazis, not without coming off as ridiculous and terrible, so they have to try and drag the other side down to their level with fiction.
Fuck their point.
The right is actually doing real harm and evil to peoples' lives.
The so called extreme left calls out people for racism, sexism and bigotry. Even if they get it wrong sometimes only a psychopath would try and conflate the two.
Yet people still keep falling for it.
It's not that both sides are the same, it's that authoritarianism/fascism/totalitarianism are bad and can exist on both what are thought of as "liberal" and "conservative" sides and the tactics employed tend to resemble each other: violence and oppression.
Sam is making a hyperbolic comparison but he's trying to make the point that politics aren't a single dimensional spectrum. It's possible for the left to be just as radical and violent as the Nazis/KKK. The point is shouting down voices of dissent or disagreement is a step in that direction, but obviously not the same thing as lynch mobs and concentration camps. Boogie's commentary was idiotic in his "both sidesing" but there is a valid point that the left should not itself be immune to criticism and can also be intellectually dishonest.
I have a friend who is so far up Sam Harris's ass. If Sam would have talked about how atheists can be as insufferable as theists then I would think he was actually doing some reflection on his own self.
It's a shame that he is a face of meditation when there are so many people out there that exhibit true loving kindness in their practice.
But this is a Sam Harris thread and I will never not post this:
It's a shame that he is a face of meditation when there are so many people out there that exhibit true loving kindness in their practice.
But this is a Sam Harris thread and I will never not post this:
I understand what racism and authoritarianism is. And you're not enlightening anyone by stating that obvious which is that those are bad. It's incredibly asanine to look at the current political climate and claim that both sides are just as guilty of being malicious and disingenuous. If you genuinely believe this you're either not paying attention or are being dishonest. The right is trying to restrict the ability for minorities to vote, the right is trying to control women's reproductive organs, the right is constantly justifying systematic racism, the right is constantly on a campaign to gaslight and change the narrative whenever they get called out. I can seriously go on. These aren't the fringe. These are things done by leaders on the right. But continue to delude yourself that the left is just as culpable for the deterioration of democracy because a few nobodies on Tumblr are obnoxious.
It just blows me away how we are witnessing a concerted effort to deceive and disenfranchise by the right, but because you see an occasional video of some liberal being loud that you can point and say "See, the left can be just as bad! They're disrupting someone's speech!!!"
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I think he's talking about the 20th century. The Left was a mirror of the Right and was arguably even worse than the Right in terms of human destruction. The point is extremism on either side should be avoided.
JFC I'm not deluding myself about anything, don't put words in my mouth. In the context of THIS thread, I'm talking about how there are bad faith actors on the "left" that will take Sam's comments out of context and act in dishonest ways to demonize him. Of course I know the right is acting in reprehensible ways and in bad faith in this country. Acknowledging that the left is not beyond reproach and has its own issues, some of which Sam has been a victim of, is not the same thing as saying "both sides are the same."
Literally nobody is saying that everyone on the left is 100% reasonable and beyond reproach. So I'm not sure why you think that's something worth noting. What is disingenuous, however, is to include that fringe group as being just as damaging and prolific as what the right is doing. You're literally cherry picking isolated cases and presenting them as being equal in scope to what Sarah Sanders, Jeff Sessions, Paul Ryan, etc. is doing.
I'm not falling for anything.
The extreme left I'm referring to in my post isn't the "so called" extreme left you are referring to (like antifa or feminists or whatever else the right likes to throw in that bucket). I'm talking the real extreme left, a group of people so small and insignificant that we don't even have a real name for them and whose views are completely unknown other than boogeyman stories. People who have no platform whatsoever.
Sam was trying to compare these two groups as if they have equal footing, they don't.
Or... I'm giving him too much credit and he's trying to compare the "so called" extreme left to the actual extreme right people in the White House.
Ugh. It's probably the latter.
I really need to stop giving people the benefit of the doubt.
No he wasn't. He very clearly was talking about modern politics. And you can warn me about extremism on the left when they start kidnapping children and hold Nazi rallies.
In what world is Ezra Klein part of the "left"? Vox explicitly appeals to moderate, technocratic liberals and spent most of 2016 getting into fist fights with modern leftists. Conflating the two is absurd and shows how empty Harris' point was.
No, I'm not. Sam has a history of having to deal with intellectual dishonesty and bullshit from the left. Acknowledging he has legit grievances and that this intellectual dishonesty can lead to dangerous places isn't the same thing as saying it's currently at those dangerous places, equivalent to what's going on to the right in scale, or as damaging. Both of these things are true: Sam has put up with bullshit from the left like taking his comments out of context and having people slander him in bad faith, and that sucks. Also, Republicans doing reprehensible and despicable evil on a global scale and the effects of that will haunt us for decades.
If you think I don't understand the difference in scale between the two then I don't know what to tell you. The fact thousands of children are being traumatized by our government doesn't mean I can't be mad when I get rear ended or when I stub my toe, even if the two aren't even comparable in terms of pain.
He's a fan but he's coming around. He had Talib Kweli on his podcast (which is really good, fwiw) a couple weeks ago and they had a long conversation about Harris. Dax actually had his mind changed on some things.
Please provide the proper context for this statement:
In what world is "dishonesty and bullshit" the equivalent of totalitarianism/facism/authoritarianism? in what world is Sam Harris having to deal with Twitter trolls the equivalent of the this country's administration has been doing? I get he's frustrated to be criticized by bad faith actors, but spare me drama. Those things are not all equivalent, and to conflate the worst fringe on the left with the right majority is nonsensical.
I mean Harris is comparing a reporter with a Klan member, meanwhile you're placing critics in the same level as what's going on in our border, for example.
I like listening to Sam Harris on other topics, but he's obviously off base here.
If he'd just said intellectually equivalent, I might even consider it. The left absolutely has some very intellectually dishonest tendencies going on right now.
But morally equivalent? How are the present evils of the far right even remotely comparable to what happens on the left? Even if you want to talk about the potential of absolute far left extremism somehow being as bad, that is obviously not happening in America in 2018. Only one party has power and only one extreme fringe is killing people.
Leftists have a tendency to be quite annoying at times, but the idea that being annoying is equivalent to being evil in 2018 is fucking absurd. I may not fully, 100% identify with either group but if I have to pick a side it's not a difficult choice.
If he'd just said intellectually equivalent, I might even consider it. The left absolutely has some very intellectually dishonest tendencies going on right now.
But morally equivalent? How are the present evils of the far right even remotely comparable to what happens on the left? Even if you want to talk about the potential of absolute far left extremism somehow being as bad, that is obviously not happening in America in 2018. Only one party has power and only one extreme fringe is killing people.
Leftists have a tendency to be quite annoying at times, but the idea that being annoying is equivalent to being evil in 2018 is fucking absurd. I may not fully, 100% identify with either group but if I have to pick a side it's not a difficult choice.
He's had to deal with people from those outlets taking his words out of context in order to smear him in intellectually dishonest ways and he thinks it's immoral to do so. It's had a serious negative effect on his life.
Imagine you yourself get put on blast regularly for things you don't feel like you actually said by people you think actually know you didn't say those things for the sole purpose of doing you harm. You'd probably have a very low opinion of them and prone to making hyperbolic comparisons about them too. Do you think he literally means they're like the klan or do you think he feels aggrieved and made the comparison because he loathes people actively trying to harm his reputation in dishonest ways?
Dude calm the fuck down and see above.
Neo-Nazis/KKK: "I hate all minorities."
Left: "I hate neo-nazis and KKK."
Sam Harris: "These are the same."
Left: "I hate neo-nazis and KKK."
Sam Harris: "These are the same."