I gotta say I'm a bit impressed by the last few post you made, starting with this one. They are a bit more mellowout and I dare even say ... objectively neutral comparing to the stuffs you used to post. I'm curious if there was a reason for this shift?Observe wrote: ↑Sat, 7. Dec 19, 17:37It should be pretty obvious that different people have different ideas and views. It should also be obvious, that most of us do not choose our thoughts or feelings. Therefore, not much point lambasting each other over personal differences that we have no control over. Better to embrace those things that we have in common and find ways to have respectful discussions where we differ. The old way is to rage about how my fictional story is better than yours. This only leads to further division.
Of course I agree with most of the things you just said. Similarly, in the past couple month a certain someone had said a few thing that I wish he had said when he was the president. Obama gave the field of Democrat candidate a warning that the average voters would want realistic improvement to their life, not the whole sale "burn down the house and change it overnight" like some of the leading candidate are advocating. In a separate interview (I think with the BBC) he also cautioned about the "cancel" culture that had been pretty much dominated activism and politic in the last decade or so. Whenever people (especially online) raveling at a canceled figure, I often ask myself: do you think you just help ridding of the world a racist/sexist/bigot/whatever, or you actually just helped creating a more bitter/entrenched copy underground? Some people might say there is nothing to understand there, zero tolerance and all that. To them I say we live in a society that even a mass murderer or serial rapist are still entitled to a fair trial, and the society is still obligated to listen to their defense before passing judgement. It's ... kinda hard to get that across when often if someone stand up for the right of a murderer to a fair trial, they will often labeled as supporting murdering. A conduct that's not uncommon in a thread like this. There is someone in this thread that whatever I brought this up, always seem to assume "trying to understand something is the same thing as agreeing with it".
And frankly that's the core of the issue - the refusal to acknowledge. If politic were as civil as it was 20-30 years ago, we wouldn't even have to worry about Trump, you don't have to remove him if he's not the president to begin with, right? I had always said I care less about what Trump does as the president - that is a short term issue, and more concern about the fact that he became a President in the first place - to me that's the long term and if we're not careful of the path we tread, it can become a chronic issue. You can remove Trump, but you can't remove the culture that elect him, and both the left and the right had a hand in creating that culture. Trump may be in his own unique league right now, and I bet a lot people hope he's a one off thing. But I'm afraid that unless our political culture changes, and as long as individuals believe their laundry list of virtues give them the right to ignore while passing judgement on everyone disagree with them, then at a point not too far in the future a president like Trump will become the norm rather than an exception. If one thing history teach us: traditional and norm once broken -no matter what the justification for the occasion is - often never go back to what it was before.
And that prospect scares me more than stuffs like Trump has access to the country nuclear launch code.
I remember as most people on the left was celebrating the white house leak a few months back in how it made a fool out of Trump, Obama was one of the few leaders, if not the only leader from the left that came out denouncing it. You know, I didn't have much respect for Obama when he was the president, but if he is allowed to run again I might vote for him. That's why you recent string of post kinda remind me of the same shift, ever since leaving the WH Obama has been saying the right thing, he's a bit more mellow out and speaking more objectively. In another word, I feel now he talks more as a the leader of American rather than as the leader of the left.