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ehsbsh OP wrote

So if thats your view my point is why not just agree to disagree? No one is going to change their mind if both sides are so hard lined, so their is no point in hateing eachother over it right?

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GaldraChevaliere wrote

Their point of view literally is hating us, and acting on that hate with economic and physical violence. Their minds won't change, so if there's any sort of natural law, it'd be to defend ourselves.

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ehsbsh OP wrote

To some extreme ones sure, but im a lib-centrist and thats not my goals. That overgenralized

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GaldraChevaliere wrote (edited )

If you identify with centrism, you're essentially admitting to moral cowardice. By upholding the status quo and insisting on 'peaceful debate' between sides with a distinct power imbalance socially and politically, where the politically more powerful side has a vested interest in killing the weaker, you're still ultimately enabling that more powerful side regardless of your social policies, which ultimately serve only to keep you comfortable with yourself rather than pursuing any sort of genuine liberation.

The Left has hardly any more sympathy for the Center than it does for the Right, because the Center will always aid whoever has more power and even if that were us, many of us would still be appalled at how utterly cowardly and submissive that behavior is. I'd go further into depth, but I'm late as fuck for something, so I'll respond to your next post later.

E: Back. Consider the scenario of an old woman falling down and being unable to stand without her cane, which has skittered away into the street. She cannot save herself and she's calling for help, but most people are walking away. Of those people ignoring her, there will be essentially two rationales among them.

One subgroup, the 'extreme' one, will ignore her because they believe that to help her in her weakness would be to enable her weakness, and that if she deserved to walk, she would try to stand up herself. The other group, the 'moderate' one, simply don't want to get involved. They're too busy or they don't want to confront what they're seeing, so they just keep walking and hope that she'll eventually be helped or will find a way to help herself. The moderate group might even be afraid of the extreme group punishing or ridiculing them for stopping for the old woman, so they keep going out of fear.

To the old woman, there is no difference between these two groups, however much they may see a difference between themselves. To her, there is no 'extremist' or 'moderate', there are only callous young people who care nothing for her plight, and so ignore her and leave her in indignity. She might do everything in her power to get up, clutching at street lamps or crawling into the road to get her cane back, but each attempt is a dangerous and sapping endeavor that drains more of her strength for a minimal chance of escape from her predicament. There's even a risk that the extreme group will kick her cane away or step on her hands or push her back down again. So, as much as she is trying, she simply cannot stand up on her own without help.

The moderate, while convinced of his moral superiority to the extremist, still does the extremists' work by refusing to help the old woman, and thus rationalizes it to himself to be spared of the guilt and culpability for his inaction. Slowly but surely, he adopts the extremist's mindset that if the old woman truly deserved help, she would adequately perform to the moderate's expectations, and because she didn't (and couldn't), there must be nothing wrong after all.

Using this metaphor, you can see how this dynamic would apply to class and race relations. The overclass, believing the underclass deserves its suffering, will actively thwart attempts for the underclass to save itself, and the moderate in fear of the overclass will assist in this process, adopting the overclass's beliefs while trying to maintain a sense of morality in the scenario, which ultimately boils down to one of two beliefs. Either the overclass is too strong, or the overclass is righteous. Neither is a helpful mindset to the underclass, and so the underclass resents the moderate as much or even more than their oppressor, while the moderate cannot understand why.

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ziq wrote

It's probably healthy to hate the people whose boots are pressing on your skull.

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