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[mainiac]

10/10 strawman there

No it's really not.  Folks, let's have a history lesson.  This may seem meandering at first but it's actually terribly relevant to Trump and the whole "SJW" label that people use as if it's an insult. 

Way back in 1992, presidential candidate Bill Clinton decided to get in the business of critiquing unknown rap artists.  Namely a woman named "Sister Souljah" who nobody gave a shit about before or since.  She said some stuff about the LA riots he deliberately took out of context and said "If you took the words 'white' and 'black,' and you reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech,"

So, why did Bill Clinton do this?  He wasn't so stupid that he could honestly believe the intentional misreading of her words.  His relationship with the black community was a political liability so he needed to pick a fight with a black person.  Sister Souljah was perfect to diss.  The comments she made about the LA riots were the perfect strawman for white fears about black people.  Sister Souljah was a sacrificial lamb, by mistreating her he could allay the fears of the white-racist-but-not-too-racist crowd.  And she wasn't popular enough that his comments would have any backlash to speak of.  By being just a little bit racist towards one person he would have a pass to go ahead and be tolerant and appoint black cabinet officials.  It was an act of subtly affirming their worldview so they would accept his actions.  "I'm not judging you for thinking black men in cities are criminals.  Even I'm disgusted by the most extremist of them like Sister Souljah."

But that's just a long way of saying "he threw racists a bone to keep them off his back."

Every liberal public figure does this a little bit and not just with regards to black people.  Remember when Obama said that wearing an american flag pin was trivializing patriotism?  Well he gave up and started wearing them.  And usually politicians have to throw bones that matter a lot more.  Obama took time to "evolve" his position on gay marriage.  Obama denounced rap glorifying criminals.  Clinton went for Dont Ask Dont Tell which was a huge step up but still threw the homophobes a bone.

SJW is a vacuous word whose meaning is in the eye of the beholder.  But it's derogatory.  Where the MAGA crowd says "cuck", you say "SJW".  It's like where the Klan said "n****r", the respectable country club racist said "negro problem" in the 50s and talks about "urban demographics" today.  Everytime you say "SJW" you picking a fight with Sister Souljah.  I mean not literally, you aren't trying to appear a little racist, you are creating a strawman for a much more general thing.  SJW is in the eye of the beholder but a pretty damn good definition is "the people trump supporters hate the most."

And the thing is you aren't Bill Clinton in this parable.  You aren't Barack Obama "evolving".  You are the racists and the homophobes that are getting thrown a bone.  Because you aren't doing this out of a belief it's for the greater good of the group you insult, you are doing it because you just want to insult them.  You are using the language of exclusion.  Or to put it at a gradeschool level you are being a bully.

Now I dont expect you to understand all of this.  But you shouldn't need to think out all the details to see the problem.  I think more then half the people in the US dont know what the term "dog whistle" means.  But they still know what Trump is trying to be racist when he demands to see Obama's birth certificate and asks if he is a muslim.

Insulting people by using the term "SJW" is the mildest form of the alt-right culture war on leftism but it's still affirming that view.  It implicitly and completely affirms the notion that it's okay to have contempt for people for pushing leftist views.  It doesn't say you disagree with them, it says they are to be looked down on.  So if you use SJW you have zero right to bitch about Trump.

And honestly, I think it's a massive disappointment that the so called "revolution" of outspoken young people fails so massively in this regard.  They buy into the language of exclusion enthusiastically.

[Flying Dice]

Please, your own strawmen are enough. You don't have to draw on the tired old tar-pit of "hurr durr not agreeing with the regressive left means you're a bigoted fascist". Nobody with a grain of common sense buys that line - I suspect that that's why it's so popular with SJWs, considering the alarming lack of critical thinking skills and utter inability to self-examine. Incidentally, that's why Shillary supporters like yourself love the regressive left, they give you the perfect excuse to lambast progressives that don't march in lock-step behind the leaders of the corp-cap-backed centrists.

If you bitch about social justice warriors without a trace of irony you have zero right to bitch about trump.

I don't discriminate; I mock all fringe loonies equally. The source from which hateful authoritarian ideologies are derived is ultimately irrelevant in the face of what they produce - in the end it doesn't matter why people are being harangued, censored, imprisoned, &c. unjustly, merely that they are. The alt-left is just as destructive and selfish as the alt-right, the only difference is that they haven't had as long to show it.

Anyone trying to frame the current political climate in the U.S. as a binary "us vs. them" has an agenda to push.

pretty sure they don't... actually... exist, though?

it's just trolls and poes at this point, riffing off teenagers who think they have it all figured out.

Um. Except that we see things practically daily that say otherwise. That's part of the genius of the thing, though, is that they use language to shield their intent.

Oh, here's a topical example. Great, right? Sexual harassment as a hate crime if it's specifically motivated by gender, sounds good.

Except that it only applies to women being abused or discriminated against. And

[it] means abuse or harassment which might not be a crime can be reported to and investigated by the police, and support for the victim put in place.

What's that? Someone triggered you? Report them to the police, and even if no crime was committed, even if the only proof that anything happened is your word, the police are required to investigate.

Let's repeat that. The police. Are bound by law. To investigate incidents even when they are not crimes.

Or if you prefer the personal touch, how's this? A day or two ago, someone I know (details spared because seriously the alt-left doxxing hate machine is kinda scary) went off on someone else for describing a crazy set of circumstances as "crazy", a lengthy rant about how it's demeaning and offensive to use the word "crazy", that it stifles the experiences of the mentally ill. Never mind that it was being used to describe a state of affairs disconnected from any group or individual which was crazy in the "Why!? Why would people do this? Why is this a thing!?" sense.

Here's one that's a bit older, how's this for twisted thinking? The imperatives of the regressive mindset are so strong that, despite a lot of these people being alleged feminists, they're willing to cover up when they're raped, lie to the police about the ethnicity of their attackers, frame the narrative to blame a nebulous group of people who had nothing to do with it, and even attack other rape victims as racist liars.

The head-in-sand game is getting a tad old. Just because you're not paying attention doesn't mean things aren't happening. I could spend hours accumulating material like this, but frankly I doubt it would help convince you. It's a sick, twisted ideological strain that's escalating tensions for no good reason, promoting racial and sexual hatred, fighting to bring back racial segregation, and serving the interests of the wealthy by removing the possibility of the poor and (increasingly shrinking) middle class uniting against the real enemy of liberty and collective prosperity.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It implicitly and completely affirms the notion that it's okay to have contempt for people for pushing leftist views.  It doesn't say you disagree with them, it says they are to be looked down on.

Here again we see maniac demanding freedom from true criticism. Only token objections to the left allowed, or you're the crypto-stormfronter waiting to break free.

Fucking please. Politics is not a noble art. I should hope after all the 2016isms, including people literally washing each other in human urine outside the DNC as Hillary Clinton accepted the nomination inside, that this is clear.

The left is not correct. The left is just a position, one does not remain at all static and that any individual may exalt, corrupt, or treat with total pragmatism. When you go into this idea that you have to abandon forms of criticism of people being asshats you ideologically divide by zero and anything becomes justifiable. This is literally the root of all extremism and it should come to no surprise that allowing human beings access to such a narrative causes them to immediately explode into gleeful dehumanization and sanctimoniousness.

If you say you can "look down" upon fascism, anti-vaccination, or genocide advocacy, then you can equally look down on anybody who purports to or even actually does (whatever you consider "actuality" to be) human rights, liberty, or fairness. At the end of the day, 9/10ths of every political position is framing, and what actually happens generally only becomes clear in history. You need look no further than all of the patriotic Cold War espionage, which both genuinely took down some horrible people and spread prosperity while also murdering paragons of society and enslaving them to the aims of the US or USSR.

So, all in all, it doesn't matter what you call yourself. If you go around harassing and slandering people or serendipitously smirking at others doing it, if you advocate an epistemology of oppression that exempts you from judgement through either mechanism or wording and attack people for the crime of disagreement, or if you set up a political theory that says you have to accept any of the above as not just legitimate but a part of your own beliefs or else you're vile and destructive, then you're a fucking SJW and you deserve to face that fact.

Fuck the left. Fuck "liberation". And certainly fuck permitting ourselves to be used and cult-ified by the organizers of our modern political schemes, who are definitely up to their necks in glee that people actually buy into this shit.

[Flying Dice]

That's the narrative for Clinton's supporters and the centrist side of the party, "If you're not with us 100% you're literally a Nazi!"

And then they wonder why the party is fracturing and the progressives are abandoning them in disgust.

[Cheeetar]

Let's repeat that. The police. Are bound by law. To investigate incidents even when they are not crimes.

And the police would never for a second break the law.

[Helgoland]

FD: You quoted RT. I think it's fair to say that you're misrepresenting what happened there. It's a bad example is what I'm saying.

Folks, could it be that 'SJW' is used with two very distinct meanings, and that much of the disagreement here comes from that ambiguity? Though if you want to continue discussing this possibility or indeed the entire SJW topic, please move your asses out of my thread and into a purpose-made sacrificial one. I'm very pleased that this one's almost made it to 300 pages, and I'd like to see it actually get there.

E: Same goes for snarky remarks about unlawful cops.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

I can see why you'd want to be rid of this topic, but I'm not sure what the cops thing is about. Police crime has been an important topic in this thread before, and it almost certainly will be again.

[Helgoland]

Sure, I know. I don't like the snark though, it tends to make things much, much worse.

[mainiac]

It implicitly and completely affirms the notion that it's okay to have contempt for people for pushing leftist views.  It doesn't say you disagree with them, it says they are to be looked down on.

Here again we see maniac demanding freedom from true criticism.

That is a hilariously myopic way to respond to someone saying that your speech affirms intolerant views.  Maybe I should take it to the next level "Here again we see MSH demanding freedom from true criticism."

But for once in my life, I have to ask the humble question.  How in the everloving heck is this about me?  I was discussing cultural movements that were done by people I dont have the slightest bit of bearing on.

Folks, could it be that 'SJW' is used with two very distinct meanings, and that much of the disagreement here comes from that ambiguity?

It has far more then two meanings.  That is why it is a term that is so worthy of contempt.

[Cheeetar]

At this point, 'SJW' just means 'outgroup' or 'people I disagree with'. See for example this article about why the author believes Donald Trump is an SJW: http://thefederalist.com/2016/03/10/3-reasons-donald-trump-is-a-social-justice-warrior/

[mainiac]

At this point, 'SJW' just means 'outgroup' or 'people I disagree with'. See for example this article about why the author believes Donald Trump is an SJW: http://thefederalist.com/2016/03/10/3-reasons-donald-trump-is-a-social-justice-warrior/

Huh, maybe I was too worried about the word because I forgot about the american ability to turn every problem into a farce.

[nenjin]

It's our nation Special Ability.

[Helgoland]

I thought that was the Churchill quote about doing the right thing...

[Dorsidwarf]

Where the hell did those couple of really sneering attacks come from? Maniac made a point about a way in which political figures ( both of his examples being democrats) pander to their ideological opponents by criticising/disparaging those they would otherwise support, tagged on a usual snide maniac jab at the end, and msh and FD suddenly start shouting about how The Left want to shut down all debate and that the democrats are failing because they accuse everyone else of being Hitler.
And then something about progressives, a word which has been so cruelly maltreated on this forum that I'm not sure how to respond?

What?

[Cheeetar]

Where the hell did those couple of really sneering attacks come from? Maniac made a point about a way in which political figures ( both of his examples being democrats) pander to their ideological opponents by criticising/disparaging those they would otherwise support, tagged on a usual snide maniac jab at the end, and msh and FD suddenly start shouting about how The Left want to shut down all debate and that the democrats are failing because they accuse everyone else of being Hitler.
And then something about progressives, a word which has been so cruelly maltreated on this forum that I'm not sure how to respond?

What?

It's those damn SJWs, man.