I've detected a new shibboleth in a micro-tribe adjacent to mine: the use of the world "cruel". Mask policies are "cruel". Closing schools during pandemic is "cruel". etc I find this shibboleth distressing, bc it's a retreat from rationality / embracing emotion & projection.
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3/ I think that most of their policy prescriptions are based on the fact that we do NOT share axioms. We do NOT agree on costs, and we do NOT agree on benefits. Yes, sure, 2% of their ideas are villainous "twirl mustache and cackle", but 98% are not. (& same re conservatives)
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4/ When someone leaps straight to calling a policy "cruel", it makes me think two things (about the person calling the policy "cruel", not the person proposing it): * they fail the Ideological Turing Test * they are emotional and not logical
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5/ Another shibboleth of the same red sub-tribe is calling things "satanic" or "demonic". Right, right, I get it, it's an expensive signal to show that you're a Believer (expensive bc believing in God isn't terribly unpopular or weird, but believing in Satan and demons is).
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6/ and, yes, a few things are literally "satanic" or "demonic", but most are not. I recently saw a friend call the income tax "satanic". Neither Satan nor God really care about tax policy. Jesus spoke on the topic and said that tax policy is re the physical world and ...
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7/ leave secular topics to secular authorities. ...and yet the same tribe chimes in "no, no, he said that about ROMAN tax policy. INCOME taxes are far worse." Frens, you're so zoomed into the leaf you can't see the forest.
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8/ God doesn't care re marginal tax rates or policy incentives, and He doesn't care if the authorities tax the product of your fields, or just your fields directly (on a tangent, how is taxing a productive asset better policy, or better Christian morality than taxing outputs?)
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9/ The stupidity in this thread I'm referencing culminated with someone say "I'd pay taxes to Caesar, but our government is no Caesar". OMG, read a book. As terrible as our government is, it's 1% as bad as Roman governments.
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10/ (I say this w some reasonable confidence; I majored in Roman history)
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11/ Anyway, I guess my thesis statement here is something off in the direction of a Spider Jerusalem quote, except tempered with a bit of hope. It's not that I hate you all, it's that I hate how you behave / think. ...but you can think better. Give it a shot.
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12/ Quit it with the shibboleths. Think through what your words are actually expressing, and decide whether you really want to say those things. (Most things that you say, you heard from other people first, and most other people are idiots, so maybe don't just repeat things?)
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14/ thanks I hate it (but, seriously tho, I think you're right, but ... man, this is some 1984 shit, where Oceania and Eurasia use identical tactics bc they've converged on the ultimate tools)https://twitter.com/Jubalnc/status/1394993066272985089 …
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End of conversation
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