The polarization originated from the response to his opposition. He was immediately smeared and called a transphobic bigot. He reacted. Became a proxy for a larger culture war issue.
-
-
Replying to @danlistensto @KennethFolk
The discourse around him now is based very heavily on what has already been said about him, which has been hyper-polarized since he originally rose to notoriety.
1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes -
Replying to @danlistensto @KennethFolk
Very little of the discourse is authentically engaging with his ideas, which range from interesting interpretations on existing ideas, to banal trad/con takes on personal responsibility.
1 reply 0 retweets 3 likes -
Replying to @danlistensto @KennethFolk
It is really a sign of the times we're living in though that saying something as self-evident as "Stalin's and Mao's regimes were responsible for megadeaths due to starvation" causes people to get upset though.
3 replies 0 retweets 3 likes -
Replying to @danlistensto @KennethFolk
All the deaths related to the Great Depression rest on capitalism, but somehow that doesn't get pointed out much. (And arguably those include many of the WWII deaths). We are good at seeing the sins of our enemies, but that's intellectually worthless if we can't see our own.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @iwelsh @KennethFolk
it doesn't? are you sure? in my very conventional mainstream public high school history courses we studied the Great Depression in a lot of detail and it was represented as both a tragedy and an enormous policy failure that could have been prevented/mitigated.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @danlistensto @KennethFolk
I certainly do not see it mentioned nearly as often in public debate as the Communist famine deaths. (Or the fools screaming Venezuela, as if it isn't just a mismanaged petro state.) Nor do I see people actually tote up the number of deaths.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @iwelsh @KennethFolk
alright, well I can't argue with your subjective experience of relative frequency of topics in the media you personally consume. have you seen anyone deny or write apologia about the Great Depression though?
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @danlistensto @KennethFolk
No. But nor have I seen capitalists accept the death count of the Depression and WWII Western front as accruing to them and then comparing it to the deaths of communism. Let alone accept the death counts of various famines and genocides as in India and N. America.
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @iwelsh @KennethFolk
I think it's a bit disingenuous to group in WW2 deaths with deaths due to economic mismanagement. These are different categories of excess deaths. The issue of genocides due to colonialism is also another serious one, but not due to capitalism specifically, and not denied.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
I'm just trying to focus the discussion here basically, instead of letting it drift off into grouping together every bad thing ever done by "The West".
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.