Politics Discussion Thread December 2012

OrphanWilde

I skipped October and November owing to election season, but opening back up:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

I skipped October and November owing to election season, but opening back up:

Top-level comments should introduce arguments; responses should be responses to those arguments.
Upvote and downvote based on whether or not you find an argument convincing in the context in which it was raised. This means if it's a good argument against the argument it is responding to, not whether or not there's a good/obvious counterargument to it; if you have a good counterargument, raise it. If it's a convincing argument, and the counterargument is also convincing, upvote both. If both arguments are unconvincing, downvote both.
A single argument per comment would be ideal; as MixedNuts points out here, it's otherwise hard to distinguish between one good and one bad argument, which makes the upvoting/downvoting difficult to evaluate.
In general try to avoid color politics; try to discuss political issues, rather than political parties, wherever possible.

As Multiheaded added, "Personal is Political" stuff like gender relations, etc also may belong here.

That was particularly delicious.

For those who don't read Zizekian:

Badiou earlier postulated that violence against the state was only legitimate when it was expressed "defensively," e.g., when Occupy Wall Street was thrown out of Central Park, the protesters were in some sense justified in using force to prevent being thrown out.
Zizek counters that it's too hard to tell whether or not the state is being excessively violent.
Indeed, "from the standpoint of the oppressed, the very existence of a state is a violent fact." Compare with Republican outrage in the post-election cycle -- impotent calls for secession and the like.
Therefore, in the twisted sense of the parent comment, "all violence against the state is defensive."
He then presents his main historical example, the Jacobin legacy. Mostly responsible for perverting the "will of the people" during the French revolution into the violence of the Reign of Terror.
Obligatory Hitler/Nazi reference.

The error seems to be the slippery conflation from "the oppressed" in part 3 (for whom violence against the state is legitimate) to "everyone" in part 4.

Obligatory Hitler/Nazi reference.

You know, this ending was kinda good for your average Godwin's law bait. If we're okay with condemning all the German non-resisters and excusing outright "terrorism" against a widely popular regime (like the Maquis' actions in France), then we should also be more tolerant of insurgent/revolutionary violence against modern governments.

(By the way, I've come to think that Moldbug's post equating Breivik and Nelson Mandela was justified in this regard - only the ends of political violence really matter, as we all de facto already approve of the means.)

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Politics Discussion Thread December 2012

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Politics Discussion Thread December 2012

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