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.

You are ignoring the much of classical New Left thought in this response. As an exercise put on your Gramschian glasses and consider how in a personal relationship based on informed consent, mutual satisfaction and without much support from the rest of society patriarchy exists in a meaningful sense. Bonus points if you see how even with the first two conditions in place this might be something feminism and regular Joe would strongly object to.

Well, I did say:

latent psychological issues or hidden manipulation

-but I see where you're coming from with this elaboration, yes.

I do indeed think that the seeming presense of informed consent and mutual satisfaction can become a cynical, ethically meaningless fake when society and culture have a chokehold on your awareness, your sense of self, your very epistemology. In regards to patriarchy and gender oppression we can see those structures in the Arab world today.
I should've specified that in this comment I was only talking about 1st world liber... (read more)

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Politics Discussion Thread December 2012

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Politics Discussion Thread December 2012

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