Politics Discussion Thread January 2013

OrphanWilde

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.

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.

Oh.

So, OK, if you don't think it's true that the use of stereotypes in humor is a safety valve to avert groupthink, I'm not exactly sure why you said that when I asked, but I'm happy to drop that line of discussion.

Now you seem to be saying that the use of stereotypes in humor is a safety valve to avert censorship... do you actually think that?

It's a way of saying things that aren't supposed to be said. Whether the level of "supposed to" is a bit of moral outrage(like it is today), or a gulag(like it was in the Soviet Union), people use jokes to get around barriers. That serves the function of evading censorship sometimes, as well as the function of undermining certain kinds of groupthink to a certain extent. It's not perfect, but it serves a role.

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Politics Discussion Thread January 2013

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Politics Discussion Thread January 2013

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