POTF 40 - Winner and Runner-Up

[Aexodus]

The winner of POTF 40 was Legio_Italica, earning 1 competition point and 5 rep points. Well done lad.

Winning Post

USA elections 2020

Do I detect a hint of 'Minority Report' or is it just wishful thinking? "should have been condemned from the beginning" Just as well that practice isn't exactly supported by the current law - unless they come up with another creative addendum to the patriot act. No one is suggesting BLM is a terrorist group. Again, Cullors herself has been candid about her extremism, including how she was mentored and trained for years by a convicted domestic terrorist leader, Eric Mann. Her organization should be condemned, not given power and influence by the political and corporate establishments. Public support for BLM didn’t enter net positive territory until 2018 amid sustained support from Democrat mega donors and proliferation of false narratives promoted by the group. I respect and to a certain extent share your point of view but it's kinda irrelevant to your claim that I was originally responding to: "The false narratives peddled by BLM incited killers to act according to the FBI." It does however seem to be based pretty much on the same approach (fallacious [claim to authority] narrative and propagation) you mention in your above comment, so there is a connection after all. I am not sure if the discussion about this specific claim (and the claim itself) actually has a place in this thread as it would require a 'three degrees of Francis Bacon' approach to link the FBI file comment to the US election. But then the thread is nearing 3000 posts and I suppose even four degrees will eventually be fine. It wasn’t a claim, but rather an accurate description of the FBI’s findings, one which, again, was referenced by the killers themselves as to their mindset and motivations (BLM and the false narratives about a vast police conspiracy against blacks, a central tenet of the group’s mantra. See Long’s confession that BLM, in his view, did not go far enough to combat this conspiracy, so he took matters into his own hands; Johnson that he was upset by BLM and the narrative of police targeting blacks, wanted to kill white people). Again, the Democrat Party has backed the group since 2015-16, and as BLM’s power and influence grew, it’s not surprising that Biden endorsed them and Cullors is demanding private meetings with him and the VP. No degrees of Kevin Bacon needed. Again. As per. BLM is a reactionary movement. The key premise it responds to, is the perception that to police, black lives don't matter as much as others. There are enough people who agree with the movement's key premise that it has mainstream political legitimacy whether you like it or not. Also, this means there is distinct political advantage to be made from responding to the movement's key premise. Because the movement's key premise is so widely agreed upon, even if the actions of a tiny minority of protesters are not, it is no longer extremist, but as the polls show, mainstream. You saying it is extremist reflects how far you are, or have moved from the mainstream reality of politics. There has been a great polarising separation, and you have found yourself staring from a great distance towards something that has gained more traction than you'd like... judging the concerns of the many by the actions of the few. Attempting to delegitimise something which is actually a relatively moderate demand. Perhaps you haven’t been paying attention. Support for BLM sat at 27% in 2016, and was net negative until 2018. Perhaps the public has a short memory. Perhaps the Democrat Party and sympathetic publicity has succeeded in whitewashing the group’s image. Perhaps both. Just because extremism has been gradually laundered into mainstream public discourse over the last 4-5 years, that doesn’t make it less extreme. According to the group’s website: Our intention from the very beginning was to connect Black people from all over the world who have a shared desire for justice to act together in their communities. The impetus for that commitment was, and still is, the rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us by the state. https://web.archive.org/web/20200917...at-we-believe/ This narrative of “rampant and deliberate violence inflicted on us by the state” is not only false, it also motivated violence and murder, as per the FBI. Ferguson helped to catalyze a movement to which we’ve all helped give life. Organizers who call this network home have ousted anti-Black politicians, won critical legislation to benefit Black lives, and changed the terms of the debate on Blackness around the world. Through movement and relationship building, we have also helped catalyze other movements and shifted culture with an eye toward the dangerous impacts of anti-Blackness. The “Hands up, don’t shoot” narrative was debunked. An organization inspired and catalyzed by divisive false narratives is problematic as it is. Far from being “moderate,” the group’s demands, according to sponsored legislation, include: “Dramatically” reduce military spending/DoD budget Use federal grants to push state and local governments to close prisons and defund police End life (prison) sentences Decriminalize illegal border crossings Close all federal prisons Fund race based reparations These demands are extreme by their own description and sit well outside the political mainstream: The Biden campaign publicly rejected most or all of these measures and they are unpopular with the public. Nevertheless, Democrat Party mega donors have been bankrolling BLM as a useful political tool for several years now.

Runner-up this week is antaeus. Better luck next time.

Runner-Up Post

Changing your mind...

There's an adage... "In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock". It's a hokey saying often attributed to Jefferson, although he didn't actually say it. It is a moralism that people use to justify intractability and reduce subjectiveness in discourse. I see the ability to reassess information and change a decision or opinion on a subject as a strength. To use the language of the above moralism, I don't draw a distinction between issues of style and matters of principle - I see both as largely subjective, and therefore as my life situation changes in time, my perspective on each is likely to change: either intentionally, or through accumulated experience. In my day to day interactions, I have deliberately sought to be flexible. I work in that career field where it is an asset to be able to separate your ego from your work. I justify my work through iterative and evidence based testing processes. This means I make a guess based on what I know, I test my guess, I iterate my guess based on feedback, and retest. The cycle is repeated until I reach a result that has broad acceptance. Many years ago I discovered through these processes that my gut isn't always correct, and that I am valued for my responsiveness to counter-evidence. However there are many contexts where flexibility can appear to be a weakness. Thanks to my history in competitive debating, I have also developed the ability to argue or debate a point separate to my own opinions. To Devil's advocate. This is a hallmark of the careers that follow from debating. Be it in politics, law, dispute resolution, etc, debaters are trained to take a position on a subject that is separate to their personal beliefs. Certainly, as a lawyer it is important to be able to argue a client's perspective - and the law demands that even the most abhorrent person out there must have fair legal representation. And politicians have to argue within the framework of the party that they have been chosen to represent. When I see a politician change their perspective, they are often castigated, either for their former perspective, or their latter. Where things get interesting for me is when we throw cognitive biases into the mix. While it is important to be intractable when arguing for other people's perspectives - as a lawyer or politician for example - It is harder to justify intractability of principle when debating subjectives from a personal perspective. Most of us here who debate online, become good enough at arguments that we become almost impossible to convince of wrongness. We become so effective at reframing evidence to suit our desired narrative that the use of evidence itself becomes secondary to our ability to reframe. Through this process and combined with the lack of accountability that the internet provides, we entrench our perspectives. I would go even further. I would suggest that through our debating culture we not only strengthen our cognitive biases, but we also we render our ability to change course in a discussion as weakness. This leads to forced binaries in our conversations about nuanced and potentially subjective topics for which there is not necessarily any wrong or right. It also leads to us debating ideas that we don't entirely agree with, simply because they are part of a broader set of perspectives that we are defending. I would argue that the most dangerous opinion, is that which is held by someone who is good enough at debating to convince themselves of their righteousness, but not introspective enough to see their own misjudgements. Most of us here would fit into this description - dangerously opinionated. When I look back through my posts over the years, I can see a hardening on some issues, and completely changed perspectives on others. Two questions: Do you see the ability to change your mind a personal strength or a weakness? and when you see others change their mind do you treat it as a strength or weakness in them?