Skeptic Project

So, against my better judgment, I wasted a lot of time today engaging in a ridiculous argument on Twitter with a bunch anarchists that I seem to have followed largely by accident. These are the folks who tag "#amagi" in every other post and are the right-wing weirdos who believe that Somalia is a model society and every person who is not a right-wing anarchist is a "statist" who believes in killing millions of people.

I'm getting really tired of ready-minted ideological solutions to the world's problems. If it's not some nimrod out there pushing the "free market" (Paultards, right-wing anarchists, Libertardians etc.) it's somebody else saying we should abolish money (the you-know-who movement) or some other utterly unrealistic idea that would, if implemented, result in the utter annihilation of human civilization.

Whatever happened to people who believe in pragmatic, real-world solutions to political and economic problems? These days it's getting to be that if you say you think the existing governmental or political structure is generally pretty good, if still in need of serious reform, you're some sort of heretic. The U.S. government has a lot of things wrong with it and I certainly don't believe unabashedly in monopoly capitalism. But it seems like you don't even have the option these days to pick a little of one and some of the other. No--people demand absolute compliance with all one ideology or another, and spend most of their time arguing against the obvious problems that adherence to their ideology raises, when they could easily overcome these objections by being less ideologically pure and mixing a little reality in with their theory.

Maybe I'm sabotaged by the fact that most of the people who wind up arguing with me on Twitter are between the ages of 17 and 25 and have no real understanding of how the real world works. Nevertheless, every time I mention anything that smacks of some sort of pragmatic centrist realism, I'm attacked from all sides.

Is political realism dead in today's world? Or is the Internet just a bunch of fricking idiots?

Never mind, I already know the answer to that. I gotta go lie down.

People like the ability to label and pigeon hole things so they can recall exactly what it is they are dealing with. In your case people are expecting you to conform to a specific ideology so as they can know what they are dealing with and how to debate it and classify you.

People are uncomfortable not knowing, and sadly being real these days means you are an unknown entity because that requires you to be honest with yourself and others, as well as switch and change your thinking and beliefs the more you learn. It seems today that most people find something they believe in and then embrace it in totality and hold onto it until it drowns in its own vomit. When they come across someone who might embrace a small part of their ideology and some of another they tend to want you to be complicit about everything to join their group or to fuck off from their group and not ruin it and become the other identity.

Its group dynamics in effect.

Whatever happened to people who believe in pragmatic, real-world solutions to political and economic problems?

Disillusionment, probably. If you read Taibbi (Griftopia) or Cohan (Money and Power), you might get the feeling as many others did, that examining the current problems will lead you to the depressing conclusion that you might understand what is going on, but that there's nothing you can do about it. No NWO, no single incompetent president to vote out of office, no evil FED to get rid of, just regular waves of collusion, lobbyism, misguided self-interest and propaganda.

The two more popular reactions I've perceived among progressives are to either move closer to the center and accept the status quo as "not that bad", or to move towards the fringes and promote some naively one-sided solution to a multitude of complex issues.

Educating yourself about the problems, even if there's no self-evident course of action resulting from it, apparently isn't that popular, and I guess there's a reason for that.
Sad, but what can you do.

I'm having a problem on the FB group with some animal liberation absolutist. He actually compares himself to the slavery abolitionists of yore. Really!

Stefan Molyneux who is otherwise a pretty sensible guy

wat

Bobbie, I'm not a hardcore follower of him but he has made some sensible posts about child abuse and related subjects. I don't share his beliefs about anarchism etc. and his 24/7 govt bashing irritates me. In any instance, his constantly putting himself out there and advertising has brought him substantial amount of popularity, and like all the others (such as pj, david icke and the likes) freedomain radio can also be included in the list of things conspiracy science wishes to target.

I see

The truth is right now ideology plays such a part of politics that it sickens me. Recently my state's secretary of state, who is fairly liberal but also practical, was voted out in the Democratic Primary by a lady who comes from a family full of scandal and corruption but won because she appealed to the left ideologues. Depressingly I will still vote for the Dem because her opponent is a birther teabagger who doesn't think the homeless should be allowed to vote even if they are veterans.

Stefan Molyneux is full of stupid