Idk, this is firmly in the SoMa/ "East Cut". They just don't like robotaxis. :P

Hi there! I don't mind anyone joining in, it's an open forum. :)

I will mostly keep my response devoid of specific political discussion, and focused on "moderate-ism".

I understand your point in this regard, and Greg's, but I believe that it as an ideology (if you prefer to think of it as one) is based on several incorrect assumptions on your part, first and foremost being that you are intrinsically assuming I (or anyone else you encounter) am not fully familiar with conservatives' (or whatever opposing group's) views on these subjects.

You are essentially just advocating for giving the benefit of the doubt. That is completely fair. It's also something I've already done, many many times.

I would assert that if you do not have a threshold for deciding that your extended good-faith-assumption is not actually correct in a given instance, you do not have a workable ideology, just dangerous apologism. If you (or in this case, Greg) do have a threshold, I think it would be productive or even necessary to state where it lies, so that it can be openly interrogated whether that threshold has been crossed.

If we’re talking about the millions of people who will vote for Trump, and their millions of different points-of-view, you certainly can’t assume most of them are invalid.

First off, I am not assuming anything, I am extremely familiar with the points of view of many different groups of conservatives, and have discussed these issues at length with them. And while I understand the knee-jerk emotional reaction that "millions of people can't be wrong", if you step back a moment you'll realize this is not at all true. Millions of people around the world are racist, sexist, imperialist, supremacist, etc. It's often not their fault, it's just their environment, but that is a reason, not an excuse.

I stated several times that I do not believe all Republicans are racist, and I would add that many who are, are not so knowingly. But many are openly racist, and all of them are, whether they like it or not, following an ideology that is being led by a racist. That tends to attract other racists, greatly increasing their concentration, and also normalizes racism among the group, which makes it very easy to be and to be around open racism without realizing it, much less interrogating it. If you are assuming that the ratio of racists must be even across all groups, that is a very incorrect and flawed assumption. Groups make different biases welcome or unwelcome by their own ideologies and actions.

I'm a white guy with a very full beard that wears jeans, work boots, and t-shirts. Believe me when I say, I have seen many times, in many places, just how fast the bigotry comes out as soon as it's just people who look like me, and who assume they are safely in fellow (conservative) company.

But secondly, why is assuming a group is not bad, more valid than assuming it is? No assumptions should be acted on without verification, so purely from a standpoint of assessing a group, why is the positive starting point only valid? I would argue that you should assume both ways, and see which assumption holds up to the scrutiny of facts better.

"If they actually aren't bad, what am I missing? If I assume an unknown factor is present, does that match the facts?"

"If they are actually bad, what would that look like and mean? Does that match the facts?"

There was a major misunderstanding here. Greg wasn’t actually making that argument. He was simply illustrating that there could be a point-of-view that you haven’t considered; One which is also valid.

Yes, but he was attempting to do it by using an example he assumed I would not have encountered, which was just another an incorrect assumption. Assuming your own ignorance is a useful exercise to a point when it comes to interrogating your own assumptions and viewpoints about another group, but only insofar as you do not have actual evidence to the contrary. Which is what the Intercept article was attempting to demonstrate that we have, about Trumpers.

The difficulty of trying to make the argument in that way, and one that I’ve run into frequently, is that neither he nor I know specifically what that point of view is. If we did, we would believe it, or have disproved it. Rather, we assume that a valid point-of-view may exist; It’s possible we just haven’t come across it yet.

Sure. But once again, what is your threshold for finally saying, "okay, yes, this is a bad group"? You can't just keep assuming that everyone is only good, otherwise you're just serving to cover for bad people.

Moderate-ism also avoids alienating the people in the group you aren’t a part of.

Which is good, unless they are part of a group that should in fact be alienated. My impression from your comment is that you do not actually have a set methodology or threshold for determining whether a group is that.

To loop back to something I said earlier, it's very useful to assume your own ignorance when interrogating your biases and beliefs.

It's not very useful to assume the ignorance of others, except to quash or dismiss criticism, which is what I see Greg as doing (though perhaps not intentionally).

For several years I lived on O'Farrel Street, between Hyde and Leavenworth, which if you know SF is basically the middle of the biggest East-West Transit route in the city. There was literally a 24-hour "Owl" bus stop outside our front window. That was noisy, even for SF.

This is right in line with the other spots I've lived in the city (SoMa, avenues).

I would not be surprised if the negative backlash about their closure forced Microsoft's hand, because imagine if it came out that this group wanted to give those devs their jobs back with the same company identity, and maybe even work more on the game they built, and MS just was like, "nah". Absolute PR bloodbath.

1000% this.

I just had a long back-and-forth about exactly this in the thread about Trump being popular because he's racist.

I think if there's anything to add to this, it's that a lot of the arguments being made simply boil down to, "but millions of people can't really be bad, so there must be something you're missing".

Which is exactly why the Intercept's piece was trying to lay out in detail the evidence that it was just in fact racism, but was dismissed due to their feelings that this leaves no room for reconciliation.

The prices don't mean anything if no one is paying it, which if something is at said 'record breaking' levels, means there is at least 1 fool out of the 2 involved.

It's still just a pyramid scheme in the end, because if I'm trading ammo or a sandwich or pigs or something, at the end of the day if no one wants to buy them from me I can still use them myself.

With crypto, there will by definition be someone holding a valueless and unusable item at some point. Whether or not the opportunity to make money in the time before that happens outweighs being involved in a pyramid scheme, is what everyone has to ask themselves (and be judged for depending on their answer).

You can argue about whether all money is the same in this regard, but there have been hundreds of crypto coins that have failed since the last fiat currency died.

How would we hold them to be better, once they are in office? I have the feeling you would probably not support impeaching them over not being far enough to the Left, so I am interested in what routes you think are available?

To be clear, I don't want a snap primary, I am just interested in if you actually have an answer to this, because otherwise it would have been more honest to just say, "shut up I don't care" than pretend that pre-election is not the time to affect the party platform (which it has always been).

Try and be more open minded. The world isn’t black and white and the issues that are important to you are not universally important to everyone.

Obviously I understand this. The problem is, "racism is not important to me" is still a position with its own moral implications. Understanding a position does not mean you are alright with it. Not every sincerely-held position is equal. And yes, there are many black-and-white, "red line" positions. Genocide, murder, rape, etc, are not positions that people need to just "allow for differing opinions on".

You might make your voting decisions based on the party that bombed your homeland less.

It's funny you brought this up in particular, because I've talked before about a friend of mine who is in this position (he is Palestinian, and has lost a lot of family to Israeli- and likely US- weapons). He is anti-US-government, not anti-DNC/GOP (obviously his reaction is not universal to immigrants, but neither would any other given immigrant's reaction be).

• If he told me that he didn't want to vote at all, I would understand and have no issue with that.
• If he told me he was going to vote Democrat despite Biden's complicity, I'd understand that, and it would not affect my opinion of him for better or worse.
• If he told me he was going to vote Republican because Biden was so pro-Israel, I'd understand the bad logic, and I'd think he was an idiot (and to be clear, I know he doesn't think this).
• If he told me he wanted to harm Jewish people, I'd understand where that is coming from as an emotional reaction, but I would not be okay with any concrete steps taken towards that (and to be clear, he has never so much as intimated that).

Understanding a viewpoint does not mean you have to be equally accepting of all possible conclusions stemming from that viewpoint.

you all spent decades sitting on your thumbs while this crap was cooking

Young people are the ones inheriting this issue from the people who did this for 'decades', and are having to deal with it. Old people in the Democratic Party should not be absolved of blame for their inaction for decades over the spread of racism on the Right and doing nothing, but, concurrently, young people shouldn't be blamed for the 'sins of their fathers', when they're clearly trying to change the party. I would personally love if we could ditch the DNC as a political apparatus, and let them all die in bankrupt obscurity, but using this as a weapon against people who are now actually trying to push change is just itself serving to bolster their racist opponents.

Furthermore, yearning for the effects of a time period doesn’t mean you’re in favor of the effects that caused that time period. Someone saying “I miss when gas was cheap” doesn’t mean “they miss exploiting and bullying people internationally to get the cheapest possible oil” … they just want their cheap gas

The lie here is that you can engage with Republican rhetoric and only see this message. If you watch any Trump speech, he says racist things. The argument that you only care about the gas and house prices still inherently means that you're choosing to ignore the racist stuff, even if you disagree with it personally.

edit:

You don’t get to tell me about my own family.

You don't get to turn your family into an argument, but then also decide it's unassailable. They're not your "instant win" button against racism in the GOP.

If you "disagree less" with vocal racists who have personal ties with White Nationalist groups... I might have some bad news for you.

First off, it's certainly possible that everyone in their family absolutely does love their interracial kids, but it's also very possible they don't; that is a dynamic I'd need to see to know. Behind closed doors, people change.

But either way, that would still be anecdotal, and not prove or disprove the tracked and statistically-validated rise in racist rhetoric in conservative spaces online, in conservative candidate platforms, in conservative legislators' bills, etc etc etc.

but it’s not racism, it’s in more ways a sort of nostalgia for a time period when life didn’t involve so many complex and nuanced topics

I hate to burst your bubble, but "life was simpler when white people were 80% of the population, and we didn't have to deal with Black people, we just let the cops do their thing, pre-phone-cameras" IS racism, whether they realize that or not. We know what was actually happening to Black people (lynchings, murder, sundown towns, Jim Crow laws used to imprison and enslave, etc). If your argument is, "well they just don't care to think about that all, they want what was a better society for themselves, even if it was much worse for people of other ethnicities", then you are acknowledging that they are (whether they realize it or not) making an argument for their (racial) comfort at the expense of others'.

Ignorance to the harm you're advocating is not an actual defense, and it's highly suspect when it's very readily-known information. Willful ignorance at that level borders on malice (and once again, it's not like the Republican platform isn't absolutely rife with racist rhetoric, so it's not like they're just in a bubble where race isn't discussed).