[-] ferristriangle@hexbear.net 24 points 7 months ago

Defending language and human expression by arbitrarily limiting the scope of what should be considered valid language and expression.

The linguistic niche that emojis fill is the same niche that is filled by emblems, which are a powerful tool for communicating specific ideas very concisely and have existed long before the internet. If pictures are too childish and regressive for this guy, then I suppose they want a world without bright red hexagonal stop signs and railroad crossing markers and would instead prefer traffic control markers be replaced with plain text billboards containing the relevant legal codes written in plain text.

[-] ferristriangle@hexbear.net 51 points 8 months ago

"Israel made it pretty simple: The collective punishment of Gaza which falls very cleanly under the definition of a war crime will end once the only leverage Palestinians have to deter even more brutal aggression is released."

[-] ferristriangle@hexbear.net 37 points 8 months ago

We've somehow found an even more exonerative tone than "Officer involved shooting"

[-] ferristriangle@hexbear.net 41 points 8 months ago

mismanagement

When talking about the US, it's more often correct to assume malice rather than incompetence

[-] ferristriangle@hexbear.net 53 points 8 months ago

"You can't just say America always bad, what about when they're on the good side?"

Well what makes them on the good side?

"They're fighting against the bad guys like Russia/China"

Okay, well you can't just always say Russia Bad China Bad, what about when they're on the good side?

"Well what makes them on the good side?"

Well weakening the global military empire of the US is a good start, since that global military empire currently is the primary mechanism through which global capitalist imperialism is enforced onto the world at gunpoint, and anything that breaks the hegemonic control of that global military empire gives breathing room to liberation struggles around the world.

"Okay, but you can't support dictators just because they weaken America"

Why not?

"Because what if America is on the good side?"

What makes them on the good side?

"Because they're fighting against the bad guys."

Repeat Ad Infinitum.

98
[-] ferristriangle@hexbear.net 29 points 8 months ago

Where did you get this idea that blood is being spilt for a "Holy Land."

This is not a war between different religions. There are Palestinian Jews who are just as oppressed under Israel's apartheid regime as Palestinian Muslims are.

Palestinian armed resistance is an entirely justified response to a settler-colonial regime occupying Palestinian territory, tearing native Palestinians out of their homes so that they could be given to colonizers, massacring the native population and stripping them of rights in an ongoing project of ethnic cleansing and genocide over the last ~75 years. Nothing about this is a holy war, Israel is a settler-colonial state that has been militarily occupying Palestinian land, relegating Palestinians into a status of second class citizens in their own homes and ushering them into what are effectively open air prisons in places like the Gaza Strip where they are unable to leave from, all while their labor is exploited to make the lives of the Zionist colonizers more comfortable.

This war is a response to decades of extreme oppression. This is not two groups of roughly equal standing bickering with each other, this is is a brutal military occupation financed by the largest military empire in the history of the world so that the US military can have a technologically advanced military ally in the middle east, fighting against the people who have had their land stolen and lives torn apart who are trying to mount an armed resistance to the injustice they have been forced to live under for generations.

There is absolutely no possible world where this is an issue where "both sides" are at fault. Different religious factions will be able to co-exist when it is Palestinian land once again. There is no co-existence with a settler-colonial state whose existence is predicated on the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the native population, theft of their land, and exploitation of their labor as colonial subjects/second-class citizens living under and apartheid regime.

[-] ferristriangle@hexbear.net 25 points 8 months ago

There are a lot of good reasons why someone might fight the British empire so it's a true testament to American ingenuity that they managed to find an evil reason

"Americans can be trusted to do the right thing, after they've exhausted every other option"

[-] ferristriangle@hexbear.net 28 points 8 months ago

And what conclusions does that interest draw you towards?

Do you think that contextualizing something to show how Navalny is exceptional equates to an endorsement of what Navalny is being compared to?

The only reason this comparison is being made is because of how often Navalny is promoted as an alternative to and preferable opposition candidate to Putin in liberal spaces.

[-] ferristriangle@hexbear.net 27 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The problem with language is that the only thing required for a definition to be "correct" is for that definition to be in common use. That's just how language works.

You can try to fight against that, and lead a never ending struggle to halt the conversation and say, "no no, the Real definition is this!" every time someone uses a definition that conflicts with the definition you use. But at some point fighting against semantic drift and taking a stubbornly prescriptivist stance on how words should be defined is a fruitless battle that doesn't actually help you communicate those ideas more clearly. Instead, you should adopt a different communication strategy that is less prone to misunderstandings.

There are so many different and contradictory understandings of what it means to be "progressive" "leftist" "liberal" "socialist" "communist" and so on that it's impossible to create a definition that everyone agrees on. Even if you correctly incorporate things like historical origin, first recorded use, and the context in which a world was popularized when evaluating how you define those terms, those things don't actually help communicate your thoughts more clearly. Which should ideally be the mechanical function that language facilitates.

Part of the issue is that those words are very broad and general, and encompass a wide variety of competing schools of thought who all nonetheless identify themselves using these umbrella terms. Of course some of the disagreement over definitions comes from bad actors deliberately mischaracterizing these things for propagandistic/rhetorical purposes, but even if that wasn't the case umbrella terms such as these are inherently more prone to semantic drift over time.

A better strategy for communicating political ideas is to use terms that are much more specific in context, such as Marxism. Of course, Marxism has the same problem of bad actors intentionally mischaracterizing what Marxism is, but because Marxism is a much more specific thing it is much easier to resolve disputes over contradictory definitions. This is because there is an authoritative source you can refer back to in order to resolve conflicts and disagreements over definitions. Because Marxism is defined by the collected body of work authored by Marx (as well as those who contributed to that body of work and expanded upon that work over the years), it is much easier to have a conversation with agreed upon definitions by referencing that body of work.

Edit: But to get back on topic and define socialism, "Socialism is when the government does stuff."

[-] ferristriangle@hexbear.net 31 points 9 months ago

"If I simply project even harder, we can imagine a made-up scenario where I am the reasonable one. Checkmate!"

[-] ferristriangle@hexbear.net 22 points 9 months ago

The old quote "If I had more time I would have written you a shorter letter" comes to mind.

Making something long is easy, just cover every point you might conceivably want to talk about, and read off your first draft.

Making something concise, coherent, engaging, focused, informative, and clear, on the other hand, often takes many revisions.

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ferristriangle

joined 3 years ago