this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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Remind me again how well “they go low, we go high” worked out for rational, non-insane people in the US?
This is absolutely an example of the paradox of tolerance.
I think it's less about "going high" than it is not alienating people in your own group. You can't make fun of disabilities on the other side (with the exception of a clinical lack of empathy) without the collateral damage of also making fun of people on your side with those disabilities.
I’m not going to be pulling my punches when this election going the wrong way could actually end democracy in the United States for the foreseeable future. And that has an absolute fuckload of horrifying knock-on effects both domestically and globally. As in, like, (more) concentration camps (remember the border patrol camps and the children they separated from families who STILL haven’t been reunited in a shocking number of cases), and they’ll probably put “political undesirables” in there this time too.
But god forbid we offend a few people.
To reiterate: it’s not a tactic I am excited about using. It is a dumb tactic. But Trump supporters are greedy, stupid, deeply prejudiced, or some combination thereof, without exception, and it’s a tactic that tends to work decently well on them. On that basis alone it’s fair game.
The paradox of tolerance does not exist. Tolerance is a social contract, not a moral imperative.
Acceptance of false paradox is what the intolerant and authoritarian want.
By rejecting it as false, it lays bare that the intolerant have rejected polite society and have made themselves open to be rightfully marginalized and ostracized.
If you don’t think the paradox of tolerance is real, I’m guessing you’ve never observed concern trolling from the far right. Which is weird, because they’ve been doing it all over the place, especially since 2016 or so.
Or, you yourself are concern trolling.
I'm not trolling.
The minute you allow intolerance to exist, you have lost.
Karl Popper framed it incorrectly. He makes it sound like a moral imperative and the hateful have seized on that.
If tolerance is a moral issue there is little that can be done about those who choose to be intolerant. Being moral is an individual choice.
It IS a social contract, howevet. If I want my lifestyle to be tolerated then I need to tolerate that of others, unless my (or their) lifestyle imposes unnecessary restrictions on the other.
For example, all the Christians whining about Christianity not being tolerated. They're getting it wrong - nobody is saying don't be Christian. They break the contract by imposing their specific values on everyone else by force.
There is a baseline on which the vast majority agree concerning appropriate behavior in society. Murder, for example, is generally considered wrong. We don't tolerate it.
Breaking a contract has consequences.
Dude, that’s literally the paradox of tolerance.
They take advantage of the goodwill and social norms of the rest of the population in the interest of imposing their specific values on everyone else by force. They don’t believe that that sense of goodwill and social norms are things they have to abide by, but they recognize the power of exploiting a system against itself, and that power is very real. The initial stages of this generally involve aggressively exploiting the letter of the law, and often, working entirely contrary to the spirit of the law.