More seriously: How much diversity are you, personally, willing to tolerate?
tl;dr - anybody sensible, for any reasonable definition of "sensible", is probably OK with me.
I'm OK with people who voted for Trump, per se. Not sure about full on MAGA cultist, they yell a lot and don't seem to understand the concept of argument from fact. But, I'd be willing to give it a try.
Also re: MAGAs, I personally would draw a bright line around gender- or race- or ethnic-based theories of human value and superiority, they just trigger my inner impulse to invite them to f*** right off. It's a personal failing, I know - judge not, keep an open mind, right? - but one I am willing to own. We all have our limits.
I'm probably more comfortable with religious fundamentalists than most folks here due to personal history, but conversations with them tend to devolve into unanswerable arguments from authority. I.e., if "the Bible says" is not part of your epistemology, there isn't really a basis for conversation. It can be kind of a dead end.
All the other flavors of conservative you name here are pretty much fine with me. I just ask that people keep it out of ad hominem territory, probably in both directions.
Also, it's a fraught time, it's easy for things to go sideways. If there actually are conservatives of any of the varieties you name interested in joining the party, we might need to update / reinstate posting rules, just to make sure everybody stays in bounds.
For those who would like to see a greater diversity of views here (diversity! What a concept!), it might be useful to ask a couple of questions:
How much diversity are you, personally, willing to tolerate? Full on MAGA cultists? (I'm guessing generally not, but I suppose that could be projection.) Religious fundamentalists, of whichever religion? (Not, I think, those demanding that society generally conform to their views, but perhaps those who think the world would be a better place if more people embraced some of their views. Again, that could be projection.) Straight up conservatives: "I don't much care for change, but can be convinced that it's necessary in specific instances"? Moderate conservatives: "There are things that need changing, but I'd generally prefer gradual changes, small changes that can be reality checked as we go, to sweeping changes"? Centerists-- those who see merits in both liberal and conservative views, and want to create compromises between them? New voices even further left than what we have now?
What ideas do you have for reality checking, both of new and existing commenters? Which mostly comes down to What is an authorative sourse? Does it have to be reliable across the board, or just in some areas? How much agreement do we need for something to be accepted as authorative?
Yes, I realize that I'm assuming a general preference for reality. Challenge that if you wish.
lj, thanks for the link to the original post. I have been a perennial lurker since the days of Moe but I didn't know when the blog actually started. I miss those days because there was a good mix of voices at the time. I think your analysis is correct when the blog switched to mostly liberal voices. I don't know if the conservatives didn't want to engage anymore or if the just felt overrun. I think that overrun feeling has happened to a few people as the blog moved majority liberal. I still love coming here - never stop, please!
What a long strange trip it's been.
Indeed. My apologies to all for angering you at one time or another over the course of the years.* The "all" would seem to include just about everybody here.
But as a famous sage once said, "(You'll) get over it."
The discussions here are unique, and greatly appreciated.
An injury to one is an injury to all.
* list of the greatest hits available upon request.
Hilzoy, Katherine (who did pro bono work for detainees) and Publius who probably wouldn't be put in a Iraq war hawk box
These three were definitely not hawks.
I think the general consensus was that Afghanistan was the necessary war. And people were quite positive about Libya, at least initially - because of Obama/Clinton.
I am talking about having conversations with people who would excuse every atrocity and defend the use of torture. It's quite similar to the positions taken regarding the Gaza war now.
Besides the actual torture apologists there were those who grandly conceded that torture is wrong, but strongly justfied blowing scores of people to bits in the name of freedom a la "you have to destroy the village to save it". I'm glad those people left.
If you are talking about the original crew, that was before my time, but we had Hilzoy, Katherine (who did pro bono work for detainees) and Publius who probably wouldn't be put in a Iraq war hawk box. I would try and take a look, but the whole Typepad architecture is very slow and creaky.
But I can pull up the first blog post in case you want a starting point. https://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2003/11/howdy_howdy_how.html
which has this Second, this is not, strictly speaking, a Right-wing blog: it's pretty much a centrist one. While I carry my Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy card with pride, my fellow-bloggers do not. They aren't froth-at-the-mouth Bush-haters, mind you - which will probably disqualify them as being on the Left for a very small yet vocal group of people - but they are most assuredly not Republicans. I look forward to their insights and challenges to my own ideological leanings. I also have a somewhat larger list of people (of varying political beliefs) whom I'm going to hit up for special guest posts from time to time: but for at least the start, three bloggers is probably an optimal number to regularly post here.
Again, this is before I was here, but my understanding is that Moe Lane started the blog, and he was on the conservative side, and worked hard to get voices from the other side, which then moved the blog to the left of center slant it has today.
Talking about good old days, during Iraq/Afgahnistan/Libya, a common plaint (out on the internet) was gee, I wish we could go back to the old Cold War days.
novakant:
"But let's also remember that the good old days were those of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. "
I think that's when the split started on ObiWi. We had 500+ comment posts about torture, with people who recognized torture as an atrocity, full stop, arguing with people who thought torture was justified and useful. IIRC, most of the original front pagers were still around, and most of them were Iraq War hawks.
LOL. I guess there's a reason the Hippocratic oath is supposed to start with 'first do no harm' (a wikipedia check says it ain't so Although it is often said that "First do no harm" (Latin: Primum non nocere) is a part of the original Hippocratic oath, no such phrase from which "First" or "Primum" can be translated appears in the text of the original oath, although a similar intention is vowed by, "I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm". Another related phrase is found in Epidemics, Book I, of the Hippocratic school: "Practice two things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient". and it likely took shape from longstanding popular nonmedical expression.
So it's entirely possible for a very wealthy person to prefer a weekend's leisure to another million dollars.
But would they prefer a person in Flint getting potable water from their faucet to another million dollars? That is a bit more opaque.
So if I understand this correctly, they give up the weekend's leisure, get another million dollars, and then give it to whoever to is taking care of the lead pipes in Flint. Is that right? Would they prefer a weekend's leisure or fix the Flint pipes?
I actually miss most of the commenters who have been banned during my roughly 2 decades here. Does anybody have the full list?
I don't have a list, but we may have different definitions of banning. In my definition, we've only 'banned' a few people while I have had the keys, which to me, means blocking them from commenting. There is a longer list of people who caused issues and were contacted off list and issues were discussed and at the end of that, the person said something to the effect that they didn't, for reasons said and unsaid, want to change and so stopped. Some might say that was 'banning', but there seems to be a difference, at least to me. of asking someone to leave and they choose not to come back and having to do something to stop that person from coming.
I'm a 13-year-old shiba inu raised by a murder of crows...
LOL
I'm a 68 year old American geezer raised on duck and cover, Kennedy assassinations, Vietnam, Nixon and CREEP, J Edgar, MLK Jr and his assassination, race riots and cities on fire.
Early adulthood was Reagan and AIDs. We gave up on duck and cover somewhere in there and were basically just crossing our fingers.
Middle age was W Bush, 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and waterboarding for fun and profit.
And, here we are now.
What a long strange trip it's been.
Supposedly seeing things on TV helped turn people against Vietnam.
True this. But, it was a different time.
There were three national broadcast TV networks, many if not most people got there news from those or newspapers. Or both. So there was a common set of news sources for most of the country, and those sources generally provided the same basic set of information, although with a somewhat different slant.
The cliche is that everybody trusted Walter Cronkite (CBS, through 1981) and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley (NBC, through 1970). They didn't necessarily agree with everything they said, but they were seen as basically truthful, reliable voices.
And, the cliche continues, when Cronkite in particular began questioning the war, that was the tipping point.
Vietnam was also (I think) the first war where there was a lot of video coverage, and it was timely, i.e., you would see things fairly soon after they happened. The photomagazines like Like also provided a lot of coverage.
Net/net, most people got their news from the same places, and those places were trusted, and they were all fairly consistent in the information they presented.
I don't think any of that is true now.
Re: Gaza in particular - I read a couple of foreign news sources - the Guardian, the BBC, Reuters, El Pais, Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera has a *lot* of coverage of Gaza, but I don't think very many people read it. It's based in Qatar, no small number of USians would probably not read it for that reason alone.
On the US side, I read the AP, which has a fairly "just the facts" stance (I think?), but they don't have the same level of coverage of Gaza as others do.
And I think everybody has basically forgotten about the Ukraine at this point.
I read Krugman on substack, but that's about it. I signed up for a bluesky account but basically never read it.
Don't do TikTok or similar.
News and information is a remarkably fragmented and siloed universe these days.
I wish there still was something with the ubiquity and trust level of the old 6 o'clock news guys, I think it would help make some of horror shows going on now more widely visible.
But they're more or less gone.
I'm a 13-year-old shiba inu raised by a murder of crows that were terrorized by some dude in a George W. Bush mask. If you know that, then the rest of my politics comes into focus.
I was wondering about Charles’s age range myself. I think I have given away my approx age once or twice.
Thanks, Gftnc. But the tone thing sort of makes my eyes roll a bit. People should get a Twitter account, ignore the crap ( I have no idea what “the algorithm” wants me to see most of the time— I know about some people and they interact with others) and read Palestinians first hand. Some over there, some here. You will get tone, all right. Some Western lefties, some antizionist Israeli and American Jews. And plenty of pro Israel people respond, I am a cuddly little teddy bear in comparison to most of that crowd. I mean the substantive ones— there are of course plenty of people who only cuss out the side they are against, but you see plenty of bigotry on both sides with those folk, so even with them you get to see what sort of sewage is out there.
Supposedly seeing things on TV helped turn people against Vietnam. I think you see vastly more on Twitter. I almost never see anything on TikTok, which is supposed to be a site that helped turn young people against Israel in Gaza.
I probably need a break.
More on ranting. I visit LGM fairly often and that entire blog is one long almost continuous rant session, but they have their own culture there and while I think I get the unwritten rules and one or two of the inside jokes, they are a different type of ranter. I wouldn’t fit. It involves how and in what manner you are supposed to criticize the Democrats. The focus is on politics along with policy but mostly how it fits with politics. Nowadays they really hate the feckless Democratic leadership. I learn things from reading them.
You know who we lack here? Palestinian- American posters
You do a pretty damn good job of linking important stuff about the Palestinian situation which most of us would not otherwise see, Donald. In the previous discussion about ranters v persuaders, I think you are a ranter par excellence. And I mean that as a compliment. It's not always comfortable, and I don't always agree with you, but you are morally consistent and IMO a kind of conscience in the blog.
Most everyone here at one time or another has either implicitly or explicitly revealed their age or birthdate. Odds are that anyone who hasn't is within the range.
Though of course with Trump in office we have a purely random foreign policy. based on whims. Best hope for Gaza would be if Netanyahu ticks off Trump in some way,
On “An open thread on July 4th”
More seriously:
How much diversity are you, personally, willing to tolerate?
tl;dr - anybody sensible, for any reasonable definition of "sensible", is probably OK with me.
I'm OK with people who voted for Trump, per se. Not sure about full on MAGA cultist, they yell a lot and don't seem to understand the concept of argument from fact. But, I'd be willing to give it a try.
Also re: MAGAs, I personally would draw a bright line around gender- or race- or ethnic-based theories of human value and superiority, they just trigger my inner impulse to invite them to f*** right off. It's a personal failing, I know - judge not, keep an open mind, right? - but one I am willing to own. We all have our limits.
I'm probably more comfortable with religious fundamentalists than most folks here due to personal history, but conversations with them tend to devolve into unanswerable arguments from authority. I.e., if "the Bible says" is not part of your epistemology, there isn't really a basis for conversation. It can be kind of a dead end.
All the other flavors of conservative you name here are pretty much fine with me. I just ask that people keep it out of ad hominem territory, probably in both directions.
Also, it's a fraught time, it's easy for things to go sideways. If there actually are conservatives of any of the varieties you name interested in joining the party, we might need to update / reinstate posting rules, just to make sure everybody stays in bounds.
"
Yes, I realize that I'm assuming a general preference for reality. Challenge that if you wish.
bring back alien space bats guy! :)
"
For those who would like to see a greater diversity of views here (diversity! What a concept!), it might be useful to ask a couple of questions:
How much diversity are you, personally, willing to tolerate? Full on MAGA cultists? (I'm guessing generally not, but I suppose that could be projection.) Religious fundamentalists, of whichever religion? (Not, I think, those demanding that society generally conform to their views, but perhaps those who think the world would be a better place if more people embraced some of their views. Again, that could be projection.) Straight up conservatives: "I don't much care for change, but can be convinced that it's necessary in specific instances"? Moderate conservatives: "There are things that need changing, but I'd generally prefer gradual changes, small changes that can be reality checked as we go, to sweeping changes"? Centerists-- those who see merits in both liberal and conservative views, and want to create compromises between them? New voices even further left than what we have now?
What ideas do you have for reality checking, both of new and existing commenters? Which mostly comes down to What is an authorative sourse? Does it have to be reliable across the board, or just in some areas? How much agreement do we need for something to be accepted as authorative?
Yes, I realize that I'm assuming a general preference for reality. Challenge that if you wish.
"
lj, thanks for the link to the original post. I have been a perennial lurker since the days of Moe but I didn't know when the blog actually started. I miss those days because there was a good mix of voices at the time. I think your analysis is correct when the blog switched to mostly liberal voices. I don't know if the conservatives didn't want to engage anymore or if the just felt overrun. I think that overrun feeling has happened to a few people as the blog moved majority liberal. I still love coming here - never stop, please!
"
The discussions here are unique, and greatly appreciated.
Hard agree.
And bobbyp, FWIW, you have never angered me.
"
What a long strange trip it's been.
Indeed. My apologies to all for angering you at one time or another over the course of the years.* The "all" would seem to include just about everybody here.
But as a famous sage once said, "(You'll) get over it."
The discussions here are unique, and greatly appreciated.
An injury to one is an injury to all.
* list of the greatest hits available upon request.
"
Hilzoy, Katherine (who did pro bono work for detainees) and Publius who probably wouldn't be put in a Iraq war hawk box
These three were definitely not hawks.
I think the general consensus was that Afghanistan was the necessary war. And people were quite positive about Libya, at least initially - because of Obama/Clinton.
I am talking about having conversations with people who would excuse every atrocity and defend the use of torture. It's quite similar to the positions taken regarding the Gaza war now.
Besides the actual torture apologists there were those who grandly conceded that torture is wrong, but strongly justfied blowing scores of people to bits in the name of freedom a la "you have to destroy the village to save it". I'm glad those people left.
"
And going forward from that post, the three original bloggers here were Moe Lane, Katherine and von.
"
If you are talking about the original crew, that was before my time, but we had Hilzoy, Katherine (who did pro bono work for detainees) and Publius who probably wouldn't be put in a Iraq war hawk box. I would try and take a look, but the whole Typepad architecture is very slow and creaky.
But I can pull up the first blog post in case you want a starting point.
https://obsidianwings.blogs.com/obsidian_wings/2003/11/howdy_howdy_how.html
which has this
Second, this is not, strictly speaking, a Right-wing blog: it's pretty much a centrist one. While I carry my Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy card with pride, my fellow-bloggers do not. They aren't froth-at-the-mouth Bush-haters, mind you - which will probably disqualify them as being on the Left for a very small yet vocal group of people - but they are most assuredly not Republicans. I look forward to their insights and challenges to my own ideological leanings. I also have a somewhat larger list of people (of varying political beliefs) whom I'm going to hit up for special guest posts from time to time: but for at least the start, three bloggers is probably an optimal number to regularly post here.
Again, this is before I was here, but my understanding is that Moe Lane started the blog, and he was on the conservative side, and worked hard to get voices from the other side, which then moved the blog to the left of center slant it has today.
Talking about good old days, during Iraq/Afgahnistan/Libya, a common plaint (out on the internet) was gee, I wish we could go back to the old Cold War days.
"
novakant:
"But let's also remember that the good old days were those of the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. "
I think that's when the split started on ObiWi. We had 500+ comment posts about torture, with people who recognized torture as an atrocity, full stop, arguing with people who thought torture was justified and useful. IIRC, most of the original front pagers were still around, and most of them were Iraq War hawks.
On “From the Chinatalk substack”
LOL. I guess there's a reason the Hippocratic oath is supposed to start with 'first do no harm' (a wikipedia check says it ain't so
Although it is often said that "First do no harm" (Latin: Primum non nocere) is a part of the original Hippocratic oath, no such phrase from which "First" or "Primum" can be translated appears in the text of the original oath, although a similar intention is vowed by, "I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm". Another related phrase is found in Epidemics, Book I, of the Hippocratic school: "Practice two things in your dealings with disease: either help or do not harm the patient". and it likely took shape from longstanding popular nonmedical expression.
"
So it's entirely possible for a very wealthy person to prefer a weekend's leisure to another million dollars.
But would they prefer a person in Flint getting potable water from their faucet to another million dollars? That is a bit more opaque.
So if I understand this correctly, they give up the weekend's leisure, get another million dollars, and then give it to whoever to is taking care of the lead pipes in Flint. Is that right? Would they prefer a weekend's leisure or fix the Flint pipes?
On “An open thread on July 4th”
I actually miss most of the commenters who have been banned during my roughly 2 decades here. Does anybody have the full list?
I don't have a list, but we may have different definitions of banning. In my definition, we've only 'banned' a few people while I have had the keys, which to me, means blocking them from commenting. There is a longer list of people who caused issues and were contacted off list and issues were discussed and at the end of that, the person said something to the effect that they didn't, for reasons said and unsaid, want to change and so stopped. Some might say that was 'banning', but there seems to be a difference, at least to me. of asking someone to leave and they choose not to come back and having to do something to stop that person from coming.
"
I'm a 13-year-old shiba inu raised by a murder of crows...
LOL
I'm a 68 year old American geezer raised on duck and cover, Kennedy assassinations, Vietnam, Nixon and CREEP, J Edgar, MLK Jr and his assassination, race riots and cities on fire.
Early adulthood was Reagan and AIDs. We gave up on duck and cover somewhere in there and were basically just crossing our fingers.
Middle age was W Bush, 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, Abu Ghraib, and waterboarding for fun and profit.
And, here we are now.
What a long strange trip it's been.
"
Supposedly seeing things on TV helped turn people against Vietnam.
True this. But, it was a different time.
There were three national broadcast TV networks, many if not most people got there news from those or newspapers. Or both. So there was a common set of news sources for most of the country, and those sources generally provided the same basic set of information, although with a somewhat different slant.
The cliche is that everybody trusted Walter Cronkite (CBS, through 1981) and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley (NBC, through 1970). They didn't necessarily agree with everything they said, but they were seen as basically truthful, reliable voices.
And, the cliche continues, when Cronkite in particular began questioning the war, that was the tipping point.
Vietnam was also (I think) the first war where there was a lot of video coverage, and it was timely, i.e., you would see things fairly soon after they happened. The photomagazines like Like also provided a lot of coverage.
Net/net, most people got their news from the same places, and those places were trusted, and they were all fairly consistent in the information they presented.
I don't think any of that is true now.
Re: Gaza in particular - I read a couple of foreign news sources - the Guardian, the BBC, Reuters, El Pais, Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera has a *lot* of coverage of Gaza, but I don't think very many people read it. It's based in Qatar, no small number of USians would probably not read it for that reason alone.
On the US side, I read the AP, which has a fairly "just the facts" stance (I think?), but they don't have the same level of coverage of Gaza as others do.
And I think everybody has basically forgotten about the Ukraine at this point.
I read Krugman on substack, but that's about it. I signed up for a bluesky account but basically never read it.
Don't do TikTok or similar.
News and information is a remarkably fragmented and siloed universe these days.
I wish there still was something with the ubiquity and trust level of the old 6 o'clock news guys, I think it would help make some of horror shows going on now more widely visible.
But they're more or less gone.
"
I'm a 13-year-old shiba inu raised by a murder of crows that were terrorized by some dude in a George W. Bush mask. If you know that, then the rest of my politics comes into focus.
"
I was wondering about Charles’s age range myself.
I'm about four months younger than wj and have the same birthday as bobbyp.
"
“ . I almost never see anything on TikTok,”
Meaning that I almost never visit, not that there isn’t material there.
"
I was wondering about Charles’s age range myself. I think I have given away my approx age once or twice.
Thanks, Gftnc. But the tone thing sort of makes my eyes roll a bit. People should get a Twitter account, ignore the crap ( I have no idea what “the algorithm” wants me to see most of the time— I know about some people and they interact with others) and read Palestinians first hand. Some over there, some here. You will get tone, all right. Some Western lefties, some antizionist Israeli and American Jews. And plenty of pro Israel people respond, I am a cuddly little teddy bear in comparison to most of that crowd. I mean the substantive ones— there are of course plenty of people who only cuss out the side they are against, but you see plenty of bigotry on both sides with those folk, so even with them you get to see what sort of sewage is out there.
Supposedly seeing things on TV helped turn people against Vietnam. I think you see vastly more on Twitter. I almost never see anything on TikTok, which is supposed to be a site that helped turn young people against Israel in Gaza.
I probably need a break.
More on ranting. I visit LGM fairly often and that entire blog is one long almost continuous rant session, but they have their own culture there and while I think I get the unwritten rules and one or two of the inside jokes, they are a different type of ranter. I wouldn’t fit. It involves how and in what manner you are supposed to criticize the Democrats. The focus is on politics along with policy but mostly how it fits with politics. Nowadays they really hate the feckless Democratic leadership. I learn things from reading them.
"
A text file. I was mildly curious about the regulars' ages and started noting them as I learned them some years ago.
"
Do you keep a spreadsheet, Charles?
"
You know who we lack here? Palestinian- American posters
You do a pretty damn good job of linking important stuff about the Palestinian situation which most of us would not otherwise see, Donald. In the previous discussion about ranters v persuaders, I think you are a ranter par excellence. And I mean that as a compliment. It's not always comfortable, and I don't always agree with you, but you are morally consistent and IMO a kind of conscience in the blog.
"
Most everyone here at one time or another has either implicitly or explicitly revealed their age or birthdate. Odds are that anyone who hasn't is within the range.
"
Though of course with Trump in office we have a purely random foreign policy. based on whims. Best hope for Gaza would be if Netanyahu ticks off Trump in some way,
"
How did you figure that out again, Charles? Thanks.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.