Extremism

I'm 0% concerned with extremists, because they don't have any power.

I find a lot of normal folks completely terrifying, however. The reason I find them terrifying is that we live in a democracy where they can decide that they don't like who I am or who I want to sleep with, and therefore they are going to enact laws designed specifically to hurt me.

 

Can you help me to understand how this works? We live in a very large, stable country with a (relatively) unassailable electoral process. If both political parties are becoming more polarized, but very large segments of the public are still voting for them, how are you claiming they are extremist?

This to me sounds like a claim that most of America is extremist. (You can say that the parties are different from the public, and fine, I can buy that. However, people still vote for them, so they must to some extent be represented by them. And it is again, huge numbers of people, so I think they are mainstream, not extremist.)

I definitely agree that both political parties are inappropriately authoritarian, even by American standards.

My mention of laws about sexuality and gender identity are meant to capture the fact that normal, everyday non-extremist people are still very dangerous, and they have a lot more power than some random Neo-Nazi in the Idaho Panhandle.

 

I get everything that you're saying, but I remain unconvinced. You don't like the political parties, and that's fine. I don't like them either. But they are mainstream. They are not extremist. They are not becoming extremist. If they were, then they would lose support. Or, their increasingly odious positions would become the new mainstream.

To say that something is extreme is to say it occupies a fringe minority position at one or the other end of a distribution. Both of the political parties represent--collectively--vast swaths of the public. Hence they are mainstream.

Are the parties increasingly polarized? Yes, I would say they are. But not extremist.

You recognized rightly that just because someone is extreme doesn't mean they are necessarily violent, although their closed mindset makes them a risk for becoming violent. I think it's just as important to recognize that just because people are mainstream doesn't mean they are non-violent. It just means that their violence is normalized.

People like to use the word "extremism" to try and marginalize things they don't like, and I think it's used imprecisely most of the time. For example, recently, the Montana Democrats defined Greg Gianforte as having "extremist views." He believes in Young Earth Creationism. That is not extreme. That's representing the views of anywhere between 40-47% of American adults. He also opposes LGBT protections and non-discrimination ordinances. Again, that's not extreme. A whole lot of people still hate us. Sure, Gianforte's views are odious. But in calling him "extreme," we're pretending that his views aren't shared by a lot of people when in fact they are. And we need to deal with how horrifying that fact is.

 

That's fine that you disagree, but that being the case, I am no longer sure about what we're discussing.

I feel like I was discussing extremism in a commonly understood sense of the term, which finds support in Political Extremism and Rationality by Albert Breton, et al.

 

I feared i was he only one here who felt that way. Mostly being that LGBTQ issues is supported ore by liberals. I agree wholly, both liberals and conservatives go to extremes which scares me. Though i think moderates can go to extremes too, i have seen it happen. I think it comes with an form of belief in ideas, people will take it to extremes.

 

Extremists ruin everything for everyone. You should be concerned with them because these are the people who represent your movement in the main stream. Or, be angry at everyone who cant distinguish between an activist and an extremist, or both.

 

The Dems and Reps in the US gov are by no means extreme. They are very centrist.

 

I think that's what scares me the most, i have seen extremes even within the LGBT+ community and with other movements. One of the reasons i avoid activists.

 

Just because a large percentage of the country hold an extreme view doesn't make it normal.

 

Meh. Extremists are the minority, that do the majority of bitching and make themselves seem larger than they actually are. They have always exsisted, however thanks to the internet and social media, they have become 'larger than life' and really blown out of porportion.

Look at the Westboro Baptist church. Extremists, but only like 100 of them, seriously, they should not have garnered any type of attention at all. As for Fox News and MSN, I listen to NPR, and read a lot and form my opinions from many sources. If you really want to be informed, it requires you to take in many sources of news not just the two polar opposites.

The ignorant majority scares the hell out of me though............

 

I don't agree with him but I know where he is coming from

 

You'd have to hope that the political-powers-that-be don't turn that into an issue, or try and work around it. Also, I believe this same test should be given to politicians as well.

 

Something more like Plato's Republic run by philosopher kings perhaps?