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irarelypostanything · 3 years

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Unnecessary Arguments - Politics

Person #1: To be clear, the reason this was originally called “unnecessary arguments” is that it was supposed to be for discussing dumb topics. Like whether the Prius is a good car

Person #2: It’s an overpriced cheese wedge that gets 76 horsepower and decent mileage, if and only if you drive in the left lane at 40 miles an hour

Person #1: I’ll counter that later, but it seems there have been some really interesting political topics coming up. “Cancel culture.” Wokeism. The question of whether, or rather to what extent we should have the government censor big tech, and a newly emerging delta variant that is far more contagious but is only really gaining adequate media attention now

Person #2: Yeah, so should we stop masking now, or until the end of time? Also, aren’t you the one who posted on Instagram that, and I quote, “The pandemic is fking over”? Wow, I wonder what the word fking means

Person #1: I made the wrong call at the wrong time. What’s important now is that we resume the vigilance we had previously. But something has come to my attention. We have a certain candidate for a certain organization, and he has said some tremendously racist things on social media

Person #2: What did he say? “I voted for Trump last year”? Wow, we should probably make him lose all of his friends and job and then delete his accounts

Person #1: Well, in response to the NFL players who kneeled for the flag, he publicly posted that “if they don’t like our flag, maybe look at this one.” He then followed that up with a picture of the Confederate flag

Person #2: Oh

Person #1: He has made a number of other racist statements as well, including but not limited to telling them to “go back” to where they came from

Person #2: It says here he also deleted the social media posts, so what’s the problem? It’s a non-issue

Person #1: The problem is that he represents an organization that serves the youth all over the world. The problem is that he is running for office in a position that encompasses three states. The social media posts, then, are fair game for scrutiny. Do you really want to elect a leader who is full of hatred and racism?

Person #2: Don’t say it…

Person #1: Especially considering the entire country just got rid of the guy who represented extreme hatred and racism?

Person #2: That’s it. I’m so tired of this. We’re adults, right?

Person #1: Sometimes you surprise me

Person #2: We have the freedom to make political posts on social media. I acknowledge that we also have the freedom to use social media to call out other people. You think a bunch of political statements you disagree with are adequate grounds to then claim this man is unqualified for a leadership role in your organization? Fine. Don’t vote for him. But don’t proceed to act like he carried out some sort of violent racist act because of some caption he put in some picture

Person #1: Okay, so you have a nonprofit that exists for the purpose of helping young people, right?

Person #2: Sure

Person #1: You can’t break free of the politics, then. You need to demonstrate that you’re fit to rule. And if all I see when I search through your Facebook feed is hatred, what kind of message does this send?

Person #2: Those social media posts were stupid, I agree, and so he deleted them. Where does this end? What if we decided one day that we wanted to ban Christians from our group, because we disliked their common stance on gay marraige? What if we decided republicans were the problem? This organization is supposed to be a non-political one. That we still make it a point in our meetings to recite the National Anthem is one of many traditions that has persisted, but any tradition is open to the possibility of being overwritten. It used to be an all-male nonprofit...that was changed as we changed. But we have free speech

Person #1: As the saying goes, this is not what our founding fathers had in mind in the 1700s when they drafted the Facebook Terms of Service

Person #2: There was a bar in Sacramento. Someone tweeted that the bartender attempted to drug her. Tons of people on Yelp, Facebook, and Reddit rushed to her defense and tried to get the bar shut down. The police investigated. The entire thing was completely fabricated, and then she deleted the Tweets. Do you think the bar ever recovered from that?

Person #1: Are you comparing an allegedly baseless accusation to the accounts of someone with actual screenshots and timestamps to corroborate her claims?

Person #2: No, because this is even less relevant. If you’re going to assassinate someone, why keep it to Facebook? Get on the SEO game, guys. Do it on Medium. Do it on Twitter. Tarnish a name until you reach the point that googling a full name immediately makes Google suggest the word “racist.”

Person #1: Okay, so this is what upsets me most about your argument

Person #2: Here we go…

Person #1: You use your fear-mongering tactics. I’ll hear words like “cancel culture,” “woke,” what have you. You’ll claim that we’re far too oversensitive

Person #2: You are

Person #1: ...because we take a stand, and then I’ll see such blatant disregard for common decency. People in high positions who, and this is textbook racism, attempt to persecute and villainize others on the basis of their race. All with the common message that we’re not allowed to be American because of the color of our skin, and no matter how hard we try we will never belong

Person #2: Actually, the people we are “targeting” are not grouped by race at all, but by a common disrespect for the country we should be proud citizens of. What do you and I have in common? The flag

Person #1: So what you’re saying is that if someone doesn’t share your level of respect for the flag, and for what it represents, then we should go back to the countries we came from. But not the United States, because even if we were born here it isn’t truly our home

Person #2: No, what I’m saying is that the posts you keep referencing didn’t actually target people on the basis of their race. It targeted them on disrespect for the flag

Person #1: Kneeling was originally intended as a sign of respect

Person #2: Don’t give me that

Person #1: Over time, the narrative shifted. That somehow these actions were directly disrespecting veterans. And now, here we are, discussing how the act of kneeling is fair licence to let all the racism this man was previously holding back bleed through. If someone cuts me off while I drive, I’m not going to yell a racist slur, because I’m not a complete piece of human excrement. And I’m definitely not going to write racist things on social media

Person #2: Yeah, and you’d better not, or else someone is going to dig it up in several years even after you’ve taken it down and use it to prevent you from having a life, or a job, or friends

Person #1: Leadership is responsibility. I never said his life should be ruined. What I am doing is merely suggesting that he is unfit to lead us or our organization

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