Jub wrote: ↑2020-03-07 12:29am
loomer wrote: ↑2020-03-07 12:22amSo, a document went around for the 2016 election puporting to show a list of Jewish Senators who had Israeli citizenship and were lying about it.Sander's name was on that list. I trust I don't need to explain the dual loyalty trope?
Who authored the document? How much credibility do they have? How was it reported on at the time? The details matter.
I raise the issue as just a very simple example of the kind of anti-semitic nonsense that goes around against Sanders, the precise details actually
don't matter when the point is to establish that such propaganda has been deployed.
I'm glad you're able to see the sense in being open to the idea of looking to see if something might be a factor, which seems to have been the real crux of our disagreement.
I never said we shouldn't look... My issue is with TRR's call to do more than just look without a specific inciting incident.
You literally just stated that we shouldn't:
Jub wrote: ↑2020-03-06 11:50pm
Why should we talk about a fire that might or might not exist? That seems like an exercise in either futility or group masturbation depending on if you're in an echo chamber or not.
As for TRR's call to do more? I don't think he made a call for anyone to blindly yell about anti-semitism. He made a call for people to call it out and back Sanders against it (which we probably should to ensure the maintenance of the ideal speech conditions necessary for a modern democracy) where there's anti-semitic narratives. That doesn't require us to accept blindly that there
are such, just that if there are, we should act. To be
able to act thus requires us to be aware of the possibility of something that needs acting on, and thus to keep an open eye and an open mind to the possibility, rather than declaring it no different to the treatment of any other politician.
...No one said it was? You seem very confused. A, no one has said it's your job, and b, you can't provide examples of something before you become aware that it's something that could be examined. That's not how rational inquiry works.
Yes, you literally can. It happens all the time in astronomy and physics where an image of something yet to be discovered/researched/understood is captured and we weren't even looking for it.
No, you really can't. The thing can exist but cannot be identified and given as an example without the awareness of it as a thing that can be identified and examined. You cannot provide an example of a thing before you become aware of the possibility of that thing existing in some shape or form, let alone as an example of a specific thing until you are aware of the possibility of the specific thing existing. Your example of the image of a new phenomenon is, for example, actually part of a prior existing category - in this case that of previously undiscovered phenomena - which provides the epistemic support for our awareness of the thing, which it shifts out of once it is identified and studied and can be categorized differently. The scientific discipline, by providing a framework for discovering undiscovered things, produces the requisite awareness of things that can be examined that may or may not have existed. Essentially, for what you're saying happens to take place would actually require us to be able to speak of the object without
any possible awareness - we could not have seen an image of it, could not have detected its impact upon anything else, could not have inferred its possible existence whether from reason or irrational belief, could not have had the faintest inkling of the possibility of it being. Only then is it possible for us to provide an example of something as that thing before we were aware of its possibility as
any thing at all, and such conditions are, bluntly, impossible.
The very act of identifying it as something we can provide an example of produces the awareness of its possibility, prior to which no example is possible. Let's assume that I've managed to accidentally produce the first ever image of the tiny man who lives inside all human cells and turns the mechanical gears that make us work during an experiment on cell membranes, and without knowing what I have, publish the image. I have not produced an example of the tiny man until it is identified at which point, retroactively, I have. The very moment someone goes 'my god, it's a tiny man, this changes everything' the image becomes an example of the tiny man - but it does so
because the tiny man has been identified (even if only as 'something that should not be there'). Only this act of identification can transform these incidental exposures to the unknown into examples of the thing, because without an
awareness of the thing, it cannot be exemplified because the possibility of awareness of it is the contingent factor for providing an example of it. Often this awareness is simultaneous with observation, but not always. Let me put it this way: If you have an image that contains a new phenomena that no one can identify in any way, not even as something anomalous or atypical (and this is one of the great tools of science - the epistemic category of 'what the fuck is going on here, this isn't right?'), it is not an example at all because its contents cannot be perceived in any way and thus cannot be noticed.
The equivalent of what you're suggesting we should be doing with the issue of looking at whether there's been any use of the Judeo-bolshevik myth against Sanders is getting, say, the first possible observation of a pulsar and immediately being able to go 'that's a pulsar'. First, you have to be able to know what a pulsar is (or at least, have some idea of what one could possibly be) to categorize objects as one rather than just another anomalous radio source that can be investigated and interrogated, then refine that field of possibilities into a coherent whole and set of criteria to create the informational category 'pulsar' which you can differentiate from other anomalous radiators. That category emerges from examining the evidence, but until it is developed, it isn't something you can provide an example of by its very nature because it has to
be developed first. It has to be created before it can be identified and invoked.
My argument is, quite literally, that we should be open to the possibility that Communist smears against Sanders invoke an old anti-semitic trope rather than pre-emptively, before
looking for anything that matches the outlines of that trope and its descendants, declaring that we shouldn't. It's no different to being open to the possibility - to again use your example of celestial objects - that a spiral galaxy is not just a local nebula but something else.
Why does this mean that the issue shouldn't be examined at all?
It doesn't it does, however, mean that the issue should be discussed with examples so all in the discussion are on relatively equal footing.
Sure - but my argument has been just that we shouldn't ignore the possibility and refuse to look at it. It's literally about the step
prior to finding examples (or possibly finding there aren't any because it isn't happening, even!)
"Doctors keep their scalpels and other instruments handy, for emergencies. Keep your philosophy ready too—ready to understand heaven and earth. In everything you do, even the smallest thing, remember the chain that links them. Nothing earthly succeeds by ignoring heaven, nothing heavenly by ignoring the earth." M.A.A.A
