2mo ago

So close to getting it...

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I think you have good intentions with that post, but I also 'think' I get why you're being reamed: We cannot simply "not accept" a broadened definition of the word "political".
Words are for communication. If many, many others have already wholly swallowed the pill that any "undesirable" position on any topic is "political", then it behooves a good communicator to work with that definition, not to simply reject it for being academically inaccurate.
Basically... you're doing about the same as someone griping about others saying, "lol I'm so OCD" because they like to arrange their books alphabetically. Except on a much, much looser term than something like OCD, because football dude kneeling was a political statement against police brutality. As much as we all wish the world was more sane than that, it isn't.
- Yeah, I get that. I do think that the way this particular word features in one particular type of propaganda structure makes it worthwhile to call out at length and talk about.
  
  Worth talking about in academia. Not worth talking about at length when communicating with normies or 99% of the real world.
  
  Yeah, what could go wrong if we let propaganda, wild misunderstandings and distortions of reality, start to impact the public consciousness and affect people's decisions or voting decisions or whatever?
  I literally can't think of a single downside.
  
  When you said that football guy kneeling wasn't political, I started to seriously question what your motives are. He literally knelt, during the national anthem, in a political protest against police brutality. Politics isn't capitol hill bullshit. I'm fairly certain that you don't have a deep enough understanding about politics to come in here and be the arbiter of what is and isn't political.
  While I understand the sentiment of your statement, and I think it was well intentioned, I think you're wrong
  
  Someone else said it I think better than I could: Colin Kaepernick’s protest was not political, it was ethical.
  You and I can disagree about the precise definition of “political” and whether it includes non-partisan activism that is dealing with pure issues of right and wrong. It is fine either way, I was just saying how I see the definition. I led off though by identifying explicitly political actions which are not “political,” by the propaganda definition. Surely we can agree that the “political” definition that doesn’t include those things is a bunch of shit.
  
  It was an ethical statement against somethinf that could and should be fixed with policy. Something that is enforced with law. It IS political no matter how much you want to pretend it isn't.

115 comments