Right, Left and coddling

[Ziggurat]

Honestly, I've never heard of people worrying about it. It sounded radioactive.

Sure, because it's got the word "uranium" in it, and people don't know what "depleted" means in this context.

I honestly think y'all are stretching to find a leftwing equivalent to, say, the rightwing fear that all the guns are going to be confiscated to usher in martial law and tyranny, but okay.

I'm reminded of the simultaneous claims from Chris Cuomo that nobody wants to repeal the 2nd amendment and from former Justice Stevens that we should repeal the 2nd amendment. I'm sure some fears about gun control are irrational, but not all of them.

At least I know what sort of thing you were thinking of now.

I'm not sure you do. For my part, I never tried to establish any equivalency. Such a judgment is always subjective, and conditions and people change over time, so it's sort of a fool's errand. The only point I was trying to establish is that, contrary to Fudbucker's claim, there are irrational fears on the left. You haven't tried to refute that point, but haven't actually conceded it either. Instead, you basically moved the goalpost for Fudbucker to the question of equivalency. And I have no interest in chasing that rabbit down a hole.

 

[baron]

Because of the elaborate and extreme care with which it's handled and removed from populated areas, right?

I don't know what you mean.

 

[Ziggurat]

Among the problems with Peterson's one-sided obsession with taking down the "extreme left"; how many people who believe 9/11 was an inside job are in political office and compare that to the number of Republican neo-Nazi sympathizers and people who believe Obama is a Muslim.

First, in regard to Peterson, he's a university professor. In the environment he works in, the extreme left is absolutely far more of a problem than the extreme right. It's only natural that he attacks the problem he is most directly confronted with. And it's not like he's in favor of the extreme right either, he's quite willing to denounce them to, and he does. That he doesn't do so with sufficient frequency to satisfy you seems pretty immaterial.

Second, in regards to politics, you're not going to be able to establish numbers on that kind of extreme belief. All your metrics are going to be subjective. And the best you can do is anecdotes, which are obviously subject to extreme sampling error. For example, there was the city councilman who recently said Jews control the weather and use that power to flood cities. What does that mean for the broader question of left-wing extremism? I could try to claim he's representative, or just the tip of the iceberg, but I don't actually know that.

 

[kellyb]

I'm not sure you do. For my part, I never tried to establish any equivalency. Such a judgment is always subjective, and conditions and people change over time, so it's sort of a fool's errand. The only point I was trying to establish is that, contrary to Fudbucker's claim, there are irrational fears on the left. You haven't tried to refute that point, but haven't actually conceded it either. Instead, you basically moved the goalpost for Fudbucker to the question of equivalency. And I have no interest in chasing that rabbit down a hole.

I inferred (it seemed like you were implying, but that might have been a misconception on my end) a claim of equivalency, because you were responding to this, which came before the "rational" comment:

but the ones that populate the comments sections on places like Breitbart are very frightened people. Like I said, their list of "enemies" is nearly endless. Their embrace of Alex Jones and their pet conspiracy theories IS cartoonish.

Re: the second amendment, it was effectively repealed a long time ago, and it's the addition of "to usher in martial law and tyranny" that makes it all irrational.

 

[kellyb]

I don't know what you mean.

Would you be comfortable rolling around in the waste from a nuclear power plant?

 

[JoeMorgue]

Hell, through "Republicans, veterans, women, minorities, and the physically disabled" into that list, too. Trump mocked and berated them all.

Trump's voter base n 2016 was 42% female.

29% of Latino voters voted for Trump. 29% of Asian voters voted for Trump. 14% of LGBT voters voted for Trump. 60% of voting veterans voted for Trump.
31% of voters who weren't born in the United States voted for Trump. Even African Americans, the one group that really was amazingly one sided, still voted for Trump at about 8%.

They don't track voting statistics for disabled people, at least not that I could find anywhere, but I'd be amazed if a statistically meaningful percentage of them didn't also vote for him as well.

30, 14, 8... these aren't huge percentages I know. But they're big enough so we can't just... dismiss them as statistically anomalies.

Here's the thing. Those demographics; minority, women, disabled, gay, veteran... aren't the only thing in those people's lives. A candidate telling you that they are going to treat this demographic you happen to be a part of better is great and all but it doesn't override every single other factor for everybody.

This is something I think the Democrats have a hard time grasping. They say (rightfully in most all cases) that they treat Group X better but then got shocked and taken by surprise when they don't sweep Group X in the elections like they think they should because they don't understand that being part of Group X isn't the most important thing in everyone in Group X's life.

Democrats have never been 100% on understanding that demographics and .... identities I guess (not 100% the word I'm shooting for but close...) are not the same thing. Even pushing aside the truism that all of these groups aren't monolithic Borg entities that are all going to vote the same way just because of basic human variation

The Democrats could never grasp that there were things like ... a transgender teen living in a dying factory town in the midwest that cared about how his demographic was going to be treated... but worried about their being a job for him to live on when he moved out of his parent's house in a few years more. There are anti-abortion women. There are evangelical African Americans. There are... etc, etc, etc.

Too Long; Didn't Read: "Vote for me because I'll be nicer to your demographic" doesn't get you a vote from everyone in the demographic.

 

[Ziggurat]

I don't know what you mean.

I think she's saying that this extreme care exists because it really is dangerous, and wouldn't exist if it were not. Which is true, to a degree. But it's also that same extreme care which makes the risk to the general population very low.

Exposure to high levels of radiation is indeed very dangerous and bad for you. Exposure to low levels presents low risk. Since radiation is unfamiliar and cannot ordinarily be detected by our own senses, it combines both actual danger with fear of the unknown. As a result, our risk tolerance for radiation is very low, lower than for more familiar dangers (such as car accidents).

There is definitely an irrational aspect to that fear, but in general it's not really a left/right thing, but simply a human propensity to be bad at risk assessment. Things can get a partisan tilt if they have specific associations, though. So depleted uranium is associated with the military, and the iraq war specifically. Even though there is no radiological risk from depleted uranium, distrust of the military and the Bush administration help boost fear of that specific danger among the left more than the right.

 

[baron]

Would you be comfortable rolling around in the waste from a nuclear power plant?

About as comfortable as rolling in a fire, or pouring boiling water on my head, or jumping off my roof or drinking the drain cleaner under my sink. Do you have a point here?

 

[baron]

I think she's saying that this extreme care exists because it really is dangerous, and wouldn't exist if it were not. Which is true, to a degree. But it's also that same extreme care which makes the risk to the general population very low.

Exposure to high levels of radiation is indeed very dangerous and bad for you. Exposure to low levels presents low risk. Since radiation is unfamiliar and cannot ordinarily be detected by our own senses, it combines both actual danger with fear of the unknown. As a result, our risk tolerance for radiation is very low, lower than for more familiar dangers (such as car accidents).

Well that's it, it's the misrepresentation of a risk to an almost hysterical degree. You get people who won't even drive past a nuclear power plant but are happy to absorb thousands of times more radiation by taking a walk in the sun, or flying off on holiday.

And whilst nuclear waste is of course dangerous, the vast majority of it is not half as dangerous as people think.

There is definitely an irrational aspect to that fear, but in general it's not really a left/right thing, but simply a human propensity to be bad at risk assessment. Things can get a partisan tilt if they have specific associations, though. So depleted uranium is associated with the military, and the iraq war specifically. Even though there is no radiological risk from depleted uranium, distrust of the military and the Bush administration help boost fear of that specific danger among the left more than the right.

For some reason mistrust of nuclear tends to be a domain of the left. It's difficult to say why as you'd imagine they'd be in favour of an energy source that is several million times safer than, say, coal, but there you go.

 

[BobTheCoward]

Would you be comfortable rolling around in the waste from a nuclear power plant?

If you swim in the ocean, that is what.you are doing. Nuke subs discharge waste directly to the ocean.

 

[pgwenthold]

But "mockery and berating of Democrats/Hillary Fans/Liberals*" does not seem to have been an impediment, has it?

Philosophically, I absolutely agree with taking the high road. That does not mean that slinging mud and insults is not an effective way of making things happen.



* Hell, through "Republicans, veterans, women, minorities, and the physically disabled" into that list, too. Trump mocked and berated them all.

Remember, Trump supporters like him because "He isn't politically correct and says what he thinks." But whatever you do, don't call Trump supporters "deplorable" because that would be mean.

It's all ********.

BTW, back to the "anti-science" discussion. Someone above asserted that, among the liberal anti-science positions is anti-vax. This just goes to show how much the ******** campaign works. There were at least two candidates in this election who were anti-vax. Green candidate, yes. The other was the republican candidate who got elected. Clinton was forcefully (not passively at all) advocating vaccination. So fringe left candidate is anti-vax and the mainstream right candidate is anti-vax. But it's the left who get accused of being anti-vax?

This doesn't mean, of course, that Trump voters are anti-vax. More likely, they just don't care.

 

[Upchurch]

Trump's voter base n 2016 was 42% female. [...]

It does not change that Trump berated them and it did not matter. You're supporting my point.

The Democrats could never grasp that there were things like ... a transgender teen living in a dying factory town in the midwest that cared about how his demographic was going to be treated... but worried about their being a job for him to live on when he moved out of his parent's house in a few years more.

We could talk about the bald-faced reality-bending lies Trump told to that jobless transgender teen about clean coal or tariffs or whatever, too. Taking the low road gets results.

 

[BobTheCoward]

There is a dumb aspect to this. Obviously, nearly any subject has a set of beliefs that range from rational to irrational. Obviously, when someone mentions a belief it is implicitly focused on the irrational side of the line.

The debate should focus on what percent believe the irrational side.

 

[Ziggurat]

For some reason mistrust of nuclear tends to be a domain of the left.

Well, nuclear power is big business. So there's your association which biases perception.

 

[kellyb]

About as comfortable as rolling in a fire, or pouring boiling water on my head, or jumping off my roof or drinking the drain cleaner under my sink. Do you have a point here?

You're the one who said:

"Radioactive waste is thousands of times less threatening to us than sunshine, a transatlantic flight, going to the dentist or the very rocks under our feet."

So...

 

[BobTheCoward]

You're the one who said:

"Radioactive waste is thousands of times less threatening to us than sunshine, a transatlantic flight, going to the dentist or the very rocks under our feet."

So...

I have used radioactive waste as a pillow.

 

[Ziggurat]

I inferred (it seemed like you were implying, but that might have been a misconception on my end) a claim of equivalency, because you were responding to this, which came before the "rational" comment:

but the ones that populate the comments sections on places like Breitbart are very frightened people. Like I said, their list of "enemies" is nearly endless. Their embrace of Alex Jones and their pet conspiracy theories IS cartoonish.

That's the part I didn't quote. And I didn't quote it for a reason. I quoted a very limited part of Fudbucker's post, because the point I was making was specifically about that limited part. I'm not making any claims of equivalency or inequivalency, but I will note again that such questions are subjective and cannot be settled by debate.

 

[baron]

You're the one who said:

"Radioactive waste is thousands of times less threatening to us than sunshine, a transatlantic flight, going to the dentist or the very rocks under our feet."

So...

Yes, that is correct. What are you having trouble with here?

 

[rustypouch]

To answer the question in the OP, here's an article about Trump supporters whining about not being coddled.

 

[Ziggurat]

You're the one who said:

"Radioactive waste is thousands of times less threatening to us than sunshine, a transatlantic flight, going to the dentist or the very rocks under our feet."

So...

There are conditions to that statement which make it true (ie, when it's properly handled). So he's right, if you accept certain reasonable assumptions, but it's bad communication style to not make those assumptions explicit.

There, I split the baby.