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Re:Study of “moral grandstanding” helps explain why social m... by bilbo0s on Thursday November 21, 2019 @03:17PM (#21599049)
Well, you have to be careful there, because it very much depends on how acute the situation has become. If the situation is acute enough, you really shouldn't be talking at all, you have to move to action.

For less important issues, sure, talk it out. Like most domestic political issues, those are just little things. No one's dying, no one's being enslaved. So talking it out is actually not only the preferable choice, but the correct choice.

But for acute issues, say something like slavery, or Germany processing thousands of Jews through death camps weekly, or even domestically if some guy goes to shoot up a Walmart, the time for talk has past. I suppose we could ask them to stop, just as a formality, but any answer other than "We'll stop immediately and unconditionally" has to be met with force. That's the whole reason we have police, because sometimes, it's just not practical to "talk it out" in the hopes that the bad actor stops doing what they're doing.

Certainly with slavery we probably waited far too long to stop the behavior, and that hesitation made forcing an end to the problem worse than it otherwise would have been. It's a good reminder that in life, as a general rule, it's always best to handle acute issues as soon as possible.

Now what's funny about all of the animosity today, is that other than the problem of domestic terrorism, there are no acute issues. So there is nothing really worth fighting over. (Again, stopping mass shooters excepted. And I'm not sure anyone is arguing against that idea anyway?) So it's kind of perplexing to me that people get so mad over issues these days? As most of the issues seem so petty in a historic or even cultural sense.

Re:Study of “moral grandstanding” helps explain why social m... by mcguire on Thursday November 21, 2019 @03:34PM (#21599278)
Cynic here!

I'd just like to point out that "Germany processing thousands of Jews through death camps weekly" didn't matter to anyone until after the war was over. (Well, anyone outside Germany. And there were people who knew what was going on and tried to show it to the world, but there are cranks everywhere.)

Re:Study of “moral grandstanding” helps explain why social m... by AnimalMuppet on Thursday November 21, 2019 @03:53PM (#21599473)
It's possible that the politics is so horrible precisely because the stakes are so small. There's nothing that makes Team A realize that there's something more important at stake than defeating Team B.
Re:Study of “moral grandstanding” helps explain why social m... by pm90 on Thursday November 21, 2019 @04:07PM (#21599626)
> Now what's funny about all of the animosity today, is that other than the problem of domestic terrorism, there are no acute issues.

I was with you the whole paragraph until this. Unless you're living in a nice Suburb and haven't been paying attention to news, we (well, the US, but some are global) face a lot of very serious issues that do demand an urgency of action, since talking hasn't been very useful in resolving them:

* Climate Change and decarbonization * Social Media destabilizing and undermining democracies all over the world leading to violence against minorities worldwide * [US] Police brutality and general incarceration of African Americans * [US] Rising healthcare expenses potentially putting reasonable healthcare out of the reach of most Americans, especially the most vulnerable * [US] Inequal economic development completely devastating most regions of the US leading to social instabilities * [US] Massive student load debts, trapping an entire generation under the weight of unpayable debt

And those are just a few things I thought about right away.

There are a variety of issues that need urgent action to tackle them.