Why are answers that basically say "right wing illogical bad, left wing rational good" allowed to exist?

Question

I just flagged an answer that literally just said pretty much "The reason for X is because Left is rational and right is irrational", using a lot of randomly picked statements (can't even call them facts, because they are just that guy's personal opinions on which of his preferred ideological positions are rational). The answer had 30 upvotes (thanks HNQ!) because it's popular to bash right wing on SE.

(the answer has other numerous flaws but this violation of CoC is the big problem for me).

Is there a reason this answer is allowed to exist, especially as a "This is what this site is about" banner (aka an answer on HNQ question)?

Answer 1

Because sometimes people aren't rational.

In fact, I'd argue that people are rarely rational, liberals and highly-educated people included. Most of our behavior is driven by factors other than pure, cold rationality – things like religion, tribalism, nationalism, patriotism, and the desire for the respect of our friends and neighbors, to name just a few. If we make some sort of requirement here that we censor any answers that aren't sufficiently politically correct, there would be very few questions about politics that we could answer accurately.

Frankly, I think your response to this is showing your own biases. Is saying that some people hold the teachings of the Bible above those of Science a smear? Is saying that some working-class people are tired of hearing from so-called "experts" and "costal elites" a smear? If so, then the Right is smearing its own supporters just as much as anyone else.

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An example: during the 2016 campaign, one of Hilary Clinton's major gaffes came when she was talking about job retraining programs for coal miners:

I’m the only candidate which [sic] has a policy about how about how to bring economic opportunity, using clean, renewable energy as a key, into coal country. Because we’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business … and we’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people

She was criticized, quite rightly, for saying this. But why? If we require that answers assume that all people are fully rational actors, there's no reason for criticism. Coal jobs are disappearing as coal gets more expensive and natural gas gets cheaper and there's nothing anyone can do about it. The rational move for coal miners is to move on to other fields – to "learn to code", as they say. Any answer built on that, though, would be totally wrong and miss a major factor that ultimately contributed to Trump's victory.

It's not rational to want to hold on to the dirty, dangerous, and disappearing jobs your family has held for generations, or to resent politicians who are willing to spend millions of dollars to give you and your children new opportunities, just as it's not rational to support higher taxes or defunding the police. But it's not wrong, either; holding "irrational" positions because of your other values is simply human, and we shouldn't denigrate any claims of "irrationality" as a smear.

If there's any value to discussing politics on a site like this, it comes from answers that help provide an understanding of people and groups that are different from your own. Sometimes that isn't fully flattering and you may not like reading them, just as I don't like the many posts here that I think smear liberals and Democrats, but it's impossible to discuss politics in any meaningful way if we ban discussion of the parts of human nature that are not strictly "rational" and "enlightened".

Answer 2

I want to spell out what the core of this dispute is, because I think that will help you guys as you try to establish policy about answers like mine.

So...

There is an essential confusion about what constitutes a 'discussable' group, not just here but generally. There are many groups that we are perfectly comfortable discussing politically: political parties; agencies like police forces or the FBI; organizations like FOX News, MSNBC, etc; nations like Russia, China, etc. For instance, I could make the following kinds of statements without anyone batting an eye:

• Russia's illegitimate occupation of the Crimea
• The RNC's rampant pandering to big business
• The FBI's potentially illicit investigation into the Trump campaign organization
• The overwhelming preference of black voters for the Democrats

We see these kinds of statements as valid because they refer to a specific observable 'fact' about the group in question, even if they render a value judgement about that fact, but they do not do damage to the intrinsic character or humanity of that group. Sure, there are blacks who vote Republican who might take offense at the broad assertion that blacks prefer Democrats, but the general trend is a matter of simple observation; we cannot exclude discussing the trend on the basis of partisan sentiment.

Statements that are problematic — the ones that ought to fall under CoC — are the ones that assign broad, prejudicial attributes to a group, without distinctions. You all know generally what I mean, and I won't provide examples

What's happened in this case, though, is that the 'group' being addressed is ambiguous by design. I aim to critique a nationalist movement which currently has a hegemonic dominance within the GOP and conservative media: a nationalist movement which is defined by certain easily observed public actions. But this nationalist movement does not identify itself as a 'nationalist movement within US conservatism'. It identifies itself as the conservative movement, and actively attacks non-nationalist conservatives as RINOs.

This creates a specific problem of ambiguity. When I talk about this nationalist movement — a movement defined by specific public behaviors, actions, and attitudes (and thus a perfectly valid focus for political discussion) — I am accused of saying insulting things about conservatives (a group that must be handled more respectfully). It's a simple, common bait-and-switch tactic. I say, for instance:

Conservative leaders and media reject scientific reasoning, as evidenced by innumerable cases of them publicly doing exactly that.

And then someone like 'User4021' (who seems to have renamed himself 'DVK‐on‐Ahch‐To') will inevitable come along and say:

So you're saying that conservatives are stupid and unreasoning?

That latter statement uses the term 'conservative' to point to an entirely different group of people than I originally pointed to, and changes the nature of my statement from a point about 'behavior' to a slur about 'character' (i.e., a conceptual leap from 'they reject reasoned analysis' to 'they are incapable of reasoned analysis'). But that is an esoteric distinction that generally falls on deaf ears. I don't know if the people who do this don't see the distinction or don't want to see the distinction, but the distinction is important.

Imagine an exchange were person A says "You dance really badly" and person B retorts "You're just saying that because of my race." We can't judge whether A is invoking race unless A is explicit about it, and that we can deal with as needed. But regardless, we can see how B dances, and if B dances badly, the comment pertains. We can see what nationalists do in the US; that is not in question because they are quite open about their public actions, and it calls for explanation. So when someone asserts that the effort to describe and explain that overt behavior is rooted in some kind of anti-conservative prejudice, well... to my mind that is a mere tactic designed to silence discussion of problematic behavior.

For the record, if I were confronted with left-wing nationalists (of which there are several varieties) I'd say pretty much the same things, and receive almost exactly the same responses in return. Nationalism is nationalism; it's a definable entity with specific characteristics. Sometimes the best one can manage in terms of neutrality is to be willing to annoy people on both sides of the fence.

Answer 3

It's not a CoC violation. It's not smart by any stretch, but a CoC violation would have been a direct attack. Something along the lines of

All [members of this political party] should die in a dumpster fire

What Ted posted was more of a diatribe. It's not untrue, but he's juxtaposing his cariacatures of the Right so he has a straw-man to knock down in his point in the next paragraph.

Reason (in the form of science, academic insight, rational discourse, or even mere common sense) is more or less unilaterally rejected, because (from the perspective of this movement) 'reason' has led to the murder of babies (abortion), the denigration of the Church (evolution and cosmology), the destruction of jobs (shifts to green technology, automation, and globalization that heavily impact blue-collar workers), a perpetual state of guilt (slavery and Jim Crow, the decimation of Native Americans, and other mistreatments), and the dominance of race, gender, and identity over traditional values (e.g., civil rights, feminism, and LGBTQ issues like gay marriage).

In other words, The Right is filled with ignorant folks who reject science, hate gays and revile Progressivism, and therefore won't wear masks. I was offended, but I'm not someone who wears my politics on my sleeve either (this isn't a site for people who do), and as a mod elsewhere I'd decline a mod flag asking for deletion of the answer. And Ted actually makes a decent point later, which is more or less the heart of the matter

The point is that there are a large number of conservatives in the US who are utterly fed up with others trying to reallocate the values of the nation, and they have turned to simple disruptive nonsense to make their displeasure heard.

I'd like to see the cariacatures removed, but I'm not in the mood for an edit or comment war either, so I did the SE thing and downvoted.

Answer 4

Not rude or abusive per the CoC

I just flagged an answer that literally just said pretty much "The reason for X is because Left is rational and right is irrational", using a lot of randomly picked statements (can't even call them facts, because they are just that guy's personal opinions on which of his preferred ideological positions are rational). The answer had 30 upvotes (thanks HNQ!) because it's popular to bash right wing on SE.

(the answer has other numerous flaws but this violation of CoC is the big problem for me).

As Machavity answered, and from what I've determined after talking about it with other mods, it doesn't rise to the level of 'rude or abusive' as you argue it does. For that reason, I will not delete it as rude or abusive.

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Is there a reason this answer is allowed to exist, especially as a "This is what this site is about" banner (aka an answer on HNQ question)?

Yea, that's a different question. By flagging, you have put that question to the mods. I think it's probably better to have a discussion about that in the broader community.

You could say there a number of issues with the answer:

• It makes strong claims that aren't backed up by references. For example, that science and academic insight are rejected by a nationalist movement in the US.

• It upsets one group (of users).

Now, these two aren't necessarily things we (want) to forbid.

References

We have talked about references before. Back in 2012 and more recently in 2018, we concluded that references can be great additions, but they're not mandatory.

I think your post here is the start to a bigger discussion. In some cases, particularly when claims are more partisan, we may want to be a bit more strict about requiring sources. But in the end, that's something for the community to decide, and not for me as a mod to tell users after they've answered.

Upsetting users

While I don't think we should try to upset users, it may happen sometimes. For example, when we read something we don't agree with, something that's critical of our own beliefs, etc. In those cases, we don't necessarily want to remove the post, because it may have value.

As it currently stands, the main policy for dealing with posts upsetting users is the network-wide code of conduct.

Again, we may want to discuss the issue in more general terms. Maybe the community wants a site-specific policy for this, but that's something we will have to discuss as a community. It's not something for me to make up and enforce on the spot after someone has already written an answer.

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Caught in the middle as a mod

As I've hinted at above, I, but I think this applies to my fellow mods as well, are caught in the middle of this dispute. We cannot point to some meta post to say which parts should be changed specifically. We cannot say that the post should be removed outright for some reason either.

I see that you've tried to edit the post yourself while the flag was still open and while this meta post is still being used to achieve some consensus. On the one hand, that might feel right, but on the other hand I hope you see that it can lead to an edit war. We don't want that.

So I'll propose here what I proposed to the other moderators:

we should have a more codified consensus helping (us mods) to pinpoint why we take some action and what can be done to improve a post (in case of removal) to make it fit the rules.

Without that, we as mods end up making judgement calls left right and center, and that doesn't benefit the community. We might be seen to act on double standard, and we will eventually let some users down.

A more codified consensus will not only help us know what moderator action we should take, it also helps users know how their post is going to be treated.

Answer 5

You've failed utterly to even attempt to provide any sort of evidence that the aforementioned answer, in its original form, violates the Code of Conduct in any way.

What it seems to me, rather, is that you object to the content of said answer, and are effectively attempting to have that content censored by using the CoC as a hammer to do so. Ironically, this is the exact type of behaviour that this answer, and others that you appear to find objectional, describe.

Instead of attempting to shut down content that uses broad generalisations, you'd be better served considering how these generalisations came to be, and why they are mostly accurate and useful.

Ultimately, this question says a lot more about your political beliefs - and insecurity around them - than it does about the "bad" answer.