The BRTD-Gully Foyle Debate

[Sensei]

this one's going to be a bloodbath.

I can haz opening statements?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Good evening all. I'd like to thank Sensei for moderating and continuing this tough task, everyone else for taking interest and even Gully for agreeing considering his general attitude. I look forward to the action.

[Eraserhead]

Will we get a 300 related question?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Good Morning Ladies and Gentlemen, it is indeed good to be here despite my supposed "general attitude". I would like to second my opponent in thanking Sensei for this opportunity and the work he has done in bringing about this debate and in wishing him good luck in moderating this debate. So with no further ado I think it's time we get down to Business.

[Joe Republic]

.... Aaaaaand Gully screws up after only five words.




( I got your back.)

[Sensei]

BRTD:

To start, what would you say is the matter with your opponent's "general attitude" as it pertains to politics?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Gully seems to have an obsession with viewing things only the way he wants them, his opposition to the categorization of "Hispanic" is a great example as with some notable exceptions in most parts of the US Hispanic is a unified culture rather than many separate ones. This is something he fails to understand. He has many ignorant attitudes (see NC-17 rating comments.) What's most amusing is his rejection of categorization yet engaging in this all the time (see his labeling of movies as "fascist" or himself as "0% conservative") and yet simply redefining labels to suit himself (see him viewing me as "conservative" for some reason.) This guy is the king of "No True Scotsman" really. He simply needs to accept that reality and general nomenclature do not conform with the way he wants things to be. But above all that, the fact that he finds the existence of the term "Hispanic" a bigger outrage than banning media is also telling.

[Sensei]

Mr. Foyle. How do you respond to these comments about your alleged misuse of nomenclature by BRTD?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I believe here I have been misrepresented by Mr. BRTD, I do not consider banning media worse than the word "hispanic" rather the first issue is discussed so much as to be irrelevant (who after all supports censorship these days?), merely my gripe with the latter was rather with how "hispanic" and "hispaniciness" is constructed, if we must go sociological, by the people and government of the United States, I never said that there wasn't a 'latino' culture, just that only really exists in the United States and part of that reason is due to how Americans see "hispanics" as a united group. I admit that I am often greatly ignorant of certain aspects of US culture and can occasionally read things which I take as gospel without ever bother in checking them up, my error on the NC-17 rating is a case in point. I do not consider that a great crime for a non-American and given the standards of posts about Europe on this otherwise enjoyable and fine community I believe I can state things more confidentially about America than many forummers here can about Europe.

My use of nomenclature like "fascist" and "0% conservative" is merely an attempt to semi-humorous or to use exaggeration to make a point, Mr. BRTD's error is in taking myself too literally and in not trying to fully analyzing what I am trying to say rather than the exact words I use, his long running misconception that I support Ralph Nader despite my constant denials is perhaps the perfect example. All in all I consider all this a silly little distraction where one person is obsessed too much with the minute details to actually get down to the greater picture, which is often ignored.

[Sensei]

Gully:

To what extent do you feel that government should be socially permissive?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

(Perhaps I should note that as I live on college campus I can't access a computer between 10PM and 10AM GMT...)

Government should be socially permissive? Well I think this is asking two questions really, one whether we should have a society which is now seen as typically liberal on matters relating to drugs, sexuality and so on and the second asking what the role the state should have in regulating such things. My answer to the latter is totally negative, the state as an abstract body at the pinnacle of our social structure should have within reason no role whatsoever in the regulation of self-damaging material, people as a whole have to stop looking up the state as a protector and the security net of society from the arbitrary choices of individuals. I of course however support quality control of drugs, foods and materials and a system of regulation against what we might call 'cowboy' businesses, who only damaged legitimate businesses, large and small and little more than leaches on society. In this I especially include drug dealers.

However I think it is important to note that the active role I see in the state is alot smaller than present in this regard, I think as soon as the state gets involved in the distribution of goods via taxation or regulation then it gains a vested interest in keeping the supply of such goods in circulation. For example I oppose tobacco taxes as that makes the state an interested body in the supply of tobacco, yet I also support bans on smoking in public places as that can damage the health of all.

But this not per se mean I support a so-called permissive society or rather I do very much support permissiveness and liberalism but not in the way my opponent thinks of as 'permissive society. A very different vehicle than the state, society and culture (which in many ways is the acting out of 'society') are little more than large groups of people who we have divided into convienent and easy to identify with groups: Americans, Blacks, Jews, Chinese and so on. Societies as one may notice change from time to time without even the state acting and this is due to the acting of the will of a group of people, probably not even a majority, who have social influence and think differently than those before whose ideas then branch out to the rest of society over time. A classical example of this is of course the 1960s and supposedly more enlightened attitudes towards sex and the consumption of illegal drugs which have developed since then though during this decade these changes were opposed by the majority of the population. What I want is not a return to the 50s but a return to a social organisation dedicated to changing society intellectually, socially and spirtually trying to remove as much as possible (I'm not idealistic enough to think we can get rid of them) the selling of sex as commodity, women-hating pornography, addictive drugs such as heroin and crystal meth, prostitution especially child prostitution, video games and films which fetishize violence especially the former, war and militarization in general.

In all this the action of individuals acting in groups and hopefully not christian fundamentalists who for all their fumigating against "big government" actively support the government banning things which they consider undesirable, rather I think Liberalism has reached a stale phase as sees itself too much of a movement dedicated towards political power rather than influencing society by other means and by organisation and patronage of things - protesting and raising awareness about social evils, creating works of art both popular and esoteric which states our point of view (though without being preachy, moralistic and overly political), mobilizing the media or creating our own forms of political organisation. If we leave all this to political parties, as we have seen over the past eight years, then things stagnate and little productive change occurs. In short what I want is not the illegalization of for example prostitution, but a state of affairs where going to a prostitute is considered socially undesirable and immoral and actively so by the majority of citizens. In this sense, I consider myself somewhat utopian. Only the people as a whole can genuinely change society by their nimble fingers, the hammer of government led by people whose first duty is towards the maintenance of power can not.

I hope I have cleared this up for future reference.

[The Mikado]

Bump.

[Sensei]

your response, BRTD?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

My opponent's view is quite myopic and naive, not to mention hypocritical. Essentially he is asking that social restrictions be replaced by social engineering. The hypocrisy comes from his support or simple tolerance of social restrictions, see his argument that banning Manhunt 2 is fine, or ignorance over Ralph Nader's totalitarianism. Furthermore he also appears to have a desire that all of society adopt his views. There's a difference between "I don't like strip clubs, but feel free to visit them all you like if you do." and "I don't like strip clubs, but don't support banning them. But it's also disgusting that you go to them."

Like it or not he is really just accepting a position more similar to those of more pragmatic Christian fundamentalists and is ideally no different from the people who run CAPAlert for example.

[Sensei]

Gully, How do you respond to BRTD's accusation that your views on governmental permissiveness are "naïve"?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I first of all object to his criticism that I desire for all of society to adopt my views, as a democrat (in the non-party sense o/c) there is nothing so important as debate within a democratic community, not the mock 'debates' of present relating usually to things hundreds of miles away in many cases and mostly involved discussing things of little direct relevance to the individual. We talk of the "economy" alot, and "society" and those other great abstractions, while noting that their effects on individuals are varied and depend on circumstance. The purpose of democracy for this imagined community is so people can have greater power as much as possible, which is very limited, over the forces that control their lives and therefore what is agreed democratically is what matters most.

Now of course as a citizen in this idealized democracy I will of course try to convince people of the rightness of my argument, to which I would expect to be objected and would be disappointed if I wasn't. The basis of these views is that things I have just attacked I don't consider healthy for either society or the individual as a whole, and are often the separation of the latter from the former. I don't support banning Manhunt 2, I just want to create the conditions in which Manhunt 2 would be less popular than present, ditto with the film 300. The work of any work of art or "artifice" is the prerogative of the artist and the artist draws a canvas upon which the present ideas embedded in society in their many differing and complex forms are put on display. Artists are the best censors.

Of course human beings, not being perfectible will still go on doing human being things but the boring, tedious nihilism of alot of contemporary cinema and popular culture has no historical basis really, no film before perhaps the 90s would have treated the Joker stabbing someone in the eye with a pencil as a joke. On an extension of this, somewhat unrelated, I don't object to violence in films as such, one of my favourite film is Once upon a time in America after all and I am also a fan of many David Cronenberg films, rather it is way violence is presented which matters and at present nihilism and anti-human attitudes hold sway. This won't change unless society changes first.

Now onto the main question on whether I am being naive or not in my supposed social engineering. I think I am less naive than many social reformers in the past. I don't expect to bring in a new millennium and as I have already admitted I don't expect every human being to change, as a rather idiosyncratic individual myself I am very aware that the responses of people towards change is differing and no-one will follow any strict pattern. At heart I still consider myself an individualist and that the current popular nihilism, misogyny and human pesimism is fundamentally anti-individualist in conception, its freedom is limited confined mostly to sex and substances with the occasional flap against censorship without putting emphasis on values. Society will always socially engineer in a way, without any single individual being aware of it, as humans have tendency to judge themselves and their values against those of other people. Simple individual conceptions like status and respect are essentially judgments people make comparing themselves to other people, also think of love, justice, belief, etc, would any of these operate if you were the only person on earth?

Now I don't mean the word "values" in the same way the fundamentalist Christians do (or even any nationalist). I am still after all an agnostic and put great emphasis on my belief in religious pluralism (another concept which wouldn't make sense in my "one person alive" concept) and to risk cliche, I have toyed with Buddhism from time to time. Rather my concept of values is about what humans can achieve, the meaning of life, to what purpose should our lives entail and in this regard I consider myself a would be social engineer (but then again, so is everyone else) especially as I consider that passing down such ideas to children as one of the most important jobs of any society. In my values I would like stress, a humanism, a belief in the possibility of individual action, both as an individual being an individual, and as individual being part of a wider group. Values akin to those of the enlightenment or the more sane Romanticists or even the early Christians in a way. Of course those historical experiments show that not everyone will follow, that society can not even be ruled by purely abstract laws or ideas but rather that the aspiration of such laws is what is important and that they can only be enforced if the people so will it to be.

If that is naive, then I accept personal naivety. Or rather I reserve to right to aspire to being naive.

[Sensei]

sorry for the delay, i've been very busy of late.

Next question, for BRTD:

What can be done to suburbs to make you not hate them?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Suburbanization, at least the in the American sense, is based off a concept I'm opposed to altogether, that of sprawl, and that people must live great distances away. In my ideal setup of a country, there would be no suburbs, simply one large city for the entire metro, or at least groups of separate cities (similar to how St. Paul is to us.) One model of "suburbs" that might work for me though is the London model, considering how few people live in London proper. Perhaps this example could work, if we were to isolate only Minneapolis and ignore all suburbs and St. Paul, let's pretend we had to chop Minneapolis up for some reason. Minneapolis is already subdivided into communities, and those into neighborhoods. Each neighborhood has about the population of a small town, the one I live in has a population of roughly 15k, but it's one of the largest in the city, most having only populations in four digits. Some of the downtown neighborhoods have populations in only three digits. Perhaps if this was carved away and established as "Minneapolis", and the residential neighborhoods that were still dense became independent cities, we could have a setup involving "suburbs" I would not mind. We might even be able to include inner suburbs like Columbia Heights, which is not culturally devoid. If the metro was setup in such a manner, with the sprawl all cut out, and all the good things of the city accessible from the "suburbs", I would find this setup acceptable.

[Sensei]

gully?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

I must I can't disagree much with my opponent has just said before me. I will add however that I live in suburb and have seen a vast level of suburbanization over the past fifteen years due to partly unsustainable economic bubble, a government seemingly in love with the idea of investing in roads over all else (not that is always a bad thing, but around here it is) and ridiculously high levels of consumer expectation. I will also stress the importance of developing good public transport. Something which is always missing in local calculations.

[Sensei]

Last question:

Gully: What parts of American politics and government, if any, would like to be seen used in Ireland?

[Tetro Kornbluth]

Interesting Question. I admire the divorce between the legislative branch and the executive branch, though I don't like how the executive is embodied so much in one person as well as the union between head of state and head of goverment. My main problem however with US politics, though this also applies to politics here too but in different ways, is the discourse surrouding it. Or to be short and leaving technical subtilties behind us, it is the "OMG FLAG PIN!11111" school of political debate which is most damaging imo.

On one final note there is one admirable aspect of the US system which I would like to adopt, and that it's constitution, or at least a version of it only slightly modified - keeping the amendment to only change the constitution via referenda. It is a wonderful document and a reason for this is its very lack of actual detailed law. Here the constitution contains laws relating to abortion, the position of family and (in the past) the position of the Church in society and divorce.

To sum up I am glad I have an opportunity to state my views here over the past few days, just a pity time did not allow more. I am grateful for my opponent in giving me this opportunity and without more to add, good night and thanks for all the fish.

[Sensei]

BRTD: Would you like to see any of the components of the Irish system used in American government?

[Хahar 🤔]

I am grateful for my opponent in giving me this opportunity and without more to add, good night and thanks for all the fish.

With that, Gully wins.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

BRTD: Would you like to see any of the components of the Irish system used in American government?

Well their system of voting is better than FPTP, but that ain't saying much, my biggest problem with STV is the order in which ballots are counted could conceivably make a difference. Still their method of election the President is superior, even though the President is a figurehead. That I do not think would work in the US. But since Ireland has a smaller population than my state, they're not directly comparable. If any state government were to adopt an Irish-style system with the voting tweaked a bit, I could see it working. But I'd look to a different country for a model for national government.