Jack of Spades

I don't buy into the anti-journalistic "they brainwash us with editorializing" - paranoia, sorry. That's way overblown and part of the conspiracy theory - world view I hate. I'm fine with mainstream media. It's the best alternative we have available. Anti-journalism throws out the baby with the bathwater. If I want to watch European or Finnish news, I read Finnish or British newspapers for that. I always prefer local news channels to follow the events in some other country, if I know the language. That's why I get my US news from US news channels. CNN is my favorite, but I watch few others too occasionally. Honestly, I'd love to watch a center-right US channel for balance, but there isn't one.

Sorry can't do that. Chris Cuomo of CNN has never disappointed me. Until that happens, I remain a militant moderate and keep the faith in high quality journalism!

Everyone is a great guy if we judge people based on their better moments and overlook their dark side. If someone beats their wife, they shouldn't get any credit for all the women they didn't beat. It's how far we go in our worse moments that defines how bad people we are. Someone who murders one person and doesn't murder 5 million others, is a murderer.

Making better jokes would help. Seriously though, I am here talking to people over the internet whom I have never met, in a language that is not my native language, in the midst of a contentious topic, and we also probably all have plenty of cultural and age differences, so I think what you're asking would pass as a pretty good joke!

See my earlier comment for you. You assume that people can't work against their own interest. Which is not some obvious truth. It's untrue historically, people, and groups of people, do work against their own interest all the time.

I get it that this is your new running joke that everybody who disagrees with someone is a bigot. It's a very funny joke. Or actually it's not. It's just an annoying intentional misinterpretation of what I've been saying, but I guess that is your point, to try take cheap shots at what I've been saying.

Bigotry is not limited to violent intentions. We already have a word for that, it's called "violent". Let's try what Dawkins said some other ways. Maybe you see what I see better when it's not directed at a group you happen to like to criticize: "Mock homosexuals, ridicule them, in public!" - just strongly disagreeing with homosexuals ideas about sexuality? "Mock immigrants, ridicule them, in public!" - just strongly disagreeing about immigrants ideas about where they should live?

Do you think the religious persecution of the state atheists started as death squads out of nowhere? It didn't. It started as "strong rebutals" of religion, as you would put it. I recommend reading the communist atheist propaganda from the time period before there were any killings to demonstrate what kind of ideas led to the horrible killings.What defines an ideology is it's nature, not the amount of power it has. That nature will determine how the future power will be used. Dawkins and his peers have never had the power to execute anyone, so we don't know whether they would use it or not. Dawkins has said repeatedly that religious people's privacy should not be respected, because their ideas (even the ideas of nice religious people, who don't push their beliefs) are dangerous. The only thing we know for certain is that Dawkins has had the power of a big microphone, and he has used that microphone to encourage his followers to publicly mock and ridicule religious people. To put it another way, he has encouraged open, public bullying. Hardly a definitive proof that he would go Stalin if given power, but I don't think that's a good omen either. First, I am well aware how arbitrary all these measures are. But, your earlier claim of religion having been "so much worse" is hardly historical. I can see the point that atheism has existed before but it has never been popular enough to become the dominant world view in any country, until the 20th century state atheist countries. Atheists have had roughly 100 years time "in office", those were the first times their ideology was dominant enough to get to define state policy. If we compare the first 100 years of state Christianity (in the late Roman Empire) to the first 100 years of state atheism (20th century), atheism is hands down the one with much worse record. It took a few centuries before Christian state religion turned really dark, for state atheism, it took less than a decade.

Not so fast conclusions. You brought up "being told by white males" implying that the channel can't be against white males, because there are white males. Right? So, I followed by demonstrating why the presence of white males is irrelevant for the argument, one way or the other. I have said what I wanted to say, I won't repeat it.

If you interpret everything that is said in the most benign light possible, and assume that they would never imply such a thing, then maybe so. Note that one could interpret Trump's speeches the same way. In his famous opening speech, he spoke against some Mexicans not all Mexicans. That is the truth of what he said. Does it mean that there was absolutely no anti-Mexican tone? What I hear on MSNBC is that white males are the bad guys of every story and white males should be sorry. As an argument for anything, the presence of white men on MSNBC is irrelevant. There were also women marching against women's voting rights 100 years ago. In hindsight, these women were simply comfortable with being discriminated against, and their presence in the movement was an expression of their poor self-esteem.

Okay I was probably a bit too figurative. What I meant is that the anchors, commentators and panelists on MSNBC mention white males in some negative context in a very predictable, repetitive fashion, many times a day, every day 365 days a year. If someone grows up listening to that, they'll blame white males for everything that has ever been wrong in the world. Do an experiment yourself; turn on MSNBC, check what the time is when you start, and when you first hear "white males" see how long time it took and whether the context was negative, neutral or positive. Then just repeat and see how many "white males" in a negative context you get before you get bored.

I agree with pretty much everything you said and I'm glad whenever I hear someone address the topic in a sober-headed fashion that recognizes the reality of all the shades of grey. There is more mainstream version of that than posters in a trash can. I watch MSNBC myself occasionally and what I very often hear is: "White males... ddzzzz.... white men.... dzzzz.... white people.... dzzz.. white males.... dzzzz... men....dzzzz... white males... dzzzz" (that "dzzz" refers to speaking of unspecified words) It's like a sneaky brain-washing tape from a scifi-movie that is indoctrinating the audience to see an enemy when they look at white males. Or to put it another way, it's racist and it's sexist. What makes it worse is that it's promoted, not by extremist edge cases but by well-read, smart and sophisticated people so it has the aura of intellectual legitimacy. To be clear, it's not as bad as some right-wing conspiracy-mongering propaganda is, I think Breitbart etc. are far worse, but it's still pretty bad. But, we are getting badly off-topic. Excuses moi!

My speaking of justice was addressed to Blur, when he mentioned the present day cultural perceptions on bigotry. It wasn't a reference to anything said in this conversation. I take it as a sign that the discussion has become overheated when everything I have said the last 5 posts has been interpreted by more than one person to be a reference to Paul, when I was answering to someone about something else. I strongly disagree. I think it's the other way around. I think the recent trend of trying to make bigotry a taboo social stigma, a case of "either horrible 100% or or 0% bigot" and have everyone have a competition of proving that they are never bigoted in way shape or form, is the attitude that has destroyed the topic. In real life these things exist on a scale of 0 to 100. If we keep treating insensitivity, bigotry or intolerance as absolutely unacceptable, unforgivable tabboo, we keep providing the dangerous 100 point bigots cover by condemning the 5, 10 or 15 points bigots the same as them. If you say that the 5/100 bigots are as bad as the 100/100 are, what you end up doing in practice is communicating the opposite; you end up sounding like the 100/100 bigots are just as harmless as the 5/100s are. That's what has gone wrong recently.

How much do you know about the history of atheism? It appears you are not familiar with the other side of the story. The Soviet Union. China. Cambodia. Vietnam. Albania. To name a few highlights. During the 20th century, the first century when state atheism has been practiced, the amount of persecution against Christians and other religions was worse than all the crusades put together were if measured by the amount of victims. The same state atheism - fun continues today in China and possibly in Vietnam (I'm not actually sure about that one, so I say possibly). The centuries of Christian state religion were bad, but at times they were pretty easy-going in comparison. And yes, there were horrible periods, particularly those of the glory days of the Inquisition and the Crusades. Historically speaking, atheism has one of the worst track records, if not the worst, when it comes to religious tolerance. Far worse than Christianity.

Just for the record to avoid any misunderstandings in the future; While I share some opinions with the US conservatives, please don't mistake me as a sympathizer of the MAGA crew or expect me to defend anyone wearing a red hat. I despise them myself. Since I already confessed having certain bigoted or intolerant feelings, I won't make any excuses for my feelings there.