ID: A scene from Legally Blonde of a conversation between Warner and Elle in the corridor at Harvard, in 4 panels:

  1. Warner asks “What happened to the tolerant left?”

  2. Elle replies, smiling “Who said we were tolerant?”

  3. Warner continues “I thought you were supposed to be tolerant of all beliefs!”

  4. Elle looks confused “Why would we tolerate bigotry, inequity, or oppression?”

  • lmmarsano@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    1·
    14 hours ago

    The argument isn’t rational to begin with, rationality cannot disprove it in the minds of those who believe it.

    So, people are just powerless to do anything but follow at the call of bigotry & disinformation, and they’re witless masses totally unamenable to reason? Got it.

    The KKK has largely been expelled from society for the past century (not entirely).

    That’s a weird example: white supremacists & KKK spoke openly and terrorized with complicit support of local & state authorities during the civil rights movement. Despite that, the civil rights movement prevailed. Without understating the difficulties, challenging reprehensible ideas is evidently possible.

    Speaking with a Nazi posits that their ideology has the same value as yours.

    No: association fallacy. Now you’re being irrational. You were before, but are now, too. It merely means we disagree, same as rebutting someone who is wrong.

    Nazis should be expelled from society in their entirety.

    Unless we exterminate them or deport them (where?), I don’t see how we do that. Maybe you mean suppress them from freely expressing themselves? Sacrificing any civil rights to achieve any of that is almost certainly an unjust threat to civil rights. Maybe you prioritize civil rights, too, but think sacrificing them is necessary to defend them?

    Neoliberal propaganda has convinced you that all ideas have value.

    No. We’re merely convinced bad causes can be defeated justly, because it’s been done before.

    Sometimes I wonder if these types of claims discouraging the healthy, open discourse we had decades ago are disinformation designed (1) to make people think the effort is futile and (2) to inflame & harden polarization. Same with comics like this.