Interesting Links for 02-10-2021

[andrewducker]

New Covid drug cuts risk of death by 50 per cent

(tags:pandemic medication )

Barbie fashion: 1066 - 1986

(tags:clothing history dolls ViaDrCross )

UK Voters Are Majority Pro-Choice Across The Political Spectrum And Support Extension Of At-Home Abortion

(tags:abortion UK demographics )

Left-Wing Authoritarianism Is Real And Needs To Be Taken Seriously In Political Psychology

(tags:politics authoritarianism psychology )

An example of the police covering up child abuse by a former officer

(tags:police abuse children UK corruption OhForFucksSake )

Amazing photos of women in motion - and how they're taken

(tags:women photography )

Some educators really have a way with words

(tags:education funny )

Comments

[nancylebov]

Left-wing authoritarianism: One more trait I expect they have in problem-- difficulty telling the difference between a prediction and a current truth.

[dewline]

I don't doubt that it exists. I just doubt that it's meant to be more than a distraction from the worst real-worlds threats active at this moment.

[mellowtigger]

Agree.

I dislike this article's lack of explanation about the severity of consequences. Suppose Group A enforces a particular view by outlawing its practice and imprisoning (or killing) its proponents. Suppose Group B wants to enforce its opposite view by allowing the practice and even simultaneously allowing (not proscribing by law) the ostracization of its opponents. Group A is not ethically equivalent to Group B as authoritarian simply because they are on the opposite ends of a political spectrum.

For example, the U.S. government once required the firing of homosexuals. Now, maybe some homophobes are losing their jobs (I would want to know if it was due to behavioral outburst versus merely voicing opinions outside of work), but that is not even close to the same moral situation.

I think they're making a false equivalence by ignoring how each side proposes to treat its detractors.

[andrewducker]

Lots of left authoritarians have also been horribly homophobic in their policies.

[andrewducker]

Homosexuality was illegal for pretty much the whole existence of the USSR, for instance.

[mellowtigger]

That probably should have been their early warning signal that they were not pursuing the ideal of socialism? ("Collective ownership, yes... but not by your kind.") I figure most people didn't figure it out until they realized that there was still a caste of haves and have-nots, that the common citizen still didn't have any real influence on decisions or goals, and elite figures were still absorbing wealth and power from the system. Similarly, one warning in the USA was when the Democratic National Committee argued in court that they are under no obligation to democratically choose their own candidate. *ding*ding*ding*

An institution should be reclassified by observers when it stops acting in accordance with its own defined terms. USSR wasn't socialist. DNC isn't democratic. And neither is the USA any more.

Now, the really interesting bit from my perspective is that this corruption could be a common failure mode (a corruption, not a culmination) of liberal government. How is a democratic machine corrupted into an authoritarian machine? Does any system with layers of representation have the same fault because of its increasingly concentrated and isolated decision authority? More importantly, how do its citizens wrest control back to a liberal framework from within the corrupt system? "Sure, you can vote... from among the people and platforms that we approve."

[anna_wing]

It depends entirely on where you are, and which of them happens to have greater access to the levers of power there. And of course, most of the world's polities don't operate on anything like a Western-style left-right axis, so trying to analyse them in those terms is likely to be have misleading results anyway.

[anna_wing]

Eric Hoffer ("The True Believer") identified the fundamentals of the fanatic type in 1951, and found that the extremes of right and left are the same poison in different bottles. I believe it is now popularly referred to as "the horseshoe theory". Having come across both sorts both in person and on-line, I agree with him.

So far, the front-line treatment in these parts has been, for the few who can afford it, anti-coagulants, antibiotics and oxygen, and tocizilumab for the very few who can afford that. A new antiviral that works reasonably well would be nice, but I remember SARS and Tamiflu, so I think I'll wait a bit before rejoicing too much over molnupiravir.

[calimac]

It doesn't take a conspiracy to cover up child abuse for people who have promised to get back to you real soon to never get back to you.

[naath]

the barbie dress history is so cool; and yes, the Victorians had just invented industrial dyes and would have been all over that yellow.

[marahmarie]

Oh, that note is hilarious. Also: hope the guy lives. That's a lot, even if he does.

[agoodwinsmith]

I didn't want the motion photos to stop.

[andrewducker]

Me either!

[cellio]

Left-wing authoritarians certainly exist (and have a fair bit of power) in the US. They call themselves liberal but violate one of the fundamental tenets of liberalism, true diversity (of thought and culture, not of demographics). Their one-true-way-ism is as scary as that from the extreme right. The only consolation is that the authoritarian leftists "only" seek to destroy people's careers and lives, while the authoritarian rightists seek to actually kill people.

One of my teachers oft said that the political spectrum isn't linear but circular: eventually the fascists at both "ends" meet. The things they want to impose are very different, but their methods aren't as different as we'd like them to be.