Escaping the Echo Chamber

[RoseMorninStar]

TV can sometimes be in-your-face but that takes the cake. Or cupcakes.

[Frelga]

Flat-screen TV?


Here's the men's equivalent.

Screenshot_20201129-140441.jpg (40.59 KiB) Viewed 6461 times

[River]

Honestly, mesh doesn't look good on either of them.

As for social media...I have no idea how to put that horse back in the barn, though I agree that it has some issues.

[RoseMorninStar]

Frelga

River, for starters negative consequences for false allegations but it's just too common and wide spread. The negative consequences would have to come from society as it does in (for example) Japan. Outrageousness, lies, and misinformation is too often rewarded.

[N.E. Brigand]

I found this profile of 20 voters helpful in appreciating the multiplicity of viewpoints out there (some perhaps more bubble-like than others), including a female African American attorney here in Cleveland who voted for Trump and fears a civil war if Biden is inaugurated and a White conservative pastor from Michigan who voted for the retired coal magnate Don Blankenship (candidate this year for the Constitution Party) and is so alarmed by his congregants' dependence on Fox News (not to mention Newsmax and the like) that he'll soon be "preaching a series from the Book of Proverbs ... to help us develop the spiritual discipline of discernment."

[RoseMorninStar]

We are a country engulfed and warped by lies. Lies for power and control. By politicians, by religion, by the wealthy/big business. News organizations have peddled it in the name of profit. Religions have traded morality for power and control in the courts. Congress.. I don't know what to say, despicable. This is what happens when a narcissist is at the helm in any organization. The problems were always there, but a narcissistic ringleader who is skilled in media manipulation and branding, who requires complete personal loyalty over loyalty to the country/constitution is ripe for disaster.

[N.E. Brigand]

I've only just started it, but this article by Maggie Koerth and Amelia Thompson-Devaux at 538.com appears to essential if grim reading for this conversation:

Our Radicalized Republic

[Sunsilver]

To get back to the gym gear controversy, in my day, the guys got to wear track pants and T-shirts. Girls had to wear these horrible 'romper suits', which had short sleeves, and ended just below the crotch in an elastic leg band.

The only other acceptable gym attire was a tight, form-fitting leotard like ballet dancers wear. These also left the whole leg exposed.

I would have been horribly humiliated if I'd had to wear either one outside of gym class!

Re: the boob tube...

[N.E. Brigand]

It can be refreshing, if you think of yourself as on the left or the right, to get a shove from someone farther from the center than you. Today I read this piece, which argues that Dungeons & Dragons suffers from antisemitic tropes and that the reason, in part, is because its sources, like J.R.R. Tolkien in his portrayal of dwarves, are antisemitic. So I wrote to the author, suggesting that the issue was more complicated than that, noting a couple works of Tolkien scholarship (by Rebecca Brackmann and Renée Vink) that argue both sides, and adding my own observation that Tolkien once wrote that Adûnaic, the ancestor of the language spoken by all of the characters in The Lord of the Rings, has a "faintly semitic flavour," i.e., since Tolkien said that dwarves were like Jews in part because of their Semitic tongue, then logically that's somewhat true of everyone who speaks Westron.

Well, the author was having none of it, and let me know in no uncertain terms that what Tolkien did with the Dwarves was undeniably racist. (And I think by implication that I was being racist in suggesting it might not be so.)

A good reminder of the limits of my own bubble.

[elengil]

A good reminder of the limits of my own bubble.

Absolutely true!!

As in many areas of life, a person can believe they are not bigoted in a particular way, and yet they may still display bigotries either through ignorance (willful or otherwise) of their own bigotry, or ignorance in regards to the offences they have given (The latter, IMO, being just as common as the former)

So Tolkien's work can very much contain offensive stereotypes or tropes, while the man himself can firmly denounce Nazi anti-Jewish sentiment to their proverbial faces. Too many people don't seem to understand how these two can so easily and readily co-exist.

https://www.openculture.com/2014/04/j-r ... isher.html

[Voronwë the Faithful]

I may be misremembering, but I am pretty sure that we have a thread here discussing the issue of Tolkien, his Dwarves, and anti-Semitism. I'll have to look when I have the opportunity. As both of you suggest, it is complicated subject with a number of different layers.

ETA: I think it was in discussing John Rateliff's History of the Hobbit.

[N.E. Brigand]

I didn't want to push this thread off topic into Tolkiena. It was just that I found this knock from the left valuable in understanding the point of view of some on the right. One often-mocked complaint that is heard from the right is that it's painful to be called a racist. The usual response from the left is that it's even more painful to be called a racial slur. And I'm sure that's true! But reasonably "woke" as I am, I have largely avoided the experience of being called racist myself. This time I got at least a hint of what that feels like.

[Frelga]

There's a lot to unpack in that interaction.

The problem is that people focus on racism and other forms of prejudice as something you are, all or nothing, vs. specific acts that may not have a harmful intent but could still be hurtful or even harmful.

Is it reasonable to label Tolkien and everyone who enjoys his work as a racist? No, it's not reasonable.

Is it unreasonable to point out where Tolkien employs stereotypes such as love of gold that have been and still are harmful and dangerous to Jewish people (waves into the direction of qanon and the rest of the y'allqeida)? No, it's not unreasonable.

Although if I'm offended by anything, it's by the fact that his one Dwarvish language snippet uses "aleinu" to mean upon you, when it means upon us. Aleihem is upon you.

Interestingly, PJ has steered entirely clear of portraying Dwarves as Semitic in any way.

[River]

I thoroughly missed any connection between Dwarves and Jews. I have picked up on some other sketchy racial stuff in Tolkien's works (paler coloring = closer to the Divine among the Elves, for one example, the evil menace always seeming to come out of the East for another) but not that one.

I've encountered some weird stuff from people to the left of me as well. Not so much accusing me of anything as expressing views that have otherwise been professed to be unpalatable. The weird reaction about the Hispanic AG doll I got for my daughter at her request is an example, but there've been other things to suggest some of my family members have some views on multiculturalism and feminism they need to get honest about.

[yovargas]

Is the only parallel between the portrayal of dwarves and Jewish stereotypes the love of gold?

[elengil]

I thoroughly missed any connection between Dwarves and Jews. I have picked up on some other sketchy racial stuff in Tolkien's works (paler coloring = closer to the Divine among the Elves, for one example, the evil menace always seeming to come out of the East for another) but not that one.

That's part of where it can get difficult - because they didn't know what they were consuming was a trope or stereotype, so they don't make the connection, and some can get very defensive if someone points it out because they think that liking it means they are somehow racist themselves.

It's like when people talk about certain terms being dog whistles, and someone says "well *I* didn't get that meaning from what they said" and it's like, yeah, you weren't the target audience, either.

Or people use a phrase and refuse to accept it is problematic or be corrected because "Well *I* don't mean that when I say it."

People don't always have the full context of everything, and it's best we sometimes let others inform us instead of sticking stubbornly to our own little narrow understandings.

(as for finding out your family may have some... 'views'... ugh... I've been there several times now. It's not a good feeling at all.)

[Frelga]

Is the only parallel between the portrayal of dwarves and Jewish stereotypes the love of gold?

From what I read, Tolkien uses tropes that were associated with Dwarves in Nordic myths, and it's those tropes that code dwarves as Jews. Dwarves are outsiders who are concerned with jewels and gold and whose allegiance is to their mystical homeland rather than their place of residence. Tolkien does use Semitic-style language for Dwarves, but to be fair, there are only so many families of unrelated human languages.

It's a complicated topic and I don't have the typing time now. Perhaps in the mythical later....

[River]

Or people use a phrase and refuse to accept it is problematic or be corrected because "Well *I* don't mean that when I say it."

Corrections can be made but you have to do it with a light touch. I actually broke my husband out of using the term "fag" (and no, he wasn't referring to cigarettes) before taking him home to meet my family for the first time by gently pointing out that not everyone knows what he means and my homosexual sister might think he's calling her a bad person. So first he started watching his mouth around her and her partner and then in the months that followed, even after the trip ended, the word just faded out of his English vocabulary. His friends still tossed it around but he didn't. He's the type that wants to be intentionally offensive, if that makes sense. Like if he's saying something hurtful, he's doing it on purpose.

[yovargas]

Dwarves are outsiders....

Uh, they are? Outsiders of what exactly?

....whose allegiance is to their mystical homeland rather than their place of residence.

Huh? What mystical homeland?

[Frelga]

Sorry, yov, I really don't have the time now. There's been some academic work on the subject, which you could probably locate if interested.