Just so we're clear then, everyone who has ever died, in all of history, you do not criticize. Not one? Literally every person that has ever died you refuse to say a critical word about?
McCain did not live in the past. He lived in modern times. Robert Byrd of all people managed to be a better person who renounced his past and actually followed through. McCain had no excuse other than at best it was convenient.
Criticize ≠ Shit On Vigorously Immediately Upon Death.
My point of historical comparisons is that we as people are more than our flaws. Both today and in days past. Saying "nah fuck him he was a racist" is remarkably shortsighted. Now, granted: the world would not end if upon death, we held giant ill-tempered roasts of the deceased and spit on their memory because of the bad things they said and did during life. Civilization would likely continue on. But it seems foolish to throw out another of our kinder and gentler traditions. They are already in short supply these days.
And yet when it comes to hold the GOP to this standard I rarely see you do it, which is why this statement rings hollow.
I find little need to criticize the GOP or Republicans at large on these forums despite agreeing with them on very little, you all do a marvelous and extremely thorough job. With an easy 99% of the forums already on that train it seems not worthwhile, but I'm happy to enlighten you as to my feelings on any particular matter if you ask.
I feel I should rush to point out all of the terrible things about these strawmen before they die and become immune to criticism.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Trump is indeed failing to be civil or show respect to McCain. Just like you and others here. A beautiful meeting of the minds, as it were. It’s amazing that the one thing you can agree with Trump on is shitting on a recently deceased former POW.
Context, Frankie. It's not our jobs to do that, it is for the political apparatus and the press to honour McCain - we're citizens. Nor are we partying over this like Trump is. We're highlighting his misdeeds not celebrating his death, I'm positive you know this.
That POW didn't stop existing after leaving his tour of duty, he became a politician who did many stupid and thoughtless things which hurt many people over literally decades in congress.
Since you want to honour McCain why don't you show us by example. What did you like about him?
I didn’t like him. But I can respect his service, and that during his captivity he sacrificed more for our country than I likely ever will.
I understand the idea of civility and "good form" as it were has been worn thin here, and I get that. But I'd argue that how we treat people should be a value independent of our enemies and how they behave. It's an ideal to strive for at any rate, not something to simply toss aside because our enemies are geese. Because our enemies will always be geese, and it makes no sense to let them define how we behave and how we treat those around us.
Then respect him, Frankie - tell us things you agreed with him about. Show us what you want from us, rather than telling us. Even I can find common ground with McCain, surely you can think of something.
While I respect the ideal to live up to, this encourages the narrative that Democrats must be angels while the Republicans have no responsibility to uphold to.
I'd appreciate not framing this as "our" enemies, as well.
They're not defining anything, Frankie, they can look like geese without us not adhering to McCain's mythologised legacy the press created out of thin air.
Now I'm curious, what didn't you like about him?
Democrats do not have to be angels. But Republicans failing their moral responsibilities doesn't mean you do the same. That arguably says more about you than it does them. It means these were never ideals you truly held to, they were merely facades you held up so long as you had to.
I'm not certain where you would find common ground for McCain. For me it's his time as POW, he did us proud there. It's a situation I cannot imagine myself in. Regardless of what came after, I can give him that. As to what I dislike, I feel there are pages and pages already describing ill feelings on the matter. I don't need to add to it. Suffice it to say I didn't appreciate many of his positions or his tendency to vote straight party line regardless of his feelings on the matter.
It is not a moral imperative to be kind about bad people and the bad things they do. We are not just as bad as Republicans for condemning Republicans who do evil.
We would be remiss if we did not rake him over the coals.
That is a way of thinking I cannot understand.
Hell, Germans and Allied forces managed a Christmas football game. I'm certain you can manage a kind word for the dead, or at the very least, brief silence.
No. Hitler is dead too. Fuck that guy. QED
The point is, if armies at war can manage a brief reprieve and recognize the humanity of the other, than so can you. Unless you somehow view your present circumstances more dire than the trenches.
No, that's not the point at all. The point is McCain was a shitty person in life and now he's dead and him being dead doesn't make him any less a shitty person. It is not a moral imperative for us to be kind to him just cause he's dead. Which is what you actually claimed not whatever this shit is about football.
I was trying to point out that even enemies trying to kill eachother can put aside enmity, however briefly, in recognition of shared humanity. If you cannot see the relevance I say that's on you.
Trump is indeed failing to be civil or show respect to McCain. Just like you and others here. A beautiful meeting of the minds, as it were. It’s amazing that the one thing you can agree with Trump on is shitting on a recently deceased former POW.
Context, Frankie. It's not our jobs to do that, it is for the political apparatus and the press to honour McCain - we're citizens. Nor are we partying over this like Trump is. We're highlighting his misdeeds not celebrating his death, I'm positive you know this.
That POW didn't stop existing after leaving his tour of duty, he became a politician who did many stupid and thoughtless things which hurt many people over literally decades in congress.
Since you want to honour McCain why don't you show us by example. What did you like about him?
I didn’t like him. But I can respect his service, and that during his captivity he sacrificed more for our country than I likely ever will.
I understand the idea of civility and "good form" as it were has been worn thin here, and I get that. But I'd argue that how we treat people should be a value independent of our enemies and how they behave. It's an ideal to strive for at any rate, not something to simply toss aside because our enemies are geese. Because our enemies will always be geese, and it makes no sense to let them define how we behave and how we treat those around us.
Then respect him, Frankie - tell us things you agreed with him about. Show us what you want from us, rather than telling us. Even I can find common ground with McCain, surely you can think of something.
While I respect the ideal to live up to, this encourages the narrative that Democrats must be angels while the Republicans have no responsibility to uphold to.
I'd appreciate not framing this as "our" enemies, as well.
They're not defining anything, Frankie, they can look like geese without us not adhering to McCain's mythologised legacy the press created out of thin air.
Now I'm curious, what didn't you like about him?
Democrats do not have to be angels. But Republicans failing their moral responsibilities doesn't mean you do the same. That arguably says more about you than it does them. It means these were never ideals you truly held to, they were merely facades you held up so long as you had to.
I'm not certain where you would find common ground for McCain. For me it's his time as POW, he did us proud there. It's a situation I cannot imagine myself in. Regardless of what came after, I can give him that. As to what I dislike, I feel there are pages and pages already describing ill feelings on the matter. I don't need to add to it. Suffice it to say I didn't appreciate many of his positions or his tendency to vote straight party line regardless of his feelings on the matter.
It is not a moral imperative to be kind about bad people and the bad things they do. We are not just as bad as Republicans for condemning Republicans who do evil.
We would be remiss if we did not rake him over the coals.
That is a way of thinking I cannot understand.
Hell, Germans and Allied forces managed a Christmas football game. I'm certain you can manage a kind word for the dead, or at the very least, brief silence.
This occurred because the soldiers involved had no ideological reason to fight. They were there at the behest of other more powerful people.
I fight and criticize people like McCain because racist ideology is bad.. There is no benefit to it and there is no compromising with the belief that other races are lesser.
Just so we're clear then, everyone who has ever died, in all of history, you do not criticize. Not one? Literally every person that has ever died you refuse to say a critical word about?
McCain did not live in the past. He lived in modern times. Robert Byrd of all people managed to be a better person who renounced his past and actually followed through. McCain had no excuse other than at best it was convenient.
Criticize ≠ Shit On Vigorously Immediately Upon Death.
My point of historical comparisons is that we as people are more than our flaws. Both today and in days past. Saying "nah fuck him he was a racist" is remarkably shortsighted. Now, granted: the world would not end if upon death, we held giant ill-tempered roasts of the deceased and spit on their memory because of the bad things they said and did during life. Civilization would likely continue on. But it seems foolish to throw out another of our kinder and gentler traditions. They are already in short supply these days.
And yet when it comes to hold the GOP to this standard I rarely see you do it, which is why this statement rings hollow.
I find little need to criticize the GOP or Republicans at large on these forums despite agreeing with them on very little, you all do a marvelous and extremely thorough job. With an easy 99% of the forums already on that train it seems not worthwhile, but I'm happy to enlighten you as to my feelings on any particular matter if you ask.
I feel I should rush to point out all of the terrible things about these strawmen before they die and become immune to criticism.
McCain is a very good example of a saying I heard long ago and don't remember exactly.
Anyone can triumph in the face of adversity, but give a man power and you'll see the true nature of his character.
It is a pretty saying, but I'd also wager the man who said it hadn't been tortured by the Viet Cong.
I think resisting power and resisting torture are both complicated in their own way, being able to do one doesn't mean you've "innate good character" to do the other. They're very different things that aren't just dealt with by having enough grit or what have you.
Surely what you're arguing here is that we need to take McCain's life on balance - there was good and there was bad, and unless he's truly exceptional - one will outweigh the other.
Mostly, yes, except I'm saying the final judgement doesn't matter at the moment. There was both good and bad to him, and I think it's worthwhile to extend the kindness of remembering the good in the wake of his death. It is a small kindness, and the last thing any of us can hope for when we're gone.
Who exactly is this kindness for? Who is being materially harmed by criticism?
Trump is indeed failing to be civil or show respect to McCain. Just like you and others here. A beautiful meeting of the minds, as it were. It’s amazing that the one thing you can agree with Trump on is shitting on a recently deceased former POW.
Context, Frankie. It's not our jobs to do that, it is for the political apparatus and the press to honour McCain - we're citizens. Nor are we partying over this like Trump is. We're highlighting his misdeeds not celebrating his death, I'm positive you know this.
That POW didn't stop existing after leaving his tour of duty, he became a politician who did many stupid and thoughtless things which hurt many people over literally decades in congress.
Since you want to honour McCain why don't you show us by example. What did you like about him?
I didn’t like him. But I can respect his service, and that during his captivity he sacrificed more for our country than I likely ever will.
I understand the idea of civility and "good form" as it were has been worn thin here, and I get that. But I'd argue that how we treat people should be a value independent of our enemies and how they behave. It's an ideal to strive for at any rate, not something to simply toss aside because our enemies are geese. Because our enemies will always be geese, and it makes no sense to let them define how we behave and how we treat those around us.
Then respect him, Frankie - tell us things you agreed with him about. Show us what you want from us, rather than telling us. Even I can find common ground with McCain, surely you can think of something.
While I respect the ideal to live up to, this encourages the narrative that Democrats must be angels while the Republicans have no responsibility to uphold to.
I'd appreciate not framing this as "our" enemies, as well.
They're not defining anything, Frankie, they can look like geese without us not adhering to McCain's mythologised legacy the press created out of thin air.
Now I'm curious, what didn't you like about him?
Democrats do not have to be angels. But Republicans failing their moral responsibilities doesn't mean you do the same. That arguably says more about you than it does them. It means these were never ideals you truly held to, they were merely facades you held up so long as you had to.
I'm not certain where you would find common ground for McCain. For me it's his time as POW, he did us proud there. It's a situation I cannot imagine myself in. Regardless of what came after, I can give him that. As to what I dislike, I feel there are pages and pages already describing ill feelings on the matter. I don't need to add to it. Suffice it to say I didn't appreciate many of his positions or his tendency to vote straight party line regardless of his feelings on the matter.
It is not a moral imperative to be kind about bad people and the bad things they do. We are not just as bad as Republicans for condemning Republicans who do evil.
We would be remiss if we did not rake him over the coals.
That is a way of thinking I cannot understand.
Hell, Germans and Allied forces managed a Christmas football game. I'm certain you can manage a kind word for the dead, or at the very least, brief silence.
No. Hitler is dead too. Fuck that guy. QED
The point is, if armies at war can manage a brief reprieve and recognize the humanity of the other, than so can you. Unless you somehow view your present circumstances more dire than the trenches.
No, that's not the point at all. The point is McCain was a shitty person in life and now he's dead and him being dead doesn't make him any less a shitty person. It is not a moral imperative for us to be kind to him just cause he's dead. Which is what you actually claimed not whatever this shit is about football.
I was trying to point out that even enemies trying to kill eachother can put aside enmity, however briefly, in recognition of shared humanity. If you cannot see the relevance I say that's on you.
I don't think you understand even the example you are trying to use to prove your point.
Certainly we can recognize that McCain was human. That's why the only respectful and moral thing to do here is to be honest about who he was. It's precisely why he is a great example for the future.
McCain was a man. And this is what he did wrong. We are also human. Let's discuss what he did and decide what was good or bad and why the bad things shouldn't be repeated or perpetuated. The only way that can happen is through discourse.
Frankly, I think the ones shitting on McCain are the ones trying to shut down discourse. He didn't apologize for who he was. Why are you?
McCain is a very good example of a saying I heard long ago and don't remember exactly.
Anyone can triumph in the face of adversity, but give a man power and you'll see the true nature of his character.
It is a pretty saying, but I'd also wager the man who said it hadn't been tortured by the Viet Cong.
I think resisting power and resisting torture are both complicated in their own way, being able to do one doesn't mean you've "innate good character" to do the other. They're very different things that aren't just dealt with by having enough grit or what have you.
Surely what you're arguing here is that we need to take McCain's life on balance - there was good and there was bad, and unless he's truly exceptional - one will outweigh the other.
Mostly, yes, except I'm saying the final judgement doesn't matter at the moment. There was both good and bad to him, and I think it's worthwhile to extend the kindness of remembering the good in the wake of his death. It is a small kindness, and the last thing any of us can hope for when we're gone.
Who exactly is this kindness for? Who is being materially harmed by criticism?
Those who totally don’t endorse racism but are adamant it be acceptable in polite society. For some reason.
Trump is indeed failing to be civil or show respect to McCain. Just like you and others here. A beautiful meeting of the minds, as it were. It’s amazing that the one thing you can agree with Trump on is shitting on a recently deceased former POW.
Context, Frankie. It's not our jobs to do that, it is for the political apparatus and the press to honour McCain - we're citizens. Nor are we partying over this like Trump is. We're highlighting his misdeeds not celebrating his death, I'm positive you know this.
That POW didn't stop existing after leaving his tour of duty, he became a politician who did many stupid and thoughtless things which hurt many people over literally decades in congress.
Since you want to honour McCain why don't you show us by example. What did you like about him?
I didn’t like him. But I can respect his service, and that during his captivity he sacrificed more for our country than I likely ever will.
I understand the idea of civility and "good form" as it were has been worn thin here, and I get that. But I'd argue that how we treat people should be a value independent of our enemies and how they behave. It's an ideal to strive for at any rate, not something to simply toss aside because our enemies are geese. Because our enemies will always be geese, and it makes no sense to let them define how we behave and how we treat those around us.
Then respect him, Frankie - tell us things you agreed with him about. Show us what you want from us, rather than telling us. Even I can find common ground with McCain, surely you can think of something.
While I respect the ideal to live up to, this encourages the narrative that Democrats must be angels while the Republicans have no responsibility to uphold to.
I'd appreciate not framing this as "our" enemies, as well.
They're not defining anything, Frankie, they can look like geese without us not adhering to McCain's mythologised legacy the press created out of thin air.
Now I'm curious, what didn't you like about him?
Democrats do not have to be angels. But Republicans failing their moral responsibilities doesn't mean you do the same. That arguably says more about you than it does them. It means these were never ideals you truly held to, they were merely facades you held up so long as you had to.
I'm not certain where you would find common ground for McCain. For me it's his time as POW, he did us proud there. It's a situation I cannot imagine myself in. Regardless of what came after, I can give him that. As to what I dislike, I feel there are pages and pages already describing ill feelings on the matter. I don't need to add to it. Suffice it to say I didn't appreciate many of his positions or his tendency to vote straight party line regardless of his feelings on the matter.
It is not a moral imperative to be kind about bad people and the bad things they do. We are not just as bad as Republicans for condemning Republicans who do evil.
We would be remiss if we did not rake him over the coals.
That is a way of thinking I cannot understand.
Hell, Germans and Allied forces managed a Christmas football game. I'm certain you can manage a kind word for the dead, or at the very least, brief silence.
This occurred because the soldiers involved had no ideological reason to fight. They were there at the behest of other more powerful people.
I fight and criticize people like McCain because racist ideology is bad.. There is no benefit to it and there is no compromising with the belief that other races are lesser.
And yet, a small kindness that acknowledges the humanity of the deceased costs you nothing. I chose the analogy particularly because it did not preclude further bloodshed. Likewise, there is no reason you cannot go right back on blast once the dust settles. But it seems to me devoid of decency to use a man's casket as a pulpit from which to disgrace him--barring the man being literally Hitler, I suppose.
Trump is indeed failing to be civil or show respect to McCain. Just like you and others here. A beautiful meeting of the minds, as it were. It’s amazing that the one thing you can agree with Trump on is shitting on a recently deceased former POW.
Context, Frankie. It's not our jobs to do that, it is for the political apparatus and the press to honour McCain - we're citizens. Nor are we partying over this like Trump is. We're highlighting his misdeeds not celebrating his death, I'm positive you know this.
That POW didn't stop existing after leaving his tour of duty, he became a politician who did many stupid and thoughtless things which hurt many people over literally decades in congress.
Since you want to honour McCain why don't you show us by example. What did you like about him?
I didn’t like him. But I can respect his service, and that during his captivity he sacrificed more for our country than I likely ever will.
I understand the idea of civility and "good form" as it were has been worn thin here, and I get that. But I'd argue that how we treat people should be a value independent of our enemies and how they behave. It's an ideal to strive for at any rate, not something to simply toss aside because our enemies are geese. Because our enemies will always be geese, and it makes no sense to let them define how we behave and how we treat those around us.
Then respect him, Frankie - tell us things you agreed with him about. Show us what you want from us, rather than telling us. Even I can find common ground with McCain, surely you can think of something.
While I respect the ideal to live up to, this encourages the narrative that Democrats must be angels while the Republicans have no responsibility to uphold to.
I'd appreciate not framing this as "our" enemies, as well.
They're not defining anything, Frankie, they can look like geese without us not adhering to McCain's mythologised legacy the press created out of thin air.
Now I'm curious, what didn't you like about him?
Democrats do not have to be angels. But Republicans failing their moral responsibilities doesn't mean you do the same. That arguably says more about you than it does them. It means these were never ideals you truly held to, they were merely facades you held up so long as you had to.
I'm not certain where you would find common ground for McCain. For me it's his time as POW, he did us proud there. It's a situation I cannot imagine myself in. Regardless of what came after, I can give him that. As to what I dislike, I feel there are pages and pages already describing ill feelings on the matter. I don't need to add to it. Suffice it to say I didn't appreciate many of his positions or his tendency to vote straight party line regardless of his feelings on the matter.
It is not a moral imperative to be kind about bad people and the bad things they do. We are not just as bad as Republicans for condemning Republicans who do evil.
We would be remiss if we did not rake him over the coals.
That is a way of thinking I cannot understand.
Hell, Germans and Allied forces managed a Christmas football game. I'm certain you can manage a kind word for the dead, or at the very least, brief silence.
No. Hitler is dead too. Fuck that guy. QED
The point is, if armies at war can manage a brief reprieve and recognize the humanity of the other, than so can you. Unless you somehow view your present circumstances more dire than the trenches.
No, that's not the point at all. The point is McCain was a shitty person in life and now he's dead and him being dead doesn't make him any less a shitty person. It is not a moral imperative for us to be kind to him just cause he's dead. Which is what you actually claimed not whatever this shit is about football.
I was trying to point out that even enemies trying to kill eachother can put aside enmity, however briefly, in recognition of shared humanity. If you cannot see the relevance I say that's on you.
I can't see the relevance because there is none. You still haven't connected the dots except via this claim that being nice to him cause he's dead is some sort of moral imperative.
I recognize our shared humanity. I think he did some good stuff in life and have said as much in this thread. I just also recognize all the shitty things he also did. And him being dead don't make those go away nor does it obligate me to not talk about them.
Trump is indeed failing to be civil or show respect to McCain. Just like you and others here. A beautiful meeting of the minds, as it were. It’s amazing that the one thing you can agree with Trump on is shitting on a recently deceased former POW.
Context, Frankie. It's not our jobs to do that, it is for the political apparatus and the press to honour McCain - we're citizens. Nor are we partying over this like Trump is. We're highlighting his misdeeds not celebrating his death, I'm positive you know this.
That POW didn't stop existing after leaving his tour of duty, he became a politician who did many stupid and thoughtless things which hurt many people over literally decades in congress.
Since you want to honour McCain why don't you show us by example. What did you like about him?
I didn’t like him. But I can respect his service, and that during his captivity he sacrificed more for our country than I likely ever will.
I understand the idea of civility and "good form" as it were has been worn thin here, and I get that. But I'd argue that how we treat people should be a value independent of our enemies and how they behave. It's an ideal to strive for at any rate, not something to simply toss aside because our enemies are geese. Because our enemies will always be geese, and it makes no sense to let them define how we behave and how we treat those around us.
Then respect him, Frankie - tell us things you agreed with him about. Show us what you want from us, rather than telling us. Even I can find common ground with McCain, surely you can think of something.
While I respect the ideal to live up to, this encourages the narrative that Democrats must be angels while the Republicans have no responsibility to uphold to.
I'd appreciate not framing this as "our" enemies, as well.
They're not defining anything, Frankie, they can look like geese without us not adhering to McCain's mythologised legacy the press created out of thin air.
Now I'm curious, what didn't you like about him?
Democrats do not have to be angels. But Republicans failing their moral responsibilities doesn't mean you do the same. That arguably says more about you than it does them. It means these were never ideals you truly held to, they were merely facades you held up so long as you had to.
I'm not certain where you would find common ground for McCain. For me it's his time as POW, he did us proud there. It's a situation I cannot imagine myself in. Regardless of what came after, I can give him that. As to what I dislike, I feel there are pages and pages already describing ill feelings on the matter. I don't need to add to it. Suffice it to say I didn't appreciate many of his positions or his tendency to vote straight party line regardless of his feelings on the matter.
It is not a moral imperative to be kind about bad people and the bad things they do. We are not just as bad as Republicans for condemning Republicans who do evil.
We would be remiss if we did not rake him over the coals.
That is a way of thinking I cannot understand.
Hell, Germans and Allied forces managed a Christmas football game. I'm certain you can manage a kind word for the dead, or at the very least, brief silence.
This occurred because the soldiers involved had no ideological reason to fight. They were there at the behest of other more powerful people.
I fight and criticize people like McCain because racist ideology is bad.. There is no benefit to it and there is no compromising with the belief that other races are lesser.
And yet, a small kindness that acknowledges the humanity of the deceased costs you nothing. I chose the analogy particularly because it did not preclude further bloodshed. Likewise, there is no reason you cannot go right back on blast once the dust settles. But it seems to me devoid of decency to use a man's casket as a pulpit from which to disgrace him--barring the man being literally Hitler, I suppose.
There is no going right with someone who refuses to acknowledge others are equals. The soldiers in WWI did this. McCain never did.
Edit: And I get that you’re super willing to forgive stuff like racism, I do. Just kindly stop demanding others to be. A lot of us care about it significantly more.
Quid on
0
Options
ElJeffeRoaming the streets, waving his mod gun around.Moderator, ClubPAMod Emeritus
I feel maybe there should be some distinction between saying negative things about someone recently-deceased in a public space, and saying negative things about someone in a nondescript internet forum in the context of a thread specifically created to discuss the person's legacy.
I submitted an entry to Lego Ideas, and if 10,000 people support me, it'll be turned into an actual Lego set!If you'd like to see and support my submission, follow this link.
Saying that people should exclusively talk about someone's good while ignoring their bad only serves as an attempt to further the deceased's political agenda post mortem. I have absolutely no moral imperative to be on board for that when that political agenda was reprehensible.
I just don’t truck with the idea that anyone is obligated to speak only positive things about someone who’s died. In the presence of McCain’s family I’d absolutely bite my tongue specifically for the sake of the mourning relatives. But in a public forum to discuss matters? No. It only encourages the idea tha it’s okay to do terrible things so long as you’re “civil” about it.
From my perspective, I said plenty about how much i disagreed with him when he was alive. Voted against him too.
But, now that he is dead, i dont see the point in putting him on blast. There are alive people I can do that towards. People that are actively doing things i disagree with.
It just seems.....i don't know....less classy to continue to gripe about someone who is dead this shortly after they died.
In a few years when his record is more a data point than an immediate reflection on the man? Sure. Go for it.
Now it just feels....not right.
Not 100% sure why.
Reverence for the dead has, for some folks, taken a back seat to using a man's final moment in the public eye to advance their political position.
That's at least part of what makes it feel not right to me.
Death improves no man. Someone who's a shitbird while they are alive is not suddenly a better person after they die.
The dead deserve no reverence the living weren't getting already.
Dead people get some reverence. It's less respecting the person and more respecting death.
That doesn't even make sense. Death doesn't need any respect.
The only difference between a man before he's dead and after is the living man could still change. Once they dead, they were what they were and we should treat them as such.
I know, it doesn't make sense. Yet, you'd be less eager to protest any individual's funeral over their book signing. You would wish bad things to happen to your enemies, but wishing they were dead feels like you're giving up a part of your own soul. Am I right? It's a cultural thing ingrained in our genetics.
No, I don't feel it is. I wouldn't protest someone's funeral because even the shittiest people probably have someone close to them who's gonna miss them and that's what a funeral is for. (Someone's state funeral though? Yeah, I'd be ok with that for quite a few people I can think of.)
But just cause I wouldn't disrupt their family's private ceremony of the dead doesn't mean I wouldn't call said person a piece of shit if that's what they were in life.
I don't think family is the deciding factor here. I think it's still death. By not disrupting a family's right to mourn, you are allowing them the right to celebrate death.
Think of someone you hate. You see them at the mall with their family. The kids are having fun. It would obviously ruin their day if you confronted your enemy in front of their friends and family, right? What if they're at camp? What if they're in their home, playing a board game? Do you hesitate to intrude on their private moment? Do you feel the same trepidation in confronting them that you do with a family funeral? These memories you're tarnishing - each is an important and precious page of a family's life. But one feels like sacrilege, like something unnatural a human just doesn't do.
What is so important about respecting the relationship of people you hate with people that love people you hate?
The answer is that I'm wrong. Death, family, and other emotional bonds remind us that we're all human and bring us out of the sociopathic frenzy of partisan rage. I really doubt you'd organize a protest at a state funeral, but even though it's about death - a trait we all share - the ceremony is so far removed from actual common life that it might as well be a piece of paper that is laid at state. However, even with that detachment, we reserve a certain amount of reverence for any death - regardless of credentials. Add family in there; add evidence of of genuine emotion - you might as well be staring in a mirror. Empathy is on full blast.
Senator McCain, to many of us, is not human. He is just an idea, something we saw a few times on television and read on a news website. He's an idea that hurts real people that we actually verifiably know, so of course he's inhuman. Ideas can be totally evil with no redeeming features and unworthy of the basic compassion we afford to every real human being. Of course it's better that he's dead, because it just doesn't register that he is flesh and blood and feels pain and agony like the rest of us. It's impossible to understand.
However, I would be very intrigued if I was wrong. A world that does not respect death - I'd be curious to see that. It would be wonderful not to worry about the death of those that I love, to accept it as a part of life and be at peace with it. To be able to move on and not be irreparably devastated by grief and regret. I think everyone would be happier, perhaps.
Anyway, this is so off topic, I apologize. All I was trying to do is work through Ninjeff's uncertain feelings and I kind of went overboard. You don't have to respond; I don't know what argument I'm making and have no real goal for further discussion.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I just don’t truck with the idea that anyone is obligated to speak only positive things about someone who’s died. In the presence of McCain’s family I’d absolutely bite my tongue specifically for the sake of the mourning relatives. But in a public forum to discuss matters? No. It only encourages the idea tha it’s okay to do terrible things so long as you’re “civil” about it.
From my perspective, I said plenty about how much i disagreed with him when he was alive. Voted against him too.
But, now that he is dead, i dont see the point in putting him on blast. There are alive people I can do that towards. People that are actively doing things i disagree with.
It just seems.....i don't know....less classy to continue to gripe about someone who is dead this shortly after they died.
In a few years when his record is more a data point than an immediate reflection on the man? Sure. Go for it.
Now it just feels....not right.
Not 100% sure why.
Reverence for the dead has, for some folks, taken a back seat to using a man's final moment in the public eye to advance their political position.
That's at least part of what makes it feel not right to me.
Death improves no man. Someone who's a shitbird while they are alive is not suddenly a better person after they die.
The dead deserve no reverence the living weren't getting already.
Dead people get some reverence. It's less respecting the person and more respecting death.
That doesn't even make sense. Death doesn't need any respect.
The only difference between a man before he's dead and after is the living man could still change. Once they dead, they were what they were and we should treat them as such.
I know, it doesn't make sense. Yet, you'd be less eager to protest any individual's funeral over their book signing. You would wish bad things to happen to your enemies, but wishing they were dead feels like you're giving up a part of your own soul. Am I right? It's a cultural thing ingrained in our genetics.
No, I don't feel it is. I wouldn't protest someone's funeral because even the shittiest people probably have someone close to them who's gonna miss them and that's what a funeral is for. (Someone's state funeral though? Yeah, I'd be ok with that for quite a few people I can think of.)
But just cause I wouldn't disrupt their family's private ceremony of the dead doesn't mean I wouldn't call said person a piece of shit if that's what they were in life.
I don't think family is the deciding factor here. I think it's still death. By not disrupting a family's right to mourn, you are allowing them the right to celebrate death.
Think of someone you hate. You see them at the mall with their family. The kids are having fun. It would obviously ruin their day if you confronted your enemy in front of their friends and family, right? What if they're at camp? What if they're in their home, playing a board game? Do you hesitate to intrude on their private moment? Do you feel the same trepidation in confronting them that you do with a family funeral? These memories you're tarnishing - each is an important and precious page of a family's life. But one feels like sacrilege, like something unnatural a human just doesn't do.
What is so important about respecting the relationship of people you hate with people that love people you hate?
The answer is that I'm wrong. Death, family, and other emotional bonds remind us that we're all human and bring us out of the sociopathic frenzy of partisan rage. I really doubt you'd organize a protest at a state funeral, but even though it's about death - a trait we all share - the ceremony is so far removed from actual common life that it might as well be a piece of paper that is laid at state. However, even with that detachment, we reserve a certain amount of reverence for any death - regardless of credentials. Add family in there; add evidence of of genuine emotion - you might as well be staring in a mirror. Empathy is on full blast.
Senator McCain, to many of us, is not human. He is just an idea, something we saw a few times on television and read on a news website. He's an idea that hurts real people that we actually verifiably know, so of course he's inhuman. Ideas can be totally evil with no redeeming features and unworthy of the basic compassion we afford to every real human being. Of course it's better that he's dead, because it just doesn't register that he is flesh and blood and feels pain and agony like the rest of us. It's impossible to understand.
However, I would be very intrigued if I was wrong. A world that does not respect death - I'd be curious to see that. It would be wonderful not to worry about the death of those that I love, to accept it as a part of life and be at peace with it. To be able to move on and not be irreparably devastated by grief and regret. I think everyone would be happier, perhaps.
Anyway, this is so off topic, I apologize. All I was trying to do is work through Ninjeff's uncertain feelings and I kind of went overboard. You don't have to respond; I don't know what argument I'm making and have no real goal for further discussion.
Nah, fuck this.
A funeral is a private occasion for a family to mourn the passing of a loved one. They can have that time. It's not about you or me or the public.
A state funeral is the state itself honouring that person. If said person deserves scorn instead of honours, the public should see fit to give it to them in the form of protests. It's the state itself acting so it's clearly about the public.
The only reason not to heckle someone spending time with their family is to spare their family. And depending on what they've done and what their position is, you even waive that sometimes.
You can say it's about death but that's only because of the idiotic idea that someone being dead makes them immune from criticism. Death didn't make said person better. If you'd say it about them while they were alive, there's no reason not to say it about them after they are dead.
Death is not a thing one respects by white-washing history. That chain of logic doesn't even make sense.
"The administration’s current family separation policy is an affront to the decency of the American people, and contrary to principles and values upon which our nation was founded,” McCain, R-Ariz., said in a blistering tweet Monday evening. “The administration has the power to rescind this policy. It should do so now.”
After then-candidate Trump feuded with the Gold Star family, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention:
"It is time for Donald Trump to set the example for our country and the future of the Republican Party. While our party has bestowed upon him the nomination, it is not accompanied by unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us. ... I'd like to say to Mr. and Mrs. Khan: Thank you for immigrating to America. We're a better country because of you. And you are certainly right; your son was the best of America, and the memory of his sacrifice will make us a better nation – and he will never be forgotten."
Yeah it's nice to show respect for the recently deceased, it's polite, it's a good moral to follow. But that moral is greatly outweighed by the moral imperative to spread truth and facts to counter a massive propaganda campaign actively spreading lies. If the liars aren't observing a moment of silence, why should we?
I learned a lot of useful stuff in this thread, far more useful than empty platitudes and silence.
I guess I'm confused. When words like "decency" and "respect" are being used, is that really just meant as "polite"? I think the words all have fundamentally similar meanings, but connotatively I think there is a fair amount of nuance between the concepts.
I don't think it's decent or respectful to pretend someone isn't a sum of everything they've done, good and bad. It's polite, perhaps, to not criticize the dead, but so what? There's context to politeness. In a debate thread on a forum that discusses politics on a daily basis, why is being polite even remotely important? And why should politeness in this context be more important than being honest? What moral value does politeness here have? I feel that the value of honesty about the deceased far outweighs the value of politeness in any context here, even a utilitarian one. Unless you're explicitly conversating with the direct family of the deceased, it seems arguably better to be completely honest about the person.
Of course, criticism will always rise to the top, but that's not a matter of respect or decency, either. Because in a context such as this, the message is "racism is bad." It's not really "shit on McCain because he was racist" it's "this man did these things, we need to stop doing this and we need to stop putting up with this as a society."
Trump is indeed failing to be civil or show respect to McCain. Just like you and others here. A beautiful meeting of the minds, as it were. It’s amazing that the one thing you can agree with Trump on is shitting on a recently deceased former POW.
Context, Frankie. It's not our jobs to do that, it is for the political apparatus and the press to honour McCain - we're citizens. Nor are we partying over this like Trump is. We're highlighting his misdeeds not celebrating his death, I'm positive you know this.
That POW didn't stop existing after leaving his tour of duty, he became a politician who did many stupid and thoughtless things which hurt many people over literally decades in congress.
Since you want to honour McCain why don't you show us by example. What did you like about him?
I didn’t like him. But I can respect his service, and that during his captivity he sacrificed more for our country than I likely ever will.
I understand the idea of civility and "good form" as it were has been worn thin here, and I get that. But I'd argue that how we treat people should be a value independent of our enemies and how they behave. It's an ideal to strive for at any rate, not something to simply toss aside because our enemies are geese. Because our enemies will always be geese, and it makes no sense to let them define how we behave and how we treat those around us.
Then respect him, Frankie - tell us things you agreed with him about. Show us what you want from us, rather than telling us. Even I can find common ground with McCain, surely you can think of something.
While I respect the ideal to live up to, this encourages the narrative that Democrats must be angels while the Republicans have no responsibility to uphold to.
I'd appreciate not framing this as "our" enemies, as well.
They're not defining anything, Frankie, they can look like geese without us not adhering to McCain's mythologised legacy the press created out of thin air.
Now I'm curious, what didn't you like about him?
Democrats do not have to be angels. But Republicans failing their moral responsibilities doesn't mean you do the same. That arguably says more about you than it does them. It means these were never ideals you truly held to, they were merely facades you held up so long as you had to.
I'm not certain where you would find common ground for McCain. For me it's his time as POW, he did us proud there. It's a situation I cannot imagine myself in. Regardless of what came after, I can give him that. As to what I dislike, I feel there are pages and pages already describing ill feelings on the matter. I don't need to add to it. Suffice it to say I didn't appreciate many of his positions or his tendency to vote straight party line regardless of his feelings on the matter.
It is not a moral imperative to be kind about bad people and the bad things they do. We are not just as bad as Republicans for condemning Republicans who do evil.
We would be remiss if we did not rake him over the coals.
That is a way of thinking I cannot understand.
Hell, Germans and Allied forces managed a Christmas football game. I'm certain you can manage a kind word for the dead, or at the very least, brief silence.
This occurred because the soldiers involved had no ideological reason to fight. They were there at the behest of other more powerful people.
I fight and criticize people like McCain because racist ideology is bad.. There is no benefit to it and there is no compromising with the belief that other races are lesser.
And yet, a small kindness that acknowledges the humanity of the deceased costs you nothing. I chose the analogy particularly because it did not preclude further bloodshed. Likewise, there is no reason you cannot go right back on blast once the dust settles. But it seems to me devoid of decency to use a man's casket as a pulpit from which to disgrace him--barring the man being literally Hitler, I suppose.
Edit: And I get that you’re super willing to forgive stuff like racism, I do. Just kindly stop demanding others to be. A lot of us care about it significantly more.
You certainly do, often to the exclusion of any and all other factors. I suppose we all have our own North Star to steer by.
Trump is indeed failing to be civil or show respect to McCain. Just like you and others here. A beautiful meeting of the minds, as it were. It’s amazing that the one thing you can agree with Trump on is shitting on a recently deceased former POW.
Context, Frankie. It's not our jobs to do that, it is for the political apparatus and the press to honour McCain - we're citizens. Nor are we partying over this like Trump is. We're highlighting his misdeeds not celebrating his death, I'm positive you know this.
That POW didn't stop existing after leaving his tour of duty, he became a politician who did many stupid and thoughtless things which hurt many people over literally decades in congress.
Since you want to honour McCain why don't you show us by example. What did you like about him?
I didn’t like him. But I can respect his service, and that during his captivity he sacrificed more for our country than I likely ever will.
I understand the idea of civility and "good form" as it were has been worn thin here, and I get that. But I'd argue that how we treat people should be a value independent of our enemies and how they behave. It's an ideal to strive for at any rate, not something to simply toss aside because our enemies are geese. Because our enemies will always be geese, and it makes no sense to let them define how we behave and how we treat those around us.
Then respect him, Frankie - tell us things you agreed with him about. Show us what you want from us, rather than telling us. Even I can find common ground with McCain, surely you can think of something.
While I respect the ideal to live up to, this encourages the narrative that Democrats must be angels while the Republicans have no responsibility to uphold to.
I'd appreciate not framing this as "our" enemies, as well.
They're not defining anything, Frankie, they can look like geese without us not adhering to McCain's mythologised legacy the press created out of thin air.
Now I'm curious, what didn't you like about him?
Democrats do not have to be angels. But Republicans failing their moral responsibilities doesn't mean you do the same. That arguably says more about you than it does them. It means these were never ideals you truly held to, they were merely facades you held up so long as you had to.
I'm not certain where you would find common ground for McCain. For me it's his time as POW, he did us proud there. It's a situation I cannot imagine myself in. Regardless of what came after, I can give him that. As to what I dislike, I feel there are pages and pages already describing ill feelings on the matter. I don't need to add to it. Suffice it to say I didn't appreciate many of his positions or his tendency to vote straight party line regardless of his feelings on the matter.
It is not a moral imperative to be kind about bad people and the bad things they do. We are not just as bad as Republicans for condemning Republicans who do evil.
We would be remiss if we did not rake him over the coals.
That is a way of thinking I cannot understand.
Hell, Germans and Allied forces managed a Christmas football game. I'm certain you can manage a kind word for the dead, or at the very least, brief silence.
This occurred because the soldiers involved had no ideological reason to fight. They were there at the behest of other more powerful people.
I fight and criticize people like McCain because racist ideology is bad.. There is no benefit to it and there is no compromising with the belief that other races are lesser.
And yet, a small kindness that acknowledges the humanity of the deceased costs you nothing. I chose the analogy particularly because it did not preclude further bloodshed. Likewise, there is no reason you cannot go right back on blast once the dust settles. But it seems to me devoid of decency to use a man's casket as a pulpit from which to disgrace him--barring the man being literally Hitler, I suppose.
Edit: And I get that you’re super willing to forgive stuff like racism, I do. Just kindly stop demanding others to be. A lot of us care about it significantly more.
You certainly do, often to the exclusion of any and all other factors. I suppose we all have our own North Star to steer by.
Except people have bought up good things McCain did, they just are overwhelmed by the bad deeds in his life. Which is of McCain's own making. The media's portrayal of McCain was the deception, not what we're doing here.
And I'd be fine not speaking ill of McCain if his death wasn't being eulogized as a great man literally all over our media. Like again today Pitts mentioned his temper and how his "obama's not a muslim" was over written by his dumb running mate, and still said the was a non partisan force for good which is just made up bullshit.
And that's the problem, if not for people going "well actually" the story that people would know of McCain would be a false narrative, completely sound with no actual substance.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
And I'd be fine not speaking ill of McCain if his death wasn't being eulogized as a great man literally all over our media. Like again today Pitts mentioned his temper and how his "obama's not a muslim" was over written by his dumb running mate, and still said the was a non partisan force for good which is just made up bullshit.
And that's the problem, if not for people going "well actually" the story that people would know of McCain would be a false narrative, completely sound with no actual substance.
I'm 1000% uninterested in opinions of how this forum leans or how much we criticize political parties - it's not the topic. Nor is bringing up people's past posting history or views and getting personal a productive move.
I just don’t truck with the idea that anyone is obligated to speak only positive things about someone who’s died. In the presence of McCain’s family I’d absolutely bite my tongue specifically for the sake of the mourning relatives. But in a public forum to discuss matters? No. It only encourages the idea tha it’s okay to do terrible things so long as you’re “civil” about it.
From my perspective, I said plenty about how much i disagreed with him when he was alive. Voted against him too.
But, now that he is dead, i dont see the point in putting him on blast. There are alive people I can do that towards. People that are actively doing things i disagree with.
It just seems.....i don't know....less classy to continue to gripe about someone who is dead this shortly after they died.
In a few years when his record is more a data point than an immediate reflection on the man? Sure. Go for it.
Now it just feels....not right.
Not 100% sure why.
Reverence for the dead has, for some folks, taken a back seat to using a man's final moment in the public eye to advance their political position.
That's at least part of what makes it feel not right to me.
Death improves no man. Someone who's a shitbird while they are alive is not suddenly a better person after they die.
The dead deserve no reverence the living weren't getting already.
Dead people get some reverence. It's less respecting the person and more respecting death.
That doesn't even make sense. Death doesn't need any respect.
The only difference between a man before he's dead and after is the living man could still change. Once they dead, they were what they were and we should treat them as such.
I know, it doesn't make sense. Yet, you'd be less eager to protest any individual's funeral over their book signing. You would wish bad things to happen to your enemies, but wishing they were dead feels like you're giving up a part of your own soul. Am I right? It's a cultural thing ingrained in our genetics.
No, I don't feel it is. I wouldn't protest someone's funeral because even the shittiest people probably have someone close to them who's gonna miss them and that's what a funeral is for. (Someone's state funeral though? Yeah, I'd be ok with that for quite a few people I can think of.)
But just cause I wouldn't disrupt their family's private ceremony of the dead doesn't mean I wouldn't call said person a piece of shit if that's what they were in life.
I don't think family is the deciding factor here. I think it's still death. By not disrupting a family's right to mourn, you are allowing them the right to celebrate death.
Think of someone you hate. You see them at the mall with their family. The kids are having fun. It would obviously ruin their day if you confronted your enemy in front of their friends and family, right? What if they're at camp? What if they're in their home, playing a board game? Do you hesitate to intrude on their private moment? Do you feel the same trepidation in confronting them that you do with a family funeral? These memories you're tarnishing - each is an important and precious page of a family's life. But one feels like sacrilege, like something unnatural a human just doesn't do.
What is so important about respecting the relationship of people you hate with people that love people you hate?
The answer is that I'm wrong. Death, family, and other emotional bonds remind us that we're all human and bring us out of the sociopathic frenzy of partisan rage. I really doubt you'd organize a protest at a state funeral, but even though it's about death - a trait we all share - the ceremony is so far removed from actual common life that it might as well be a piece of paper that is laid at state. However, even with that detachment, we reserve a certain amount of reverence for any death - regardless of credentials. Add family in there; add evidence of of genuine emotion - you might as well be staring in a mirror. Empathy is on full blast.
Senator McCain, to many of us, is not human. He is just an idea, something we saw a few times on television and read on a news website. He's an idea that hurts real people that we actually verifiably know, so of course he's inhuman. Ideas can be totally evil with no redeeming features and unworthy of the basic compassion we afford to every real human being. Of course it's better that he's dead, because it just doesn't register that he is flesh and blood and feels pain and agony like the rest of us. It's impossible to understand.
However, I would be very intrigued if I was wrong. A world that does not respect death - I'd be curious to see that. It would be wonderful not to worry about the death of those that I love, to accept it as a part of life and be at peace with it. To be able to move on and not be irreparably devastated by grief and regret. I think everyone would be happier, perhaps.
Anyway, this is so off topic, I apologize. All I was trying to do is work through Ninjeff's uncertain feelings and I kind of went overboard. You don't have to respond; I don't know what argument I'm making and have no real goal for further discussion.
Nah, fuck this.
A funeral is a private occasion for a family to mourn the passing of a loved one. They can have that time. It's not about you or me or the public.
A state funeral is the state itself honouring that person. If said person deserves scorn instead of honours, the public should see fit to give it to them in the form of protests. It's the state itself acting so it's clearly about the public.
The only reason not to heckle someone spending time with their family is to spare their family. And depending on what they've done and what their position is, you even waive that sometimes.
You can say it's about death but that's only because of the idiotic idea that someone being dead makes them immune from criticism. Death didn't make said person better. If you'd say it about them while they were alive, there's no reason not to say it about them after they are dead.
Death is not a thing one respects by white-washing history. That chain of logic doesn't even make sense.
Other than respecting the private time of families - which, lets be honest, is something we violate with famous people all the time - I agree that death shouldn't matter one bit in how we treat somebody. Heck, we were all glad when Mr. Manafort got all those convictions, so we should be glad that Mr. McCain is finally out of this world and unable to cause any more trouble. I do think we allowed ourselves to be much more glad when Mr. Roger Ailes died.
You'll notice I'm talking about being glad rather than talking about criticism. That's a bit of a false equivalence, because I still believe that respect is an emotional rather than a logical judgment. If you don't feel a sort of positivity or passion when talking about somebody or something you respect, I submit that respect really doesn't factor into whatever you say it does. At that point, it's just an algorithm of behavior.
Emotion makes us do illogical things. I'm not happy Mr. McCain is dead, and I'm not sad either. I'm indifferent to him in particular. But talking about death has made me feel a variety of things that indirectly inject emotion into my thoughts, which is why my arguments are playing fast and loose with narrative efficiency and flow. I usually fashion an argument with a series of simple and agreeable assumptions leading to more complex conclusions with plans for follow up contingent upon opposing argument, but I really don't know what I'om going to say next here, and these last few posts have been very circumstantial and often tangential. I think that's why people are acting oddly (edited: idiots was too flavorful and my intent was not to insult people) in this thread, making logical mistakes and self-contradictions. That's a normal occurrence, but that's especially what we do with a topic that's emotionally charged. I think we underestimate it here because 99% of the time the emotion is anger. Here it's something else.
Anyway, what you're saying is all right in theory but it's really hard to be stoic in the face of death when it invades your own world. And to end with some inappropriate gallows humor, if a person spends their life harming others, and stops only when they are dead, did not death actually make them better?
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I just don’t truck with the idea that anyone is obligated to speak only positive things about someone who’s died. In the presence of McCain’s family I’d absolutely bite my tongue specifically for the sake of the mourning relatives. But in a public forum to discuss matters? No. It only encourages the idea tha it’s okay to do terrible things so long as you’re “civil” about it.
From my perspective, I said plenty about how much i disagreed with him when he was alive. Voted against him too.
But, now that he is dead, i dont see the point in putting him on blast. There are alive people I can do that towards. People that are actively doing things i disagree with.
It just seems.....i don't know....less classy to continue to gripe about someone who is dead this shortly after they died.
In a few years when his record is more a data point than an immediate reflection on the man? Sure. Go for it.
Now it just feels....not right.
Not 100% sure why.
Reverence for the dead has, for some folks, taken a back seat to using a man's final moment in the public eye to advance their political position.
That's at least part of what makes it feel not right to me.
Death improves no man. Someone who's a shitbird while they are alive is not suddenly a better person after they die.
The dead deserve no reverence the living weren't getting already.
Dead people get some reverence. It's less respecting the person and more respecting death.
That doesn't even make sense. Death doesn't need any respect.
The only difference between a man before he's dead and after is the living man could still change. Once they dead, they were what they were and we should treat them as such.
I know, it doesn't make sense. Yet, you'd be less eager to protest any individual's funeral over their book signing. You would wish bad things to happen to your enemies, but wishing they were dead feels like you're giving up a part of your own soul. Am I right? It's a cultural thing ingrained in our genetics.
No, I don't feel it is. I wouldn't protest someone's funeral because even the shittiest people probably have someone close to them who's gonna miss them and that's what a funeral is for. (Someone's state funeral though? Yeah, I'd be ok with that for quite a few people I can think of.)
But just cause I wouldn't disrupt their family's private ceremony of the dead doesn't mean I wouldn't call said person a piece of shit if that's what they were in life.
I don't think family is the deciding factor here. I think it's still death. By not disrupting a family's right to mourn, you are allowing them the right to celebrate death.
Think of someone you hate. You see them at the mall with their family. The kids are having fun. It would obviously ruin their day if you confronted your enemy in front of their friends and family, right? What if they're at camp? What if they're in their home, playing a board game? Do you hesitate to intrude on their private moment? Do you feel the same trepidation in confronting them that you do with a family funeral? These memories you're tarnishing - each is an important and precious page of a family's life. But one feels like sacrilege, like something unnatural a human just doesn't do.
What is so important about respecting the relationship of people you hate with people that love people you hate?
The answer is that I'm wrong. Death, family, and other emotional bonds remind us that we're all human and bring us out of the sociopathic frenzy of partisan rage. I really doubt you'd organize a protest at a state funeral, but even though it's about death - a trait we all share - the ceremony is so far removed from actual common life that it might as well be a piece of paper that is laid at state. However, even with that detachment, we reserve a certain amount of reverence for any death - regardless of credentials. Add family in there; add evidence of of genuine emotion - you might as well be staring in a mirror. Empathy is on full blast.
Senator McCain, to many of us, is not human. He is just an idea, something we saw a few times on television and read on a news website. He's an idea that hurts real people that we actually verifiably know, so of course he's inhuman. Ideas can be totally evil with no redeeming features and unworthy of the basic compassion we afford to every real human being. Of course it's better that he's dead, because it just doesn't register that he is flesh and blood and feels pain and agony like the rest of us. It's impossible to understand.
However, I would be very intrigued if I was wrong. A world that does not respect death - I'd be curious to see that. It would be wonderful not to worry about the death of those that I love, to accept it as a part of life and be at peace with it. To be able to move on and not be irreparably devastated by grief and regret. I think everyone would be happier, perhaps.
Anyway, this is so off topic, I apologize. All I was trying to do is work through Ninjeff's uncertain feelings and I kind of went overboard. You don't have to respond; I don't know what argument I'm making and have no real goal for further discussion.
Nah, fuck this.
A funeral is a private occasion for a family to mourn the passing of a loved one. They can have that time. It's not about you or me or the public.
A state funeral is the state itself honouring that person. If said person deserves scorn instead of honours, the public should see fit to give it to them in the form of protests. It's the state itself acting so it's clearly about the public.
The only reason not to heckle someone spending time with their family is to spare their family. And depending on what they've done and what their position is, you even waive that sometimes.
You can say it's about death but that's only because of the idiotic idea that someone being dead makes them immune from criticism. Death didn't make said person better. If you'd say it about them while they were alive, there's no reason not to say it about them after they are dead.
Death is not a thing one respects by white-washing history. That chain of logic doesn't even make sense.
Other than respecting the private time of families - which, lets be honest, is something we violate with famous people all the time - I agree that death shouldn't matter one bit in how we treat somebody. Heck, we were all glad when Mr. Manafort got all those convictions, so we should be glad that Mr. McCain is finally out of this world and unable to cause any more trouble. I do think we allowed ourselves to be much more glad when Mr. Roger Ailes died.
You'll notice I'm talking about being glad rather than talking about criticism. That's a bit of a false equivalence, because I still believe that respect is an emotional rather than a logical judgment. If you don't feel a sort of positivity or passion when talking about somebody or something you respect, I submit that respect really doesn't factor into whatever you say it does. At that point, it's just an algorithm of behavior.
Emotion makes us do illogical things. I'm not happy Mr. McCain is dead, and I'm not sad either. I'm indifferent to him in particular. But talking about death has made me feel a variety of things that indirectly inject emotion into my thoughts, which is why my arguments are playing fast and loose with narrative efficiency and flow. I usually fashion an argument with a series of simple and agreeable assumptions leading to more complex conclusions with plans for follow up contingent upon opposing argument, but I really don't know what I'om going to say next here, and these last few posts have been very circumstantial and often tangential. I think that's why people are acting like idiots in this thread, contradicting themselves and making big arguments out of little things. That's what we do normally, but that's especially what we do with a topic that's emotionally charged. I think we underestimate it here because 99% of the time the emotion is anger. Here it's something else.
Anyway, what you're saying is all right in theory but it's really hard to be stoic in the face of death when it invades your own world. And to end with some inappropriate gallows humor, if a person spends their life harming others, and stops only when they are dead, did not death actually make them better?
No, because they cease to exist upon death. Death just made them...dead.
Their legacy is all that remains and that should be treated exactly as it is. Good, bad, and everything in between.
Picking it apart at that point and using it as a teaching moment is good for society. The same way we continue talking about how Mr. Rogers was a model human being and why, we can talk about why Mr. McCain was not and why. For the good of the future.
I just don’t truck with the idea that anyone is obligated to speak only positive things about someone who’s died. In the presence of McCain’s family I’d absolutely bite my tongue specifically for the sake of the mourning relatives. But in a public forum to discuss matters? No. It only encourages the idea tha it’s okay to do terrible things so long as you’re “civil” about it.
From my perspective, I said plenty about how much i disagreed with him when he was alive. Voted against him too.
But, now that he is dead, i dont see the point in putting him on blast. There are alive people I can do that towards. People that are actively doing things i disagree with.
It just seems.....i don't know....less classy to continue to gripe about someone who is dead this shortly after they died.
In a few years when his record is more a data point than an immediate reflection on the man? Sure. Go for it.
Now it just feels....not right.
Not 100% sure why.
Reverence for the dead has, for some folks, taken a back seat to using a man's final moment in the public eye to advance their political position.
That's at least part of what makes it feel not right to me.
Death improves no man. Someone who's a shitbird while they are alive is not suddenly a better person after they die.
The dead deserve no reverence the living weren't getting already.
Dead people get some reverence. It's less respecting the person and more respecting death.
That doesn't even make sense. Death doesn't need any respect.
The only difference between a man before he's dead and after is the living man could still change. Once they dead, they were what they were and we should treat them as such.
I know, it doesn't make sense. Yet, you'd be less eager to protest any individual's funeral over their book signing. You would wish bad things to happen to your enemies, but wishing they were dead feels like you're giving up a part of your own soul. Am I right? It's a cultural thing ingrained in our genetics.
No, I don't feel it is. I wouldn't protest someone's funeral because even the shittiest people probably have someone close to them who's gonna miss them and that's what a funeral is for. (Someone's state funeral though? Yeah, I'd be ok with that for quite a few people I can think of.)
But just cause I wouldn't disrupt their family's private ceremony of the dead doesn't mean I wouldn't call said person a piece of shit if that's what they were in life.
I don't think family is the deciding factor here. I think it's still death. By not disrupting a family's right to mourn, you are allowing them the right to celebrate death.
Think of someone you hate. You see them at the mall with their family. The kids are having fun. It would obviously ruin their day if you confronted your enemy in front of their friends and family, right? What if they're at camp? What if they're in their home, playing a board game? Do you hesitate to intrude on their private moment? Do you feel the same trepidation in confronting them that you do with a family funeral? These memories you're tarnishing - each is an important and precious page of a family's life. But one feels like sacrilege, like something unnatural a human just doesn't do.
What is so important about respecting the relationship of people you hate with people that love people you hate?
The answer is that I'm wrong. Death, family, and other emotional bonds remind us that we're all human and bring us out of the sociopathic frenzy of partisan rage. I really doubt you'd organize a protest at a state funeral, but even though it's about death - a trait we all share - the ceremony is so far removed from actual common life that it might as well be a piece of paper that is laid at state. However, even with that detachment, we reserve a certain amount of reverence for any death - regardless of credentials. Add family in there; add evidence of of genuine emotion - you might as well be staring in a mirror. Empathy is on full blast.
Senator McCain, to many of us, is not human. He is just an idea, something we saw a few times on television and read on a news website. He's an idea that hurts real people that we actually verifiably know, so of course he's inhuman. Ideas can be totally evil with no redeeming features and unworthy of the basic compassion we afford to every real human being. Of course it's better that he's dead, because it just doesn't register that he is flesh and blood and feels pain and agony like the rest of us. It's impossible to understand.
However, I would be very intrigued if I was wrong. A world that does not respect death - I'd be curious to see that. It would be wonderful not to worry about the death of those that I love, to accept it as a part of life and be at peace with it. To be able to move on and not be irreparably devastated by grief and regret. I think everyone would be happier, perhaps.
Anyway, this is so off topic, I apologize. All I was trying to do is work through Ninjeff's uncertain feelings and I kind of went overboard. You don't have to respond; I don't know what argument I'm making and have no real goal for further discussion.
Nah, fuck this.
A funeral is a private occasion for a family to mourn the passing of a loved one. They can have that time. It's not about you or me or the public.
A state funeral is the state itself honouring that person. If said person deserves scorn instead of honours, the public should see fit to give it to them in the form of protests. It's the state itself acting so it's clearly about the public.
The only reason not to heckle someone spending time with their family is to spare their family. And depending on what they've done and what their position is, you even waive that sometimes.
You can say it's about death but that's only because of the idiotic idea that someone being dead makes them immune from criticism. Death didn't make said person better. If you'd say it about them while they were alive, there's no reason not to say it about them after they are dead.
Death is not a thing one respects by white-washing history. That chain of logic doesn't even make sense.
Other than respecting the private time of families - which, lets be honest, is something we violate with famous people all the time - I agree that death shouldn't matter one bit in how we treat somebody. Heck, we were all glad when Mr. Manafort got all those convictions, so we should be glad that Mr. McCain is finally out of this world and unable to cause any more trouble. I do think we allowed ourselves to be much more glad when Mr. Roger Ailes died.
You'll notice I'm talking about being glad rather than talking about criticism. That's a bit of a false equivalence, because I still believe that respect is an emotional rather than a logical judgment. If you don't feel a sort of positivity or passion when talking about somebody or something you respect, I submit that respect really doesn't factor into whatever you say it does. At that point, it's just an algorithm of behavior.
Emotion makes us do illogical things. I'm not happy Mr. McCain is dead, and I'm not sad either. I'm indifferent to him in particular. But talking about death has made me feel a variety of things that indirectly inject emotion into my thoughts, which is why my arguments are playing fast and loose with narrative efficiency and flow. I usually fashion an argument with a series of simple and agreeable assumptions leading to more complex conclusions with plans for follow up contingent upon opposing argument, but I really don't know what I'om going to say next here, and these last few posts have been very circumstantial and often tangential. I think that's why people are acting oddly (edited: idiots was too flavorful and my intent was not to insult people) in this thread, making logical mistakes and self-contradictions. That's a normal occurrence, but that's especially what we do with a topic that's emotionally charged. I think we underestimate it here because 99% of the time the emotion is anger. Here it's something else.
Anyway, what you're saying is all right in theory but it's really hard to be stoic in the face of death when it invades your own world. And to end with some inappropriate gallows humor, if a person spends their life harming others, and stops only when they are dead, did not death actually make them better?
No. In that case death made the rest of us better off. The dead person is still what they were the second before they died.
The idea that we should not speak ill of the dead is a crappy belief that mostly just serves to white-wash history. I see no reason not to speak of the dead the same way we speak of the living.
I just don’t truck with the idea that anyone is obligated to speak only positive things about someone who’s died. In the presence of McCain’s family I’d absolutely bite my tongue specifically for the sake of the mourning relatives. But in a public forum to discuss matters? No. It only encourages the idea tha it’s okay to do terrible things so long as you’re “civil” about it.
From my perspective, I said plenty about how much i disagreed with him when he was alive. Voted against him too.
But, now that he is dead, i dont see the point in putting him on blast. There are alive people I can do that towards. People that are actively doing things i disagree with.
It just seems.....i don't know....less classy to continue to gripe about someone who is dead this shortly after they died.
In a few years when his record is more a data point than an immediate reflection on the man? Sure. Go for it.
Now it just feels....not right.
Not 100% sure why.
Reverence for the dead has, for some folks, taken a back seat to using a man's final moment in the public eye to advance their political position.
That's at least part of what makes it feel not right to me.
This is, in itself, a political stance you’re attempting to advance using his death. Specifically you’re advocating people who have suffered or have seen others suffer from a person’s malign actions remain silent. For the benefit of people who don’t care as much or are okay with those actions.
It’s fine that this is a strongly held belief for you. But please don’t treat other people’s strongly held beliefs as somehow skeevier or more selfish. That is unless you refuse to speak poorly of literally anyone who’s ever died, which I suspect is unlikely.
nah I don't think this rhetorical jujitsu and accusation that I'm doing something like expecting the suffering to remain silent really lands as a criticism. Firstly I don't think it's a political stance to place reverence for the dead over cheap political hay-making. It feels like the ultimate talking behind someone's back, you know? It lowers people. Then again, the idea of elevated discourse is itself maligned and rejected in some quarters, including a sizable contingent around here, in favor of the low-road opportunistic gutpunching political style, and the topical threads suffer as a result.
Anyhow I think you were in a better place on page one than the thread is on page 13 with regard to viewing a man's life in context. There's very little room for praise or even moderation in here now, and I guess if what people want is a Major Media Reaction thread then it's serving its purpose. If what we want is a place to talk about McCain's legacy, it feels to me like the dominant viewpoint is one in which defending him even mildly is not really welcome. OP doesn't caution people against being overly kind, after all. I wonder how people will react to seeing any Democrats at all in attendance. Why speak at the funeral of a homophobic racist torture-supporting blood-soaked warmonger?
idk, maybe Democrats should boycott en masse if that's an accurate representation. On the other hand, I guess I feel like any situation where a person is even coincidentally aligned with Donald Trump on a topic ought to be worth at least a little deeper analysis just to make sure they haven't gone astray in the pursuit of political corpse-kicking.
I just don’t truck with the idea that anyone is obligated to speak only positive things about someone who’s died. In the presence of McCain’s family I’d absolutely bite my tongue specifically for the sake of the mourning relatives. But in a public forum to discuss matters? No. It only encourages the idea tha it’s okay to do terrible things so long as you’re “civil” about it.
From my perspective, I said plenty about how much i disagreed with him when he was alive. Voted against him too.
But, now that he is dead, i dont see the point in putting him on blast. There are alive people I can do that towards. People that are actively doing things i disagree with.
It just seems.....i don't know....less classy to continue to gripe about someone who is dead this shortly after they died.
In a few years when his record is more a data point than an immediate reflection on the man? Sure. Go for it.
Now it just feels....not right.
Not 100% sure why.
Reverence for the dead has, for some folks, taken a back seat to using a man's final moment in the public eye to advance their political position.
That's at least part of what makes it feel not right to me.
This is, in itself, a political stance you’re attempting to advance using his death. Specifically you’re advocating people who have suffered or have seen others suffer from a person’s malign actions remain silent. For the benefit of people who don’t care as much or are okay with those actions.
It’s fine that this is a strongly held belief for you. But please don’t treat other people’s strongly held beliefs as somehow skeevier or more selfish. That is unless you refuse to speak poorly of literally anyone who’s ever died, which I suspect is unlikely.
nah I don't think this rhetorical jujitsu and accusation that I'm doing something like expecting the suffering to remain silent really lands as a criticism. Firstly I don't think it's a political stance to place reverence for the dead over cheap political hay-making. It feels like the ultimate talking behind someone's back, you know? It lowers people. Then again, the idea of elevated discourse is itself maligned and rejected in some quarters, including a sizable contingent around here, in favor of the low-road opportunistic gutpunching political style, and the topical threads suffer as a result.
Anyhow I think you were in a better place on page one than the thread is on page 13 with regard to viewing a man's life in context. There's very little room for praise or even moderation in here now, and I guess if what people want is a Major Media Reaction thread then it's serving its purpose. If what we want is a place to talk about McCain's legacy, it feels to me like the dominant viewpoint is one in which defending him even mildly is not really welcome. OP doesn't caution people against being overly kind, after all. I wonder how people will react to seeing any Democrats at all in attendance. Why speak at the funeral of a homophobic racist torture-supporting blood-soaked warmonger?
idk, maybe Democrats should boycott en masse if that's an accurate representation. On the other hand, I guess I feel like any situation where a person is even coincidentally aligned with Donald Trump on a topic ought to be worth at least a little deeper analysis just to make sure they haven't gone astray in the pursuit of political corpse-kicking.
Why are you trying to ascribe value to only speaking well of the dead and what is that value?
I just don’t truck with the idea that anyone is obligated to speak only positive things about someone who’s died. In the presence of McCain’s family I’d absolutely bite my tongue specifically for the sake of the mourning relatives. But in a public forum to discuss matters? No. It only encourages the idea tha it’s okay to do terrible things so long as you’re “civil” about it.
From my perspective, I said plenty about how much i disagreed with him when he was alive. Voted against him too.
But, now that he is dead, i dont see the point in putting him on blast. There are alive people I can do that towards. People that are actively doing things i disagree with.
It just seems.....i don't know....less classy to continue to gripe about someone who is dead this shortly after they died.
In a few years when his record is more a data point than an immediate reflection on the man? Sure. Go for it.
Now it just feels....not right.
Not 100% sure why.
Reverence for the dead has, for some folks, taken a back seat to using a man's final moment in the public eye to advance their political position.
That's at least part of what makes it feel not right to me.
Death improves no man. Someone who's a shitbird while they are alive is not suddenly a better person after they die.
The dead deserve no reverence the living weren't getting already.
Dead people get some reverence. It's less respecting the person and more respecting death.
That doesn't even make sense. Death doesn't need any respect.
The only difference between a man before he's dead and after is the living man could still change. Once they dead, they were what they were and we should treat them as such.
I know, it doesn't make sense. Yet, you'd be less eager to protest any individual's funeral over their book signing. You would wish bad things to happen to your enemies, but wishing they were dead feels like you're giving up a part of your own soul. Am I right? It's a cultural thing ingrained in our genetics.
No, I don't feel it is. I wouldn't protest someone's funeral because even the shittiest people probably have someone close to them who's gonna miss them and that's what a funeral is for. (Someone's state funeral though? Yeah, I'd be ok with that for quite a few people I can think of.)
But just cause I wouldn't disrupt their family's private ceremony of the dead doesn't mean I wouldn't call said person a piece of shit if that's what they were in life.
I don't think family is the deciding factor here. I think it's still death. By not disrupting a family's right to mourn, you are allowing them the right to celebrate death.
Think of someone you hate. You see them at the mall with their family. The kids are having fun. It would obviously ruin their day if you confronted your enemy in front of their friends and family, right? What if they're at camp? What if they're in their home, playing a board game? Do you hesitate to intrude on their private moment? Do you feel the same trepidation in confronting them that you do with a family funeral? These memories you're tarnishing - each is an important and precious page of a family's life. But one feels like sacrilege, like something unnatural a human just doesn't do.
What is so important about respecting the relationship of people you hate with people that love people you hate?
The answer is that I'm wrong. Death, family, and other emotional bonds remind us that we're all human and bring us out of the sociopathic frenzy of partisan rage. I really doubt you'd organize a protest at a state funeral, but even though it's about death - a trait we all share - the ceremony is so far removed from actual common life that it might as well be a piece of paper that is laid at state. However, even with that detachment, we reserve a certain amount of reverence for any death - regardless of credentials. Add family in there; add evidence of of genuine emotion - you might as well be staring in a mirror. Empathy is on full blast.
Senator McCain, to many of us, is not human. He is just an idea, something we saw a few times on television and read on a news website. He's an idea that hurts real people that we actually verifiably know, so of course he's inhuman. Ideas can be totally evil with no redeeming features and unworthy of the basic compassion we afford to every real human being. Of course it's better that he's dead, because it just doesn't register that he is flesh and blood and feels pain and agony like the rest of us. It's impossible to understand.
However, I would be very intrigued if I was wrong. A world that does not respect death - I'd be curious to see that. It would be wonderful not to worry about the death of those that I love, to accept it as a part of life and be at peace with it. To be able to move on and not be irreparably devastated by grief and regret. I think everyone would be happier, perhaps.
Anyway, this is so off topic, I apologize. All I was trying to do is work through Ninjeff's uncertain feelings and I kind of went overboard. You don't have to respond; I don't know what argument I'm making and have no real goal for further discussion.
Nah, fuck this.
A funeral is a private occasion for a family to mourn the passing of a loved one. They can have that time. It's not about you or me or the public.
A state funeral is the state itself honouring that person. If said person deserves scorn instead of honours, the public should see fit to give it to them in the form of protests. It's the state itself acting so it's clearly about the public.
The only reason not to heckle someone spending time with their family is to spare their family. And depending on what they've done and what their position is, you even waive that sometimes.
You can say it's about death but that's only because of the idiotic idea that someone being dead makes them immune from criticism. Death didn't make said person better. If you'd say it about them while they were alive, there's no reason not to say it about them after they are dead.
Death is not a thing one respects by white-washing history. That chain of logic doesn't even make sense.
Other than respecting the private time of families - which, lets be honest, is something we violate with famous people all the time - I agree that death shouldn't matter one bit in how we treat somebody. Heck, we were all glad when Mr. Manafort got all those convictions, so we should be glad that Mr. McCain is finally out of this world and unable to cause any more trouble. I do think we allowed ourselves to be much more glad when Mr. Roger Ailes died.
You'll notice I'm talking about being glad rather than talking about criticism. That's a bit of a false equivalence, because I still believe that respect is an emotional rather than a logical judgment. If you don't feel a sort of positivity or passion when talking about somebody or something you respect, I submit that respect really doesn't factor into whatever you say it does. At that point, it's just an algorithm of behavior.
Emotion makes us do illogical things. I'm not happy Mr. McCain is dead, and I'm not sad either. I'm indifferent to him in particular. But talking about death has made me feel a variety of things that indirectly inject emotion into my thoughts, which is why my arguments are playing fast and loose with narrative efficiency and flow. I usually fashion an argument with a series of simple and agreeable assumptions leading to more complex conclusions with plans for follow up contingent upon opposing argument, but I really don't know what I'om going to say next here, and these last few posts have been very circumstantial and often tangential. I think that's why people are acting like idiots in this thread, contradicting themselves and making big arguments out of little things. That's what we do normally, but that's especially what we do with a topic that's emotionally charged. I think we underestimate it here because 99% of the time the emotion is anger. Here it's something else.
Anyway, what you're saying is all right in theory but it's really hard to be stoic in the face of death when it invades your own world. And to end with some inappropriate gallows humor, if a person spends their life harming others, and stops only when they are dead, did not death actually make them better?
No, because they cease to exist upon death. Death just made them...dead.
Their legacy is all that remains and that should be treated exactly as it is. Good, bad, and everything in between.
Picking it apart at that point and using it as a teaching moment is good for society. The same way we continue talking about how Mr. Rogers was a model human being and why, we can talk about why Mr. McCain was not and why. For the good of the future.
Were you sad when Mr. Rogers died? I wasn't. Or maybe I was; I tried my hardest not to feel anything because I felt like if I did, I would have an excuse to feel happy that someone I didn't like died.
I hate to delight in the suffering of others. It feels like, when I criticize dead people, that's what I'm doing - kicking them when they're 6 feet down. Do you not feel a little bit like that, even though you know it doesn't make sense? Maybe it's the effect of religion; I feel like I'm choosing which people I send to hell and which I send to heaven. I don't want to be in that kind of position.
I also don't know how good it is for society to have role models or role devils. Mr. Rogers reminds me how long it's been since we had a hero that didn't disappoint us. I feel like my own legacy is as wrecked as my browsing history and that there's little point in seeking redemption; anonymity is the way to go. I think Mr. McCain's obituary is about at the median of modern legacy - a debatably nice guy who suffered a bunch, hurt some people, then died. It's so much the human condition.
Maybe it's for the good of the future, but dang. I really don't want to think about it.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
+2
Options
HenroidMexican kicked from Immigration ThreadCentrism is Racism :3Registered Userregular
I think it would be enlightening for some posters to go back and see the Ted Kennedy thread that was created for his death.
Many posters were free to bring up his disgraceful past moments as well as his accomplishments, one does not diminish nor eliminate the other, and trying to create a fiction over the truth of a person does both the dead and the living a disservice.
I just don’t truck with the idea that anyone is obligated to speak only positive things about someone who’s died. In the presence of McCain’s family I’d absolutely bite my tongue specifically for the sake of the mourning relatives. But in a public forum to discuss matters? No. It only encourages the idea tha it’s okay to do terrible things so long as you’re “civil” about it.
From my perspective, I said plenty about how much i disagreed with him when he was alive. Voted against him too.
But, now that he is dead, i dont see the point in putting him on blast. There are alive people I can do that towards. People that are actively doing things i disagree with.
It just seems.....i don't know....less classy to continue to gripe about someone who is dead this shortly after they died.
In a few years when his record is more a data point than an immediate reflection on the man? Sure. Go for it.
Now it just feels....not right.
Not 100% sure why.
Reverence for the dead has, for some folks, taken a back seat to using a man's final moment in the public eye to advance their political position.
That's at least part of what makes it feel not right to me.
Death improves no man. Someone who's a shitbird while they are alive is not suddenly a better person after they die.
The dead deserve no reverence the living weren't getting already.
Dead people get some reverence. It's less respecting the person and more respecting death.
That doesn't even make sense. Death doesn't need any respect.
The only difference between a man before he's dead and after is the living man could still change. Once they dead, they were what they were and we should treat them as such.
I know, it doesn't make sense. Yet, you'd be less eager to protest any individual's funeral over their book signing. You would wish bad things to happen to your enemies, but wishing they were dead feels like you're giving up a part of your own soul. Am I right? It's a cultural thing ingrained in our genetics.
No, I don't feel it is. I wouldn't protest someone's funeral because even the shittiest people probably have someone close to them who's gonna miss them and that's what a funeral is for. (Someone's state funeral though? Yeah, I'd be ok with that for quite a few people I can think of.)
But just cause I wouldn't disrupt their family's private ceremony of the dead doesn't mean I wouldn't call said person a piece of shit if that's what they were in life.
I don't think family is the deciding factor here. I think it's still death. By not disrupting a family's right to mourn, you are allowing them the right to celebrate death.
Think of someone you hate. You see them at the mall with their family. The kids are having fun. It would obviously ruin their day if you confronted your enemy in front of their friends and family, right? What if they're at camp? What if they're in their home, playing a board game? Do you hesitate to intrude on their private moment? Do you feel the same trepidation in confronting them that you do with a family funeral? These memories you're tarnishing - each is an important and precious page of a family's life. But one feels like sacrilege, like something unnatural a human just doesn't do.
What is so important about respecting the relationship of people you hate with people that love people you hate?
The answer is that I'm wrong. Death, family, and other emotional bonds remind us that we're all human and bring us out of the sociopathic frenzy of partisan rage. I really doubt you'd organize a protest at a state funeral, but even though it's about death - a trait we all share - the ceremony is so far removed from actual common life that it might as well be a piece of paper that is laid at state. However, even with that detachment, we reserve a certain amount of reverence for any death - regardless of credentials. Add family in there; add evidence of of genuine emotion - you might as well be staring in a mirror. Empathy is on full blast.
Senator McCain, to many of us, is not human. He is just an idea, something we saw a few times on television and read on a news website. He's an idea that hurts real people that we actually verifiably know, so of course he's inhuman. Ideas can be totally evil with no redeeming features and unworthy of the basic compassion we afford to every real human being. Of course it's better that he's dead, because it just doesn't register that he is flesh and blood and feels pain and agony like the rest of us. It's impossible to understand.
However, I would be very intrigued if I was wrong. A world that does not respect death - I'd be curious to see that. It would be wonderful not to worry about the death of those that I love, to accept it as a part of life and be at peace with it. To be able to move on and not be irreparably devastated by grief and regret. I think everyone would be happier, perhaps.
Anyway, this is so off topic, I apologize. All I was trying to do is work through Ninjeff's uncertain feelings and I kind of went overboard. You don't have to respond; I don't know what argument I'm making and have no real goal for further discussion.
Nah, fuck this.
A funeral is a private occasion for a family to mourn the passing of a loved one. They can have that time. It's not about you or me or the public.
A state funeral is the state itself honouring that person. If said person deserves scorn instead of honours, the public should see fit to give it to them in the form of protests. It's the state itself acting so it's clearly about the public.
The only reason not to heckle someone spending time with their family is to spare their family. And depending on what they've done and what their position is, you even waive that sometimes.
You can say it's about death but that's only because of the idiotic idea that someone being dead makes them immune from criticism. Death didn't make said person better. If you'd say it about them while they were alive, there's no reason not to say it about them after they are dead.
Death is not a thing one respects by white-washing history. That chain of logic doesn't even make sense.
Other than respecting the private time of families - which, lets be honest, is something we violate with famous people all the time - I agree that death shouldn't matter one bit in how we treat somebody. Heck, we were all glad when Mr. Manafort got all those convictions, so we should be glad that Mr. McCain is finally out of this world and unable to cause any more trouble. I do think we allowed ourselves to be much more glad when Mr. Roger Ailes died.
You'll notice I'm talking about being glad rather than talking about criticism. That's a bit of a false equivalence, because I still believe that respect is an emotional rather than a logical judgment. If you don't feel a sort of positivity or passion when talking about somebody or something you respect, I submit that respect really doesn't factor into whatever you say it does. At that point, it's just an algorithm of behavior.
Emotion makes us do illogical things. I'm not happy Mr. McCain is dead, and I'm not sad either. I'm indifferent to him in particular. But talking about death has made me feel a variety of things that indirectly inject emotion into my thoughts, which is why my arguments are playing fast and loose with narrative efficiency and flow. I usually fashion an argument with a series of simple and agreeable assumptions leading to more complex conclusions with plans for follow up contingent upon opposing argument, but I really don't know what I'om going to say next here, and these last few posts have been very circumstantial and often tangential. I think that's why people are acting like idiots in this thread, contradicting themselves and making big arguments out of little things. That's what we do normally, but that's especially what we do with a topic that's emotionally charged. I think we underestimate it here because 99% of the time the emotion is anger. Here it's something else.
Anyway, what you're saying is all right in theory but it's really hard to be stoic in the face of death when it invades your own world. And to end with some inappropriate gallows humor, if a person spends their life harming others, and stops only when they are dead, did not death actually make them better?
No, because they cease to exist upon death. Death just made them...dead.
Their legacy is all that remains and that should be treated exactly as it is. Good, bad, and everything in between.
Picking it apart at that point and using it as a teaching moment is good for society. The same way we continue talking about how Mr. Rogers was a model human being and why, we can talk about why Mr. McCain was not and why. For the good of the future.
Were you sad when Mr. Rogers died? I wasn't. Or maybe I was; I tried my hardest not to feel anything because I felt like if I did, I would have an excuse to feel happy that someone I didn't like died.
I hate to delight in the suffering of others. It feels like, when I criticize dead people, that's what I'm doing - kicking them when they're 6 feet down. Do you not feel a little bit like that, even though you know it doesn't make sense? Maybe it's the effect of religion; I feel like I'm choosing which people I send to hell and which I send to heaven. I don't want to be in that kind of position.
I also don't know how good it is for society to have role models or role devils. Mr. Rogers reminds me how long it's been since we had a hero that didn't disappoint us. I feel like my own legacy is as wrecked as my browsing history and that there's little point in seeking redemption; anonymity is the way to go. I think Mr. McCain's obituary is about at the median of modern legacy - a debatably nice guy who suffered a bunch, hurt some people, then died. It's so much the human condition.
Maybe it's for the good of the future, but dang. I really don't want to think about it.
My life has been a mess so far, but - and this is completely personal - I'd rather be remembered as I am, or as people knew me to be, not some whitewashed version of who I was. I'm actually terrified by the concept of people only speaking well of me. I mean, I've tried to make progress, too. I've actually worked at being a better person. I still have a ways to go. But if I ever meant anything to anyone, indivudally or collectively, I'd want them to remember all of that. The bad, the good, the struggles, the failures. I can't speak for anyone else, but, I dunno, that's how I define respect.
Death and the way we speak of the dead is also one of my biggest problems with religion and how it shapes the way people perceive and think about morality. I don't know if there is or isn't an afterlife. But it doesn't matter because we don't know, can't know, and won't know until we die. So we have our lives and our lives alone to make an impression, to live the right way. So that's another reason I think we should continue to think and talk about people 100% honestly . Hold people accountable for their actions while they are alive. Everyone earns the legacy they leave when they die. I just cannot get behind this idea of "softening" their legacy in death. They were who they were, that's it. And John McCain had 81 years to get it right. I'm certainly also less inclined to think positively about the legacy of an individual who seemed to devolve rather than evolve morally.
I mean, I don't know what else to say. I'm sorry you feel this "way: I feel like my own legacy is as wrecked as my browsing history and that there's little point in seeking redemption." You can't erase the past and we shouldn't, but you can do what you can from today forward and if society was an honest society, they would remember that too.
I just don’t truck with the idea that anyone is obligated to speak only positive things about someone who’s died. In the presence of McCain’s family I’d absolutely bite my tongue specifically for the sake of the mourning relatives. But in a public forum to discuss matters? No. It only encourages the idea tha it’s okay to do terrible things so long as you’re “civil” about it.
From my perspective, I said plenty about how much i disagreed with him when he was alive. Voted against him too.
But, now that he is dead, i dont see the point in putting him on blast. There are alive people I can do that towards. People that are actively doing things i disagree with.
It just seems.....i don't know....less classy to continue to gripe about someone who is dead this shortly after they died.
In a few years when his record is more a data point than an immediate reflection on the man? Sure. Go for it.
Now it just feels....not right.
Not 100% sure why.
Reverence for the dead has, for some folks, taken a back seat to using a man's final moment in the public eye to advance their political position.
That's at least part of what makes it feel not right to me.
Death improves no man. Someone who's a shitbird while they are alive is not suddenly a better person after they die.
The dead deserve no reverence the living weren't getting already.
Dead people get some reverence. It's less respecting the person and more respecting death.
That doesn't even make sense. Death doesn't need any respect.
The only difference between a man before he's dead and after is the living man could still change. Once they dead, they were what they were and we should treat them as such.
I know, it doesn't make sense. Yet, you'd be less eager to protest any individual's funeral over their book signing. You would wish bad things to happen to your enemies, but wishing they were dead feels like you're giving up a part of your own soul. Am I right? It's a cultural thing ingrained in our genetics.
No, I don't feel it is. I wouldn't protest someone's funeral because even the shittiest people probably have someone close to them who's gonna miss them and that's what a funeral is for. (Someone's state funeral though? Yeah, I'd be ok with that for quite a few people I can think of.)
But just cause I wouldn't disrupt their family's private ceremony of the dead doesn't mean I wouldn't call said person a piece of shit if that's what they were in life.
I don't think family is the deciding factor here. I think it's still death. By not disrupting a family's right to mourn, you are allowing them the right to celebrate death.
Think of someone you hate. You see them at the mall with their family. The kids are having fun. It would obviously ruin their day if you confronted your enemy in front of their friends and family, right? What if they're at camp? What if they're in their home, playing a board game? Do you hesitate to intrude on their private moment? Do you feel the same trepidation in confronting them that you do with a family funeral? These memories you're tarnishing - each is an important and precious page of a family's life. But one feels like sacrilege, like something unnatural a human just doesn't do.
What is so important about respecting the relationship of people you hate with people that love people you hate?
The answer is that I'm wrong. Death, family, and other emotional bonds remind us that we're all human and bring us out of the sociopathic frenzy of partisan rage. I really doubt you'd organize a protest at a state funeral, but even though it's about death - a trait we all share - the ceremony is so far removed from actual common life that it might as well be a piece of paper that is laid at state. However, even with that detachment, we reserve a certain amount of reverence for any death - regardless of credentials. Add family in there; add evidence of of genuine emotion - you might as well be staring in a mirror. Empathy is on full blast.
Senator McCain, to many of us, is not human. He is just an idea, something we saw a few times on television and read on a news website. He's an idea that hurts real people that we actually verifiably know, so of course he's inhuman. Ideas can be totally evil with no redeeming features and unworthy of the basic compassion we afford to every real human being. Of course it's better that he's dead, because it just doesn't register that he is flesh and blood and feels pain and agony like the rest of us. It's impossible to understand.
However, I would be very intrigued if I was wrong. A world that does not respect death - I'd be curious to see that. It would be wonderful not to worry about the death of those that I love, to accept it as a part of life and be at peace with it. To be able to move on and not be irreparably devastated by grief and regret. I think everyone would be happier, perhaps.
Anyway, this is so off topic, I apologize. All I was trying to do is work through Ninjeff's uncertain feelings and I kind of went overboard. You don't have to respond; I don't know what argument I'm making and have no real goal for further discussion.
Nah, fuck this.
A funeral is a private occasion for a family to mourn the passing of a loved one. They can have that time. It's not about you or me or the public.
A state funeral is the state itself honouring that person. If said person deserves scorn instead of honours, the public should see fit to give it to them in the form of protests. It's the state itself acting so it's clearly about the public.
The only reason not to heckle someone spending time with their family is to spare their family. And depending on what they've done and what their position is, you even waive that sometimes.
You can say it's about death but that's only because of the idiotic idea that someone being dead makes them immune from criticism. Death didn't make said person better. If you'd say it about them while they were alive, there's no reason not to say it about them after they are dead.
Death is not a thing one respects by white-washing history. That chain of logic doesn't even make sense.
Other than respecting the private time of families - which, lets be honest, is something we violate with famous people all the time - I agree that death shouldn't matter one bit in how we treat somebody. Heck, we were all glad when Mr. Manafort got all those convictions, so we should be glad that Mr. McCain is finally out of this world and unable to cause any more trouble. I do think we allowed ourselves to be much more glad when Mr. Roger Ailes died.
You'll notice I'm talking about being glad rather than talking about criticism. That's a bit of a false equivalence, because I still believe that respect is an emotional rather than a logical judgment. If you don't feel a sort of positivity or passion when talking about somebody or something you respect, I submit that respect really doesn't factor into whatever you say it does. At that point, it's just an algorithm of behavior.
Emotion makes us do illogical things. I'm not happy Mr. McCain is dead, and I'm not sad either. I'm indifferent to him in particular. But talking about death has made me feel a variety of things that indirectly inject emotion into my thoughts, which is why my arguments are playing fast and loose with narrative efficiency and flow. I usually fashion an argument with a series of simple and agreeable assumptions leading to more complex conclusions with plans for follow up contingent upon opposing argument, but I really don't know what I'om going to say next here, and these last few posts have been very circumstantial and often tangential. I think that's why people are acting like idiots in this thread, contradicting themselves and making big arguments out of little things. That's what we do normally, but that's especially what we do with a topic that's emotionally charged. I think we underestimate it here because 99% of the time the emotion is anger. Here it's something else.
Anyway, what you're saying is all right in theory but it's really hard to be stoic in the face of death when it invades your own world. And to end with some inappropriate gallows humor, if a person spends their life harming others, and stops only when they are dead, did not death actually make them better?
No, because they cease to exist upon death. Death just made them...dead.
Their legacy is all that remains and that should be treated exactly as it is. Good, bad, and everything in between.
Picking it apart at that point and using it as a teaching moment is good for society. The same way we continue talking about how Mr. Rogers was a model human being and why, we can talk about why Mr. McCain was not and why. For the good of the future.
Were you sad when Mr. Rogers died? I wasn't. Or maybe I was; I tried my hardest not to feel anything because I felt like if I did, I would have an excuse to feel happy that someone I didn't like died.
I hate to delight in the suffering of others. It feels like, when I criticize dead people, that's what I'm doing - kicking them when they're 6 feet down. Do you not feel a little bit like that, even though you know it doesn't make sense? Maybe it's the effect of religion; I feel like I'm choosing which people I send to hell and which I send to heaven. I don't want to be in that kind of position.
I also don't know how good it is for society to have role models or role devils. Mr. Rogers reminds me how long it's been since we had a hero that didn't disappoint us. I feel like my own legacy is as wrecked as my browsing history and that there's little point in seeking redemption; anonymity is the way to go. I think Mr. McCain's obituary is about at the median of modern legacy - a debatably nice guy who suffered a bunch, hurt some people, then died. It's so much the human condition.
Maybe it's for the good of the future, but dang. I really don't want to think about it.
Why is it wrong to think the same of someone after they are dead that you did when they were alive?
"Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
If people demand "civility" in order to whitewash over people's lives and refuse to acknowledge the problems left behind as part of their legacy, then how can we possibly deal with any of the issues that they had a hand in creating/exacerbating/sustaining/etc?
I suppose it ties into the broader question of what we owe the dead. If you take the strictly utilitarian perspective, then we’re all just flesh and electricity and messy bits, and death is the end. Dispose of remains in a sanitary matter and be done.
But obviously, this is not how we see or treat death on the whole. We attach ceremony, circumstance, respect, meaning, etc. We have traditions built around death that both pay respect to those that survive the deceased and the deceased themselves, illogical as that may seem to those who do see death as the ultimate finale. Even something as simple as walking on a grave has meaning attached, even if you’re alone and no one sees it’s something an individual would know they’ve done and it carries connotations.
That to say, I see respect for the recently deceased as wrapped up in all that. A private forum I suppose it doesn’t matter but like stomping on a grave in the woods, it still feels vaguely wrong to me. That’s about the best way I can verbalize it.
I just don’t truck with the idea that anyone is obligated to speak only positive things about someone who’s died. In the presence of McCain’s family I’d absolutely bite my tongue specifically for the sake of the mourning relatives. But in a public forum to discuss matters? No. It only encourages the idea tha it’s okay to do terrible things so long as you’re “civil” about it.
From my perspective, I said plenty about how much i disagreed with him when he was alive. Voted against him too.
But, now that he is dead, i dont see the point in putting him on blast. There are alive people I can do that towards. People that are actively doing things i disagree with.
It just seems.....i don't know....less classy to continue to gripe about someone who is dead this shortly after they died.
In a few years when his record is more a data point than an immediate reflection on the man? Sure. Go for it.
Now it just feels....not right.
Not 100% sure why.
Reverence for the dead has, for some folks, taken a back seat to using a man's final moment in the public eye to advance their political position.
That's at least part of what makes it feel not right to me.
Death improves no man. Someone who's a shitbird while they are alive is not suddenly a better person after they die.
The dead deserve no reverence the living weren't getting already.
Dead people get some reverence. It's less respecting the person and more respecting death.
That doesn't even make sense. Death doesn't need any respect.
The only difference between a man before he's dead and after is the living man could still change. Once they dead, they were what they were and we should treat them as such.
I know, it doesn't make sense. Yet, you'd be less eager to protest any individual's funeral over their book signing. You would wish bad things to happen to your enemies, but wishing they were dead feels like you're giving up a part of your own soul. Am I right? It's a cultural thing ingrained in our genetics.
No, I don't feel it is. I wouldn't protest someone's funeral because even the shittiest people probably have someone close to them who's gonna miss them and that's what a funeral is for. (Someone's state funeral though? Yeah, I'd be ok with that for quite a few people I can think of.)
But just cause I wouldn't disrupt their family's private ceremony of the dead doesn't mean I wouldn't call said person a piece of shit if that's what they were in life.
I don't think family is the deciding factor here. I think it's still death. By not disrupting a family's right to mourn, you are allowing them the right to celebrate death.
Think of someone you hate. You see them at the mall with their family. The kids are having fun. It would obviously ruin their day if you confronted your enemy in front of their friends and family, right? What if they're at camp? What if they're in their home, playing a board game? Do you hesitate to intrude on their private moment? Do you feel the same trepidation in confronting them that you do with a family funeral? These memories you're tarnishing - each is an important and precious page of a family's life. But one feels like sacrilege, like something unnatural a human just doesn't do.
What is so important about respecting the relationship of people you hate with people that love people you hate?
The answer is that I'm wrong. Death, family, and other emotional bonds remind us that we're all human and bring us out of the sociopathic frenzy of partisan rage. I really doubt you'd organize a protest at a state funeral, but even though it's about death - a trait we all share - the ceremony is so far removed from actual common life that it might as well be a piece of paper that is laid at state. However, even with that detachment, we reserve a certain amount of reverence for any death - regardless of credentials. Add family in there; add evidence of of genuine emotion - you might as well be staring in a mirror. Empathy is on full blast.
Senator McCain, to many of us, is not human. He is just an idea, something we saw a few times on television and read on a news website. He's an idea that hurts real people that we actually verifiably know, so of course he's inhuman. Ideas can be totally evil with no redeeming features and unworthy of the basic compassion we afford to every real human being. Of course it's better that he's dead, because it just doesn't register that he is flesh and blood and feels pain and agony like the rest of us. It's impossible to understand.
However, I would be very intrigued if I was wrong. A world that does not respect death - I'd be curious to see that. It would be wonderful not to worry about the death of those that I love, to accept it as a part of life and be at peace with it. To be able to move on and not be irreparably devastated by grief and regret. I think everyone would be happier, perhaps.
Anyway, this is so off topic, I apologize. All I was trying to do is work through Ninjeff's uncertain feelings and I kind of went overboard. You don't have to respond; I don't know what argument I'm making and have no real goal for further discussion.
Nah, fuck this.
A funeral is a private occasion for a family to mourn the passing of a loved one. They can have that time. It's not about you or me or the public.
A state funeral is the state itself honouring that person. If said person deserves scorn instead of honours, the public should see fit to give it to them in the form of protests. It's the state itself acting so it's clearly about the public.
The only reason not to heckle someone spending time with their family is to spare their family. And depending on what they've done and what their position is, you even waive that sometimes.
You can say it's about death but that's only because of the idiotic idea that someone being dead makes them immune from criticism. Death didn't make said person better. If you'd say it about them while they were alive, there's no reason not to say it about them after they are dead.
Death is not a thing one respects by white-washing history. That chain of logic doesn't even make sense.
Other than respecting the private time of families - which, lets be honest, is something we violate with famous people all the time - I agree that death shouldn't matter one bit in how we treat somebody. Heck, we were all glad when Mr. Manafort got all those convictions, so we should be glad that Mr. McCain is finally out of this world and unable to cause any more trouble. I do think we allowed ourselves to be much more glad when Mr. Roger Ailes died.
You'll notice I'm talking about being glad rather than talking about criticism. That's a bit of a false equivalence, because I still believe that respect is an emotional rather than a logical judgment. If you don't feel a sort of positivity or passion when talking about somebody or something you respect, I submit that respect really doesn't factor into whatever you say it does. At that point, it's just an algorithm of behavior.
Emotion makes us do illogical things. I'm not happy Mr. McCain is dead, and I'm not sad either. I'm indifferent to him in particular. But talking about death has made me feel a variety of things that indirectly inject emotion into my thoughts, which is why my arguments are playing fast and loose with narrative efficiency and flow. I usually fashion an argument with a series of simple and agreeable assumptions leading to more complex conclusions with plans for follow up contingent upon opposing argument, but I really don't know what I'om going to say next here, and these last few posts have been very circumstantial and often tangential. I think that's why people are acting like idiots in this thread, contradicting themselves and making big arguments out of little things. That's what we do normally, but that's especially what we do with a topic that's emotionally charged. I think we underestimate it here because 99% of the time the emotion is anger. Here it's something else.
Anyway, what you're saying is all right in theory but it's really hard to be stoic in the face of death when it invades your own world. And to end with some inappropriate gallows humor, if a person spends their life harming others, and stops only when they are dead, did not death actually make them better?
No, because they cease to exist upon death. Death just made them...dead.
Their legacy is all that remains and that should be treated exactly as it is. Good, bad, and everything in between.
Picking it apart at that point and using it as a teaching moment is good for society. The same way we continue talking about how Mr. Rogers was a model human being and why, we can talk about why Mr. McCain was not and why. For the good of the future.
Were you sad when Mr. Rogers died? I wasn't. Or maybe I was; I tried my hardest not to feel anything because I felt like if I did, I would have an excuse to feel happy that someone I didn't like died.
I hate to delight in the suffering of others. It feels like, when I criticize dead people, that's what I'm doing - kicking them when they're 6 feet down. Do you not feel a little bit like that, even though you know it doesn't make sense? Maybe it's the effect of religion; I feel like I'm choosing which people I send to hell and which I send to heaven. I don't want to be in that kind of position.
I also don't know how good it is for society to have role models or role devils. Mr. Rogers reminds me how long it's been since we had a hero that didn't disappoint us. I feel like my own legacy is as wrecked as my browsing history and that there's little point in seeking redemption; anonymity is the way to go. I think Mr. McCain's obituary is about at the median of modern legacy - a debatably nice guy who suffered a bunch, hurt some people, then died. It's so much the human condition.
Maybe it's for the good of the future, but dang. I really don't want to think about it.
My life has been a mess so far, but - and this is completely personal - I'd rather be remembered as I am, or as people knew me to be, not some whitewashed version of who I was. I'm actually terrified by the concept of people only speaking well of me. I mean, I've tried to make progress, too. I've actually worked at being a better person. I still have a ways to go. But if I ever meant anything to anyone, indivudally or collectively, I'd want them to remember all of that. The bad, the good, the struggles, the failures. I can't speak for anyone else, but, I dunno, that's how I define respect.
Death and the way we speak of the dead is also one of my biggest problems with religion and how it shapes the way people perceive and think about morality. I don't know if there is or isn't an afterlife. But it doesn't matter because we don't know, can't know, and won't know until we die. So we have our lives and our lives alone to make an impression, to live the right way. So that's another reason I think we should continue to think and talk about people 100% honestly . Hold people accountable for their actions while they are alive. Everyone earns the legacy they leave when they die. I just cannot get behind this idea of "softening" their legacy in death. They were who they were, that's it. And John McCain had 81 years to get it right. I'm certainly also less inclined to think positively about the legacy of an individual who seemed to devolve rather than evolve morally.
I mean, I don't know what else to say. I'm sorry you feel this "way: I feel like my own legacy is as wrecked as my browsing history and that there's little point in seeking redemption." You can't erase the past and we shouldn't, but you can do what you can from today forward and if society was an honest society, they would remember that too.
I appreciate that. I've always been uncomfortable talking about death and am terrified about what I'll have to say when my parents die. I have never really seen what you describe - a pure accounting of a person at their funeral - because everyone there is biased to seek hope and humanity through suffering. It's actually a bit insulting that you get similar kudos to people that worked half as hard or were half as good, but I feel like a legacy arms race is also a nightmare. I kind of want to do a bunch of good and die alone and unremembered. It feels purer to not be aiming for some social high score on game over, but for something that goes with you when you die.
I wonder what was going through Mr. McCain's head when he made those last few decisions. Hollywood teaches us that the omega years should be spent securing your legacy. I wonder if old people usually think that
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
I just don’t truck with the idea that anyone is obligated to speak only positive things about someone who’s died. In the presence of McCain’s family I’d absolutely bite my tongue specifically for the sake of the mourning relatives. But in a public forum to discuss matters? No. It only encourages the idea tha it’s okay to do terrible things so long as you’re “civil” about it.
From my perspective, I said plenty about how much i disagreed with him when he was alive. Voted against him too.
But, now that he is dead, i dont see the point in putting him on blast. There are alive people I can do that towards. People that are actively doing things i disagree with.
It just seems.....i don't know....less classy to continue to gripe about someone who is dead this shortly after they died.
In a few years when his record is more a data point than an immediate reflection on the man? Sure. Go for it.
Now it just feels....not right.
Not 100% sure why.
Reverence for the dead has, for some folks, taken a back seat to using a man's final moment in the public eye to advance their political position.
That's at least part of what makes it feel not right to me.
This is, in itself, a political stance you’re attempting to advance using his death. Specifically you’re advocating people who have suffered or have seen others suffer from a person’s malign actions remain silent. For the benefit of people who don’t care as much or are okay with those actions.
It’s fine that this is a strongly held belief for you. But please don’t treat other people’s strongly held beliefs as somehow skeevier or more selfish. That is unless you refuse to speak poorly of literally anyone who’s ever died, which I suspect is unlikely.
nah I don't think this rhetorical jujitsu and accusation that I'm doing something like expecting the suffering to remain silent really lands as a criticism. Firstly I don't think it's a political stance to place reverence for the dead over cheap political hay-making. It feels like the ultimate talking behind someone's back, you know? It lowers people. Then again, the idea of elevated discourse is itself maligned and rejected in some quarters, including a sizable contingent around here, in favor of the low-road opportunistic gutpunching political style, and the topical threads suffer as a result.
Anyhow I think you were in a better place on page one than the thread is on page 13 with regard to viewing a man's life in context. There's very little room for praise or even moderation in here now, and I guess if what people want is a Major Media Reaction thread then it's serving its purpose. If what we want is a place to talk about McCain's legacy, it feels to me like the dominant viewpoint is one in which defending him even mildly is not really welcome. OP doesn't caution people against being overly kind, after all. I wonder how people will react to seeing any Democrats at all in attendance. Why speak at the funeral of a homophobic racist torture-supporting blood-soaked warmonger?
idk, maybe Democrats should boycott en masse if that's an accurate representation. On the other hand, I guess I feel like any situation where a person is even coincidentally aligned with Donald Trump on a topic ought to be worth at least a little deeper analysis just to make sure they haven't gone astray in the pursuit of political corpse-kicking.
Why are you trying to ascribe value to only speaking well of the dead and what is that value?
There is value in taking some time at the end of a life to consider it fully. Above all, that value is in reminding us that we are also human and worthy of praise as well as condemnation.
We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times.
Posts
I feel I should rush to point out all of the terrible things about these strawmen before they die and become immune to criticism.
I was trying to point out that even enemies trying to kill eachother can put aside enmity, however briefly, in recognition of shared humanity. If you cannot see the relevance I say that's on you.
This occurred because the soldiers involved had no ideological reason to fight. They were there at the behest of other more powerful people.
I fight and criticize people like McCain because racist ideology is bad.. There is no benefit to it and there is no compromising with the belief that other races are lesser.
Be swift, they are delicate creatures!
Who exactly is this kindness for? Who is being materially harmed by criticism?
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
I don't think you understand even the example you are trying to use to prove your point.
Certainly we can recognize that McCain was human. That's why the only respectful and moral thing to do here is to be honest about who he was. It's precisely why he is a great example for the future.
McCain was a man. And this is what he did wrong. We are also human. Let's discuss what he did and decide what was good or bad and why the bad things shouldn't be repeated or perpetuated. The only way that can happen is through discourse.
Frankly, I think the ones shitting on McCain are the ones trying to shut down discourse. He didn't apologize for who he was. Why are you?
Those who totally don’t endorse racism but are adamant it be acceptable in polite society. For some reason.
And yet, a small kindness that acknowledges the humanity of the deceased costs you nothing. I chose the analogy particularly because it did not preclude further bloodshed. Likewise, there is no reason you cannot go right back on blast once the dust settles. But it seems to me devoid of decency to use a man's casket as a pulpit from which to disgrace him--barring the man being literally Hitler, I suppose.
I can't see the relevance because there is none. You still haven't connected the dots except via this claim that being nice to him cause he's dead is some sort of moral imperative.
I recognize our shared humanity. I think he did some good stuff in life and have said as much in this thread. I just also recognize all the shitty things he also did. And him being dead don't make those go away nor does it obligate me to not talk about them.
There is no going right with someone who refuses to acknowledge others are equals. The soldiers in WWI did this. McCain never did.
Edit: And I get that you’re super willing to forgive stuff like racism, I do. Just kindly stop demanding others to be. A lot of us care about it significantly more.
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
I don't think family is the deciding factor here. I think it's still death. By not disrupting a family's right to mourn, you are allowing them the right to celebrate death.
Think of someone you hate. You see them at the mall with their family. The kids are having fun. It would obviously ruin their day if you confronted your enemy in front of their friends and family, right? What if they're at camp? What if they're in their home, playing a board game? Do you hesitate to intrude on their private moment? Do you feel the same trepidation in confronting them that you do with a family funeral? These memories you're tarnishing - each is an important and precious page of a family's life. But one feels like sacrilege, like something unnatural a human just doesn't do.
What is so important about respecting the relationship of people you hate with people that love people you hate?
The answer is that I'm wrong. Death, family, and other emotional bonds remind us that we're all human and bring us out of the sociopathic frenzy of partisan rage. I really doubt you'd organize a protest at a state funeral, but even though it's about death - a trait we all share - the ceremony is so far removed from actual common life that it might as well be a piece of paper that is laid at state. However, even with that detachment, we reserve a certain amount of reverence for any death - regardless of credentials. Add family in there; add evidence of of genuine emotion - you might as well be staring in a mirror. Empathy is on full blast.
Senator McCain, to many of us, is not human. He is just an idea, something we saw a few times on television and read on a news website. He's an idea that hurts real people that we actually verifiably know, so of course he's inhuman. Ideas can be totally evil with no redeeming features and unworthy of the basic compassion we afford to every real human being. Of course it's better that he's dead, because it just doesn't register that he is flesh and blood and feels pain and agony like the rest of us. It's impossible to understand.
However, I would be very intrigued if I was wrong. A world that does not respect death - I'd be curious to see that. It would be wonderful not to worry about the death of those that I love, to accept it as a part of life and be at peace with it. To be able to move on and not be irreparably devastated by grief and regret. I think everyone would be happier, perhaps.
Anyway, this is so off topic, I apologize. All I was trying to do is work through Ninjeff's uncertain feelings and I kind of went overboard. You don't have to respond; I don't know what argument I'm making and have no real goal for further discussion.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Nah, fuck this.
A funeral is a private occasion for a family to mourn the passing of a loved one. They can have that time. It's not about you or me or the public.
A state funeral is the state itself honouring that person. If said person deserves scorn instead of honours, the public should see fit to give it to them in the form of protests. It's the state itself acting so it's clearly about the public.
The only reason not to heckle someone spending time with their family is to spare their family. And depending on what they've done and what their position is, you even waive that sometimes.
You can say it's about death but that's only because of the idiotic idea that someone being dead makes them immune from criticism. Death didn't make said person better. If you'd say it about them while they were alive, there's no reason not to say it about them after they are dead.
Death is not a thing one respects by white-washing history. That chain of logic doesn't even make sense.
https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/immigration/2018/06/18/john-mccain-rips-trumps-family-separation-policy-affront-american/712611002/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2018/08/25/john-mccain-quotes-through-years/955687001/
I learned a lot of useful stuff in this thread, far more useful than empty platitudes and silence.
I don't think it's decent or respectful to pretend someone isn't a sum of everything they've done, good and bad. It's polite, perhaps, to not criticize the dead, but so what? There's context to politeness. In a debate thread on a forum that discusses politics on a daily basis, why is being polite even remotely important? And why should politeness in this context be more important than being honest? What moral value does politeness here have? I feel that the value of honesty about the deceased far outweighs the value of politeness in any context here, even a utilitarian one. Unless you're explicitly conversating with the direct family of the deceased, it seems arguably better to be completely honest about the person.
Of course, criticism will always rise to the top, but that's not a matter of respect or decency, either. Because in a context such as this, the message is "racism is bad." It's not really "shit on McCain because he was racist" it's "this man did these things, we need to stop doing this and we need to stop putting up with this as a society."
You certainly do, often to the exclusion of any and all other factors. I suppose we all have our own North Star to steer by.
Except people have bought up good things McCain did, they just are overwhelmed by the bad deeds in his life. Which is of McCain's own making. The media's portrayal of McCain was the deception, not what we're doing here.
And that's the problem, if not for people going "well actually" the story that people would know of McCain would be a false narrative, completely sound with no actual substance.
pleasepaypreacher.net
Yes, that.
Knock it off @Frankiedarling @Harry Dresden and anyone else joining in
Other than respecting the private time of families - which, lets be honest, is something we violate with famous people all the time - I agree that death shouldn't matter one bit in how we treat somebody. Heck, we were all glad when Mr. Manafort got all those convictions, so we should be glad that Mr. McCain is finally out of this world and unable to cause any more trouble. I do think we allowed ourselves to be much more glad when Mr. Roger Ailes died.
You'll notice I'm talking about being glad rather than talking about criticism. That's a bit of a false equivalence, because I still believe that respect is an emotional rather than a logical judgment. If you don't feel a sort of positivity or passion when talking about somebody or something you respect, I submit that respect really doesn't factor into whatever you say it does. At that point, it's just an algorithm of behavior.
Emotion makes us do illogical things. I'm not happy Mr. McCain is dead, and I'm not sad either. I'm indifferent to him in particular. But talking about death has made me feel a variety of things that indirectly inject emotion into my thoughts, which is why my arguments are playing fast and loose with narrative efficiency and flow. I usually fashion an argument with a series of simple and agreeable assumptions leading to more complex conclusions with plans for follow up contingent upon opposing argument, but I really don't know what I'om going to say next here, and these last few posts have been very circumstantial and often tangential. I think that's why people are acting oddly (edited: idiots was too flavorful and my intent was not to insult people) in this thread, making logical mistakes and self-contradictions. That's a normal occurrence, but that's especially what we do with a topic that's emotionally charged. I think we underestimate it here because 99% of the time the emotion is anger. Here it's something else.
Anyway, what you're saying is all right in theory but it's really hard to be stoic in the face of death when it invades your own world. And to end with some inappropriate gallows humor, if a person spends their life harming others, and stops only when they are dead, did not death actually make them better?
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
However, it is a discussion thread, not a guest book. Expect people to respond to your opinions of the man with their own.
No, because they cease to exist upon death. Death just made them...dead.
Their legacy is all that remains and that should be treated exactly as it is. Good, bad, and everything in between.
Picking it apart at that point and using it as a teaching moment is good for society. The same way we continue talking about how Mr. Rogers was a model human being and why, we can talk about why Mr. McCain was not and why. For the good of the future.
No. In that case death made the rest of us better off. The dead person is still what they were the second before they died.
The idea that we should not speak ill of the dead is a crappy belief that mostly just serves to white-wash history. I see no reason not to speak of the dead the same way we speak of the living.
nah I don't think this rhetorical jujitsu and accusation that I'm doing something like expecting the suffering to remain silent really lands as a criticism. Firstly I don't think it's a political stance to place reverence for the dead over cheap political hay-making. It feels like the ultimate talking behind someone's back, you know? It lowers people. Then again, the idea of elevated discourse is itself maligned and rejected in some quarters, including a sizable contingent around here, in favor of the low-road opportunistic gutpunching political style, and the topical threads suffer as a result.
Anyhow I think you were in a better place on page one than the thread is on page 13 with regard to viewing a man's life in context. There's very little room for praise or even moderation in here now, and I guess if what people want is a Major Media Reaction thread then it's serving its purpose. If what we want is a place to talk about McCain's legacy, it feels to me like the dominant viewpoint is one in which defending him even mildly is not really welcome. OP doesn't caution people against being overly kind, after all. I wonder how people will react to seeing any Democrats at all in attendance. Why speak at the funeral of a homophobic racist torture-supporting blood-soaked warmonger?
idk, maybe Democrats should boycott en masse if that's an accurate representation. On the other hand, I guess I feel like any situation where a person is even coincidentally aligned with Donald Trump on a topic ought to be worth at least a little deeper analysis just to make sure they haven't gone astray in the pursuit of political corpse-kicking.
Why are you trying to ascribe value to only speaking well of the dead and what is that value?
Don't lionize him because he's dead
Were you sad when Mr. Rogers died? I wasn't. Or maybe I was; I tried my hardest not to feel anything because I felt like if I did, I would have an excuse to feel happy that someone I didn't like died.
I hate to delight in the suffering of others. It feels like, when I criticize dead people, that's what I'm doing - kicking them when they're 6 feet down. Do you not feel a little bit like that, even though you know it doesn't make sense? Maybe it's the effect of religion; I feel like I'm choosing which people I send to hell and which I send to heaven. I don't want to be in that kind of position.
I also don't know how good it is for society to have role models or role devils. Mr. Rogers reminds me how long it's been since we had a hero that didn't disappoint us. I feel like my own legacy is as wrecked as my browsing history and that there's little point in seeking redemption; anonymity is the way to go. I think Mr. McCain's obituary is about at the median of modern legacy - a debatably nice guy who suffered a bunch, hurt some people, then died. It's so much the human condition.
Maybe it's for the good of the future, but dang. I really don't want to think about it.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Many posters were free to bring up his disgraceful past moments as well as his accomplishments, one does not diminish nor eliminate the other, and trying to create a fiction over the truth of a person does both the dead and the living a disservice.
MWO: Adamski
My life has been a mess so far, but - and this is completely personal - I'd rather be remembered as I am, or as people knew me to be, not some whitewashed version of who I was. I'm actually terrified by the concept of people only speaking well of me. I mean, I've tried to make progress, too. I've actually worked at being a better person. I still have a ways to go. But if I ever meant anything to anyone, indivudally or collectively, I'd want them to remember all of that. The bad, the good, the struggles, the failures. I can't speak for anyone else, but, I dunno, that's how I define respect.
Death and the way we speak of the dead is also one of my biggest problems with religion and how it shapes the way people perceive and think about morality. I don't know if there is or isn't an afterlife. But it doesn't matter because we don't know, can't know, and won't know until we die. So we have our lives and our lives alone to make an impression, to live the right way. So that's another reason I think we should continue to think and talk about people 100% honestly . Hold people accountable for their actions while they are alive. Everyone earns the legacy they leave when they die. I just cannot get behind this idea of "softening" their legacy in death. They were who they were, that's it. And John McCain had 81 years to get it right. I'm certainly also less inclined to think positively about the legacy of an individual who seemed to devolve rather than evolve morally.
I mean, I don't know what else to say. I'm sorry you feel this "way: I feel like my own legacy is as wrecked as my browsing history and that there's little point in seeking redemption." You can't erase the past and we shouldn't, but you can do what you can from today forward and if society was an honest society, they would remember that too.
Why is it wrong to think the same of someone after they are dead that you did when they were alive?
This shit doesn't make any sense.
If people demand "civility" in order to whitewash over people's lives and refuse to acknowledge the problems left behind as part of their legacy, then how can we possibly deal with any of the issues that they had a hand in creating/exacerbating/sustaining/etc?
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
But obviously, this is not how we see or treat death on the whole. We attach ceremony, circumstance, respect, meaning, etc. We have traditions built around death that both pay respect to those that survive the deceased and the deceased themselves, illogical as that may seem to those who do see death as the ultimate finale. Even something as simple as walking on a grave has meaning attached, even if you’re alone and no one sees it’s something an individual would know they’ve done and it carries connotations.
That to say, I see respect for the recently deceased as wrapped up in all that. A private forum I suppose it doesn’t matter but like stomping on a grave in the woods, it still feels vaguely wrong to me. That’s about the best way I can verbalize it.
I appreciate that. I've always been uncomfortable talking about death and am terrified about what I'll have to say when my parents die. I have never really seen what you describe - a pure accounting of a person at their funeral - because everyone there is biased to seek hope and humanity through suffering. It's actually a bit insulting that you get similar kudos to people that worked half as hard or were half as good, but I feel like a legacy arms race is also a nightmare. I kind of want to do a bunch of good and die alone and unremembered. It feels purer to not be aiming for some social high score on game over, but for something that goes with you when you die.
I wonder what was going through Mr. McCain's head when he made those last few decisions. Hollywood teaches us that the omega years should be spent securing your legacy. I wonder if old people usually think that
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
There is value in taking some time at the end of a life to consider it fully. Above all, that value is in reminding us that we are also human and worthy of praise as well as condemnation.
I don't think that's too much to ask.