Benjaben

Actually after a re-read, you were constructive and made reasonable points throughout. My bad, I dunno why I interpreted that last one so harshly, wasn't really my business anyway.

What a dismissive, reductive response. As if your point of view is the only one with any merit.

Just want to back you up here and say the deeper ethos sometimes DOES matter. People need to stop acting like a piece of generally good advice applies to every situation ever. The "stop gatekeeping" pendulum has swung a bit too far (although the principle is great and, incidentally, punk as fuck!).

When did we decide everything has to be for everyone, and everyone has a right to participate in everything, just by virtue of existing? What would these folks say to someone who walks around in - e.g., Sikh cultural accoutrement - but has zero interest (and even a snobbish disdain) for the underlying religion? "Good for them, we shouldn't gatekeep"? Fuck outta here.

On the one hand, all culture and art is syncretic, full stop. I'm not saying punk rock is off limits in any way, that'd be absurd. But at this point it's got what, like 40 years of maintaining a broadly consistent ethos or spirit? That's remarkable, it's valuable, and it's only been possible because of gatekeeping - passionate community members putting forth effort to maintain the community identity. In a time when every damn thing of cultural significance is being hollowed out and commoditized for profit, we should all celebrate punk rock staying punk.

I've noticed this too.

I just don't agree that most folks mean the middle panel. It really depends who and where you ask. A lot of people have - for example - a big problem with Affirmative Action because it looks like the middle panel - different help given to different people.

I think it depends a lot on the people using the words. People who don't believe that the systematized slavery as practiced in the US produced long-lasting generational effects, for example, might say that treating people equally moving forward is best. Under that belief system, everyone starts on ~even footing and gets the same opportunities, so actually it's less fair to make special cases for folks!

In my view those folks are starting from a deeply flawed premise (and usually one they've arrived at in order to justify the worldview they already hold), so their conclusions are worthless. But I think they'd meet the criteria of advocating for equality and against equity, and sincerely mean it. It's not hypothetical either, I've met people like this - depressingly many, in fact.

Great comment, sincerely - completely nails it. My only nitpick (and only delivered cuz you clearly care) is I don't think it should be called terrorism.

Terrorism, as hate-fueled and damaging as it is, at least has an ethos, an organizing principle, a (generally twisted, but coherent) morality. These monsters have nothing so human to stand behind. As you know, it's nothing more complicated than "fuck every life on earth but mine, for no reason more compelling than that I want even more stuff". Terrorists actually compare favorably against that.

Seriously. I'm not at all of the opinion that both sides are equivalently bad for our society, but this is just silly.

I really can't understand how you could read it that way, when the last phrase is "or will they simply forget Trump given time". The poster sure seemed to go out of their way to not describe a preferred outcome but just to wonder how this turns out, how his supporters will respond, and how much their response even matters. If they're questioning whether those people's reaction even matters, does that sound like advocating on their behalf?

I understand interpretation of written text is always a little ambiguous, but jumping to "you're saying Trump should go free so his supporters aren't sad?!" - nearly your direct words - just feels like either a very intentional misreading or just the briefest possible look at what the poster wrote. It just isn't there at all and you came across weird and hostile.

They never took that position at all, deliberately said so even. Quit with that antagonistic, unnecessarily hostile Reddit-style garbage.