We need to talk about your kitsch problem... - General Tiki

E EnchantedTikiGoth Member Calgary, Canada Joined: Dec 31, 2003 Posts: 355	E EnchantedTikiGoth Posted posted on Wed, May 31, 2017 10:29 PM On 2017-05-31 10:36, Swanky wrote: If that magnifying glass ever really points our way, I'm not sure what the proper response can be. I have some good talking points, but we've also handed our enemies a lot of great things to hang us with. And who wants to be out there talking to the cameras? Who wants to become the target for that criticism? Even a good argument will attract a lot of hate. Well, the article I wrote is my response (and thanks for the compliments, lunavideogames) and I put it out there in the hopes of "arming" fellow Tikiphiles with a way to articulate a cogent counter-argument. I don't know who would be brave or foolhardy enough to go out on camera, but if we're talking tactics, then let's talk turkey... The two most important things we have on our side are the fact that SJWs are not invincible and nobody likes them. You see the odd success, like the Portland burrito stand or video of them shouting down a lecturer, and think that SJWs win every engagement the moment they shout "racist." That is not true. These are the same people who lost the presidency of the United States to the least qualified and most offensive candidate in American history. If you actually watch the goings on, SJWs lose nearly every fight they pick, including actual real riots where they're literally getting their asses kicked. For some reason, most people are getting fed up with sanctimonious scolds who try to suck the fun out of everything and accuse everyone of being racists and white supremacists and misogynists and so on. The extreme left-wing position adopted by SJWs has successfully managed to alienate liberals, libertarians, conservatives, socialists, religious people, gay and bisexual people, actual transgender people, video game players, an endless list of everyone politically to the right of Mao Tse-tung. And more importantly, it is increasingly uniting them against SJWs. These two facts are your biggest asset. So, strategy: SJWs are not your customers. They're going to picket your bar? They're going to boycott? So what? They never darkened your doors to begin with. Stay loyal to your customers, the people who like and support what you're doing, who are loyal to you. Don't try to appease people who never supported you to begin with and aren't going to support you if you give them what they want. Therefore, don't give SJWs what they want. In fact, don't engage with them, period. Let them picket. So what? If they come on your property, rough up your customers, smash your windows, call the cops. You don't have to talk to them, because they don't want to talk to you. They are picking on you because it makes them feel powerful, not because they want to have a reasoned discussion with you and come to a generous consensus. What they want most is to be right and for you to be wrong. Don't attempt to reason with unreasonable people. So don't admit any wrongdoing. Don't apologize... NEVER apologize... NEVER capitulate... NEVER try and meet them halfway... You can't appease a shark by giving it only a taste of blood. Admitting that they "might have a point" about "some things" is a confession. In the hands of an inquisitor, a confession is a weapon. No accused witch was spared the pyre because she was made to confess. If they accuse you of cultural appropriation, DO NOT SAY "I guess maybe a little." You say "Cultural appropriation theory is just a theory." Which means, don't capitulate to their framework; challenge it. If it comes to that, don't just accept their social theories about cultural appropriation and patriarchy and privilege and white supremacist systems of oppression. Don't try to exonerate yourself on their terms. Their terms are iron-clad rhetorical constructs designed to find you guilty. Challenge the validity of their social theories. Don't try to prove that America isn't a white supremacist system: challenge the idea that there is such a thing as a "white" race. Argue that cultural appropriation is not a thing and there are better ways to understand cultural exchange and diffusion. The defining characteristic of their politics is to lump everyone into dialectical opposing groups, obfuscating your individuality and reducing you to a representative of a system of oppression, so respond by asserting your individuality and the dignity of your personhood*. Learn to recognize kafkatraps and call them out when you see them. If it does come to that, remember that your audience is the public, not the SJW. You're not trying to win them over, not really. That would be nice, but that's not the goal. Their goal is to win, to make you look bad and make themselves feel powerful in the process. So bypass them and appeal to the public with virtues that everyone normal can agree on: personal liberty, personal dignity, the right of a businessperson to make an honest living, the right of America to have its own culture and experiences (tying back to what I said about how Tiki is not a representation of Polynesia but a representation of America's collective experience and romance of the Pacific), and the right of people to harmlessly chill out and enjoy a drink with friends. Be humble, be kind, be personable, be a good guy or gal. Get the public on your side. Don't worry about the SJWs. They don't like the SJWs. Words will never hurt you. SJWs are emotional abusers. Seriously, their behaviour patterns are the same as emotional abusers. Like all emotional abusers, their tactics rely on you being a better, more generous, more introspective, more self-critical person than them. Do you think they're the one's wracked with existential questions over calling you a racist, white supremacist, patriarchal, cis-het normative, misogynistic cultural appropriator? They're not, but they sure hope YOU are being wracked with existential questions over being called that. They are throwing anything against the wall to see what makes you doubt yourself. It's EXACTLY like the bully who just said any mean thing to get a rise out of you. No matter how it goes, it's not the end of the world. So they picketed you, called you names, slandered you in the media, maybe even got a couple companies/advertisers to stop supporting you. That's a tough deal, but it isn't the end of the world. At the end of the day, the people who always supported you will keep doing so. We'll still be here. To add to this point, one of the best, quickest arguments I've made to shut down an SJW was like this. Here's how it went down (I'm the wordy one, go figure): I shared all this in the hopes that you could see how this works in practice. What I did was two-fold. First I identified, called out, and denied the validity of "Marxist dialecticism," "race essentialism," privilege theory," and the entire concept of a "white" race and pan-racial identities. Second, I stood firm on a set of unarguably high-minded moral virtues, particularly ethnic diversity and personal dignity, and the unflinching assertion that what she was saying were simply debatable propositions and not The Truth. As you saw, it's kind of hard to accuse someone of being racist when they're adopting a stronger multicultural stance than you are. Make sure you know what you DO believe so you can stand firm on it.

On 2017-05-31 10:36, Swanky wrote:

If that magnifying glass ever really points our way, I'm not sure what the proper response can be. I have some good talking points, but we've also handed our enemies a lot of great things to hang us with.

And who wants to be out there talking to the cameras? Who wants to become the target for that criticism? Even a good argument will attract a lot of hate.

Well, the article I wrote is my response (and thanks for the compliments, lunavideogames) and I put it out there in the hopes of "arming" fellow Tikiphiles with a way to articulate a cogent counter-argument. I don't know who would be brave or foolhardy enough to go out on camera, but if we're talking tactics, then let's talk turkey...

The two most important things we have on our side are the fact that SJWs are not invincible and nobody likes them. You see the odd success, like the Portland burrito stand or video of them shouting down a lecturer, and think that SJWs win every engagement the moment they shout "racist." That is not true. These are the same people who lost the presidency of the United States to the least qualified and most offensive candidate in American history. If you actually watch the goings on, SJWs lose nearly every fight they pick, including actual real riots where they're literally getting their asses kicked. For some reason, most people are getting fed up with sanctimonious scolds who try to suck the fun out of everything and accuse everyone of being racists and white supremacists and misogynists and so on. The extreme left-wing position adopted by SJWs has successfully managed to alienate liberals, libertarians, conservatives, socialists, religious people, gay and bisexual people, actual transgender people, video game players, an endless list of everyone politically to the right of Mao Tse-tung. And more importantly, it is increasingly uniting them against SJWs. These two facts are your biggest asset.

So, strategy:

SJWs are not your customers. They're going to picket your bar? They're going to boycott? So what? They never darkened your doors to begin with. Stay loyal to your customers, the people who like and support what you're doing, who are loyal to you. Don't try to appease people who never supported you to begin with and aren't going to support you if you give them what they want.
Therefore, don't give SJWs what they want. In fact, don't engage with them, period. Let them picket. So what? If they come on your property, rough up your customers, smash your windows, call the cops. You don't have to talk to them, because they don't want to talk to you. They are picking on you because it makes them feel powerful, not because they want to have a reasoned discussion with you and come to a generous consensus. What they want most is to be right and for you to be wrong. Don't attempt to reason with unreasonable people.
So don't admit any wrongdoing. Don't apologize... NEVER apologize... NEVER capitulate... NEVER try and meet them halfway... You can't appease a shark by giving it only a taste of blood. Admitting that they "might have a point" about "some things" is a confession. In the hands of an inquisitor, a confession is a weapon. No accused witch was spared the pyre because she was made to confess. If they accuse you of cultural appropriation, DO NOT SAY "I guess maybe a little." You say "Cultural appropriation theory is just a theory."
Which means, don't capitulate to their framework; challenge it. If it comes to that, don't just accept their social theories about cultural appropriation and patriarchy and privilege and white supremacist systems of oppression. Don't try to exonerate yourself on their terms. Their terms are iron-clad rhetorical constructs designed to find you guilty. Challenge the validity of their social theories. Don't try to prove that America isn't a white supremacist system: challenge the idea that there is such a thing as a "white" race. Argue that cultural appropriation is not a thing and there are better ways to understand cultural exchange and diffusion. The defining characteristic of their politics is to lump everyone into dialectical opposing groups, obfuscating your individuality and reducing you to a representative of a system of oppression, so respond by asserting your individuality and the dignity of your personhood*. Learn to recognize kafkatraps and call them out when you see them.
If it does come to that, remember that your audience is the public, not the SJW. You're not trying to win them over, not really. That would be nice, but that's not the goal. Their goal is to win, to make you look bad and make themselves feel powerful in the process. So bypass them and appeal to the public with virtues that everyone normal can agree on: personal liberty, personal dignity, the right of a businessperson to make an honest living, the right of America to have its own culture and experiences (tying back to what I said about how Tiki is not a representation of Polynesia but a representation of America's collective experience and romance of the Pacific), and the right of people to harmlessly chill out and enjoy a drink with friends. Be humble, be kind, be personable, be a good guy or gal. Get the public on your side. Don't worry about the SJWs. They don't like the SJWs.
Words will never hurt you. SJWs are emotional abusers. Seriously, their behaviour patterns are the same as emotional abusers. Like all emotional abusers, their tactics rely on you being a better, more generous, more introspective, more self-critical person than them. Do you think they're the one's wracked with existential questions over calling you a racist, white supremacist, patriarchal, cis-het normative, misogynistic cultural appropriator? They're not, but they sure hope YOU are being wracked with existential questions over being called that. They are throwing anything against the wall to see what makes you doubt yourself. It's EXACTLY like the bully who just said any mean thing to get a rise out of you.
No matter how it goes, it's not the end of the world. So they picketed you, called you names, slandered you in the media, maybe even got a couple companies/advertisers to stop supporting you. That's a tough deal, but it isn't the end of the world. At the end of the day, the people who always supported you will keep doing so. We'll still be here.

To add to this point, one of the best, quickest arguments I've made to shut down an SJW was like this. Here's how it went down (I'm the wordy one, go figure):

I shared all this in the hopes that you could see how this works in practice. What I did was two-fold. First I identified, called out, and denied the validity of "Marxist dialecticism," "race essentialism," privilege theory," and the entire concept of a "white" race and pan-racial identities. Second, I stood firm on a set of unarguably high-minded moral virtues, particularly ethnic diversity and personal dignity, and the unflinching assertion that what she was saying were simply debatable propositions and not The Truth. As you saw, it's kind of hard to accuse someone of being racist when they're adopting a stronger multicultural stance than you are. Make sure you know what you DO believe so you can stand firm on it.

Post #776526 by EnchantedTikiGoth on Wed, May 31, 2017 10:29 PM