David Brooks (Now): No, not Volcano, not ever.

David Brooks (2028 probably): I get why you guys wanted to throw me into the volcano. My Bad.

I’m a simple man, I see code and I copy and paste it into the terminal with no understanding of what it does.

I mean that people responding positively to this meme have had their groupthink reflexes triggered by the closest (proximity) excitative buzzword and are chuckling along with the implications of that buzzword, regardless of how accurate or relevant the meme is as an idea.

All they understand is that there is supposed to be a joke, and they are content with that.

They’re mostly just being lazy/impatient and not explaining the full context of the meme. Mainly because this is a left-wing community and you keep defending centrism. We on the left can be impatient and hostile towards people who fence-sit especially on issues such as slavery.

I think there are understandable reasons for their hostility.

while a lot of your information is accurate in certain contexts, it is not the situation political context this meme is referencing.

This is a political community dedicated to criticizing the US’s authoritarianism. I would say criticizing the history of slavery and racism is relevant to that political context.

I like that you’re at least providing an entire honorable, relevant context.

Thank you :)

nope, it’s conflating slaves and slave owners,

I can see that interpretation. If you believe that it’s saying the centrist is smart. It’s not, it’s making fun of the self-conception of the centrist as smart.

This is posted to c/usauthoritarianism, not c/lostcause. It’s making fun of the people who fence sat on one of the most authoritarian systems in the history of the US.

implying that centrists can’t tell the difference, which 1. is a problem a fraction of a percent of extreme conservatives can be theorized to indulge in, and in no rational, accurate way related to centrists.

At one point in time slavery was a central political discussion and was not fringe at all. Abraham Lincoln won the 1860 election with less than 50% of the popular vote. Most people were fine with the continuation of slavery as a system at that time.

At the time the centrist position was “popular sovereignty” meaning centrists would have allowed each state the right to decide for itself weather or not it allowed slavery. In other words the now right-wing position of “states-rights”.

In the grand scale of history slavery-abolitionism is a fringe far-left political position. But the left won that fight so now it is normal for nearly everyone to agree slavery was bad. Which is why centrists now believe slavery was bad. But at the time when slavery was a relevant political issue that wasn’t the case at all. Centrists took the position in the center of the 2 sides. The 2 sides were the slave and the slave-owner.

what i mean by what, precisely?

What do you mean by “proximal repetition”?

Edit:fixing grammar

No, it isn’t. it’s safely blaming a small group for the behavior of a larger more threatening group.

How? It’s making fun of the fence sitters in the discussion of whether or not slavery is bad.

i do not.

Ok then explain what you mean.

in what way is somebody knowing the difference between centrist and conservative policies a fallacy?

The meme is not about knowing the difference, it’s a criticism of the position itself. Truth is truth. The truth doesn’t care what the center of any political debate is.

To be a centrist is to say well this side is saying one thing that side is saying this other thing we should try to average them out to get to the best conclusion. That is a logical fallacy.

The truth may or may not be in the center of the political debate, but that is not because it’s the center of the political debate.

To quote the Wikipedia article you’ve already been linked:

An example of an argument to moderation would be considering two statements about the colour of the Sky on Earth during the day – one claiming, correctly, that the sky is Blue, and another claiming that it is Yellow – and incorrectly concluding that the sky is the intermediate colour, Green.

If you’ve built your political ideology on proximal repetition rather than critical analysis

If you mean proximally repeating a point on the political compass then you’re agreeing with the point of the meme.

centrists don’t believe that slave owners and slaves are the same

Centrists don’t believe that now… because leftists and progressives won that battle…

You seem to not understand the Middle ground fallacy. Which is what this meme is making fun of.

If you’ve built your personal political philosophy on the middle ground fallacy (it seems like you may have given how upset you are) then you got a lot of rethinking to do.

Corn Kidz 64 has the best graphics of any game of the last 20 years. I will fight and die on this hill.

This is why you need a recreational nuke. You gotta fight the storm with the power of nuclear.

Pants!? To protect their newfound legs for the cold Canadian winter!

it has Jim Crow style laws at best and apartheid at worst.

But you repeat yourself.

Dickfacé

Your therapy dog needs a therapy dog. Eventually your going to have a whole therapy pack.