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[DrYouth]

The tendency toward anger, hyperbole, strawmanning and hysteria that occurs here, only occurs because that's what the members who engage in that behavior have been and are taught by the society they're part of. Playing (and over-acting) the victim, strawmanning positions to be more extreme than they are, painting your opponent as evil incarnate or in league with evil incarnate, and last but not least: The assumption that there is a "The" right and a "The" left, reminscent of the two-party system. A Conservative gets painted with the same brush as a Hitlerian Neo-Nazi, a Social Liberal gets painted with the same brush as a Stalinist. Both sides know that that sort of thinking is wrong, but they only object to it when it's done to their own.

+1

It would be refreshing to see a forum where this gets called out on both sides.

I think that's what the DCF started out as...
What happened was that the SJW memes started to hit home.
The victim playing left was being called out effectively... and the left wasn't used to seeing itself portrayed as unbalanced and flawed.
The right had been strawmanned for long enough... and there was blood in the water.

The challenge will be for the right to rise above tit for tat...
Are they up for it?

[DrYouth]

This is interesting. Please say some more about it, if you will.

Is it normal/common for an individual to get "stuck" at one of these levels, or should these levels generally be considered like phases that will be outgrown?

I take this from Ken Wilbur's body of work that is now referred to as "Integral psychotherapy".
He outlines a number of stages of psychological development.
Many of these are transitional but it is expected that you will plateau at one of them. The highest stages are rarely encountered.
Mark Foman further interpreted these stages and even offers rough estimates of the % of the population at these levels.
What fascinated me most was that he continues to outline stages of development based on his work with advanced practitioners of meditation such that the most advanced stages are beyond what mere mortals are likely to aspire to.
These are of course speculative to some degree but they ring true to my instincts about this.

The stage of the SJW is probably "relativistic/sensitive"...
Forman even cautions about the tendency to "idealize alternate value systems" and "positively project onto the other".

The problem with opening oneself up to the value system of the other is the price of potentially alienating oneself from one's own native value system. It is dangerous territory and there are many possible pitfalls to navigate. It is possible to return home enriched from the journey, but many don't make it.

[BjornP]

The challenge will be for the right to rise above tit for tat...
Are they up for it?

Aside from not being sure we can speak of a "The" right, as I mentioned, I don't think they are up to it, no. Referring to the types of right-wingers we have here on the MHF. They seem to only be copying "the" left's behavior, the hyperbole, strawmanning, painting people as more extremist than they really are, and clutching their pearls in fear of the coming apocalypse if "the left get what they want". As long as they simply react to, and copy from, the left's playbook instead of asserting some originality and leadership - as opposed to that tit for tat-thing - they can't rise above them. They need to become, and become seen as, prestigious , making them more persuasive, and thus in order to transcend above simply being those guys chasing after the ball thrown by their Left.

[Speaker to Animals]

You don't get it.

A huge number of people on the left gave up debating. They can't debate their side because they lose all the time. The least worst of them act like GCF or Monty and just behave like dicks. But quite a lot of them have resorted to violence. What you are labling the "left" has lost their minds and they will not reason. Those who do reason are sitting out on the sidelines wondering what the fuck happened.

Even here in this forum, when they get defeated in an argument, their impulse is to call for the people who defeat them to get banned or their ideas censored.

This isn't some cycle of things. It's not all the left either. And, personally, I think using this left-right paradigm is part of the problem. People simply have different ideologies. There is no continuous spectrum to it. Some of those ideologies are indefensible and dangerous. But when you frame it like some kind of political ecosystem, you only attempt to preserve an ideology or ideologies that should not be preserved but, rather, replaced.

[MilSpecs]

The tendency toward anger, hyperbole, strawmanning and hysteria that occurs here, only occurs because that's what the members who engage in that behavior have been and are taught by the society they're part of. Playing (and over-acting) the victim, strawmanning positions to be more extreme than they are, painting your opponent as evil incarnate or in league with evil incarnate, and last but not least: The assumption that there is a "The" right and a "The" left, reminscent of the two-party system.

This. It's also hard for even the most adult of us to avoid responding in kind after awhile. I can deal with what other posters have turned into. I can't deal with what it turns me into.

[DrYouth]

You don't get it.

A huge number of people on the left gave up debating. They can't debate their side because they lose all the time. The least worst of them act like GCF or Monty and just behave like dicks. But quite a lot of them have resorted to violence. What you are labling the "left" has lost their minds and they will not reason. Those who do reason are sitting out on the sidelines wondering what the fuck happened.

Even here in this forum, when they get defeated in an argument, their impulse is to call for the people who defeat them to get banned or their ideas censored.

This isn't some cycle of things. It's not all the left either. And, personally, I think using this left-right paradigm is part of the problem. People simply have different ideologies. There is no continuous spectrum to it. Some of those ideologies are indefensible and dangerous. But when you frame it like some kind of political ecosystem, you only attempt to preserve an ideology or ideologies that should not be preserved but, rather, replaced.

A huge number of people on the left gave up debating.
I will grant you that.
Some behave like dicks...

But to be fair we all behave like dicks when we feel threatened.
Instincts kick in... we lash out at those bold or foolish enough to threaten our world view.
Which one of us has never done this? When I look back at my early days on the forum it makes me laugh... I was definitely an indoctrinated "believer".
When we bunker down in one perspective and declare the opposing view the enemy of humanity... we are very likely no longer listening at all.
When we stop listening, we stop learning and growing....
This is mindset is what we want to combat. More-so than any specific ideology.

[Speaker to Animals]

You don't get it.

A huge number of people on the left gave up debating. They can't debate their side because they lose all the time. The least worst of them act like GCF or Monty and just behave like dicks. But quite a lot of them have resorted to violence. What you are labling the "left" has lost their minds and they will not reason. Those who do reason are sitting out on the sidelines wondering what the fuck happened.

Even here in this forum, when they get defeated in an argument, their impulse is to call for the people who defeat them to get banned or their ideas censored.

This isn't some cycle of things. It's not all the left either. And, personally, I think using this left-right paradigm is part of the problem. People simply have different ideologies. There is no continuous spectrum to it. Some of those ideologies are indefensible and dangerous. But when you frame it like some kind of political ecosystem, you only attempt to preserve an ideology or ideologies that should not be preserved but, rather, replaced.

A huge number of people on the left gave up debating.
I will grant you that.
Some behave like dicks...

But to be fair we all behave like dicks when we feel threatened.
Instincts kick in... we lash out at those bold or foolish enough to threaten our world view.
Which one of us has never done this? When I look back at my early days on the forum it makes me laugh... I was definitely an indoctrinated "believer".
When we bunker down in one perspective and declare the opposing view the enemy of humanity... we are very likely no longer listening at all.
When we stop listening, we stop learning and growing....
This is mindset is what we want to combat. More-so than any specific ideology.

What part of "most of them no longer reason" do you not understand?

They simply don't reason. The "left", if you really want to use this bogus left-right paradigm, adopted marxism and globalism. Both of those ideologies cannot withstand criticism. The globalists, at least, are smart enough to no longer attempt to defend their globalist ideas and instead seek to limit the kinds of reform that are coming to fix this mess they helped create. The marxists.. those people are losing their damned minds.

And the people who identify as plain-old liberals are being labeled "fascists" by the new base of the democratic party.

We have left behind the time for reason. This is the time of street battles and whatever else comes down the pike. The "left" lost, and their project is being dismantled. But they can't process that fact or let it pass without fighting. That's where we are at right now.

The marxists have as much intention to give up their ways as their democratic slave-lord predecessors had of giving up slavery. I don't see how this ends without a big break-up or a fight.

[DrYouth]

This is the time of street battles and whatever else comes down the pike. The "left" lost, and their project is being dismantled. But they can't process that fact or let it pass without fighting. That's where we are at right now.

The marxists have as much intention to give up their ways as their democratic slave-lord predecessors had of giving up slavery. I don't see how this ends without a big break-up or a fight.

Are you sure?
Or is it simply that a fight would be more satisfying?
There are many on both sides (including Dan Carlin himself) referring to the new Civil War.
To me it sounds like hyperbole.

I suggest we call it hyperbole when it is invoked by either side.
Civil war about what exactly?
Russian interference, genderless bathrooms, immigration reform, bad trade deals...
I don't see it.

[Speaker to Animals]

This is the time of street battles and whatever else comes down the pike. The "left" lost, and their project is being dismantled. But they can't process that fact or let it pass without fighting. That's where we are at right now.

The marxists have as much intention to give up their ways as their democratic slave-lord predecessors had of giving up slavery. I don't see how this ends without a big break-up or a fight.

Are you sure?
Or is it simply that a fight would be more satisfying?
There are many on both sides (including Dan Carlin himself) referring to the new Civil War.
To me it sounds like hyperbole.

I suggest we call it hyperbole when it is invoked by either side.
Civil war about what exactly?
Russian interference, genderless bathrooms, immigration reform, bad trade deals...
I don't see it.

You don't "see" it because your side has not for years been the target of political persecution and now physical violence, and you apparently lack the cognitive resources to put yourselves in other people's shoes.

You don't "see" it precisely in the same way the wider left did not see the big deal with leftists attacking Trump supporters across the nation, and only now when Trump supporters are fighting back do they suddenly "see" a problem with the violence.

This is a situation of your own making. It's coming to Canada as well, no doubt, and your leftists are far more violent and totalitarian than ours.

[DrYouth]

You don't "see" it because your side has not for years been the target of political persecution and now physical violence, and you apparently lack the cognitive resources to put yourselves in other people's shoes.

You don't "see" it precisely in the same way the wider left did not see the big deal with leftists attacking Trump supporters across the nation, and only now when Trump supporters are fighting back do they suddenly "see" a problem with the violence.

This is a situation of your own making. It's coming to Canada as well, no doubt, and your leftists are far more violent and totalitarian than ours.

Look at my posts above...
I see it.
I'm just not drawn into it.

Would I be drawn into it if I were in your shoes?
Maybe I would be...
But that doesn't mean being drawn into it is where you want to end up... however satisfying it might be.