QAnon comes to visit

[GethN7]

No one is saying you're affiliated with QAnon.  It's just that you've been taken in by some of their theories.

I've had this talk with you before, about Kiwi Farms.  So the thing about them is that they're not good people.  They spend their time in judgement of other people -- and whether that's about lolcows or righteous crusades, you just end up with people who build themselves up by tearing other people down.  I think you eventually learned that, but I knew it all along.  But you can't judge a person by who they associate with.  I have my own shames, which is why it was so easy to recognize this to me.

Except, well, you've had a very extreme reaction on this one issue, and you've found a lot of far-right sources to back you up.  Who are your friends now?  Who are you listening to?  You're not associated with QAnon, but it sure seems like you're spending time around people who do, at least online.

I had a friend I met at community college.  Really bright guy.  When I knew him, he always used to talk about how stupid conservatives were, and he had pretty deep liberal values.  It actually got him into trouble when he tried to say something anti-military, which didn't go over so well in my family.  Well, he graduated from university with a geology degree, went up to Alaska for a while to work in a gold mine, and I got to meet up with him six months later.  Turned out he was arguing the exact same way, but from the conservative side.  Talked about how dumb liberals were on some issues, even reversed himself on things that seemed really deeply held.  It turned out that his principles were in fact all shallowly held, and were easily replaced when he joined a new social group.  The only constant was thinking himself on the smart, right side.

The point of that story is that it makes me doubt my own moral and political judgement.  A lot.  And in this case I saw something of the same in you -- you say that Lolita should clearly be permitted, but this movie clearly should be prohibited -- both for moral reasons.  And it feel like one comes from the "no censorship" moral framework, and the other one comes from the "no perversion" moral framework.  Why do these views seem so deeply held but incongruous?  My best guess is that one or both views is held socially, rather than from some underlying moral framework.  That you've let yourself be influenced by them -- and/or by us.

And while I was still trying to work through the moral conflict, you basically threw up your hands and left.  Moral clarity isn't easy, and sometimes it's simply impossible to follow all of our morals.  It's why we are in bondage to sin, and cannot free ourselves.

First off, politics has nothing to do with this. I am morally opposed to live-action child porn, and that "Cuties" movie is a road to Hell paved with terrible intentions in that regard.

I'm a social conservative, but otherwise classically liberal, but that's beside the point. If that "Cuties" crap was animated or otherwise not depicting incredibly sexualized real kids, we wouldn't be here and I'd be defending it's right to exist despite my moral reservations because no real-world kids are being harmed. If I have any legal or moral dog in any fight, it's drawing a hard line on not crossing the threshold into accepting live-action child pornography, and that movie may not wholly be devoted to it in it's whole, but there is enough sexualization of REAL children I don't want to condone giving it the time of day.

I was under the mistaken impression not wanting to open that particular Pandora's Box was a politically agnostic position, and if it isn't, then if the right-wing is the only side that has a problem with it, then while I don't identify with all their positions, on that yes, we do agree.

That is not a new position for me. Even back in my younger days when I didn't care about politics half as much (and these days I usually still don't get invested in them too much), I've always opposed censorship except where we cross the line into turning real-world children into sex objects. When something crosses that sort of bright red line, politics goes out the window and basic intrinsic morality comes to the fore, meaning I can't condone giving it a voice beyond saying "it exists", and even when doing that, I don't want to give even passive acceptance of condoning it beyond that, but this situation put me in a position where that was at odds with my own principle of not forcing my personal morals on others through a potential abuse of power.

I quickly began to realize I was the only one who felt this way and decided to surrender in advance, losing on my own terms, rather than losing by fiat. It was meant so I could remove myself from any position of conflict, let those who dissented make decisions without my influence and input (and overturn my decisions without my dissent), and let me have the ability to sleep at night taking a moral stand while defusing conflict before it went nuclear. I've sacrificed power before to preserve peace, and that's what I did here.

That said, ATT Miraheze is now free of my influence for the indefinite future. There is no need to worry I'll go Fast Eddie because I admit I did pull rank and made a unilateral decision that smacked of one of his. Done with the best of legal and moral intentions, but I won't deny what it looked like, and I realized if I'm going to feel that strong morally while still not being a hypocrite, giving up that power while remaining true to my own deeply held principles was the only way to square the circle, walk away before causing more drama and being able to work through the turmoil without causing grief for anyone else in the process.

That said, I'll stick to ATT Wikia. I'm the sole admin running that side of things, and I'll mind that side of the fence while removing myself from the side where I cannot have any say without running into conflicts where I might be tempted or accused of ruling by fiat despite our agreement to run by consensus.

I get to sleep at night, everyone else is free of drama. Win-win if you ask me.


P.S. - If we are going to drag politics into this anyway, I'm glad to see I was right about the revulsion I feel being bipartisan:

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard/status/...3584226305