[eropple]

Christianity is a completely political phenomenon (as a cursory historical examination will demonstrate) and public advocacy of it is a political act.

Similarly, most things, including fandoms, are political in nature whether they want to be or not. By liking Star Trek, you're buying into a box of propositions, some related to the art and some related to the real-world universe around that art. By (as in the Reddit experiment) working to expand it, you're making a political claim.

People are political, people are never not political, and drawing an imaginary line to try to separate some political acts from others is pretty fruitless.

[Karunamon]

This defines the word "political" to be so broad as to render it essentially meaningless.

I can't like Star Trek without "buying into a box of propositions"? Really? First, you're going to have to tell me why I like Star Trek.

[eropple]

What I am saying is that politics is an externalization rather than an internalization--which is very far from meaningless. Your why doesn't matter (and it's one reason why the right wing's "but I didn't support the Republicans because of racism" is so hollow). Your what matters. And it matters to other people. It's inescapably political because you live in a polity and your decisions impact other people. See, for example, the useful idiots of GamerGate who provided air cover to people who sent death and rape threats to women who had the temerity to make video games. If they're the one in a figurative million, literally-few-thousand who actually cares about "ethics in games journalism", that doesn't matter in the slightest because of what they enable through their action and their inaction.

Drawing those imaginary lines to segment off Some Topics (because otherwise one might have to defend them) is nonsense. People draw these lines anywhere from religion to fandoms to allegiance to political parties--but none of them are meaningful. You are your impact on other people and every impact on everyone else is inescapably, inextricably, definitionally "political".

[wutbrodo]

> "but I didn't support the Republicans because of racism" is so hollow). Your what matters. And it matters to other people. It's inescapably political because you live in a polity and your decisions impact other people. See, for example, the useful idiots of GamerGate who provided air cover to people who sent death and rape threats to women who had the temerity to make video games. If they're the one in a figurative million, literally-few-thousand who actually cares about "ethics in games journalism", that doesn't matter in the slightest because of what they enable through their action and their inaction.

It's this kind of maximalism that makes our politics so disgustingly toxic. It's entirely consistent for a hypothetical person to think that Hillary Clinton's hawkishness and role in the Middle East escapades of the last decade and a half are more damaging and evil than the Republican Party's association with racism in 2016's America. Your equally-ignorant doppelganger on the other side could say "it rings hollow that you say you didn't vote for Hillary _because_ of imperialism" and "see for example the useful idiots of the Democratic party who provide air cover for legitimizing the murder of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi innocents"[1]. Both of you can sit on your high horse, convinced that everyone else on the other side is guilty of the worst sins and too ignorant to know or evil to care. In the meanwhile, the level of political discourse drops ever lower and the level of political dysfunction climbs.

Being unable to separate people's intent from their n-degrees-of-separation theoretical impact isn't enlightened, it's childish. I know it's a lot of mental effort to consider the fact that those that disagree with you aren't evil, but hey, being an adult is hard.

[1] Note that none of the hypothetical political views in this comment are necessarily ones that I hold.

[hueving]

Living in absolutes is like that is only afforded to people who agree with their group on absolutely every topic (a.k.a. mindless people).

Do you support the Democratic party? If so, are you okay being defined by Nancy Pelosi using a Muslim person as a prop?

[mproy]

You are mostly speaking of the potential external impact of personal decisions. This is almost completely antithetical to politics. If I'm not proselytizing about Star Trek or even Christianity, there is nothing political about it.

Even if one buys into your premise, your examples are quite notably biased and there is an obvious left wing analogue to each of your right wing boogeymen.

[Karunamon]

>Your what matters. And it matters to other people. It's inescapably political because you live in a polity and your decisions impact other people.

By the same standard, then, I can safely write off BlackLivesMatter as a group whose members are inherently racist, and in some cases engage in literal terrorism (definition: violence applied for political goals) with the sanction of the larger group?

Why or why not?

You are your impact on other people and every impact on everyone else is inescapably, inextricably, definitionally "political".

Except most of these definitions of yours, that are entirely yours as far as I can see, don't have anything to do with the actual definition of the word political. To wit:

relating to the government or the public affairs of a country.

Where's the connection to government and public affairs and Star Trek? You did make that connection, and I'm curious to see how you go about defending it, especially since you called out this division of political vs not as a rhetorical device used to avoid defending things.

On that same note, humans "draw lines to segment off topics" because that is literally the only way human reason about things. Your definition of politics implies that I can't watch a Goddamned fictional series about spaceships without a bunch of other ill-defined ideological baggage attached to it. I don't see the practical or metaphorical usefulness of this definition, and up to this point, you have not demonstrated it.

[Dylan16807]

> By the same standard

They were describing a situation of 99% bad people where you write off the 1%. You seem to be describing the inverse. That's not the same standard.

[qu4z-2]

Is there some source for these percentages or are the numbers generated purely from a sense of "I like this group" vs "I don't like that group"?

[Dylan16807]

Those numbers are not my opinion on anything in particular. It's a loose representation of how they were describing the groups. eropple said one in a few thousand were innocent, while Karunamon was describing a minority of the group as racist/terrorist.

There's a big difference between "almost all of this group is terrible, you are enabling them and should be painted with the same brush" and "a tiny fraction of this group is terrible, you are enabling them and should be painted with the same brush".

It's a fully general statement, not about particular groups.

[Karunamon]

Not at all. But I'm afraid that's not a great conversation to have here.