[tmuir]

This makes me think about what someone said in regards to the Black Lives Matter movement, and its relative success. Essentially, if you're waiting for Jesus, or even just Martin Luther King, Jr, to come back, and be the pure, untainted perfect black person to martyr themselves because you think every other victims imperfections are cause of your struggle, then someone else has convinced you to rely on your predjuidices, instead of thinking clearly without emotion.

[ggg9990]

MLK was a massively flawed individual with the philandering and plagiarism and everything... he is an example of how leaders DON’T need to be perfect.

[tmuir]

But those are controversial ideas that are not part of the reverence around Dr King. The conventional wisdom about Dr King is that he inspired an entire movement to universally take the high road and protest with nonviolence. In this sense, he is seen as pure.

The same holds true for Jesus Christ. It's just as likely he was objectively a flawed person in reality, and has been lionized by his supporters.

[subpixel]

I feel quite differently. I don’t regard BLM as particilarly successful and at a realpolitik level I believe that no matter how just your cause may be, as a political entity you are only as strong as your leadership and your messaging.

[tmuir]

I don't argue that they've been particularly successful, I simply said relatively successful. I mean relative to other recent movements that have never gone anywhere at all. The very fact that you confidently use the acronym BLM, and that its expansion is a common term in the American lexicon in the last several years proves that they have been successful to the point of at least resonating with supporters of the cause.

But I would generally agree, they have generally failed to motivate others to do much of anything outside of basic tolerance or superficial support of their cause.

[JohnTClark]

I don't expect him to be perfect. The part that I don't like about him is that he feels guilty that he manipulated people and at the same time he tries to manipulate me and try to lie. Its like Snowden gives an interview about how bad the NSA is and at the same time my antivirus tells me that Snowden_malaware.exe is trying to install on my computer.