[grahameb]

cleric here, so excuse me for getting theological: but there should be (and at times truly has been, even if flawed) a shared understanding of the dignity and worth of every person. if we have that, then when one party or another is in power, they know that they are expected to care for minorities and for the stranger, and for the 'other side'.

we should be willing to vote for that.

that seems to be breaking down, throughout the western world.

we should never denigrate or infringe upon the personhood of anyone. we should take the higher road. and I'm not arguing that the oppressed should accept their oppression: I'm arguing that the oppressors should listen to the oppressed, and change.

I live in Australia – our constitution is a strange mashup of the UK model (which is certainly the primary influence), and things gleaned from the US. Something I observe is that we're more willing to admit the possibility of non-partisan spaces. For example, rather than electoral commissions being bipartisan, they're non-partisan, with partisan input. It is a serious matter if an official of such an organisation is found to have publicly stated political views. We have some people who make it their profession to be boring, and to simply uphold the precepts of society: including the rights of minorities. That's a serious sacrifice, made routinely by judges and senior public servants.

I find myself quite terrified that this is being eroded. I don't know how we turn it around: but I certainly speak up for the dignity of all through my ministry. We all ought to speak up.

[Brigand]

My impression is that a focus on dignity and worth of every person has lead to a complete fixation on rights and wants of minorities and underprivileged groups.

What is missing from this point of view are individual responsibility and willingness to contribute. From what I see online some people a fed up with this approach and this has caused the current backlash.

Perhaps dignity needs to be complemented by responsibility and we all ought to keep both in mind?

[zaneyard]

I disagree with this thought. I think it's really easy for people to react to things being done for other people (who may have it better or worse off than you) with a sense of abandonment. The reality of the situation is that some people do need more help than others, and a lack of empathy prevents us from seeing that. The idea that receiving help means that person has "given up" their responsibility to society is harmful to society itself in my opinion.

[throwaway5752]

"has lead to a complete fixation on rights and wants of minorities and underprivileged groups."

While this may be a feeling based on what some choose to read or listen to, numbers don't back this up as reality. There are many fact-based cases I could make, but I'm going to just focus on top CEOs - https://www.researchgate.net/figure/White-male-CEOs-and-New-... indicates 85.8% of Fortune 500 CEO are white males, even though they are only ~38% of the population.

Adding back in white females, Fortune 500 CEOs are 92.6% white, even though they are 75.3% of the population (https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045224)

Flipping it for effect, only 5% of top CEOs are non-white even though those groups are 25% of the country.

One frustration that may of us disagree with the point you've articulated is that this perception is innacurate and largely a result of people self-selecting into "red-pill" type media ecosystems that are manipulative and spend greatly disproportionate amounts of time generating outrage and the perception of a crisis.

[dfxm12]

What is missing from this point of view are individual responsibility and willingness to contribute.

This sentiment you're speaking of is basically a racket created by conservative politicians and the media, designed to, as dang would say, "activate" the parts of the voter base. Since Reagan and probably before, they have hammered home catch phrases about "welfare queens" or whatever the buzzword of the day is with no substance behind it. It works for the base because they don't really know or make an attempt to know anyone being "othered" by the media or the politicians in this way.

In reality, it's people like Musk who get tons of tax payer money, privatize all of their gains and then contribute nothing back. They will then have the temerity to cry foul whenever someone tries to make them pay income tax, and they get their way, too, not because they work hard, but because they already have the capital.

[throwforfeds]

Maybe a decade or so ago I saw some right wing news posts on Facebook that were talking about welfare recipients in Maine and how much it was costing the state. All the photos used in the article were of black people. This is in a state where 94% of the population is white and was right at the beginning of the influx of African asylum seekers, so the population of black people was still something like only 1.5%.

Clearly the article had a racist agenda and the comments were filled with people that had never heard of empathy. It didn't occur to anyone that a huge percentage of people in Maine receiving these benefits looked exactly like them. That was the day I deleted Facebook.

[tom_]

Mx Goat added a note about their real-world qualifications for pitching in on this sort of question, presumably because their user name didn't really make it obvious why we might wish to listen to their thoughts on how a society should function for the benefit of all.

[angrygoat]

hah – yes, it's an old username, it's not possible to change username on here or I would :)

[metadat]

You can email [e-mail] the request and they may grant it, there are plenty of precedents.

[angrygoat]

oh, thanks :)