Laci Green is embarrassing, and it’s kind of sad. I get wanting to have dialogue with people, I’ve done it from both liberal and conservative perspectives, and it has tremendous value.
HOWEVER, you can’t have a dialogue that changes anyone’s mind if one party goes in believing the other is a lesser person in some way. Kindness will not function to convince someone they are wrong about what causes them to antagonize other people, especially if they never meet the people they’re antagonizing.
And in this case, these people aren’t antagonizing, they’re attacking, threatening, and dehumanizing other people. Giving someone a platform to say they think progressive tax is bad policy is engaging in a dialogue. Giving someone a platform to say that poor people are leeches on society and deserve to suffer under a flat tax is helping them to spread vitriol without ever confronting them or their toxic ideas.
If an idea is directly opposed to someone’s basic humanity, it’s a bad idea. If you help someone spread such a bad idea, you bear responsibility commensurate with the harm you help cause.
I miss the Laci Green who educated people about the basic humanity of others. When does she come back?
hi! I don't know/follow you but I'm scrolling through the Laci Green tag rn bc I've been thinking a lot about this lately.
I def agree with you that we HAVE to draw the line on subjective views of reality/truth when it comes to human rights. an “opinion” can be harmful in very real ways to very real people, and we have every right to feel indignant when it seems like a prominent online presence (Laci) is using her popularity to defend people’s rights to have those opinions -- like, yes, they are legally ALLOWED to have those opinions, first amendment and all, but that’s not the point here, the point is fighting for basic human rights!!!! -- but I have to say, I genuinely don’t believe that’s what Laci is doing here. hear me out:
to us, it’s very clear that we have the moral high ground, which makes it so tiring to converse with people who have bad ideas, like you said. the Internet is a wonderful thing but also, on some level, I believe it’s contributed to this huge rift between two political groups that all of a sudden have NO idea how to converse meaningfully with each other. we always expect the other to use hateful speech with us. but like.... we HAVE to somehow engage with the other side to make any sort of difference, ya know? and the rhetoric used by extremists on both sides (while one may be morally righteous at its core) just further polarizes these issues, undeniably. just look at the comments on Laci’s most recent vid! the hypocrisy of the “antis” just ASTOUNDS me . . . but until we talk to them on a different platform, on a different level, they’re never gonna even have the chance to reconsider their beliefs. there’s some huge misunderstanding happening somewhere, and we should investigate that & figure out where it comes from!
we’ll have to wait and see, but it’s my hope that Laci is trying to show us an example of what that meaningful conversation might look like. and I think that is SUCH important work that not many people have the ability/guts to do. if I remember correctly, Laci prefaced this whole thing by saying that no one fighting for social justice is required to engage bigots in conversation -- but she can, due to her online presence, and she IS. I’m really excited to see what happens. I don’t know if it will make a difference, but I hope it is a step in the right direction.
(disclaimer I’m not trying to defend Laci on any problematic views that she might have I’m just playing devil’s advocate about this whole debate thing. also, sorry for the novel on ur post! <3)










