Most CHUDs didn’t go to underfunded intercity schools with moldy textbooks. They went to well funded suburban middle class schools which, yeah are still US public schools, but still provide better educational opportunities than what most people in the world have.

CHUD aren’t fascists because their social studies teacher was underpaid, they’re fascists because fascism speaks to them and their values. They are fascists at the end of the day because they like being fascists.

And further more, unless you embrace full hard determinism, you have to view these people as culpable to some extend for the awful politics they support. Yeah, none are immune to propaganda, we are shaped by are culture yadda yadda. But I have to think humans have some capacity of will to rise above their social conditioning, if they’re willing didn’t society would never evolve or change for the better.

  • JoeByeThen [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    7·
    13 days ago

    Hexbear is a land of contrasts. 🤷

    Agency, however, is not the same thing as Free Will. Agency merely means that the mechanisms that determine “a choice” occurs inside a person, it doesn’t mean they’re exerting any sort conscious control over said “choice.”

    And if you are gonna argue for Free Will, I’m disengage at this point.

    • BobDole [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
      8·
      13 days ago

      Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past. The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.

      It’s, frankly, anti-Marxist thinking. The argument you are arguing against reminds me of Calvinism at its core, where people are born good or bad (fascist or anti-) and nothing they are exposed to will change their destiny of not getting into heaven (or achieving liberation in our case)

      • purpleworm [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
        8·
        13 days ago

        The infamous unconditional election doctrine of Calvinism is that it doesn’t actually matter if you’re good or bad, God just chooses to save people independent of any sort of human merit because no human action can one-sidedly change what the Sovereign chooses, and none of us are “worthy” anyway. We’re all “totally depraved” sinners and the ones who escape perdition escape it due to divine mercy, not because we deserve to, or so Calvin said.

        Basically, Calvinism is even more misanthropic than people give it credit for.

        I agree that his point is anti-Marxist though, because we plainly do have conscious control. People argue about free will in such silly ways. To me it’s the second least-serious of the traditional big arguments in philosophy after moral realism.

        • BobDole [none/use name]@hexbear.netEnglish
          5·
          12 days ago

          I appreciate the refresher on Calvinism. I haven’t really thought seriously about it in well over a decade, as I’ve cut out all the conservative Christians in my life