Is taking drugs immoral?

[luka]

I'm not saying you are thick in this instance

 

[luka]

I'm saying you did something we all do all the time that if looked at up close is actually very complex and strange

 

[luka]

I do often tell you are thick and that is probably not very nice of me. And I'm sorry for being unpleasant, but in this case that's not what I'm doing

 

[WashYourHands]

Drugs mmmkay

 

[sufi]

It's been funny to see drugs suddenly become the issue of the day seemingly out of nowhere. We've got the one - two of Boris threatening to take away addicts' passports whilst parliament comes under scrutiny for rampant drug use and one former MP's alleged to have had his dealer on his expenses account...

slovenly bastard

better image has a sprinkle of white powder

 

[WashYourHands]

The nemesis of sense

 

[shakahislop]

I do love these old threads. It's almost like everyone just trying out opinions that they've hardly had to think about. Whereas by this point in 2021, everyone on the internet has read all the counterarguments to what they're saying. You have to have a pretty sophisticated viewpoint to survive putting it online nowadays, with loads of caveats and all that. It's pretty interesting.

 

[luka]

That's what's I was saying about offline friends who have not gone through this process they come across like unevolved creatures from the primordial swamp

 

[luka]

What you think you can take as given you can't

 

[luka]

They've been shut out of a conversation that has been going on for like the last 20 years

 

[IdleRich]

One of the classic arguments is about whether there are new ideas to be had in music (or, I guess, art in general) or if we simply have to be content with a reshuffling of the pack of ideas that already exist... and now we have the situation where the question is "are there any truly new arguments to be made about whether there can be any truly new music or is only recombining old ideas possible - or can we only reshuffle the old arguments about whether new music is possible or only a reshuffling of old music?".

Does that make sense? Even if it doesn't you will all know exactly what I wanted it to mean.

 

[luka]

I do find this era of dissensus radically disgusting, clogged pores, blackheads

 

[luka]

Disgusting people with their disgusting arguments, sending their disgusting arguments into battle like its robot wars

 

[shakahislop]

I don't know which story broke first and the former may simply be an attempt to combat the latter, but they really do seem to be out of ideas if they're shouting about resurrecting the war on drugs.

It may also be an attempt to distract from the whole Christmas party thing, which a few notable journalists are also rumoured to have attended.

It's hard to know exactly what they think they're trying to do. There's not really a way to know most of the time unless you're actually one of the people involved in figuring out the political communications strategy of the government, I don't think any of those people are on dissensus, I mean I think they'd benefit from it but they're probably not.

So obviously I don't know exactly how they're doing it. And weirdly I've never seen a book or anything which describes what political parties do at this kind of tactical level. I would imagine though that at some level they do use social science stuff, by which I mean interviews and focus groups, and other kinds of research based on going to chat to people, to come up with the idea that they can achieve something by raising an issue like middle-class drug users.

At a guess with this one, they are either aware that it plays well with the small and elderly demographic that they are honing in on to hold onto their seats in the next election (which is information you can get by doing the aforementioned chatting), or they think that it will provoke a load of people and organizations to need to say in the media that they are actually in support of people taking drugs, in support of legalization, and so on. The idea being that it makes people that the conservatives want to vote for them notice that there is a big difference in opinion between themselves and these the people who support taking drugs etc.

this is a surprisingly long post for something that i don't give a shit about. but I am pretty interested in the general communications tactics, and also quite surprised that there isn't much public awareness of these tactics. there's not even much of a vocabulary among fancy people like us is there? 'dead cat'. that's the only one isn't it, and that's quite recent.

 

[version]

It might be that they haven't really talked about drugs at all since Boris won the leadership, so it's something they can direct people's attention to without having to worry about already having made loads of outlandish promises that can be thrown back at them, like with Brexit or COVID or immigration.

 

[IdleRich]

I do find this era of dissensus radically disgusting, clogged pores, blackheads

This era now or this era then?

 

[luka]

Then. The bad old days.

 

[IdleRich]

It's hard to know exactly what they think they're trying to do. There's not really a way to know most of the time unless you're actually one of the people involved in figuring out the political communications strategy of the government, I don't think any of those people are on dissensus, I mean I think they'd benefit from it but they're probably not.

Pointless digresssion but is it "hone in" or "home in"? I always find myself wanting to say hone but then I think that that doesn't make sense, whereas homing in like a homing missile does... and yet my instinct is somehow always towards honing, and it seems I'm not alone, why is this?

this is a surprisingly long post for something that i don't give a shit about. but I am pretty interested in the general communications tactics, and also quite surprised that there isn't much public awareness of these tactics. there's not even much of a vocabulary among fancy people like us is there? 'dead cat'. that's the only one isn't it, and that's quite recent.

You're right, I'm really tired of hearing people say "dead cat" and "gaslighting" which have both gone from being relatively rarely used to being catch all expressions for virtually anything the government does, to the extent that they both seem to have lost any particular meaning they once had.

 

[IdleRich]

Then. The bad old days.

Phew.

 

[luka]

This was clever I thought

they think that it will provoke a load of people and organizations to need to say in the media that they are actually in support of people taking drugs, in support of legalization, and so on. The idea being that it makes people that the conservatives want to vote for them notice that there is a big difference in opinion between themselves and these the people who support taking drugs etc.

He's not just a safe pair of hands