Is fascism worse than capitalism?

I'll cop to editing a lot. It's usually me rewriting my posts to avoid coming off as dickish.

Well, since you asked: Active is one part and proposing barriers against running being the source of the disparity is another. "Some" is leading too but that's a bit different. It's probably better to let Lisna speak to this but I think that you inaccurately reframed what he saw as an aspect of the party that he liked as the defining aspect of the party.

I can see your point. It is not my intention to 'lead the witness' so to speak. I recognize that my initial statement made it sound like Lisna was suggesting that the racial heterogeneity of the Dem party is its defining appeal for him, which is not the case.

What do you think would be a fairer way to frame the broader question at hand?

"What is the cause of the racial disparity between the Republican party and the Democratic party?"

I guess I'm not totally sure of what your broader question is. If you want to go really broad, maybe "How well do our leaders reflect or represent the populace?"? That removes the false dilemma of R v D at least.

Is capitalism a form of fascism?

I like the question in principle and I think that would lead to an interesting though quite tangential discussion - but I think that particular question is too broad and nebulous for our purposes. To have any kind of meaningfull discourse with this question, it would beg further questions like:

"Our" - who is the identifying party implied? America? The west? The world? I suppose identifying this would reasonably define "populace"

"leaders" - what leaders? Political leaders? Spiritual leaders? Intellectual leaders?

"reflect or represent" - reflect or represent how? the interests of the populace? the ethnic makeup of the public?

"How well" - how do we quantify this?

Does R v. D necessarily have to be a false dilemma?

What do you think?

No, but it is.

What do I think about what? What a better general question might be?

What do you mean by "it is"? You mean the way I used it is a false dilemma? I don't quite understand how. If we're comparing the two major political parties in the US and we're noting their differences, if I asked what would be the causality for racial disparity between two said parties, how is that a false dilemma? Should I bring the Greens and the Libertarians into the discussion as well? Perhaps I'm simply misunderstanding you.

How would you answer the questions you asked?

It was sloppily used tbh, but I meant that the republican versus democrat comparisons are a false dilemma which is something to be avoided. Maybe thinking about it like this will help: you ask people if they want an Xbox, their choices are yes and no, but if you ask people if they want an Xbox or a Playstation, the focus shifts from the value of a console to which one is better or worse. It's meant to obscure.

I also still don't really know what your broader question is.

As much as I appreciate this exercise in socratic dialogue, the questions I asked were simply there to illustrate that the question, as you proposed it, was too broad to be practically useful here.


I haven't brushed up on my knowledge of logical fallacies lately, but I thought I had a decent understanding of what a false dilemma was, I just wasn't sure exactly how you were applying it to my question - and perhaps I'm still not. If I'm to ask,

"What is the cause of the racial disparity between the Republican party and the Democratic party?",

I'm not presenting any kind of dilemma, false or not - it's not a "this or that" kind of thing, nor am I trying to obscure anything. I'm simply asking for causality of an effect that we see in reality. Right?


I don't know if I could distill it any further than:

"What is the cause of the racial disparity between the Republican party and the Democratic party?"

I expect the answers to this question to be generally similar - something along the lines of: "Democrats have better served the interests of black and hispanic voters" or "Many people in these disparate racial groups are poor/lower-class and Democrats have better served the interests of the poor" - as elph said, it's not exactly a tough question to answer, but I thought that perhaps it could be a springboard into further, more interesting discussions, similar to what you proposed with your question, i.e. "How well have these leaders actually represented their voters - and how would we quantify that?"

Perhaps you conduct your discusssions with your interlocutors differently, but I somewhat prefer to start at ground zero - and carry on discussions from there (generally - when I'm not feeling cynical or sarcastic, that is).