Another go-round with you makes my day, Ethan! I should have you over for Christmas dinner sometime, we would be a riot for the family together :-D

I would like to point out some things about Dissident to others here at GC. Even if you are pro-legalization, his argument for it requires swallowing an awful lot of deluded, outrageous thinking.

Like, f'r instance:

1. Respecting freedom of choice.

2. Respecting free access to objective scientific information and support for younger people to guide them towards making the best decisions for themselves.

3. Promoting the entire community looking after younger people instead of the often secluded, insular nuclear family unit.

4. That democracy serves us better than draconian prohibition.

5. That younger people should be treated as full human beings who are capable of making competent decisions if given access to information, support, and objective education.

6. That the world as run by adults alone is not a good one based on competent policies that prove an adult voice alone will guarantee good decisions.

7. That it's possible for people of all ages to work together to create a better world order, and that the best we can possibly do is not a simply tweaked version of today's neoliberal world order.

Yup, deluded and outrageous! Your words for "not compatible with mainstream values that centrists like me espouse."

There are better, simpler arguments in favor,

Translation: As simple as mere variations of the current system of authority.

though naturally I think they are also inadequate.

And the solution is more of the same and hope it turns out better the next 50 times we try variations of the same thing? Just as long as we tweak it just a bit here and there, right?

First, note how he describes (most recently here: https://www.annabelleigh.net/messages/726138.htm) in great detail what I know, what I think, and why I believe and act the way I do. It's profoundly disrespectful and arrogant.

Based on a lot of very empirical evidence after years of our charming exchanges. "Disrespectful" like your frequent reduction to throwing ad hominems at me after we go back and forth for a long thread, and I try to be polite but finally frustrate you too much to maintain your own civility because I challenge your points? "Arrogant" as in a willingness to call it like I see it after having one too many exchanges with you over the years, with plenty of time to analyze and mentally digest your rhetoric and compare it to historical and contemporary political rhetoric and tactics?

One might think these posts aimed directly at discrediting me are suggesting I make you very nervous, Ethan. Too many lurkers who are on the fence about the issues may be swayed. They may not think my arguments are that "outrageous" or "delusional" despite you're insistence that they so obviously are. And when you're not singling me out, you spend 98% of your time here attacking the pro-choice and youth liberationist stances in general. Clearly, you feel your world order is threatened. And clearly, our mere presence in a few cyber-locales mean we are not marginalized enough for your tastes.

The frustration is obviously really grating on you. Hence, I feel sorry for you, if that bit of sympathy is any help.

I don't think most of us would put up with that from a psychotherapist we'd been seeing for ten years.

Certainly not if that psychotherapist was almost always telling you things you didn't want to hear because they felt you needed to hear them. And certainly not if you were closed to what they were trying to tell you long before the day you first walked into their office.

What he has said about me is in all important respects dead wrong.

Provide evidence to the contrary one of these days, and maybe those who are not part of your "choir" will start believing you. In the meantime, I think it's safe to stand by what I say.

More important, what he says about the world is dead wrong.

Yes, we get it, Ethan. You have a very cynical view of humanity, and you support power and authority, which you also believe is required to keep people that do not support that notion under control. You're a very good centrist, as I have said before. I thank you for continuing to prove me right by making such statements.

Let's make his world view clear. He believes our society is rotten to the core.

Yup. I think we have many, many good people in the world, but the system we live under brings out the worst in them. And a world order that cares more about power than freedom and equality is indeed rotten to the core, and is not a "necessary evil." We can do better, and I do not care about "disrespecting" the powers that be by saying that we can.

The nuclear family is horrible.

I think it's pretty oppressive, yes, considering it's insular and current undemcoratic nature, considering how power is known to corrupt those who have it, and considering it's well known that the greatest degree of virtually every sort of harm inflicted upon dependent kids--physical, emotional, & sexual abuse; murder; neglect; bullying--occurs within its walls. The fact that you ignore this and promote it in its continued form makes it quite clear where your agenda really is: supporting the continuation of our current institutions more or less as they are, consequences be damned. If you are so enamored of the nuclear family unit remaining intact, then why not propose a more democratic version of it? That I can roll with. But you will not agree with any variation that dispenses with the corrupting influence of adult power and authority.

The capitalist masters are horrible.

Um, considering all the massive amounts of evidence to back that up...yes. I say that with no shame whatsoever. I will note that you mentioned "masters" with a hint of reverence and defensiveness against my aspersions of them, which is yet more evidence that you are pro-authority more than anything else. In addition to your seeming insistence that our present day institutions are somehow inherently worthy of respect and preservation. Just like all centrists I have engaged with all over the political sphere. Not everyone here is anti-capitalist like I am, and those who are not have severe disagreements with me on that point, but most of us here tend to be pro-civil liberties over that of pro-authority, and this is what mainly unites the pro-choicers against you and your ilk. Not to mention the youth liberationists in general.

Adults are a class that rules over children and seeks to keep children oppressed.

Um, Ethan, do they not insist on making virtually all decisions for children and young adolescents? Do they not fully control the law-making apparatus, the mandatory schooling system, the nuclear family households, etc.? Do you not argue they should control the sexual expression of kids, and decide for them whether it's important or not? Provide serious evidence against me if you want to be taken serious when you claim my own assertions are "deluded" and that I got you totally wrong.

He favors a socialist state.

Actually, he favors no state at all if you read him clearly, which you haven't by choice. But that's neither here nor there. As long as the state and capitalism continue to exist (whether it's forever or not), then I favor a state that lacks the power to control our personal lives and respects civil liberties and free access to information over that of authority and control. And on that matter, the Libertarians in our community are mostly in accord with me. It's the centrist liberals like you who are not.

As I recall his complaint with the USSR was that they just didn't do it right.

Nope, wrong. My complaint was and is that the USSR and similar state-controlled societies supported nothing remotely like what I support. But as a centrist, of course you will read me wrong and misrepresent me. It's what your ilk does in a general sense in their attempts to discredit others by using such dirty pool tactics. And yet, you accuse me and others on the pro-choice side of being disrespectful. You are getting so desperate to grasp at every available straw to discredit me that you are actually being funny!

He has a faith that human nature is 100% good if only freed of the shackles of our system.

Not 100% good or perfect, but most certainly far better than we are now. Yet, you claim you are not cynical! Cynicism and mistrust of your fellow humanity is the crux of how you justify the authoritarian and draconian policies and societal structures that you support as your actual main agenda. Even though these structures bring out the worst in us, thus creating a perpetual self-fulfilling prophecy that you feed on while trying to convince us it's more or less the best we can accomplish. Which means, the best you want us to accomplish, as you see yourself as a beneficiary of the power structure as it exists. Your contempt for democracy is matched only by your contempt for humanity in general, and us in particular.

There are millions of people in the West who are better read and more profound thinkers than either of us, and somehow it's only the tiniest minority that would buy into his analysis -- which he has the gall to say is "obvious"!

Greater intelligence and being better read does not necessarily lead to greater enlightenment or understanding. Especially not if they feel they have a vested interest in the power structures that exist, be it emotional, financial, or cultural. And there are many great learned thinkers who come to similar conclusions to myself, but you conveniently ignore their work.

Lots of them would like society to change profoundly, but in a variety of different ways.

Some in ways that are completely draconian. Others in ways that are but superficial changes on the system that now exists, which ultimately amounts to no fundamental change at all. I'll stick by a system that promotes the greatest civil liberties, not one that promotes the highest degree of "security" at the expense of those liberties.

Radical green, radical pacifist, and radical anarcho-syndicalist come to mind. Some very smart people are passionate devotees of some religion or other.

The smartest and most erudite people can also be among the most ignorant if they allow their emotions to dictate where their loyalties lead. I think we shall let history ultimately decide which of these thinkers were right. In the meantime, we will just have to take the sides of those we feel will be proven right over the long haul, which is precisely what we're doing here now.

Even a heavily regulated and restructured capitalism would represent some huge changes from the way we live now, and many would favor that.

Which I am not against, as I believe it would be an improvement over what we have now, but I would not support it as an ultimate goal. The Libertarians here would disagree, as they feel a heavily or completely unregulated capitalist system is the way to accomplish the greatest freedoms. However, in either case, we would be left without a state that has the power to control our personal lives in the ways you want it to. On this, socialists, social democrats, and Libertarians are in basic accord. None of these three options are what centrists tend to support for that reason.