Guys, at this rate I don’t think the revolution’s going to happen anytime soon.
No. The most important thing is to gain virtue points by pointing out other people doing something wrong.
Ah, of course. Always place fighting other leftists before fighting capitalism!
They suck because nobody is left enough for anyone else, this past year the left splintered and if you so much as lean a little bit left or right of another leftist, you’re a fascist and they don’t want your support.
Meanwhile the right is unified, so no wonder the left is getting its ass handed to them.
Well said.
I need someone to explain to me why I should be guilted into staying on Facebook, Twitter, etc.
By this logic I should be on truth social trying to make it “a better place.” This is fucking stupid. The sites are built on rage bait, The algorithms want to keep you angry and fighting with people online. You are fighting against massive companies who have weaponized your data against you for the purpose of making sure you hang around. The only correct decision is to leave.
We need to build our own spaces and defend them.
Yeah, there’s nothing wrong with leaving. I don’t think social media is productive in reality. You’d get a lot more done doing any level of political action in real life.
I am honestly a bit impressed by how you managed to read all this into OP’s pic. Literally nothing there is about using Facebook, being guilted(???) into using it, nothing suggests that leftists shouldn’t build their own spaces. Are you really responding to the pic or to something else?
I actually did intend to respond to a specific comment yes
Well then… Your comment showed up first when I opened the comments, and without any other context it baffled me.
No the idea is the Left has a long history of infighting over which cause is most worthy or which step in the direction of progress to make to the detriment of making overall progress or actually working against the Right.
Letting “perfect be the enemy of good”.
I understood the post, I meant to respond to another comment
People who seek first to run away to greener pastures rather than try and maintain their own are the true scourges of society.
re: online spaces I fundamentally disagree.
This so fucking much
Freedom is a humanist value. Curtailing freedom to do wrong is of course acceptable. Something most people here won’t like is that the best gender/sexuality is hetero-CIS. That doesn’t make the freedom not to be forced into the best humanist production of 20+ births per lifetime to not be a valid freedom. A feminist/queer supremacy can define wrongs as hiring practices, or not believing their preferred side in any accusation.
Autocracy, oppression, warmongering is not a left/right exclusivity. Warmongering against those less liberal than “us” is common. All of these are huge wrongs, not the slightestly cured by “leftism”. Freedom has to be more important that good, because there is no non-evil way of imposing “only good”, or especially, letting a ruling autocracy corrupt definition of good.
UBI is especially important as a solution to divisiveness. It is incredibly empowering to workers, and empowers both forming relationships, and empowering those unhappy into leaving relationships.
From my casual observation, leftists tend to be a lot more individualistic and tribalistic than people on the right, to the point where they would much rather join the right just to spite another left group.
I’m not sure about the right, but the amount of arguing over labels and shit is ridiculous on here. Half the time people never get past whether something is left/liberal/tankie/right/whatever and completely ignore whether an idea or policy is good on its merits.
And if they do, most of the time it devolves into whether or not it’s the most ideal in every way possible. People are content to let perfect be the enemy of good.
To be honest, if the leftist revolution promises Stalins USSR style economics and governance, then Western people are better off without it because most people in Western nations are relatively well off, so moving to that type of economic/political model will make the majority in a western nation poorer.
For example, 66% of US population are homeowners, that is they own both the land and property (if any). In this case, the humanitarian pov is that the minority should be lifted from poverty, and provided equal rights to achieve self-actualization. So housing assistance, education, health care and food assistance.
The democratic and humane way to achieve this is via high tax rates on the uber wealthy. People also deserve protections from discrimination to enable their self-actualization in a psychologically and physically safe manner. My own philosophy is that a person is born without any will to be born, so that person doesn’t necessarily owe anything to anyone else other than reasonable and mutual social contracts. People don’t have the right to be sociopaths or psychopaths, but they don’t have to be self sacrificing or altruistic.
My own pov aside, the U.S. could implement China-style market socialism and state-controlled socialism for itself and its citizens, but then it’s not going to be a haven for immigrants because such policies require cultural homogeneity. Cultural homogeneity requires strict immigration control, as seen in China, https://www.ispionline.it/en/publication/why-isnt-china-considering-immigration-against-demographic-decline-163101.
But I think maintaining immigration to democratic and economically well off nations is important for lifting the world out of poverty and illiteracy. However, all of this necessitates that nations preserve democracy. Capitalism has ruined democracy, which is why we get neoconservatism/neoliberalism, two sides of the same fail coin.
Governance models have forgotten that people formed groups, communities and nations to ensure the betterment and self-actualization of the individual, not to create productivity or workers. Currently the world acts to enable self actualization for companies or nations, which is why we end up with genocides and corporate imperialism as a default state. People deserve better than the Stalin-style leftism or the Clinton-style liberalism. I think we need some type of humanitarian libertarianism, where we can ensure free markets, individual freedoms, but also governance models which ensure social fairness and justice.
Aka national socialism.
‘Centrists’ don’t help much either because they too hold the left to a higher standard than the right and always seem to be looking for any excuse to whip out the ol’ “so much for the tolerant left” so that they can feel better about themselves when they vote for who they really wanted to vote for anyway.
People on the right can say in plain English “I want to dismantle women’s rights and put all gay people into camps” and the ‘centrist’ will be like “hmmm yes that seems like a valid political opinion”. But the moment someone on the left drops the high road shit for once and bites back, the ‘centrist’, clutching pearls is like “See? This is why I’m supporting the bigots that hate everyone, because you SWORE and that’s unacceptable!”
A large portion of “cancel culture” also was the left (and liberals) choosing the “moral high road”, because they convinced us someone’s 8+ year old mistake made them unfit for anything. This got so bad, the right started to manipulate it, even on the old internet, and nowadays there are a lot of callouts astroturfed by kiwifarms and other far-right doxing groups (some of it moved to Discord/Matrix).
You can see it plain as day in the last election’s rhetoric. Democrats insist that a simple Republican Majority is enough to end democracy nationwide. However, they also believe Republicans can trivially block any liberal initiative from the legislative minority.
“As you can clearly see, in this info graphic design I am the Chad and you are the Wojack.”
Palestine is now going to get genocided even faster, trans and gay people are going to suffer, and there’s a real chance of a country falling into actual fascism which will then cause a domino effect Rippling out into the entire world. This is your fault. You did this. You and your idiocy.
you are secretly wishing for this to be true so you can gloat because youre mad they didnt vote for Kamala (who was going to continue the genocide).
It is disgusting.
That’s not a Centrist viewpoint at all. That’s a solidly right viewpoint.
The Centrist would, however, say “look, if you’re going to make your whole vibe about tolerance, that’s cool. I love it. But my homie, that’s a slippery slope you haven’t fully negotiated yet. So when your less disciplined people start to be big picture tolerant through on-paper intolerance, don’t expect me to do the same mental gymnastics to defend it that you do with your mom at Thanksgiving. How about you solve the problem before you create it by not being sloppy and bumbling your way into an obvious trap every bully has pulled since the dawn of time?”
But hey, as a Centrist, the Left can’t discern me from someone like Bush 43 or a raging MAGA freak because anything right of far left is a legit fascist. Which is why I cant hang with you all, your labels are weird. But the Right usually wants to hang me for being a traitor, so one of y’all is far more worth dealing with occasional cringe.
I’m still always surprised when people say “slippery slope” in earnest, as though it isn’t a well-known logical fallacy to be avoided. As though, at no point along the slope, would we be able to reverse course. “This thing must necessarily lead to that thing over time!”
Okay Nostradamus.
It’s only a fallacy when there is not evidence given that each step leads to the next. A slippery slope argument is perfectly valid when evidence is provided.The fallacy is in the implicit and unexamined assumption that a must lead to b.
E.g
Taking heroin once is obviously a slippery slope to becoming a heroin addict because taking it once causes you to crave taking it again.
Here, it’s what I hoped was obvious shorthand for a subjective value set with no clear, well-defined boundaries of what is or is not defined for the practice of tolerance.
Most descriptions of tolerance are set by simply being allowed to exist, or a set of principles which are a bit nebulous in practice, like how the UN tries to define it.
Do you have a favorite courtroom-ready definition of the words “tolerance” and “intolerance” that would apply in every state equally to show anyone what they can and can’t say with perfect objective clarity? I would love to hear it.
So when people are defining the term with the absence of the opposite of the term, it means the term is ultimately being used to define itself.
But hey, as a Centrist, the Left can’t discern me from someone like Bush 43 or a raging MAGA freak because anything right of far left is a legit fascist.
:-/
How about you solve the problem before you create it by not being sloppy and bumbling your way into an obvious trap every bully has pulled since the dawn of time?
There is an argument that politics is the art of representing the aggregate interests of ordinary people on their behalf. And what a successful politician needs to succeed is a rapport with the community such that they can channel the socio-economic demands into the bureaucracy efficiently.
Unfortunately, we live in a country where seats are heavily gerrymandered, information on candidates for leadership is either highly censured or ludicrously unreliable, and singular individuals are expected to represent populations on the scale of 300k to 40M at the national level.
Socratic Rhetoric isn’t the issue here. You’re not engaging in an Ivy League debate between peers. You’re talking entirely about the ability to manipulate public opinion at a national scale. A lot of that boils down to mass deception, demagoguery, and pure tribalist politics.
There’s nothing you can say or do that won’t result in the opposition calling you a foreign infiltrator or a degenerate loser or a reactionary terrorist. You’re trying to play chess with a stampeding bull.
That’s not a Centrist viewpoint at all. That’s a solidly right viewpoint.
Well then all I can say is that there’s a fair number of right wing people that consider themselves ‘centrists’ either dishonestly or genuinely believing it. It’s actually what I was going for by putting centrist in quotations.
But something that I will never go near the centre on is human rights (whatever that looks like). For example, women should have full rights over their own bodies and not have to die in hospitals when something goes wrong because doctors don’t want to risk harming a foetus (that ends up dying along with her anyway), trans people should be allowed to exist without fear and persecution from other people that can’t mind their own damn business and everyone should be able to choose their religion or lack thereof. For me personally, these are the kinds of things that are more important than the price of eggs. And anyone that ignores those issues because of the price of eggs, does in fact look pretty similar to a MAGA to me.
As far as the slippery slope goes, I believe in no tolerance for the intolerant. Once you’ve shown that you just will not give other people the respect that you personally want, you don’t deserve it.
Look, I can’t help that you have limited real life experience, but the middle is crowded with people of a wide variety of political beliefs. For some, like me, I’m more center-left, supporting things like obvious human rights issues, but I won’t go all in on some of the more outlandish financial policies. And I simply will not give machine politics a moment of my life. I’ve seen it fail miserably too many times to think it can work just because one side does it.
But so when your retort to someone not exactly like you is “you don’t deserve respect until you’re someone exactly like me and think only how I think,” then your genuine intolerance is out there on display, and yet you aren’t self aware enough to realize you’ve just said it.
It’s disappointing that you jumped into that within A single comment. Seriously?
From the condescending opening line to the blatant straw man, it almost sounds like you’re replying to the wrong comment.
then your genuine intolerance is out there on display
Did you really just “so much for the tolerant left” me? Hilarious. Thanks for the laugh, considering where this conversation started. I’ll put it to you this way seeing as the concept seems so difficult for you to understand. If you go around condemning gay people to burning for eternity and telling women things like “your body, my choice” then I am not going to respect you because you clearly have no respect for anyone else.
And just to clear things up in case this is the reason that you’re taking it so personally, when I say “you”, I am not pointing a finger at you, I am using it in a general sense, talking about the people that do these things.
You arrived here telling me that my first comment was actually about right wingers while calling yourself a centrist, but you’ve already started clutching your pearls just because I don’t want to ever meet in the middle with hateful bigots and tried to shame me into changing my position by pulling “iNTolERant LEft” schtick. So I dunno.
I’m asking you if you understand if what you in particular are saying is, by it’s nature, a contradiction. You were never tolerant from the start, and never really pretended to be. You just think you have labels that magically confer this value on you without having to do the work.
You don’t represent the Left as a whole. But you’re picking up a lot of cues with Left-leanimg terminology that create a dogmatic point of view, regardless of the left/right side of things.
Friendo, I’m happy to hear your thoughts on this, as it adds to my understanding of a diverse range of points of view. Tell me more.
Your logic is bullshit, you are a “clever” one. You know that quote about antisemetism and valuing the meaning of words? That’s about you. Logical fallacy and dissociation are all you have to offer the conversation. You wouldn’t discern good faith if it was hanging from your fucking nuts.
What specifically is bullshit?
What is the logical fallacy?
Without actual details, it’s hard to see this as anything more than just a lazy personal attack.
They talk big words and say nothing. It’s an argument method where they attempt to look good/smart and goad other people into looking angry. In this particular case, they want you to reply angrily and say “Look how intolerant they are to me, and I was just pointing out how intolerant they really were!”
Except in crisis, a society benefits when everyone does nothing renegade.
The problem is we’re in crisis, largely due to a lack of information about the scope and breadth of that crisis.
The scope(of ice ream) and the bread of that crisis.
I just hope we can switch to renewables and stop facho putin, everything on top will be the cherry on the cake IMO.
Lmao i love this planet.
It’s how we’re conditioned to behave by society from birth. Break the rules and you get punished.
It’s easy to convince people to do wrong if you convince them there is no right to be done.
That’s why Tankies are so hard to tell us both sides bad.
Right… Except this is true for all online communities. People talk a lot of shit and complain a lot. Cope with it or log off.
Or blame it on the left, lol, whatever makes you happy.
Yeah why should I be guilted into staying on Facebook?
I am left and this is so fucking true though. So many pussy-ass towel wringing gutless cowards just want to pick bones out of tofu than actually act to make a meaningful difference because they are frozen with indecision over acadmic moral quandries
It’s interesting how your comment undercuts the message that it’s trying to express. You got the vocabulary wrong. It was a good try though.
I wish we could all just agree on a few basics and do it. Like, can we support unions and do mutual aid? Yeah, it’s not nearly enough to fix all our problems, but it’s a start. Maybe it will help bring about anarcho syndicalist trotskyist solarpunk feminism, and maybe it won’t, but it’s a start.
I haven’t figured out how to channel it into convincing others, yet (though I haven’t done a lot of activism for, like, going on a decade now), but I have been having the thought, for the last 4 years, that focusing on tangible goals could really help us.
Just seeing the Republicans turn half a century of steadfast obsession into actually overturning Roe has me thinking we need material results fast.
Because, if the one constant for our side since the 60s has been anything, it’s been a slow erosion at our ability to even effect change.
I feel like even the need for lockstep consensus to work together wouldn’t be so direly needed if we had rank-choice voting and a dismantling of the two party system.
To use your union example, more unions mean a slow of concentration of wealth which means less influence for the wealthy upon our society including more stability so there’s less desperation to vote for a Hail Mary solution like thinking Trump ever gave a single care about the price of eggs.
Just…really concentrating on tangible goals and carving out progress on them.
Of course, we’d need your aforementioned agreement, for that…
Bones out of tofu is a great expression.
Its a Chinese idiom that works very well
A lot of online leftists aren’t doing anything because they don’t know how to do something (or are scared, e.g. of losing their job or of getting brutalized by the police). If you aren’t doing anything in The Real World™ there are only so many things left to do, and the internet is genuinely terrible about people who make mistakes or change their opinion.
