Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain’t dead. Remember, don’t downvote for disagreements.
I believe that the stance against nuclear power (specifically, nuclear fission, as opposed to radioisotope power used by spacecraft) by greens undermines the fight to stop global warming, and that many of the purported issues with nuclear power have been solved or were never really issues in the first place.
For instance: the nuclear waste produced by old-gen reactors can be used by newer generations.
Donald Trump isn’t stupid.
Yeah I’m starting to agree. At the very least, the aggregate of “Trump + his advisors” functions intelligently, which is what matters, and that’s scary.
I think of him as astoundingly stupid. But he ain’t dumb.
There’s plenty of evidence that he actually is very stupid, and that he may even have a learning disability. To be honest, once you accept the thought that he may be mildly retarded, you can’t unsee it. For example in the recent talk about rare earth minerals, it seems to me that Trump thinks rare earth is actually soil in the way he talks about it and it drives me nuts that the media doesn’t point this out:
“We’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earth and other things…They have great rare earth. And I want security of the rare earth, and they’re willing to do it."
But he makes up for it politically with great skill in appealing to people’s base emotions.
He is far from the first flim-flam snake oil man making it big and performing atrocities in America. You could even look at the founding of the country as a sort of real estate scam gone darkly awry.
Im left leaning on many social issues but pronouns was never a necessary social construct hill we needed to die on.
I think that useless fight got us the full hard swing to the right.
Especially because you shouldn’t give a fuck about how people perceive you. You should be whoever you are and not care about labels.
There can be too much political correctness at times.
Related: I believe it’s ok, given certain contexts, to speak broadly and crassly to people who expect that. It’s ultimately ineffective and therefore bad to come off as an pretenscious arrogant know-it-all, correcting everyone’s grammar and word choices and any ignorance they have. I see some students in the labor movement and wonder if they’re capable of expressing their knowledge to typical joe worker, without injecting French, German or Russian, or losing their temper at some unintentionally offensive ignorance. We’re speaking broadly to regular people, don’t alienate them with your academic knowledge.
That doesn’t mean never correct crappy things people say, you can and should, but pick your battles. A climate scientist once told me, being correct isn’t enough.
being correct isn’t enough
A very valuable lesson, and it’s very fitting who said it
It’s less ‘too much pc’ and more ‘purity politics’ imo
There’s a great post on tumblr that really fuckin’ nailed it:
“The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I’m not a trannie or a fag so I don’t care, just give 'em the medicine they need.”
“This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility.”
One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.
just a short reminder:
you can post a picture of a gun on facebook, because it is only a harmless picture of a machine that is solely built to kill people. definitely nothing that shouldn’t be shown in public
if you do post a picture if an exposed female nipple, banned, because guess what? that’s against the policy
I do feel like arguing semantics at almost all times steals some energy from the movement overall
The invention of money was a blight on our society. Abolishing it immediately is the first step to proper environmental recovery.
What the systems of getting people their food, supplies would look like, I don’t know, but having corporations hoarding wealth and polluting everything needs to stop.
Money can and should be abolished, but the best way to do so is to work towards a fully publicly owned and centrally planned economy and work of of labor vouchers, which are destroyed upon first use. Eliminate production for profit and replace it with production for use.
A few related thoughts.
- Money, capital, and profit are not the same things.
- Labor vouchers are a form of money.
- Every time you give fiat money back to the government which owns the “money printer,” that money has been in effect destroyed.
- I’m not of the opinion that money should be abolished, not even necessarily “eventually.” Maybe a time will come when it makes sense to, but I don’t have the foresight to speak meaningfully to that.
I think it’s important to understand that “money” as it exists within markets exists in a manner to be exchanged and accumulated. Labor vouchers are a type of "currency,” but as they can’t really be accumulated in the same manner money for exchange can be, may make sense in the far future.
It’s mostly a moot point because we lilely won’t make it to the level of centralization necessary for such a system in our lifetimes though, and our successors can figure out potentially an even better system.
I see the sentiment that money should be abolished here all the time, but this is the first time I’ve actually seen a proposed replacement. It’s an interesting idea.
If anyone wants do go deep into non-monetary economic systems, I haven’t read/listened-to much of their work but economists and computer scientists like Cockshott have researched planned non-money economies.
A summary: https://dessalines.github.io/essays/paul_cockshott_cyber_communism.html
It’s Marxist, so you can go to Marx for more on that, though he didn’t spend much time describing how he thought Communism would function.
Idk how we’d get rid of money, but it needs to be done. We’re literally the only species on the planet with this concept and we’re suffering for it.
Yup. We’re producing the goods, we need the goods, why the hell are we doing this with shareholders and money?
Oh right, cause human time is limited and automation isn’t good enough.
Humanity also just can’t coexist peacefully with anything. We ruin everything we touch. Our hubris will be our downfall and I take comfort in the fact that the Earth will heal after we extinct ourselves.
Humans aren’t worth it.
Out of curiosity, how do you identify politically?
Anarcho-syndicalist
I think that’s neat. I agree about trade unions.
If you don’t think humans are worth it, why not be apolitical entirely?
I can recognize a good idea even if I don’t think it’s worth it
The acab movement has caused more harm than it has salved. Furthering the ideas that there are no good cops means that nobody good will become a cop in the future, furthering the issue
What an interesting take…I assume you will be down voted into oblivion, but it is thought provoking all the same. When I was younger I thought police helped people and I probably would have considered being a police officer. Now, I can’t imagine who would want to and I immediately question anyone who would. I have to imagine this is causing the people who truly want to help people to avoid the profession.
I know a few people who are police, one being a very close friend who is now retired from being a cop. Not a single one of them is a bad person or cop. The stories I hear from them make me wonder why they would do it, and the universal answer is usually to help people. The best part is that of the six or so people I know counting my friends, they are all quitting because people treat them so badly juat for doing thier job, and they will be replaced with cops who show no compassion. I myself have many stories of cops being understanding and caring and, in turn, being very lenient. When I talk to people with the acab mentality, the police never go easy. It’s odd how just treat people how you want to be treated works.
I’m asking this in good faith, but are you/your police friends white? Historically speaking, minorities have been profiled, been more likely to be arrested, and been subject to harsher sentences than white people have. This is no small part to the reason that the ACAB sentiment runs much deeper in minority populations. And I say this as a white man with a mother and brother that work for the police.
Sure they might be good for you, their friend. They might not fell endangered by random dog and shoot it. They might even not beat their partner. But what they will do if encouter person shoplifting food? Someone having a tiny amount of drugs? Or if ordered to beat and/or arrest the protesters, like the students peacefully protesting Gaza genocide? ACAB is not a personal theory, it’s systemic. Systemically your good friends are still the armed opression arm of capitalist government and a footsoldiers in the class war against vast majority of society.
You’re under the impression that they were my friends first, which aside from one, who was s cop in another city, I was not. Ony after opening a place of business and being vandalized and had things stolen did I get to know some. The ones I did become more familiar with are definitely the kinds of police you want. They use discretion first, try hard to de escalate a situation, and the last thing they want to do is make a bad situation worse for anyone. And per your questions about how they would treat people, the ones I know would help before punish, as per your examples, they’d buy someone a meal or defuse a tough situation.
The way you describe them all as soldiers working against everyone is a tough statement to take simply because when you don’t need them, ACAB, but when you do need them, they can’t get there soon enough. Sadly, the bad cops everyone sees is all we’ll be left with once all the good ones leave because of that sentiment. Then you’ll see the “soldiers” you’re talking about.
The good ones I was talking about, the ones I know, half have retired early, because no matter how much good they try to do, reasonable they try to be the only rhe thing people see is an enemy. I don’t look forward to the day when all we are left with is the bad ones, and it’s coming sadly.
Law enforcement is one of the last careers that still offers a pension, has a union that fights for its members, and is a good source of income without going into massive college debt.
Seems like something the left would be in love with, but systemic issues have demonized the entire profession. I think an influx on left-leaning officers would be great, but like politics- people who would be good at the job stay away from it.
Teen Vogue (I know, right?): Police Unions: What to Know and Why They Don’t Belong in the Labor Movement
Police unions have always been outliers among organized labor, and there are many reasons why the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union has long refused to allow cops (and prison guards) into its organization. […] Actually, police unions themselves used to be illegal, because local governments worried about the consequences of allowing armed state agents to organize. And historically speaking, the police have been no friend to workers, whether officers were shooting at the families of coal miners during the Battle of Blair Mountain, crushing the ribs of immigrant garment workers during the Uprising of the 20,000, or teargassing working-class protesters in Minneapolis after police killed George Floyd.
Step 1: proving ACAB wrong
In capitalist states, the core mission of the police is to 1) protect the bourgeoisie’s private ownership of the means of production and to 2) discipline the proletariat, cracking heads if necessary. Historically in the US, they began as slave patrols, because slaves were private property, i.e., means of production.
The issue is structural, there are no “good cops” in the same way there are no “good pimps” or “good slave owners.”
There were some slave owners who were kind to their slaves, taught them to read, allowed them to have some free time and make a small amount of money.
That doesn’t mean that what they were doing was morally acceptable. They still were buying and selling human beings like property.
Policing, especially in the USA is rotten to the core. There are absolutely some cops who are kind people, who become police officers out of a naive belief that they can do good for society as a whole in that profession.
But those people don’t usually last long. They either leave after seeing the ugly underbelly, or they become corrupted by the system. The police will always act in the interest of the rich and powerful, or else they get fired. If they are told to break up a protests, they will always comply. If they are told to block a corporate skyscraper so that protesters cannot get into it to stage a sit-in, they will do it, even as ultra wealthy oligarchs stream safely past them to conduct horrifically corrupt dealings that hurt and kill millions of people across the world.
The cop’s job is also to go around trying to bust people for crimes. If a cop comes up to you out of the blue and starts up a conversation, 99% of the time they are fishing for information, trying to sus something out. They aren’t just trying to be friendly, they are doing their job. In the US at least, the cops are allowed to lie to you in an investigation in order to try to get you to admit guilt. They are allowed and trained to do it, to use all kinds of trickery to manipulate you into a confession, or to get Intel that helps them.
In addition, the examples people frequently cite as good things the cops do would be better done by non-cops. First aid? Suicide intervention? Disaster relief? Theft deterrence? Wellness checks? Those are all things that would be better done by non-cops if we funded and grew those kinds of organizations instead of further militarizing the police.
ACAB has never meant that all cops are evil people, it means that no matter how good of a person a cop is, they will always be empowering a corrupt and evil system.
Why don’t we see the same sentiment about paramedics, firefighters, and heck, even soldiers? Because the systems that those folks are a part of don’t have the same corrupting effect. Even soldiers are generally looked on much more favorably than cops, even though politically and socially, there is a large amount of overlap. Part of this is propaganda, but another factor is the standards soldiers are held to in the US. They are expected to carry themselves extremely well, and can be severely punished, even jailed for misconduct.
As a personal anecdote, I grew up in both worlds. My dad and several members of my family were both in the military and were cops. I was around both cultures a ton. I’ve had many bad encounters with police officers over the years, and that’s with me knowing all the classic, “always keep your hands visible and comply” stuff that my dad and his cop friends told me.
I’ve never had a single negative encounter with an on-duty soldier. They’ve always been extremely respectful and grounded. Like I said, just an anecdote, but interesting to think about. If cops could be fired or even jailed for relatively minor infractions, even have their lives destroyed like soldiers who are dishonorably discharged, ACAB would probably never have became a thing.
The phrase “we aren’t free until we’re all free” applies to animals as much as humans, and thinking otherwise is straight up bigotry. That so few extend leftist thought to the rest of the living world is a travesty, if you’ve managed to come around to leftist thinking then you’ve absolutely been capable of challenging your pre-conceived biases and this is just another step in that process.
All that said, I’m not one to judge people for not agreeing with this. It took me an exceptionally long time and the right circumstances to finally reassess my reasoning and to realise it was absurdly flawed, hypocritical and informed by propaganda.
I’m a strict leftist, that means, i believe that humans (in fact, all life) are valuable. Yes, you have to say that in these times. Lots of politicians these days seem to disagree with even that.
As a direct consequence, i advocate for UBI (universal basic income). Because the people need to live off something, and it is getting harder by the year to be successful through your own labor. (As numerous articles describe, - i won’t link them here, because that would be out of scope - hashtag “working poor”).
However, i think the borders must be closed. That affects both goods and migration. If the borders are closed, people stop competing with one another. Just a reminder: “compete” comes from Latin and basically means “fight”. People are fighing against one another, and i think that makes a society sick. If the borders close, economy slows down considerably, and people stop competing.
Supporting UBI is not really a leftist thing. It was promoted by laissez-faire economists as a way to kill the welfare state (universal services) and is still formulated as such by its prominant proponents.
Why do you believe you are leftist rather than simply a fairly mainstream liberal? Liberals have pivoted to being openly in favor of immigration crackdowns in the US over the last few years.
Do people really stop competing with one another if the borders are closed? And if so, how? In my mind, neither open nor closed borders change anything in the amount of competition there is, it just changes the groups involved.
If there’s no free trade, you don’t try to undercut the prices of your neighbor’s factory. You just produce your thing, and that’s it.
Wait, which borders are you talking about? The borders of each individuals property? So everyone should be self-sufficient, with no trade happening at all?
no i meant that in a metaphorical sense. no free trade means that there’s no “getting ahead” (because you can’t flood a foreign market with your cheap products), so people put in less effort.
Yes but which free trade are you talking about? Because if you close borders so trade only happens within one country, then there will still be competition within the country. I.e. your neighbor’s factory. That’s why I ask which borders you mean exactly… Because usually “close the border” means closing the border of the country to imports/exports of goods/humans of other countries.
Yes but i suspect that competition would be less fierce within the country, for two reasons:
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the central government can stand in and regulate that “a factory may only produce a specific amount of goods”. such regulation works better on the smaller level, because regulatory oversight is easier to achieve.
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i guess that maybe the competition could naturally be less fierce. Consider: you would not want to pick a fight with the neighbour that lives directly next door; because you still have to get along well with him. It’s easier to be in fierce competition with somebody who is on the other side of the world, because you will probably never see them again.
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What I find funny is that some days I’ll be adamant about how bad UBI would be because of the cost, and the next, I’d be the loudest voice next to yours for its good. I feel it would be super easy to implement. Basically, you’d tax every company for every self checkout machine as if each machine is a person and the salary that would be paid to the person is instead of a machine would be used to fund it. I k ow its poorly worded, but I hope people have enough sense to understand what I mean.
Yeah, there’s a lot of technicalities involved. Like, do you tax the companies directly, or rather the billionaires owning the companies?
My proposal so far is: Every person who has citizenship has to pay 3% of their total wealth off as wealth tax annually. Which makes sense because if they invest in stock, that stock likely goes up by more than 3% annually (after adjusting for inflation). So they don’t even have to lift a finger to pay off that wealth tax. (Excluding a tax-free amount of $1 million). That would fund surprisingly much. I did some preliminary math, and in germany, such a wealth tax alone would provide every person with citizenship with approximately $120 /month.
Which is just a small support. UBI doesn’t necessarily need to jump from 0 to 100%, maybe it’s easier to introduce it slowly and then increase the value.
If i may ask: what makes you against UBI on some days?
UBI sounds like keeping capitalism on life support after it attempted suicide (again).
I’d give a functional UBI system 4 generations before it’s useless much like the minimum wage.
I’d give the revolution in the US zero % chance of success, which one is better?
I’d give revolution a greater chance of success than UBI coming without equal or greater social functions taken away to compensate. Revolution is practically an inevitability, UBI is closer to a dream.
I think on the Left we have a “virtuous” cycle/feedback loop that results in increasingly outlandish positions.
Essentially, for most people there’s a serotonin feedback when people upvote, applaud, reteeet etc. People, responding to incentives like anyone else shift their online discourse to match.
Similarly, even beyond the positive feedback, on thr Left no one wants to be a white cis male contradicting the feelings, emotions or arguments of a POC or LGBTQ+ person.
The Right doesn’t really have this problem as the Far right opinions are generally understood to be reprehensible to most people so those movements have evolved to work on dog whistles etc.
It’s a structural issue but one that puts us out of touch with the mainstream (consider defund the police, transgender athletes or immigration until we were getting murdered in the polls and it was too late to do anything.)
on the Left we
Where on “the Left”?
no one wants to be a white cis male contradicting the feelings, emotions or arguments of a POC or LGBTQ+ person
Maybe liberals don’t. And I wouldn’t consider them to be on the left.
Why would you want to police emotions or feelings of others? Arguments on the other handz should be based on logic. And as long as you’re respectful, one can disagree. Your attempt at making all these different scenarios look the same, makes me question your position and honesty in this conversation
The Right doesn’t really have this problem as the Far right opinions are generally understood to be reprehensible to most people
This is just purely false and inaccurate. There are plenty of people who agree with far right talking points
Ahahaha, “As long as you’re respectful one can disagree.” And a paragraph later “hey, this guy pointed out trump would be worse for Palestineans that means he is down with genoicde!!!”
Could you prove my point much harder?
You don’t even realize you are further proving my point and you’re coming across as even more fake.
I started respectfully, just as at first, you appeared to be “just another leftist with some different opinion”. If you knew how to read, you’d have noticed that my change in tone came in the “edit” of my reply.
In reality, you’re just another liberal apologists that is fine with genocide… And I am absolutely NOT going to be respectful to Zionists once your true colore are evident.
Your “point” was moot to begin with because you’re not leftist. But you are a fake ally, ready to backstab minorities and allow genocides to happen
I have no idea what point you’re trying to make other than, I dunno, some crazy shit like everyone who disagrees with you is a Zionist or something?
But I stand by that post, if you voted for a third party, you helped trump. If you’re trying to wrap your stupidity around the plight of the Palestineans you either aren’t following the news or never really cared about them in the first place.
I get that this is probably the first humanitarian crisis you’ve seen on social media and pretended to care about but as you grow up, hopefully you’ll realize there are sometimes unfortunate restrictions around your choices. While I would have loved a better option than the Dems, the choice was them or trump. If you voted third party, you helped put an administration that is absolutely hostile to them and worse than what would’ve been the case otherwise.
Sorry if reality sucks but whining about it like a petulant child isn’t going to change it or rally others to your cause.
the anti-work movement has been a blight on communism
I feel like it has the wrong name. But it is a baby step for many toward anticapitalist ideals.
Work is good, and can be beneficial. Working a job you hate because if you don’t you’d starve is awful and should be done away with.
Do you see it as a waste of time or a distraction? I see it as a gateway drug.
I think we need to figure out how to make leftism more appealing to centrists, and particularly to the cis/straight/white/male demographic.
Leftism is unpopular by definition, especially to the privileged classes. Leftism seeks to upend the status quo, and loss aversion is a problem.
Not that efforts can’t be made.
Where in the definition of leftism is it said that leftism is unpopular?
it’s manifested in our reality; only the liberal branch of leftism is permitted (particularly in the united states) while the other branches are openly denigrated by moderates and rightists alike and persecuted by our governments and militias.
That’s hardly definitional.
How it’s possible that the political movement that aim for the benefits of the 99% is unpopular by definition?
Identity politics may be unpopular by definition, but not leftism.
Because the status quo throughout history is an extremely small number of people getting the most benefits by far and everyone else getting screwed, and everyone seeing this as normal. People are used to it, while having everyone on relatively equal footing is new and therefore scary.
Leftism is unpopular by definition
This really depends how you define “leftism”.
If you mean ‘whichever side of politics is left of the population’s center’ then sure, it can’t be a majority.
If you mean ‘whichever side of politics is left of the political center’ then that doesn’t imply it’s unpopular, and there’s direct electoral evidence of ‘left’ parties achieving a majority government.
If you mean socialism and communism, they certainly aren’t unpopular by definition. If anything, their definition makes them a mass movement of the proletariat, the vast majority of a post-industrial society.
Are you active in any socialist parties?
I would like to be, but I just can’t figure out how to get involved in my area.
I was going to follow up with a sick zinger but instead I’ll just be normal, ha.
It is important to grow the left, to turn it from like 100-1000 people in a given city into 5-10%. I can agree with that motivation, as can the vast majority of socialists. Our aim is revolution, that doesn’t happen from just a few reading groups, it has to become more.
The entire country already caters to the demo you mentioned. Everything is ready-made for them. Many orgs are dominated by them, such as the DSA. You should not write off straight white cis guys but they are consistently the hardest to reach because they are dismissive of others’ experiences with oppression and have been more shielded from capitalism’s worst in their country, but tend to feel very entitled to an opinion about it.
Centrism is the only described characteristic that is a chosen identity and it is a political tendency, if you can call it that. It’s a person with no political development whatsoever, they just vaguely cobble together an incoherent mishmash of common liberal and reactionary ideas that they can’t really defend but they call themselves an outsider as if that means something regarding someone whose political life can be summed up as, “sometimes votes”.
So what would it mean to try to boost efforts to recruit straight white cis dude centrists? Because the first things that would come to mind for me are usually called tailism by socialists and has a long track record of failure in the US in particular, where the US had a gargantuan labor movement that was entirely scuttled by liberal cooption and playing straight white cis dudes off of marginalized groups. There were entire unions that were segregated or disallowed black membership, for example. Those were the easiest to coopt into the red scare and, once they were used to out and isolate socialists, were then easily undermined and shrunk when their anticommunist government came for labor a couple decades later, having no radical core remsining and no material leverage.
That is a controversial opinion here.
(And I agree with it. I don’t know what the way is, but I hope it can be found)
I think the first thing to do is to shift sentiment toward solving the problem of how to make things appealing to centrists and the apolitical. Let’s get “I agree – but that has bad optics so let’s focus on something else first” into our lexicon. Once the left is able to be more strategic about this, then I think we’ll gain a lot more strides. I have some thoughts about what that might look like, but it’s outside the scope of this post.
When you’re coming from a position of extreme privilege and you’re either a bit stupid or lack empathy or general social awareness being treated equally with “lesser people” (like women, brown people or people from particular religious backgrounds) can seem an awful lot like you’re being discriminated against.
I think you’re missing the point a bit. Liberal/centrist values are already to treat everyone equally, but not equitably. So when leftism comes in with suggestions for change, it looks to centrists like inequality. If you listen to centrists objections to leftism, this is what they say repeatedly, so I’m inclined to believe that is how they legitimately feel. This is why I think we need slightly different messaging/branding/whatever, or to talk about these issues in a different way, so that centrists actually understand what we’re getting at. It’s also not hard to find instances of leftists who, when angry, lash out at the majority – which while relatable to me, doesn’t help make leftism look appealing.
(By “majority” I mean the average joe, not billionaires.)
Fundamentally, what Centrists want is stability, for people to get along, to find solutions that the majority on both sides would agree with. For the status-quoish state of stability.
A Centrist would be a Liberal (as its defined today, and not how it was defined in the 70’s/80’s) before they would be a Leftist. They perceive Capitalism as a stable foundation of the society.
To get a Centrist to believe in Leftist ideals you’d have to try and show that Leftism is also stable, AND describe how the transition/change to Leftism on its own would not be an unstabilizing thing. And also how Capitalism is a dead-end alley for the species ultimately, and how its ultimately hurtful to a society by encouraging fighting and competition between its members.
You’d also have to show Centrists that Rightists would understand that Leftism works. Centrists want both Leftists and Rightists to be ‘happy’ (loaded word I know, but you get the gist of what I’m trying to opine on).
No idea how to do all that, but IMO that’s what would need to be done. You’d have to get the Right on board with Leftism, and you’d have to show Centrists that moving to Leftism won’t be destabilizing to their current way of existing.
Best guess would be to appeal to common belief systems (safety, fairness, freedoms, respect) that all three pillars would have in common.
An overall generic example would be to prove to a Rightist that a hand-out to someone is not being unfair, but its just helping someone out until they get on their feet, and can’t be exploited, to try and “raise all boats” in society. And you’d have to tell some Leftists to stop trying to exploit the system, that they’re now back on their feet, and that they need to put in as much effort as everybody else does.
For Leftists/Rightists stop yelling across the divide at each other, and start talking to each other, trying to understand what is important to them, and see if both sides can meet in the middle on those things that are important to both. Centrists will be happy that the fighting has stopped, and then you’d have to be extra careful not to destroy that non-fighting in trying to move the center to the left.
Oh, and do all of this while we have freedom of speech and people purposely trying to shape the narratives towards what they just want and to F with everybody else. A.k.a., “Free Will is a Pain in the Ass”.
Thank you for coming to my 🧸-Talk.
I think an awful lot of them actually have more leftish values, but they are convinced (and there is a huge self reinforcing bubble of that mentality, between media, politicians, and voters) that only the weakest, most watered down version of that can possibly succeed, politically.
Centrists want the status quo, yes, but mostly just for themselves. This is why fascism starts with minority groups. Centrists will accept fascists “coming for the” communists/trans/migrants/etc, since it mostly isn’t effecting their status quo.
Centrists want the status quo, yes, but mostly just for themselves.
That’s not true at all. I know Centrists who care about everybody, and want everybody to be safe/happy/successful. They see it as a “floating tide raises all boats” kind of thing.
But only in a kind of theoretical sense. They think the status quo is best for everyone, but it’s really only best for them. What is a more centrist sentiment than “our system may not be perfect, but it’s the best there is”? See Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” for an eloquent condemnation of “moderates”.
But only in a kind of theoretical sense. They think the status quo is best for everyone, but it’s really only best for them.
You’ll have to elaborate/defend that statement. I think you’re just imposing your own perspective/worldview without facts in evidence.
What is a more centrist sentiment than “our system may not be perfect, but it’s the best there is”?
That would be said by Leftists about a Leftist-bias system, or Rightists about a Rightist-bias system. What you described is not just in the domain of the Centrist. There are many “systems” that groups of humans gather around, and each system may look very different from other systems.
See Dr. King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” for an eloquent condemnation of “moderates”.
I have not read this, so apologies if I get this wrong, but I will judge this sentence based on the overall message of your comment reply.
Being a moderate does not mean settling for whatever no matter what, no matter how harmful it is. Its about trying to have a consensus that most/all can live with, in how we run our society and how we act towards each other.
For example, if everybody agreed on Leftism, then should the middle of the Leftism population be condemmed (as they would now be the Centrists of Leftism)? Or Centrists of Rightism?
If human history teaches us anything, governing from the fridge/edges never works out well for everybody else.
You aren’t exactly wrong in your first two quote-responses, I will give you that. “The Left” commonly answers the second with an idea called ‘eternal revolution’. The idea being that we cannot stop improving, or become so lazy in our ways that we begin to ossify into a form over function society.
I urge you to read the letter. It will raise your consciousness a hundred times more than any conversation you’ll have on Lemmy today.
I urge you to read the letter. It will raise your consciousness a hundred times more than any conversation you’ll have on Lemmy today.
I’ll take a look.
As a person in that demographic it’s wild to me that leftism isn’t appealing… we’re supposed to just blame everything on everyone but ourselves I suppose?
The person on my left whispers about equality, and the benefits of social safety nets. The person on my right yells lies that equality means I have to give up things, and that social safety nets will be abused by people who want to steal the fruits of my labor. The person behind me (financially) says nothing, they’re too busy just trying to live. The person ahead of me points to the person behind getting food stamps and screams “how dare they take your taxes” while they quietly steal the actual fruit of my labor.
Any time leftism gets loud enough to get enough attention to appeal to anyone, rightism is already loudly complaining about the noise. If one doesn’t think about it too much, all they’ve heard is negativity about the left and positivity about the right. Call it brainwashing, gaslighting, or indoctrination, but rarely do the facts of both sides come to play. You have to work to find the truth of leftism while also working to ignore the bullshit being screamed from the right.
it will become automatically appealing to them the moment that is pays out economically for them. if they could afford more under a leftist politics, than under the current politics, people are gonna be all for it.
In theory it should have a strong monetary incentive for all but the wealthiest of cis/striaght/white/males. They just don’t realize that for some reason.
I can think of a good reason but i’m not sure whether you’re willing to buy into it.
people naturally don’t think of themselves as individuals. people think of themselves as a group/society.
People recognize that under a republican US government, they’re significantly more likely to go to mars and have prosperous offspring. while if they’re stuck on earth, a recession and decline is waiting for them. they can’t verbalize it and probably aren’t even rationally aware of it, but i guess they can feel it with their heart.
of course lots of you folks are gonna immediately chime in and say “nooo i saw a youtube video that explained that it’s impossible to live on mars”, and honestly, you should reconsider why you’re so eager to deny a topic that you’ve clearly not put in as much effort to think about than the people who actually do care about this project. and also, assuming it does work out; what will you do then? be ashamed of your wrong prediction? because if you’re not, that means you don’t stand to your prediction, and therefore the prediction is worthless. i’m not sure whether i was too direct about this and somebody perceived it as rude, but i’m tired of this feeling of being stuck. we need to think long-term again.
Is this mars thing meant to be an analogy or do you mean people literally think they will have a better life colonizing mars?
I’m confused, are you saying that most straight white men are not left… Because they all want to go to mars?
Yeah that is so out of the blue, I’m not sure what to make of it. I think most people don’t even realize SpaceX/Elon want to colonize mars.
The white nationalist movement preys on alienated young white men (more than other groups). Creating avenues for including these people in our movement means less people we have to fight.
I’m not saying everyone is able to fit into our movement, or they may require so much education that we just don’t have the resources to depropagandize them, but as a mass movement, more is generally better.
100% agree. I honestly think that in ~2015, the left’s failure to appeal to young white men caused them to turn to the alt right. I think we scared them off with things like “check your privilege” etc., and should have focused more on getting them amped about class warfare.
Agreed 100%. I’m glad we’re collectively starting to realize this. It’s a bit late, but hopefully it’ll still do good.
Well, I posted about this in this topic because I think it’s not a perspective that’s gained traction. Please help spread the good word…!
I’ve been thinking of starting some sort of group to help with that goal-- would you be interested? I’m not sure what we could do, but I want to do something, you know? I figure the best impact I can have is to convince other people that I mostly agree with to adopt this approach, which is what I envision the group could help with.
Late is better than never
I’m a straight white male that leans left, and ya, I’ve had friends (who, it’s sad to say, are hard to talk to now) who were center go right because they were welcomed with open arms by the right and shat on by the left. Before Elon went on a rant about the dude trying to rescue those trapped kids, before Joe Rogan started leaning into the propaganda for ratings, and when Bernie had a chance, we were on the same page… But since trump got involved, Bernie got shut out, and (it’s obvious now) the rich started weaponising the media against us, we have very little media that we consume that’s the same.
I left reddit, rogan and switched to Lemmy and breaking points, and they have leaned in harder to Rogan and we’re drawn down the rabbit hole of tim pool. Everytime I’ve tried to reason with them I get “what about isms”, “the left is more violent”, “the left hates everyone”, and borderline conspiracy theory non-sense. Even my own mom was pretty center left when I was growing up and now she’s bought into the non-sense because that’s the media she sees.
The right tells good tales, and a lot of people on the left are gate keeping, so… Just by fact of barrier to entry the right is going to be easier to drift towards. I hope we get our shit together.
I think the most insidious part is that the far right feeds on men’s anger and negative emotions and just keeps telling them that if they go farther right, if they become more dominant alpha male, it’ll make all their negative emotions go away. And then when it doesn’t, they just keep pushing right.
It depends on the material conditions. Also there is a reason “centrists” even exist as they are now and appear to you as some kind of constant monolith. Or as Marx did put it “Ideas of ruling class are the ruling ideas”
IMO the biggest problem is media. They report through a center-right lens and focus on sensationalism. So all people see of the left is the “check your privilege cis white boy” and “anarchists have burned down the entire city” BS lines instead of the vast aid efforts and daily work.
For years I’ve been hearing “the media has a left bias” though. I guess that’s left=democrat party, not left=leftist.
The fox news viewer see CNN as “leftist” and anything further as “The Commies”. CNN/MSNBC/whatever "liberal” orgs see themselves as the leading charge of the liberal movement and anything more progressive or actually leftist as “The Commies”.
Ehh, can’t expect anything short of that sort of bias from corporate media.
I feel like one obvious answer is “stop being so eager to alienate cis straight white men”
I think a lot of conversation is “men go to therapy” but therapy alone isn’t enough? We kind of cast men off of having all the privilege in the world without recognizing that patriarchy hurts them too, and in lots of facets of their lives in a way that just going to a therapist once a week does not help.
Yeah, therapy is not a viable solution for broad societal issues
I think this advice is not very actionable as is, and needs more digesting into more specific strategies.
Like, for instance: let’s avoid making people feel rejected by the left for having privilege, and instead focus on guiding privileged people so that they can use their privilege to help the cause.
I agree. I’m glad you made this post and are actually interacting in the comments to be constructive.
There’s a book I was introduced to last year called “good strategy bad strategy” that is worth a read, most of it’s somewhat obvious and a little dated as far as examples, but the framing of how to think about strategy is pretty solid. Its an easy read, and like most non fiction books, you get most of the meat in the first half.
As a USian, while I think gun violence is a preventable mass tragedy that unfolds daily here I also think that when minorities, indigenous people, women, queer people or really anybody who isn’t a white christian rightwing men talks about wanting to own a gun to protect themselves while living in this country I agree. If you don’t understand the very real threat of police violence that you can’t resist or stop, and the very real threat of other kinds of violence that police will NOT step in to stop because of who you are, you can’t really argue against owning guns in the US to people that have no other choice than to take this kind of thing seriously.
I think handguns should be made much much much more illegal, since the handgun is actually the tool of state violence and oppression, it is the tool of surprise murder and intimidation. On the other hand if you carry a rifle you have to state your capacity for lethal violence, there is no hiding it or revealing it like a powertrip or gotcha card, which isn’t to downplay the terror and violence that evil rightwing terrorists have wrought upon the US with assault rifles, but at this point I don’t think owning a hunting style rifle or a shotgun as somebody who lives in the US is an unreasonable idea, especially if you have become a convenient political and literal target for the right.
To be clear, the whole stupid idea that owning an ar15 with a 30 roung mag, bumpstock and quick change mags somehow makes you safe to a home defender that breaks into your house at 3am when you pull it out and proceed to shoot 30 rounds erratically in the general direction of something you hear, sending bullets careening through the walls of your neighborhood and more likely killing somebody’s kid than doing anything to make you safer IS pathetic and spits on actual real gun culture.
Also I want to note that people who roleplay as mil-sim types by spending actual thousands of dollars on pseudo-military equipment to live powertrip fantasies are by and large hilariously pathetic, especially because they are usually completely and utterly blind to (or worse directly supportive of) forms of authoritarian violence (state or otherwise). See lots of loser white dudes showing up in 24k worth of weekend warrior dress up GI Joe gear to defend the incredible threat to civil liberties that society expecting people to wear masks during a pandemic represented… Good job chuds! You saved the day!
The point of concealed carry, in my eyes, is that people don’t know you have it and are more wary to start shit in general. Open carry just means they wait till you’re asleep to lynch you.
Its still horrifying either way.
I think things become much more chaotic and prone to quickly escalating to lethal applications of violence if there is the constant threat that anybody could be concealed carrying and more importantly that if someone felt the need to carry a firearm that they would likely conceal it.
Bringing a large visible rifle into a situation still escalates the threat of violence, but at least it does it in a clear and unambiguous way. There is no excuse to shoot the teenager dressed in basketball shorts and a wifebeater with absolutely no where to hide a rifle because you saw somebody else nearby with a rifle and you think the unarmed teenager might be concealing one. (There really is almost never an excuse to shoot anybody unless they are holding a gun and aiming it at you, and maybe even not then if you are on the one antagonizing them).
The US is a country where police not unregularly shoot innocent people, often unarmed black men or other minorities, and handwave away any responsibility for the needless violence by suggesting there might have been a handgun…
With a hunting rifle or shotgun there is no ambiguity about your intentions in a space or how you will potentially react to lethal threats of violence. There is no conveniently conflating other innocent and unarmed people with the people holding rifles or shotguns and easily getting away with it. On the other hand there is no surprising people by entering a space under false pretexts about your capacity or intentions around violence with a rifle or shotgun, since carrying a large weapon immediately identifies you as someone carrying a large weapon.
My point is, concealed carry is only effectively a right or privilege if society gives you the permission to arbitrarily carry around the means to end many peoples’ lives in your pocket, which is something really only extended willingly and consistently to white, christian conservative men. Carrying around a hunting rifle or a shotgun is a different story.
Look at the way handguns are used in US media, they are treated as status symbols of power and righteosness. Shows and movies constantly rely on the revealing, obtaining and losing of handguns to portray changes in the power of characters (lazy fucking writing but that is another rant…). To US culture the handgun is the ultimate object of empowerment and of personally distributed justice and that says everything you need to know about handguns really.
(also, if you are someone who actually needs to protect yourself with a handgun, you already know who you are, this conversation is irrelevant)
quick change mags
I’m sorry, what? Are there slow change mags?
That Trump is neither conservative (in any way) nor cares at all about any traditional Republican values
I agree and disagree.
I believe he doesn’t actually care for anything but himself. He is racist and classist and what else. But I don’t think it dictates his politics as much as you might would assume. He wants power and through his own racism, he released that “vague” racism works, but mostly the creation of the “others”.
But I think his activities are deeply based in traditional republican values. That is why project 2025 exists. Republican think Tanks created it. You could argue that those aren’t republican values but e.g. they pushed for a horrible school system for decades. Trump doesn’t actually care about it, but he follows the plan because it aligns with government deregulation which he likes.
To your second point, I think you’re somewhat right about that. However it’s a weird mix of traditional Republican values and this new Nationalism. Republicans were traditionally for a small federal government (except military of course)
Trump and MAGA are regressive. They are hell-bent on taking this country back to the first half of the 20th century, in all the worst possible ways.
Huh. Mid 20th century? But that’s when America transitioned to relatively high and progressive income taxes instead of relying on tariffs. It’s also when massive state spending on education lead to a large chunk of Americans being able to care about something other than themselves, a precursor to progressivism in America and the civil rights movement.
If anything, I think Americans appear to want to go back to the Gilded Age, known for its massive inequality, corruption, and excessive-wealth-flaunting.
He recently said something about the 20s and 30s. That’s when he considered America great, apparently.
Most of them don’t even know what they want. They’re told what to think and simply can’t process anything on their own. Argue with one and you’ll be hard pressed to find an original thought, just regurgitations of what they’ve been told by fox news.
Perhaps it would be useful to build up from basics, asking them what issues actually affect their own life, and hopefully avoid all the hyperreality* culture wars of the media.
* https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2019/05/Causes-of-death-in-USA-vs.-media-coverage.png
I’ve noticed this in that they can’t think of their own problems. They say “they’re teaching kids to be trans in school” but don’t talk to their actual kids about what they’re actually learning. They say “the inflation makes it impossible to buy groceries!” And they show the groceries with 3 cases of Mt dew because they don’t want to think about budgeting. They say “immigrants are taking our jobs” and live in rural Missouri where there’s 1 Latino in town. They aren’t thinking of problems that actually effect them, they think of the problems fox news tells them to think about.
The DNC is the primary obstacle to progress and no progress is possible between now and when they go the way of the Whigs because of the rigged duopoly system.
The real question is how do they end? My hope is for a national dem and maybe a republican to break off to something like the working families party, something that exists, works at the ground level, but can be boosted by the optics of national politicians drawing attention to it.
