Guys, at this rate I don’t think the revolution’s going to happen anytime soon.
maybe i’ve just instinctively avoided places like this but that isn’t my impression at all, i find that a lot of people agree even if they don’t call themselves leftist at all, in fact the whole problem is that basically everyone has nearly identical beliefs but can’t bear the thought of voting for leftists who want to actually treat people fairly.
frankly the sentiment of this post feels like astroturfing to sow discontent.
‘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!”
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.
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.
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?
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.
Yeah, I’m aware. And I appreciate your response.
Sadly, I see a lot of the same at even the state and local level. Really, it comes down to branding with parties as a fundraising avenue, and only having Pepsi and Coke as the options concentrates both wealth and power as narrowly as possible.
Sure, that’s not for me. I don’t need to have a fit about it either, until I’m being force-fed one of them which, in my opionion, results in the detriment of the Constition and the nation. I’m happy to hold my nose for things I don’t love for anyone that rounds up to close enough. I’ve pleasantly done that for decades.
Which doesn’t mean that far-left folks mischaracterising anyone not as far left as them is fair or accurate. Incremental change in policy and political culture is how it works. Always has. That’s literally PoliSci 101 after you define terms.
So when the far left folks demand everyone be where they are or it’s a disaster, the rubber band they held snaps and they lose any momentum going their way by getting out too far to still remain in touch with the vast majority or voters. I want things moving father left than they are on …well, most things, but the Left would rather push me away and move even farther left and act out about how I’m not chasing them.
Which is how we arrive at where we are, bifurcated with nothing left but contempt for anyone thinking with a sliver of rationality who never felt at home with either group.
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.
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.
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).
I swear you could introduce UBI and someone somewhere would complain about it not being left enough.
Someone somewhere would because UBI is the capitalist techbro idea of a social safety net; it’s a band-aid that doesn’t address the underlying problems in a similar way to how the ACA helps but in reality is a very center-right idea that doesn’t address the underlying hypercapitalist healthcare system.
Well there yah go, we didn’t even need to introduce it and it’s already not left enough.
It was cooked up by Milton Friedman, one of the grandfathers of American free market libertarianism.
The whole impetus of UBI was to eliminate traditional social services because, it is argued, there’s no way that a government institution could be as efficient or effective as a free market.
And make no mistake, even modern proponents of UBI such as Andrew Yang propose funding it by hollowing out existing social services.
Like, yeah, UBI is better than having literally no social support at all, but the fact that its seen as this ultra-leftist idea, to the point that we apparently can’t even conceive of how it could possibly “not be left enough”, is an indication of how far right mainstream politics has shifted.
I mean it depends on the context of how UBI is going to get paid for. If it is funded by a wealth tax then I am on board. But that’s not how the powerful proponents of UBI say it should be funded. Andrew Yang would have us take it out of Social Security to pay for it but you don’t hear him say we should uncap Social Security contributions.
Also, I think rent caps or something need to be introduced as well. I worry about landlords just assuming you have an extra 2,000 on you and then taking it.
But implemented with the right protections, I would love UBI.
UBI gives you “moving expense money”. Greedy landlords gives builders incentive to build more to give you alternatives. If you don’t want to work, then moving to smaller communities is a more affordable choice, and you can move before you have a job lined up. A problem with welfare/UI is not just that any job income get’s clawed back at 50%, but you need to stay close to the same welfare office to keep getting benefits.
Income taxes, especially if investment income is not given preferential treatment, is even with a flat tax on first $100k income, with surtaxes on higher incomes, something that impacts the rich/successful while still making them more rich. You don’t need to cling to “only a wealth tax or burn it all down”. Wealth generates investment income. Taxing that properly is all that is needed.
Sure, I’m on board as long as the fix isn’t to cut other social safety nets.
UBI is only surface-level leftist, it’s distributing some of the wealth while leaving the important parts - property - untouched.
So yes, I and many others would complain about UBI. I’ve long held it’s an untenable bandage slapped on the gaping hemorrhage that is capitalism.
If you know anything about first aid you know that slapping a bandage on is the first step to actually helping the patient.
“The real problem with this stab wound is it damaged their liver. Putting a bandage over the wound isn’t going to solve that, what they really need is surgery!”
“We’re twenty miles away from a hospital, we need to stop the bleeding or they’ll die before we get them to a doctor.”
“A bandage isn’t going to save them. Only a surgeon will.”
And that is the issue. Ada is bleeding to death, and Bob is giving them a rudimentary bandage to staunch the bleeding. You could:
-
Let Bob do their thing, and go get an ambulance.
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Complain to Bob that this will only slow down the bleeding. What Ada needs is to be in a hospital. Keep yelling at Bob for his shitty bandage.
We are all afraid that Jake will convince the doctor to refuse surgery claimimg the problem is fixed now. He goes on to convince Ada and the world that she is healed and asking for surgery makes no sense.
I dont know if Jake will be effective at creating regressions nor if we can fight him off effectively.
This so fucking much
Ah yes, the old enemy of the left: the left.
