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.
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!
This so fucking much
'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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It's certainly not enough, but I'd still prefer it over nothing. I'll gladly take a miniscule win.
And that is the issue. Ada is bleeding to death, and Bob is giving them a rudimentary bandage to staunch the bleeding. You could:
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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.
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The irony writing itself.
You literally just engaged in what the OP was talking about, and here am I joining in as well.
I mean, if it introduces people to surface-level leftist ideas and gets them onboard, they then can be drawn further to the normal - the left wing ideas. Which would be good.
I agree with you though that it's only a bandage.
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.
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
Bones out of tofu is a great expression.
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.
Yeah why should I be guilted into staying on Facebook?
It's how we're conditioned to behave by society from birth. Break the rules and you get punished.
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(TM) there are only so many things left to do, and the internet is genuinely terrible about people who make mistakes or change their opinion.
The differences of opinion are still there in irl leftist spaces but it alters how it feels when you’re actively doing something. Online you only see the differences in opinion but the real leftists aren’t just arguing details online (though they do that too) they’re running food banks and organizing housing cooperatives and coming out en masse when someone is being evicted. They’re putting together food packages and sending books to inmates. They’re hiking out into the desert to leave water for migrants and waiting by the train tracks to toss food up to travelers.
Bickering about details online might seem ridiculous to someone who isn’t involved but for the actually active leftists that part is only a sliver of their leftism and it’s not necessarily a bad thing— it’s very hard to imagine the world organized other than it is and one way we can be prepared to make the right decisions together when gaps appear is to discuss everything from every angle. I’m not going to pretend all the stuff online is in good faith and I suspect a good percentage of keyboard warriors who are not actually involved in leftward movement, but I do think in the context of real activism the bickering makes more sense.
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.
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.
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?
The Left: Fractured Butt Hole. 😞
As a leftist its also important to keep in mind we do differentiate between leftists who hold some opinions we disagree with compared to a Liberal who disagrees with us on nearly everything. Especially when said Liberals demand to be treated like leftists yet support imperalism, genocide, apartheid, capitalism, bigotry, and yet constantly call people "fake leftists" or "tankies".
You had me until "tankies". Tankies are scum and don't need defending.
It's not about defending tankies it's about people who are constantly shifting the focus of conversation to the most mockable section of online lefties.
The ruling class don't waste their time distancing themselves from qanon, they focus on furthering their class interests and emiserating the poor.
Liberals who are constantly calling people tankies are helping the ruling class.
You cant use your favorite strawman argument? How sad
It's a strange state of affairs, there is a right wing recruitment pipeline deticated to making fun of liberals for being "cringe but also wrong"™.
An interesting experament you can do, replace "leftist", "the left" and "liberal" with "SJW" (swap the insider and outsider language) and ask yourself how much and in what interesting ways does the sentimate of the post change.
And how do we do that?
This is the internet, everyone is as anonymous as they want to be. Lots of people find these posts by browsing by All, so they're not likely to be aware of (or care about) the rules for a particular instance. If a Liberal and a Leftist wander into the same community, it can be hard to tell them apart unless they've made politics their whole identity.
Its pretty simple, do you support genocide?
yet support imperalism, genocide, apartheid, capitalism, bigotry
Yeah as a liberal I resent this. Im against all of these things except that I believe that the world is capitalist and would probably not be really any different even with a sudden communist takeover. Power corrupts any system just like it always has so you need safegaurds and checks that our system did have until everyone decided to throw out baby with the bath water
There are ideas i like that are communist(social programs, centralized production, not a huge fan of not owning my own stuff, but i dont think businesses should really own land), but i believe there is a lot of resistance to it and a slow burn towards utopia is a more fruitful endeavor.
Preach
I think you underestimate my ability to fuck things up. Especially my plans to do nothing.
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.
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 than 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.
Edit: Not opening that can of worms.
Lmao i love this planet.
I remember when the election happened I saw so many people on the left complaining that they needed a left wing version of Joe Rogan.
Motherfuckers you HAD Joe Rogan. He just talked to people you didn't like sometimes so you literally pushed him into the open arms of the right. Good job idiots.
Yeah I don’t think that’s what happened.
We doing revisionist history now? Joe endorsed Bernie Sanders in 2020. He was a self described Democrat for the majority of his life.
But because he invited guests from both sides of the isle onto his podcast the left decided he was a problem. God forbid anyone want to even hear what the other side is thinking once in their lives. The left abandoned Joe and guess who was there to snap him up when they did that? The alt right dumbasses. So now we have Joe endorsing Trump this time around.
The left is not tolerant of any amount of different thinking among their ranks. You gotta agree on everything or you need to leave. You can see it situations like Joe or even smaller situations like myself and many others who spent their entire lives being Democrats only to be shown the door when we disagreed on one or two things.
Whether or not you believe that's what's going on I can tell with absolute certainty it is. The 2024 election results fall more on the shoulders of the Democratic party messing everything up than Trump or the Republicans doing anything particularly right.
Y'all need to stop thinking in such black and white terms when it comes to people. Someone can be all for universal healthcare, but also want their own gun to defend themselves. Some of the more moderate left can understand that, but the grand majority will view that kind of person as a full on righty so they push them away. And guess what happens when they do that? You lose elections because you're so up your own ass about things that you lose people who were on your side.
