Guys, at this rate I don’t think the revolution’s going to happen anytime soon.
This so fucking much
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.
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.
‘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.
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.
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.
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.
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!”
It’s how we’re conditioned to behave by society from birth. Break the rules and you get punished.
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
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.
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.
Ah yes, the old enemy of the left: the left.
Damned Leftists! They ruined the left!
You leftists sure are a contentious people.
You’ve just made an enemy for life!
You’ve just made an enemy for
lifeleft!ftfy
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.
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.
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.
I swear you could introduce UBI and someone somewhere would complain about it not being left enough.
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.
I’m not sure what you’re saying.
If landlords can assume every tenant they’ll ever see has 2,000 plus their income, then they can just set rent to be 2,000 plus the average income of the area (or whatever it is they do currently). That’s what I’m worried about.
Like, I’m worried about inter-landlord collusion that happens not because they’re talking to each other but because they can all assume the same facts about you.
I mean, truthfully, I think landlords should be cut out of the game anyway, but that’s a wholly separate issue.
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.
The higher the UBI, the more programs can be cut and make the beneficiaries (excluding people with cushy jobs administering them) of those programs still better off, while either making the UBI even higher (from cost savings) or not increasing taxes as much. The conditionality of programs is always a poverty trap, that unconditional cash solves.
Our current government/candidates says some polite things about their role in shared prosperity. While security needs are real, that should in fact be the only role of government. Rationed bandaids meant to be divisive and anger raising, provides power with the real objectives of rulership. Deliver slaves to the oligarchs. When you oppose your precisous slavery trapping bandaids being removed for the freedom of unconditional cash that grows with economic growth that redistribution provides you are simply submitting to government power over all of us.
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.
The UBI I support is only a replacement for unemployment benefits and all the welfare state social safety nets would still be provided for I.e. single payer healthcare, social housing
Is that still a capitalist nightmare?
Implemented like that it would probably be a step in the correct direction. I’m not trying to say you’re a monster who wants to turn the world into a capitalist hellscape. But let’s use an analogy:
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There’s a country with a public library system that’s been suffering from chronic underfunding and dysfunction. The buildings are falling apart, the catelogs are outdated, and many people don’t even have a library near them.
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Jeff Bezos proposes to eliminate public libraries, says it would be more efficient and effective for the government to give citizens a stipend to buy off of Amazon. Its called universal books.
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Years later someone says “leftists will infight about anything, someone would probably say universal books isn’t left enough.”
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Someone points out who came up with universal books and why they wanted it, then there’s a reply saying “the version of universal books that I support would still fund the public libraries but have the Amazon stipend in addition to that.”
Maybe adding the Amazon stipend to the existing public library system would be great. After all not every library can carry every book, and sometimes its not feasible to put a library in every tiny rural community.
I’m just trying to make the point that its not completely insane to get a little defensive about such an idea in a situation like that.
I agree with you. There is legitimate criticism of UBI especially of the Yang flavor.
I’ve just always seen it as increased unemployment payments with fewer conditions rather than a replacement of the welfare state.
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If we were smarter than an idiocracy we would understand that “UBI is higher than conditional social benefits received, and without any administrative overhead that makes the programs more expensive than what we receive”… I like more money is where your thinking could successfully stop at.
It never was.
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.
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.”
That’s under the assumption that you’re actually getting them to a doctor and not just slapping the bandaid on and calling it a day.
And I would argue that in either case, stopping the bleeding is still the immediate goal.
And would be correct. But if we’re planning a health system, and I keep insisting on bandaids but refuse to even talk about anything else, my proposal is a bait-and-switch. That’s the problem, not UBI/NIT, as a concept.
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.
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.
Okay, but yell at Jake then.
What you’re saying is that the bleeding is good. The more people bleed, the more they’ll need “a real solution.” This is just accelerationism.
You know what the most important thing for proper triage is : my personal feelings /s
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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.
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.
I think you underestimate my ability to fuck things up. Especially my plans to do nothing.
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.
The Left: Fractured Butt Hole. 😞
