Well, it's important simply because it's important to call everything for what it is. Rightists are cognitively defective and not rarely prone to narcissism, egomania, sociopathy, and other repulsive conditions; in short, they're stupid.
Sheep. I've cut off most of both mine and my husband's family over this MAGA bs. They vote because they are traditionally republican. To them, to be republican is to be American, and they will fallow a republican off a cliff, even as I am holding their leash and pulling, trying to drag them away. Eventually, I had to let go, lest be dragged over the edge with them.
Remember. Arguing with an idiot is like playing chess with a pigeon. They're just going to knock the pieces over and shit on the board. Tell them they're stupid, but dont waste time engaging with any that you arent personally desperate to save, or are genuinely able to change their world view. Shun and ostracize them, punish them like the petulant children they decided to become. Your time is better spent elsewhere in this fight. We can deprogram them later, survival comes first.
I don't call them "stupid" or "evil" because I think it is important to get into the details. They are not just ignorant of all that, they are willfully ignorant, but it is not a rational choice either. Certainly a big part of it is how "conservative" and "MAGAt" have become part of their identities, (if not their whole personality), so criticizing their ideas, even pointing out how Trump betrayed them, feels like a personal attack.
Conservativism is like sex... in that it sells well to everyone, everywhere, all the time. I mean, it inherently requires a scapegoat population to blame for whatever you want. People eat that shit up.
This is a big reason why "anti-big-government" or just "anti-government" became a huge plank of America's Republican Party. Because most of what made life good in the 1950s - 1960s was either government policy, regulation, or programs. >
But it’s not fair to call them stupid like it’s their fault. Conservative governments have been draining money from education for decades so that these people become stupid over generations. Of course that doesn’t mean they’re blameless, but we need to continue to put blame where it belongs; on the oligarchs and their political puppets.
"Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, Hate leads to suffering." - For many people, today's world is far too complex. They do not understand the underlying connections, feel helplessly at the mercy of events, and that frightens them. Then along come right-wing populist politicians promising a simpler world where everything will get better. And—snap!—those people are hooked.
What you're seeing the graph with wages stagnating is not just about taxes. It's wage theft. They are stealing your raises and cost of living adjustments.
Billionaires have cut our pay to put it in their own pockets, not only that they put it in a tax free systems. Every 1 cent paid to a billionaire is 2 cents stolen from a worker. One cent stolen via paycut, the other cent stolen from government assistance because of the lack of taxation.
I think it had more to do with Hilary not having a penis. It didn't matter what she said, they were going to find a way to demonize her and justify not voting for her.
Hillary had been demonized since Bill’s administration. But her diss was “bulletin board material"/"corkboard fodder” that virtually guaranteed a lot the more apathetic GOP voters would get to the polls.
The complacent are all in one or both of the other categories. They have to be either stupid or evil to not have reality outweigh complacency when it comes to supporting conservatives.
There's a reason why people on the left are called progressive because the want society to progress and there's a reason why the people on the right are called pedophiles
The problem is that these pieces of shit are proud to be dumb and miserable. As long as the people they hate are miserable, too. They are literally disney villains with weak character.
Diagnosis is great. Treating is better. However, no-one wants to hear the fact that maybe, just maybe, removing the right to vote *from* those same stupid people is the first step in doing so. Taking away their ability to ruin it for the rest of us, forces them to have to put up with the more progressive elements until such a time as those progressive elements naturally remove said people from the equation, either by age or by education. But apparently, that's "wrong" and "undemocratic."
Most generally, the psych trait is authoritarianism; which then begets everything else, the racism, the religiousness, the right-wing alignment. On the upside: it's not completely permanent. It can be trained down, if not out. Going to college consistently reduces authoritarian preferences. Some people literally just don't know better, and are otherwise good people by nature; understanding the world outside your own, loving the other as yourself, is a skill that must be learned.
(Hence "woke".) (Or maybe "relearned". Kids have little problem meeting each other on their own level, regardless of appearance. It's social influences that turn them ever so quickly against each other. "Learning to hate" is a very real problem.)
I'd argue hate is always learned. A way to unlearn it is to learn to "love" instead (corny, but true). That's harder than learning to hate. It takes a lot of metabolic energy to understand outsiders enough to feel compassion for them. It requires education to fix the problem, and is why Republicans have worked for decades to erode education accessibility. Education develops our understanding of the universe enough to be able to show compassion for all communities, even objectively hostile ones.
The older I get, the more I notice this. I live in a condo. One of the units caught on fire several months ago. My old, conservative neighbor thought her CO alarm was beeping because it was picking up leftover CO particles. I was dumbfounded. She doesn't understand how gases work. Is she also mystified by her kettle?
We need someone to explain how do we tell conservatives "Yes, you are stupid, but here's not just WHY you should change, but how you can change." Because let me tell you "You are stupid." is not going to get people to even consider your point.
Right? They are stupid but if your goal is to change minds, you have to choose words carefully and calling them stupid will kill your chances. You can have 100% of the facts but that doesn't ensure you will change peoples' minds and you need to act accordingly.
Correct. What I've found effective, is 1) avoid the person entirely if it's not worth the effort (go live the one life you have) 2) avoid moral judgements and gain their trust before injecting your ideology 3) lead by example, and let them witness the positive effects your worldview has on yourself. You can't simply flip a switch in their head. Brains don't work that way. It requires a systems level approach to change how a person thinks and behaves. Speaking from experience, it's never easy.
No one can explain it because it's not a solution that works in the real world. Compassion is what actually solves problems, because that is built on a foundation of deep understanding. You can't solve problems if you don't understand them, and not understanding the problem means you won't understand the effects of the solutions.
The real solution is providing free access to education to everyone. Education is empowering, builds compassion, and keeps us safe from malicious actors.
There is literally nothing you can say that will get them to condsider your point. It does not matter how nice or reasonable you are with your why's and how's, people aren't going to believe what they don't want to believe. People's choice to accept uncomfortable truths over comfortable lies is not within our power to compell. And acting like it is ends up turning into respectability politics- holding victims to a higher standard of behavior and making them responsible for their abusers actions
As a liberal in a very red trump-loving county (albeit significantly less so now) I get into it with magaloids on occasion. I try to avoid calling THEM stupid while still trying to explain that they've been duped (trained from birth via church, Fox News, etc) to blindly support a stupid ideology (maga) that goes against all they claim to believe; fuck farmers, socialism for the rich, 2A only for those loyal to HIS govt, endless wars, pro-pedo, fake christians, etc. They are pretty stupid tho
They may be definitionally stupid, ignorant, uneducated, and misinformed, but calling them any of those things entrenches them further in their beliefs. It's a form of validation and vindication. It literally makes the problem worse, and this is supported by science.
There is no silver bullet solution. This will take generations to undo. What I've found sorta effective is to continue asking them questions that get progressively harder to answer until they realize they don't have a good answer.
The better question is why we're leaving important functional aspects of society up to opinion and not science and fact. Not everyone's opinion is important or equal and treating them as such is exactly what rewards their stupidity.
On the nose. This clip is catharsis for the left; a flaming olive branch.
I don't know what the solution looks like yet, but I can say with absolute certainty: seeking catharsis, only further "others" your opposition. You're playing their own goddamned game for them.
DO NOT SEEK CATHARSIS. YOU WILL NEVER OBTAIN IT. THAT MOMENT OF BURNING JUSTICE WILL NOT COME. LET IT GO.
Seek all the catharsis you want because it does not fucking matter. No one is going to miss out on leaving MAGA because you weren't nice enough to them. Nothing you do can or will compell someone to stop being completely irrational and rejecting facts and logic. You don't have that power, and anyone trying to imply that you do- that your actions are what can change another amd that's why you owe bad people your best behavior- is engaging in respectability politics.
Respectability politics is, in a way, just following science. Being respectful doesn't generally make people less willing to engage in a contrary ideology, it's actually the opposite. Fear is effective too, but what world does that build for us all?
I'll grant you that one person is not enough to change the mind of another, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about needing a cultural and systemic shift to fix the problem. All humanity included, but Americans even more so.
Respectability politics is the idea that oppressors would gladly hand over rights if marginalized groups were just more polite about asking. This is philosophically and morally bankrupt, and I'm hoping you just don't know what that term actually meant. Also I'd love to see this study you're citing, because everything I've read indicates changing minds is a complex emotional process that there's no way to trigger. People want to listen, compromise, change, or they don't.
Fair enough. I'm less familiar with that distinction. You are correct that there are complex emotional barriers, but there is research that shows civility and respectfulness--as opposed to hostility--significantly reduces emotional defensiveness, making them more likely to seriously consider counter arguments. This study examined this in the context of social media discourse. https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2018.1497743
The challenge is bypassing those emotional barriers effectively.
Once one accepts this, it's possible to move on. We can only better ourselves. We do not heal society by punishing wrongs. We heal society by righting them and doing better. Perhaps modest punishments (in the legal sense) are needed in the mean time: quarantine the worst offenders, the sphere of cult leaders and influencers that have most egregiously pushed us into this. Maybe even that is too contrary to what I've just said. I don't know.
We certainly will not get there with a rabid heart. Society heals with love. Don't hate the other. You don't have to love 'em either. Neutral the other. Maybe that involves excluding them, to avoid further (potential for) injury. But always leave an "in" in case a conciliatory tone comes along. Remember that they will never admit to being wrong -- and you are in the wrong if you expect such. Your purpose is not to point fault, but to nurture a state of mind that can *recognize its own fault*.
I'd be careful with that statement, because 'fault' does not mean 'immoral' or 'wrong.' One can call out someone's faults in a healthy and constructive way that helps the other person become a better version of the person they want to be. It's not about shielding a person from the awareness of their own behaviors, it's about unmasking that behavior in a way that doesn't cause them to go into a fight or flight response and traumatize them in the process.
Imagine if the Drumpfh administration collapsed tomorrow. Would you really reach out to the likes of Miller, Bannon, Hegseth, Trump himself, etc. and say "Yo guys, it's okay, we'll do better together going forward"?
Because these people know what they're doing. They know that their goals are to hurt the people they hate, and enrich themselves. They may not be very good at it, but they aren't just poor misguided fools, they are evil bastards who will not change for a kind word.
Well, I did not in fact "willfully misread" a comment advocating for avoiding punishments - where even *enforcing actual laws* is allegedly a step too far - on people who go out of their way to hurt everyone else in the name of hate and greed, but sure. You do you.
Gotta say I vastly disagree with your thoughts anyway, though.
It's also important to point out that the current Democrat party would not be considered a progressive party in any of the nicer places he listed here. It's just as important to change the more left party in America into a truly progressive one as it is to vote for them in opposition to the Republicans. It's not enough to just vote and think you're doing enough. Live politically, the elites certainly are.
Also important to point out that the current Democrat party, during their last mandate, supported and funded Israel while they were killing thousands of children. The USA is not a real democracy. Fix your country.
Neoliberalism is yet another invention of modern conservatives. Its policies are all conservative, but it has the word "liberal" in it. Just like all those so-called "communist" autocracies all over the world that have that word and "socialist" and "people's" plastered all over a tyrannical, racist ethnostate.
Sure and the only way to change the more left party is to first get them in power. What you're really wanting is a more leftist party that will make the Democrats look like the center-right party that they are. Well, that only happens once we get control of the government away from the far right. Then we can start making changes to election laws that will allow things to be more representative of the people and not corporations
Reminder that the DNC is a private institution and can simply ignore primaries in most states and on the federal level and just put their own candidate forward if they dont like who we plebs choose. They represent their donors and the oligarch class before they represent us, and will continue to block the systemic changes necessary to remove and prevent the fascist from rising to power by all means available to them, as fascist are not their enemy, leftist are. Dems are better than fascist 1/2
But many are just wolves in sheep's clothing, and the true leftist in there are simply co-opting the party because our society is broken, and they cannot reasonably run outside of it. As you said, true systemic change requires us continue this fight for decades to come, and not just drive the GOP into a corner but raise new banners that can keep pulling us from the brink, banners that answer to their constituents, to us, and not billionaire pedophiles or genocidal ethnostates. 2/2
Id argue its actually more important and ive been saying this for years on here. If this was the 1980s or even the early 90s, then you could afford to gradually shift the party leftwards because there was plenty of time to do it.
Now? In 2026?, we've already ensured a future of global pandemics, water wars and mass climate driven migration. Thats unavoidable now, but every year we allow to pass without doing something we make it worse and edge toward extinction level climate change.
Call me an accelerationist if you want but we're in it for the species now not for individual nations or ethnicities. If an attempt by Trump to seize permanent control over the US government materialises in November and Americans resist then that might well be our best outcome, because i have no faith in the democrats learning in 4 years what they've failed to grasp in 40.
Many people will die, but many people will die regardless, and i could very easily be among them and im fine with that. 2/
Im fine with it not because im suicidal or because I want to sound brave or heroic. Im fine with it because whilst I dont have kids of my own i have 2 nephews and 2 nieces under the age of 11 and if giving my life or any of your lives will create a better world for them, then im fine with it.
Because thats what responsible adults are meant to do, and what wasnt done for us. 3
Only if you remind people democrats are still the better party and not voting only votes against having a democracy. Otherwise it's just another right wing talking point.
The problem is that USians think that voting is the only way you have to make a change. I don't know if they hate each other so much that the idea of working as a community causes them greater pain than the human desire of a dignified life motivates them to fight back.
Guess you've never actually explored the US, every community is on one or the other side of the spectrum, so for every progressive community there is a extremely conservative one. So they all net out for the most part. Plus with gerrymandering whoever works out to be gov gets to decide which communities are split into fiths to demo their vote.
We have the technology. It can be done, but I think we are still a ways away from that being reality. I like to think we could do it globally, but probably not in my lifetime. We'll see though, as instability grows within every system we have, people will demand more and more drastic change.
One less important thing to point out, that they only call the democratic party the 'democrat party' because they're so fucking stupid, they think changing it so it ends in the RAT is a 'gotcha'.
As stupid as it is, we shouldn't be using their phrasing for stuff.
There was a period in UK politics where we had the then Prime Minister (1997 - 2009ish) referred to as "Tory bLiar". Now he was a cunt, for joining Bush in Gulf War 2. But that the best satire they could come up with is a half-arsed anagram-ish rename, is equally as blatantly fuck-witted as "Demonrats" and "Dum(b)ocrats". Pointless name-calling with absolutely no political analysis.
BuckDitkis
It's pretty simple. Conservative governments invest in corporations. Progressive governments invest in people.
AnOceanOfStars
Well, it's important simply because it's important to call everything for what it is.
Rightists are cognitively defective and not rarely prone to narcissism, egomania, sociopathy, and other repulsive conditions; in short, they're stupid.
Rink257
Sheep. I've cut off most of both mine and my husband's family over this MAGA bs. They vote because they are traditionally republican. To them, to be republican is to be American, and they will fallow a republican off a cliff, even as I am holding their leash and pulling, trying to drag them away. Eventually, I had to let go, lest be dragged over the edge with them.
minipancho94
Remember. Arguing with an idiot is like playing chess with a pigeon. They're just going to knock the pieces over and shit on the board. Tell them they're stupid, but dont waste time engaging with any that you arent personally desperate to save, or are genuinely able to change their world view. Shun and ostracize them, punish them like the petulant children they decided to become. Your time is better spent elsewhere in this fight. We can deprogram them later, survival comes first.
QuantumInc
I don't call them "stupid" or "evil" because I think it is important to get into the details. They are not just ignorant of all that, they are willfully ignorant, but it is not a rational choice either. Certainly a big part of it is how "conservative" and "MAGAt" have become part of their identities, (if not their whole personality), so criticizing their ideas, even pointing out how Trump betrayed them, feels like a personal attack.
or0b0ur0s
Conservativism is like sex... in that it sells well to everyone, everywhere, all the time. I mean, it inherently requires a scapegoat population to blame for whatever you want. People eat that shit up.
This is a big reason why "anti-big-government" or just "anti-government" became a huge plank of America's Republican Party. Because most of what made life good in the 1950s - 1960s was either government policy, regulation, or programs. >
or0b0ur0s
They had to destroy that first in order to create enough perpetual misery to fuel their blame machine.
BrokenAnimal
He's not wrong.
Taranwanderinmyprydain
But it’s not fair to call them stupid like it’s their fault. Conservative governments have been draining money from education for decades so that these people become stupid over generations. Of course that doesn’t mean they’re blameless, but we need to continue to put blame where it belongs; on the oligarchs and their political puppets.
AtmaDarkwolf
but what about the huge military you can send around the world causing suffering and pain to others too ?? Share the wealth :P
Omicron416
But he also doesn't take supremacy and xenophobia into account.
Toqom
Which are both related to stupidity. You can't be a bigot or a huge religious person without stupidity
MikaTheFinland
Thorketil
"Fear leads to Anger, Anger leads to Hate, Hate leads to suffering." - For many people, today's world is far too complex. They do not understand the underlying connections, feel helplessly at the mercy of events, and that frightens them. Then along come right-wing populist politicians promising a simpler world where everything will get better. And—snap!—those people are hooked.
TrancedJoe
What you're seeing the graph with wages stagnating is not just about taxes. It's wage theft. They are stealing your raises and cost of living adjustments.
OnlyWantToSayOneThing
Billionaires have cut our pay to put it in their own pockets, not only that they put it in a tax free systems. Every 1 cent paid to a billionaire is 2 cents stolen from a worker. One cent stolen via paycut, the other cent stolen from government assistance because of the lack of taxation.
davemUnderscoreOr
You can't mention 1945-1970's in regards to anything without referencing WWII and the rebuilding of Europe.
AllAnusMorissette
https://imgur.com/5gxAhVW.mp4
Dannyalcatraz
While true, sometimes speaking the truth aloud at the wrong time leads to results contrary to those desired.
Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” quip wasn’t wrong, but it helped sink her POTUS run by further motivating GOP voters.
Beto O’Rourke’s “we’re coming for your guns” rallying cry got applause in the moment, turned a close race into another win for Ted Cruz.
doctorId
I think it had more to do with Hilary not having a penis. It didn't matter what she said, they were going to find a way to demonize her and justify not voting for her.
Dannyalcatraz
Hillary had been demonized since Bill’s administration. But her diss was “bulletin board material"/"corkboard fodder” that virtually guaranteed a lot the more apathetic GOP voters would get to the polls.
codenametrixie
no shit
PickleRiiiiiiiiiiiiick
Share and redistribute as desired.
RichardPenne
I wish everyone would always refer to Trump as Dumb Donnie from now on...
911vicki2000
Christian nationalists are also stupid
gpweed
We will never get to a Star Trek world if we dont plan for it. Www.prestodigitator.com
ShowUsTheMemesAndNoOneGetsHurt
1/3 complacent, 1/3 dumb, 1/3 evil
Madalchemist2018
The complacent are all in one or both of the other categories. They have to be either stupid or evil to not have reality outweigh complacency when it comes to supporting conservatives.
GrandmaSlappy
A lot of ignorance, lack of empathy, lack of understanding of the rest of the world, and intentionally being trained to not trust "outsiders."
whatsthisbuttondonow1
There's a reason why people on the left are called progressive because the want society to progress and there's a reason why the people on the right are called pedophiles
lildude52ca
you guys have some wierd terms for this. i know the definition of the words but i have no idea what you mean when you say
lildude52ca
progressive / conservative ???
n0gal
progressive in america means conservative everywhere else, conservative in america means regressive everywhere eles.
Thorketil
What is called conservative in the USA is described elsewhere as far-far-right authoritarianism.
notmyrealface
The problem is that these pieces of shit are proud to be dumb and miserable. As long as the people they hate are miserable, too. They are literally disney villains with weak character.
doctorId
"You're using science as a weapon"
Guess what. Facts don't care about your feelings. Fuckin uno reverse carded you, bitch
Idsertian
Diagnosis is great. Treating is better. However, no-one wants to hear the fact that maybe, just maybe, removing the right to vote *from* those same stupid people is the first step in doing so. Taking away their ability to ruin it for the rest of us, forces them to have to put up with the more progressive elements until such a time as those progressive elements naturally remove said people from the equation, either by age or by education. But apparently, that's "wrong" and "undemocratic."
WhoDoesntLikeTacos
The problem is that repubs are too dumb and won't watch videos based on reality. They are perfectly happy being ignorant.
CrisprCAS
Be fair! Some of them are racist.
Krakencrotch
Racism is pretty fuckin' stupid though.
SirenBrick
Fun fact about that too, racism is highly correlated with lower intelligence and high conservative values.
T3sl4co1l
Most generally, the psych trait is authoritarianism; which then begets everything else, the racism, the religiousness, the right-wing alignment. On the upside: it's not completely permanent. It can be trained down, if not out. Going to college consistently reduces authoritarian preferences. Some people literally just don't know better, and are otherwise good people by nature; understanding the world outside your own, loving the other as yourself, is a skill that must be learned.
T3sl4co1l
(Hence "woke".) (Or maybe "relearned". Kids have little problem meeting each other on their own level, regardless of appearance. It's social influences that turn them ever so quickly against each other. "Learning to hate" is a very real problem.)
XEtAl
I'd argue hate is always learned. A way to unlearn it is to learn to "love" instead (corny, but true). That's harder than learning to hate. It takes a lot of metabolic energy to understand outsiders enough to feel compassion for them. It requires education to fix the problem, and is why Republicans have worked for decades to erode education accessibility. Education develops our understanding of the universe enough to be able to show compassion for all communities, even objectively hostile ones.
RetrogradeLlama
NoonaTuna
Phuck right hoff with your absolute bullshit.
koalamonster
Nah, I appreciate people posting some things from TikTok because I'm never going to go on TikTok and then I still get to see some of it.
Thorketil
It is far too late for that. That unwritten Imgur rule has long since been forgotten.
malachilenomade
Yeah, that battle was lost ages ago.
JahSureYouBetcha
The older I get, the more I notice this. I live in a condo. One of the units caught on fire several months ago. My old, conservative neighbor thought her CO alarm was beeping because it was picking up leftover CO particles. I was dumbfounded. She doesn't understand how gases work. Is she also mystified by her kettle?
rdewalt
We need someone to explain how do we tell conservatives "Yes, you are stupid, but here's not just WHY you should change, but how you can change." Because let me tell you "You are stupid." is not going to get people to even consider your point.
Ristari
Right? They are stupid but if your goal is to change minds, you have to choose words carefully and calling them stupid will kill your chances. You can have 100% of the facts but that doesn't ensure you will change peoples' minds and you need to act accordingly.
XEtAl
Correct. What I've found effective, is 1) avoid the person entirely if it's not worth the effort (go live the one life you have) 2) avoid moral judgements and gain their trust before injecting your ideology 3) lead by example, and let them witness the positive effects your worldview has on yourself. You can't simply flip a switch in their head. Brains don't work that way. It requires a systems level approach to change how a person thinks and behaves. Speaking from experience, it's never easy.
theobstruction
The biggest issue is that they're PROUD of being stupid.
XEtAl
No one can explain it because it's not a solution that works in the real world. Compassion is what actually solves problems, because that is built on a foundation of deep understanding. You can't solve problems if you don't understand them, and not understanding the problem means you won't understand the effects of the solutions.
The real solution is providing free access to education to everyone. Education is empowering, builds compassion, and keeps us safe from malicious actors.
SinStar87
That would help sooo much. I've tried pointing at all that trump's done and it just gets me blocked and downvoted on here.
scrumbles666
There is literally nothing you can say that will get them to condsider your point. It does not matter how nice or reasonable you are with your why's and how's, people aren't going to believe what they don't want to believe. People's choice to accept uncomfortable truths over comfortable lies is not within our power to compell. And acting like it is ends up turning into respectability politics- holding victims to a higher standard of behavior and making them responsible for their abusers actions
Ih8thisSoMuch
As a liberal in a very red trump-loving county (albeit significantly less so now) I get into it with magaloids on occasion. I try to avoid calling THEM stupid while still trying to explain that they've been duped (trained from birth via church, Fox News, etc) to blindly support a stupid ideology (maga) that goes against all they claim to believe; fuck farmers, socialism for the rich, 2A only for those loyal to HIS govt, endless wars, pro-pedo, fake christians, etc. They are pretty stupid tho
XEtAl
They may be definitionally stupid, ignorant, uneducated, and misinformed, but calling them any of those things entrenches them further in their beliefs. It's a form of validation and vindication. It literally makes the problem worse, and this is supported by science.
There is no silver bullet solution. This will take generations to undo. What I've found sorta effective is to continue asking them questions that get progressively harder to answer until they realize they don't have a good answer.
Nooooooooooooooooooooo
The better question is why we're leaving important functional aspects of society up to opinion and not science and fact. Not everyone's opinion is important or equal and treating them as such is exactly what rewards their stupidity.
Elmarr
Prob because of the stupidity huh
T3sl4co1l
On the nose. This clip is catharsis for the left; a flaming olive branch.
I don't know what the solution looks like yet, but I can say with absolute certainty: seeking catharsis, only further "others" your opposition. You're playing their own goddamned game for them.
DO NOT SEEK CATHARSIS. YOU WILL NEVER OBTAIN IT. THAT MOMENT OF BURNING JUSTICE WILL NOT COME. LET IT GO.
scrumbles666
Seek all the catharsis you want because it does not fucking matter. No one is going to miss out on leaving MAGA because you weren't nice enough to them. Nothing you do can or will compell someone to stop being completely irrational and rejecting facts and logic. You don't have that power, and anyone trying to imply that you do- that your actions are what can change another amd that's why you owe bad people your best behavior- is engaging in respectability politics.
XEtAl
Respectability politics is, in a way, just following science. Being respectful doesn't generally make people less willing to engage in a contrary ideology, it's actually the opposite. Fear is effective too, but what world does that build for us all?
I'll grant you that one person is not enough to change the mind of another, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about needing a cultural and systemic shift to fix the problem. All humanity included, but Americans even more so.
scrumbles666
Respectability politics is the idea that oppressors would gladly hand over rights if marginalized groups were just more polite about asking. This is philosophically and morally bankrupt, and I'm hoping you just don't know what that term actually meant. Also I'd love to see this study you're citing, because everything I've read indicates changing minds is a complex emotional process that there's no way to trigger. People want to listen, compromise, change, or they don't.
XEtAl
Fair enough. I'm less familiar with that distinction.
You are correct that there are complex emotional barriers, but there is research that shows civility and respectfulness--as opposed to hostility--significantly reduces emotional defensiveness, making them more likely to seriously consider counter arguments. This study examined this in the context of social media discourse.
https://doi.org/10.1080/01972243.2018.1497743
The challenge is bypassing those emotional barriers effectively.
T3sl4co1l
Once one accepts this, it's possible to move on. We can only better ourselves. We do not heal society by punishing wrongs. We heal society by righting them and doing better. Perhaps modest punishments (in the legal sense) are needed in the mean time: quarantine the worst offenders, the sphere of cult leaders and influencers that have most egregiously pushed us into this. Maybe even that is too contrary to what I've just said. I don't know.
T3sl4co1l
We certainly will not get there with a rabid heart. Society heals with love. Don't hate the other. You don't have to love 'em either. Neutral the other. Maybe that involves excluding them, to avoid further (potential for) injury. But always leave an "in" in case a conciliatory tone comes along. Remember that they will never admit to being wrong -- and you are in the wrong if you expect such. Your purpose is not to point fault, but to nurture a state of mind that can *recognize its own fault*.
T3sl4co1l
(Note that calling out someone's faults is a fault itself, apparently unrecognized. It applies recursively.)
XEtAl
I'd be careful with that statement, because 'fault' does not mean 'immoral' or 'wrong.' One can call out someone's faults in a healthy and constructive way that helps the other person become a better version of the person they want to be. It's not about shielding a person from the awareness of their own behaviors, it's about unmasking that behavior in a way that doesn't cause them to go into a fight or flight response and traumatize them in the process.
Daliena06
Imagine if the Drumpfh administration collapsed tomorrow. Would you really reach out to the likes of Miller, Bannon, Hegseth, Trump himself, etc. and say "Yo guys, it's okay, we'll do better together going forward"?
Because these people know what they're doing. They know that their goals are to hurt the people they hate, and enrich themselves. They may not be very good at it, but they aren't just poor misguided fools, they are evil bastards who will not change for a kind word.
T3sl4co1l
Willfully misreading my comments is unfortunately par for the course. :(
Daliena06
Well, I did not in fact "willfully misread" a comment advocating for avoiding punishments - where even *enforcing actual laws* is allegedly a step too far - on people who go out of their way to hurt everyone else in the name of hate and greed, but sure. You do you.
Gotta say I vastly disagree with your thoughts anyway, though.
fearTheAnimal
It's also important to point out that the current Democrat party would not be considered a progressive party in any of the nicer places he listed here. It's just as important to change the more left party in America into a truly progressive one as it is to vote for them in opposition to the Republicans. It's not enough to just vote and think you're doing enough. Live politically, the elites certainly are.
demosteness
Also important to point out that the current Democrat party, during their last mandate, supported and funded Israel while they were killing thousands of children. The USA is not a real democracy. Fix your country.
or0b0ur0s
Neoliberalism is yet another invention of modern conservatives. Its policies are all conservative, but it has the word "liberal" in it. Just like all those so-called "communist" autocracies all over the world that have that word and "socialist" and "people's" plastered all over a tyrannical, racist ethnostate.
Rockafella83
Canadian here. Your left is basically our right..
That’s how bad things are…
CoalhouseWalker
Sure and the only way to change the more left party is to first get them in power. What you're really wanting is a more leftist party that will make the Democrats look like the center-right party that they are. Well, that only happens once we get control of the government away from the far right. Then we can start making changes to election laws that will allow things to be more representative of the people and not corporations
jtxyz
Yeah and you go to war with the army you have.
We can transform the party over time, and they sure as shit ain't great at the moment. But we need the GOP out _now_.
And if you don't think that a party can change over time, remember that the Republicans were once the party of Lincoln.
All of this is gonna have to be a long term slog now anyway.
minipancho94
Reminder that the DNC is a private institution and can simply ignore primaries in most states and on the federal level and just put their own candidate forward if they dont like who we plebs choose. They represent their donors and the oligarch class before they represent us, and will continue to block the systemic changes necessary to remove and prevent the fascist from rising to power by all means available to them, as fascist are not their enemy, leftist are. Dems are better than fascist 1/2
minipancho94
But many are just wolves in sheep's clothing, and the true leftist in there are simply co-opting the party because our society is broken, and they cannot reasonably run outside of it. As you said, true systemic change requires us continue this fight for decades to come, and not just drive the GOP into a corner but raise new banners that can keep pulling us from the brink, banners that answer to their constituents, to us, and not billionaire pedophiles or genocidal ethnostates. 2/2
FrancsTireur
Id argue its actually more important and ive been saying this for years on here. If this was the 1980s or even the early 90s, then you could afford to gradually shift the party leftwards because there was plenty of time to do it.
Now? In 2026?, we've already ensured a future of global pandemics, water wars and mass climate driven migration. Thats unavoidable now, but every year we allow to pass without doing something we make it worse and edge toward extinction level climate change.
So yeah 1/
FrancsTireur
Call me an accelerationist if you want but we're in it for the species now not for individual nations or ethnicities. If an attempt by Trump to seize permanent control over the US government materialises in November and Americans resist then that might well be our best outcome, because i have no faith in the democrats learning in 4 years what they've failed to grasp in 40.
Many people will die, but many people will die regardless, and i could very easily be among them and im fine with that. 2/
FrancsTireur
Im fine with it not because im suicidal or because I want to sound brave or heroic. Im fine with it because whilst I dont have kids of my own i have 2 nephews and 2 nieces under the age of 11 and if giving my life or any of your lives will create a better world for them, then im fine with it.
Because thats what responsible adults are meant to do, and what wasnt done for us. 3
scapegoatandthebandit
Only if you remind people democrats are still the better party and not voting only votes against having a democracy. Otherwise it's just another right wing talking point.
Altqwenta
The problem is that USians think that voting is the only way you have to make a change. I don't know if they hate each other so much that the idea of working as a community causes them greater pain than the human desire of a dignified life motivates them to fight back.
Revnis
Guess you've never actually explored the US, every community is on one or the other side of the spectrum, so for every progressive community there is a extremely conservative one. So they all net out for the most part. Plus with gerrymandering whoever works out to be gov gets to decide which communities are split into fiths to demo their vote.
scapegoatandthebandit
No one of consequence thinks that. Voting isn't all anyone can do but not voting is antidemocratic an in this political climate, it's profacsist.
YouAreTheInsultMaster
It's hard to work with people who want to kill you
XenonBunny
Only if you remind people local government is where it all starts, and change will be made from the bottom up regardless of the establishment Dems
johneventually1
only if *people* realize they have the real power, not the people we recognize as powerful
XenonBunny
Correct, ideally we'd have direct democracy rather than representational democracy, but it's hard to do. Wpuld be great though.
johneventually1
We have the technology. It can be done, but I think we are still a ways away from that being reality. I like to think we could do it globally, but probably not in my lifetime. We'll see though, as instability grows within every system we have, people will demand more and more drastic change.
NonstopRampage
One less important thing to point out, that they only call the democratic party the 'democrat party' because they're so fucking stupid, they think changing it so it ends in the RAT is a 'gotcha'.
As stupid as it is, we shouldn't be using their phrasing for stuff.
Menefreghista313
Thank you for posting this, came to say the same thing.
Daliena06
Fuck me, is that why people are always saying "Don't call it the Democrat party"?
Genuinely, I only just got that if so.
FoamingToad
There was a period in UK politics where we had the then Prime Minister (1997 - 2009ish) referred to as "Tory bLiar". Now he was a cunt, for joining Bush in Gulf War 2. But that the best satire they could come up with is a half-arsed anagram-ish rename, is equally as blatantly fuck-witted as "Demonrats" and "Dum(b)ocrats". Pointless name-calling with absolutely no political analysis.
NonstopRampage
Kind of like how most of the dunces on our side default to 'tRump', when stuff like 'president annoying orange' is right there.