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this post was submitted on 31 Aug 2023
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As it turns out, "winning the moral victory" is still just losing.
True. If you really want to win the moral victory you have to take action to stop letting your peers across the aisle get away with inciting this shit. (Speaking to leadership in congress here). You have to take action against propaganda outlets like Fox and OANN and Alex Jones and so forth.
I'm extremely grumpy today... sorry for this rant.
I guess what hit me yesterday is Biden's statement about being friends with McConnell.
I cannot comprehend considering that man as anything but a villain and a lifelong enemy. And it got me wondering what kind of person could consider him a friend? And how seriously does someone like that really take problems in this country? Kind of feels like the life and death problems we peons face aren't life and death for those in power, ya know?
Exactly. Mitch McConnell has done more damage to this country than anyone besides Reagan.
I really hope Biden was just lying to sound diplomatic.
There is no moral victory just people in power telling you to be subservient and accept their behavior or you can't go to their imaginary billionaire land in the sky. I mean even the turn the other cheek is always misrepresented. Old slave laws prevented hitting someone a certain way or they could be released, you turned the other cheek to force them to hit you in an illegal manor and try to get released or force them into a position where they couldn't hit you that time. It did not mean turn and let someone hit you ffs.
Well, would you be willing to do what they're doing in the name of "winning"? That's the real dilemma. How exactly do you maintain your own morality against an amoral adversary? Is it possible? It's the old trope of "becoming as evil as the evil you're fighting". I certainly admire pacifists for being able to hold to their ideals, but for me there's no easy answer.
Not in the name of "winning" no. But in the name of helping people that the conservatives are trying to hurt, absolutely.
It's not a dilemma at all. Conservatives aren't evil because they are willing to use underhanded to accomplish their goals. They are evil because their goals are evil. Fighting back against them is not even remotely the same.
While it is true that the ends don't justify the means, there has been this moderate liberal overcorrection where people only concern themselves with the "means" and think that it is wrong to ever focus on the "ends". But it's not, the ends matter. The process of government, the "means", isn't actually meaningful in-and-of-itself, it's a tool to manage disputes in a non-violent manner. But it is also a contract, and it only works when all parties agree to it and abide by it.
If the conservatives break the contract, and are hurting people, then upholding the "means" and allowing those people to keep getting hurt rather than putting a stop to it, is complacency and it's own sort of evil.
That's certainly one answer, I agree.
You don't fight this by meeting it head on, letting them choose the battlefield. You fight this by aggressively bringing the fucking banhammer, both figuratively and literally.
You don't just throw the law book at them, you throw the library. You hit them with every possible charge, loitering, jaywalking, not carrying the right kind of insurance, w/e. All of it, and you don't let off, or give an inch. No fucking plea deals in the face of organizers of hate and stochastic terrorists. Sending bomb scares and death threats should be a mandatory five years, doubling if repeated (5>10>20).
Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Idealism and realism are, more often than not, opposed for this reason.
Sure, in an ideal world there would simply be no amoral people. We would all be able to agree that x is bad, y is good.
We do not live in an ideal world.
My friend group in high school knew this. We'd always jokingly describe losing as winning a moral victory.