this post was submitted on 12 Oct 2025
140 points (92.7% liked)

news

195 readers
817 users here now

A lightweight news hub to help decentralize the fediverse load: mirror and discuss headlines here so the giant instance communities aren’t a single choke-point.

Rules:

  1. Recent news articles only (past 30 days)
  2. Title must match the headline or neutrally describe the content
  3. Avoid duplicates & spam (search before posting; batch minor updates).
  4. Be civil; no hate or personal attacks.
  5. No link shorteners
  6. No entire article in the post body

founded 2 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social -1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Hey @anarchiddy@lemmy.dbzer0.com -- remember when I said that "liberal" was basically a poisoned word at this point because it means so many different things to so many people that it often just causes confusion to even introduce it?

This is a pretty good example. I tried telling you that most modern Democrats are center-right conservatives as opposed to "liberals," and long story short you didn't like that. So just now I tried out applying the term using the modern "US politics" definition, where Democrats are "liberals," and now I'm all of a sudden in a what-words-mean-what-things conversation with this person. The original substance that we were talking about is forgotten.

@tinidril@midwest.social for what it's worth I actually agree with you here. I don't even know enough about Kamala's policies to be able to weigh in on where she stands, but if I had to guess I would say she is probably a center-right conservative and not a liberal. But as soon as someone says that, there's a whole new crop of people for whom "liberal" means "enemy," and they will crop up to yell at you that of course she's a liberal and how dare you try to defend her against that accusation, and so on, and so the conversation just becomes a big pointless argument filled with tribalism and accusations.

Of course, if that's your goal, then using the word "liberal" is a pretty good approach.

[–] Tinidril@midwest.social 6 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I think it's a mistake to apply any kind of principled philosophy to establishment Democrats. They aren't left, they aren't liberals, they aren't conservative, they are careerest. If they believe in anything it's competence, but with little discernment about what their competence should achieve. What they are is an elitist social club, and they see broader democracy as an inconvenience to overcome on the path to earning favor in that club.

[–] PhilipTheBucket@piefed.social -1 points 1 week ago

Yeah, pretty much.