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this post was submitted on 03 Apr 2024
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politics
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The only battle we are currently fighting is rich vs poor and we are loosing badly. All the other culture war issues are a farce.
Republicans trying to ruin the lives of half the population is not a "farce" and I'm insulted you'd simplify your argument to this level. There can be multiple things happening at once.
It's a farce they put on specifically to distract their base from the war on the poor.
For some republicans in positions of power? Sure. But not for their voter base.
You're missing the fact that all those people are beholden to the rich and powerful and have only done their bidding for the last 80 years.
Sure, Republicans are fuckin horrible. But they're this way by the design of the rich who really run things.
Republicans are horrible because of their core beliefs. That there is not good and bad, but strong and weak. That (paraphrasing a wise internet man here) "there are in-groups that the law must protect but not bind, and out-groups that the law must bind but not protect." That they're always right, and that others are always wrong. Rich people use this, but they cannot create it alone.
The rich don't just use it, they finance it and manage it.
Right, but I feel like you're not getting my point here. They couldn't do that if their supporters didn't already believe in hurting people.
I get that the billionaires can't do it alone, but my point is, without the elites the fascist/capitalist base by itself isn't sufficiently organized or motivated to run an oligarchy.
The billionaires are the brain of that organism.
Dude, it's because your point is stupid and ignorant.
My point is informed by hundreds of hours of discussion with republican individuals. If you think it's stupid and ignorant then tell me with a straight face that republicans aren't more hateful than democrats.
Republicans aren't more hateful than Democrats. On a macro scale, the political party you most identify with says very little about your capacity to hate "others". That capacity is instead part of human nature. If you think your party is above that, then you are deluding yourself or are not recognizing hate when it's directed at the opposition. Either not recognizing it, or justifying it by first vilifying and demonizing the opposition.
It is true that many democrats also hate republicans, but that's a paradox of tolerance. If you look at the policies each party supports, it's pretty clear which one is more hateful.
Right, so hatred of Republicans is justified in your mind.
Edit: The paradox of intolerance can be used to justify intolerance just as easily as it can be used to justify not being tolerant of intolerance. So which is it? Most people who refer to the paradox of intolerance aren't spending much time reflecting on that, and instead jump right to using it to feel good about demonizing their opposition.
I believe it is, but I haven't jumped to anything. I got into politics a few years ago and have only started to truly hate them about a year ago-- after Covid, really. As I said, my opinions have formed through simple conversation with members of each group. I have found republicans' actions to be fueled by selfishness, fear, anger, hatred, unjustified authority, and inequality far, far, FAR more often than I have with democrats. I should really start keeping a list of evidence or something but since I haven't, I only have my experiences (or, you know, the news, if you trust that) to point to about this stuff. I'm a pretty reflective guy, I've thought about the ethics and justification here, and I simply cannot bring myself to care about people who only care for themselves, or worse, actively enjoy watching others suffer. Yes, that includes democrats who enjoy watching the average republican (excluding politicians here) suffer. But at some point my empathy for the average republican runs out. It's been about 10 years since the republican party has gone completely to shit and anyone who still supports them is beyond my ability to help.
I'm of the opinion that where there is understanding, there can be no hatred. Or if you hate someone, it's because you don't actually understand them. And I don't mean trying to understand in the smug, condescending way that CNN or Reddit uses, which is basically "Republicans dumb", but I mean understanding the urge to be self reliant, to value family, country, or religion. But I don't mean agree with either. That is not the same as understanding someone. I read an article concluding that people from broken families are more likely to be left wing, and it has to do with reliance on government to provide security, as opposed to one's own self or their family. Does that make conservatives stupid, greedy, or full of hate? No, they just had a different life experience that formed their impression of what society should be like. Reality is it's even more complex than that, and certainly not as simple as "Republicans stupid and full of hate". People in power know this, but they also know that understanding and empathy with opposition only gets in the way of them winning. So politics inevitably becomes about winning by any means necessary, including vilifying the opposition.
When you say "Republicans", are you referring to politicians or to the roughly half of the country that votes Republican? Because I kind of agree with your take if it's regarding politicians, but even then it should apply to all of them. If you are referring to everyone who votes Republican, then you are so far off base that I don't even know where to start.
I'm referring to a large number of both politicians and voters who hold these sentiments, whether consciously or unconsciously. People who vote republican because of habit or whatever instead of ideology don't count although I do think that's shortsighted, and there are some republicans who genuinely believe in the fiscal or deregulation sides of things etc.
If they vote Republican, they condone the violence associated with it. There is no separation between the two.
Exactly what violence are you referring to?
All of it. State violence against the poor and minority groups; corporate violence against the wage-earner; radicalized lone wolf violence against the public.
And you place the blame for all of that on Republicans? What a good little for soldier you are.
Why yes...yes I do. The Republican Party is the home of conservatism now. Conservatism's goal is to destroy our country and create an oligarchy. This is done through both active and passive violence.
The goal of any conservative movement is to resist change. It's in the name, and it's the nature of people who are conservative. There's nothing about "destroy" or "create an oligarchy" in it. Conservative is closer to the opposite of those. Also, there is very little active violence coming from conservatives, especially compared to progressive movements, and passive violence is a vague term that means whatever you want it to mean, according to your favorite niche cultural movement.
I feel like you are just throwing around terms without even understanding them or applying any critical thought to them.
Beginning with Reagan declaring war on higher education by forcing debt to be incurred by it so that only upper classes could be educated and protect their wealth up to now; " think tanks" pushing public policy to ONLY serve the wealthiest while shitting all over the middle and lower class; to using religion to control women and doom them to being nothing more than incubators; to militarizing the police and cheering for every murder they committed, ALL THE VIOLENCE IS FROM THE RIGHT. NONE AT ALL IS FROM THE LEFT. NONE. ZERO. ZILCH.
And now I know that you are part of the fascist brigade here.
Perhaps you could define some terms for me, starting with "violence", but also "fascist" and "brigade", because it's almost like you think violence is any policy or speech you don't like, and a fascist is anyone who disagrees with your politics. It's hard to have a discussion when the terms are so subjective, and the condition for civil discourse is that I agree with you.
A classic radical fascist tactic is to claim that the other thinks fascism is "anything you don't agree with". Wrong. It has specific meanings demonstrated by specific policy positions.
"Violence" is anything that violates the rights of others. "States' rights" is an excuse to allow violence through the tyranny of the minority, and us used to violate the rights of others. If the Constitution federallt protects the rights of an individual, "states' rights" seeks to overrule those protections
Glad we can agree that there is an actual definition for fascism, even if you aren't bothering to refer to it before leveling accusations.
Anyway the premise of states rights as opposed to Federal is that Federal laws should be very limited, aimed at protecting basic human rights, interstate infrastructure, and the military to protect the country as a whole. Then individual states can create laws that are highly applicable to their own issues, environment, culture, demographic, tax structure and so on. If a state gets virtually no tourism, but provides tons of food for the rest of the nation, then it is best served by a set of laws that are different from a state that relies upon tourism or business or manufacturing or retirees or whatever. The Federal government can't possibly govern as well as the people in the state can govern themselves. Here you are preaching about fascism and in the same breath advocating for a strong central government. Are you just messing with me? Or are you about the other kind of authoritarian government? Answer this: are you ok with forcing other people to do and think as you do?
No, I'm not, which is why I brought up States' Rights which is doing exactly that while the conservative federal government is abandoning it's role to protect individual liberty. The States Rights issue stopped being economic long ago.
You can't weaken the federal government and be a fascist at the same time.
Sure you can. What you're doing is removing federal protections of individuals so that states can fasciststially abuse them without consequence.
Wanna explain why Louisiana is planning to criminalize librarians and how that isnt fascism at all?
Sounds like you are working from a different definition of fascism.
I'm going by the 14 tenets outlined by Dr. Lawrence Britt
I read through the 14 tenets and kept thinking it was stupid, vague, biased, and perfect for applying to whatever you don't like. Not only that but it could be easily applied to any authoritarian regime, Communist, fascist, or whatever. And then I looked into it a little more and it turns out that he isn't a doctor at all, just some magazine contributor for a leftist magazine. I assume you looked it up just now, but you may want to look into it a little more carefully before you base too much on that. There is actually a lot of discussion and criticism around the validity of those points.
Oh gee I wonder by whom?
There are others with similar tenet lists as well. They absolutely apply to all the anti-American, freedom-despising MAGAt fascist shitheads and their psychotically deranged egomaniacal leader. Is that your crowd?
There is a lot of space between calling out inconsistencies, agendas, and extremists on the left, and being a right wing extremist. If you think being able to criticize obviously agenda-driven lists, or to see nuance or weaknesses in them is some kind of litmus test for extremism, then perhaps it is YOU that is the extremist.
They do not exist in that space. Meanwhile conservatism has solved zero problems and has no intention to. They cannot be trusted with or allowed to govern.
I'm saying that I exist in that space between.
The role and benefit of conservatives in any society is to resist reactive or bad change, to resist the creation of new problems, which is the mistake that progressives are prone to making. You need both. I agree that conservatives cannot be trusted to govern alone since it will result in stagnation in the long term, but also neither can progressives be trusted to govern alone. In reality you can't actually get rid of either, because society will simply shift until you have both again.
There are no progressives in US government and there haven't been any progressives in US government for at least 50 years if not more. Nobody is existing in the space in between because there is no in between. This is been a Non-Stop rightward- lurching regime for nearly the entirety of my life.
Lol ok. I think this conversation has run it's course.