Had this convo last night. Friend is confused as hell about what is left/right. Frustrating trying to undo years of doublethink.

The conversation wound up with this: How do you best raise a child? With one parent's word being the only thing to consider like a god? Or with the help of aunts/uncles, siblings, family, doctors, teachers, community, etc, to help them form their own opinion? Then ask yourself why is it that everyone considering themselves "conservative" spends the majority of the time screaming about how each one of those things is the enemy.

when talking to my parents, if I say "community" instead of "communism," or "nobody deserves to starve" instead of "free food", and "help vulnerable people" instead of "benefits" and "everyone deserves to feel safe from harm" instead of XYZ - everyone wholeheartedly agrees!

But if I let them go off on a tangent without guiding them, then they're "anti woke" even though they don't know what woke means

Also add the word 'capitalism' in there. It's like I don't even get to finish saying the word before the people I'm talking to either zones out or start defending it with: "well there is no better alternative".

... Doesn't help that it described fascism as well.

I mean that's, like, literally their name

We currently live in a post scarcity world. Yes right now. The only reason we have poverty in today's world is that it financially benefits an extreme minority of humans on earth. We currently can provide for everyone and still live the same level of comfort we have now, but imaginary line on graph must go up.

Man, it's annoying what characters like Mao and Stalin (as well as America) have done to those words.

Hell, the word "union" is such a dirty word in tech that I've literally watched people complain about employee treatment, praise employees empowering others, while saying "I'm against unions in all forms, but (lists what a union is)".

It just goes to show that branding is important. You can list something that people would 100% agree with, tell them it's the bogeyman, and they'll change their mind immediately. Call it something else, and you'll probably have work councils (unions), community support (socialism), and premium health insurance (free healthcare).

I got some rednecks to almost agree with me about socialism at a party once.

We were outside this quaint little town that was supported almost entirely by a cement factory. People in the town had been working there for three generations. The entire town depended on the factory for its existence. If that factory closed down the town would die.

But the person who makes that decision doesn't live in the town. He doesn't even live in this country. He's just some rich dude in France who can wipe an American town off the map at a whim. Didn't we fight a revolution to stop that sort of thing? Shouldn't the people who do the work have a say in what happens?

I could see the dawning realization in their eyes just before some chud pointed out that was technically socialism and that shut down the discussion.

I find it funny that it costs $30k to criminalize a homeless person, and $10k to offer supportive housing. Yet we choose the expensive option.

Same with energy we have solar, and batteries.. Yet we power cars with gasoline, we have hemp yet we make things out of plastics

I think it's pretty easy to talk about the sort of political policies you want to see without feeling the need to attach political ideologies to them. You can talk about wealth redistribution all day without ever mentioning socialism.

how do we even undo that stigma?

almost everyone i talk to who hates marxism doesnt even know what it is.

in sweden we have the concept of "folkhemmet" (the people's home) which i like a lot for this reason, it's a big part of why sweden is such a nice place to live.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkhemmet

I usually just talk about worker and consumer cooperatives and if I have to name an ideology I say Mutualism.

@Flatworm7591 careful with the ape holding the fasces...

Have you thought about using words like "unions" or "The New Deal?"