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I think one of the distinct challenges Liberalism faces is the inability to rally around any figurehead. No matter who we put up, someone can find some instance where that person expressed a belief that doesn't meet the liberal purity test. A common theme with conservatives is that they don't care about one of their leaders making a controversial statement. They can brush off the worst of Trump, et al's comments and talking points and claim it was just a joke, just words, or can't amount to anything. Just do a google search for "you cant take Trump literally," and you'll have pages of articles explaining away evrry comment he's ever made. Liberals on the other hand comb through every word spoken by each leader and when you find the 'bad thing' it's over and we tear them apart. As a group we can't seem to justify supporting someone if they weren't perfect from day one, and there seems to be no room for forgiveness for views expressed decades past. Conservatives just don't have that issue.
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Jan 19, 2017 18:16
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Tiny Brontosaurus posted:I know this is a smaller target to aim for and thus trickier to hit, but I really do want to talk about (american-style) liberals, not leftists. I think we have a generational issue here where SA posters mostly know fellow young people, who, if they are into politics at all, tend to hold very strong, rigid opinions and share them freely. But that's not what most older people are like. I think the key here is how do we radicalize someone who is comfortable? The people you are talking about have what they need and at this point a lot of the fighting to be done would be done for other, distant people over there. The GOP is largely consistent of people who are not fighting against some kind of oppression, but for personal gain. More money for me, gently caress you, is often quoted as the mentality. Unmotivated liberals with institutional power can sit around and go "well it would be nice for other people to benefit from progress so i hope they get on that." But they have no personal need to fight for it.
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Jan 19, 2017 19:11
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Ytlaya posted:I think this is a difficult problem (and possibly an impossible one to fix). I know a bunch of wealthy liberals, and they sorta-kinda care about helping people in theory but it never goes beyond discussions and is almost always limited to ideas that wouldn't be considered "radical." I think this is partly because wealthier people don't really understand what it even means to deal with hardship, in the same way as a man doesn't know how it feels to be a woman. Their lived experiences basically render them completely and utterly ignorant about what it's like to not have a comfortable, happy life. And these are people who I think, at their core, are good people. But it's impossible to communicate to them with just words what it's like to experience difficulty. As a result, it's impossible to really get these people to feel any sort of urgency, since the very concept of urgently needing help is foreign to them. I have seen this from another angle too, where someone has indeed lived legitimate hardship but worked their way out of it, so now they can sympathize with the hardship of others but feel like that's just part of the deal and it will soon turn out all right.
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Jan 20, 2017 06:03
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