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Solkanar512 posted:You don't get to smear the people who are working their loving asses off to make things better. That's loving lazy, that's loving short-sighted and that's loving bullshit. You don't get to smear the people working for human rights, for action on climate change, for labor rights, for healthcare and so on. You don't have the right to tear those people down, just because you want to scream and shout at Pelosi. Criticize her all you loving want, but don't you loving dare poo poo all over those who are making real change in the world. I suppose that one way to defend the status quo is to argue that the only "valid" way of doing politics is to support mainstream politicians. In the case of your average low info liberal voter, I think genuine ignorance about the fact that Democratic politicians also actively support and commit great evil is also a factor. It seems like a lot of liberals basically just define "Democrat" in their head with a short list of cherry-picked positive things the party has done. One thing the Citations Needed podcast sometimes mentions, which I think is very true, is that most people (obviously including liberals) basically just ignore bipartisan/status quo harm when evaluating politicians and political outcomes. Bipartisan/status quo harm is just written off as an immutable fact of reality, and doesn't factor into whether a Democratic politician is good or bad; only the differences between them and Republicans are considered. Once you also take into account that bipartisan/status quo harm, suddenly it stops looking like such a benevolent act of justice to throw your support behind folks like Obama, Clinton, etc. I can still understand arguments that Democrats should always be supported as a harm reduction measure, but that's a bit different from actually calling them a "force for good" (which is far more dubious claim), and it's certainly no justification for attacking people who are unwilling to support politicians who are objectively bad people who support bad/harmful things. Even if you believe their choice is suboptimal, people do suboptimal things all the time. My choice to not donate $10 to some worthwhile charity immediately after making this post likely would have a higher net negative impact than if I didn't vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 general election. It's a dramatically disproportionate reaction to what is, at worst, a mildly suboptimal choice on the part of people who don't vote for president in the general election, and it wrongly attempts to assign full blame for the election outcome to every individual's decision to vote. I understand where that reaction comes from (because people have trouble comprehending big numbers and how individual decisions connect to them), but it's still wrong and irrational.
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May 31, 2019 23:32
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Ardennes said in his post last page more or less what I was planning to say. Public opinion in the US is heavily controlled by our media, and I agree with him that our media is in many ways more effective as propaganda than the state media of other countries. It allows a range of opinions on the limited set of topics where the opinions of wealthy people and businesses differ, so there's an illusion of choice, but the range of acceptable opinions is strictly limited. The internet changes this somewhat, and (in my opinion) is likely a large reason Sanders was able to even be competitive. But if I'm being completely honest, I'm not optimistic that media will ever lose its hold over peoples' political views (or at least that it won't in time to avoid catastrophe via global warming, etc). Basically the point is that when people like KingNastidon try to act like the outcome of voting is some representation if the True Feelings (tm) of Americans, it's utterly absurd. There is almost no link between the actual things people want and the ideology and policies of the people they vote for.
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Jun 6, 2019 07:51
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Biden is virtually certain to result in depressed Democratic turnout at the state/local levels relative to Trump (who at least motivates turnout among Dems). It genuinely isn't clear whether the differences between Trump and Biden as president exceed the harm caused by increased Republican control at lower levels. Probably most of what Republicans have done to hurt women and minority groups is through state legislatures. It's important to keep this in mind (and this is also why it's important to stay engaged for elections outside of the president).
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Jun 22, 2019 16:28
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Ogmius815 posted:Elizabeth Warren is like Bernie, but smarter. It might be a useful thought exercise to articulate exactly why you believe this. Does it feel "obvious" to you? If so, why? I think that Warren benefits from a more understated version of the same thing that draws people to Buttigieg; she talks and behaves in a way that people from a certain socioeconomic background associate with "a smart, educated person."
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Jun 23, 2019 04:01
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generic one posted:Alright, so, I’ve gotta ask, since this is the protest voting thread, if there’s a choice between Biden and Trump, who would you vote for? Biden’s lovely, I think we can all agree that’s obvious, but wouldn’t he do less harm than Trump, if that’s how the general election plays out? There are a couple things wrong with this way of thinking. The first (and probably clearest) is that, for most Americans, there is no real question about whether their state will be red or blue. For those Americans, there is literally no practical reason for them to vote for Biden instead of supporting some other candidate they actually think is decent. So this whole question only even applies for the minority of Americans who live in swing states (or states where it's reasonably possible for them to be swing states. But even assuming that is the case, the net outcome isn't really clear when you're talking about someone as bad as Biden. This is for the reason I've already explained earlier in this thread - that a Democrat like Biden is virtually certain to result in Republican gains at the state (and probably also Congressional) levels relative to under Trump (who at least motivates Democratic turnout), and state governments are where a huge amount (if not most) of harm against minority groups and women are perpetrated by the Republican Party. In the specific role as President, Trump would be worse (probably, unless Biden started a war which isn't impossible). But it isn't clear that the additional harm specifically from Trump being President relative to Biden would exceed the harm from decreased Democratic turn-out for other elections. None of this is a defense for not voting at all or voting for Trump, though. It's just a defense for not voting for someone like Biden.
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Jun 23, 2019 22:04
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generic one posted:I totally agree with and understand the rest of your reply, but this is the part I struggle with. Yes, I agree that having someone like Sanders would significantly impact down-ticket races by motivating voters, but if we get to the general election, and Sanders isn’t he candidate, shouldn’t we still vote for whoever it is over Trump? Ah, I think I see the point of confusion. I'm talking about elections during the tenure of the president, not the downticket races during the presidential election. If Biden is president, elections that take place during his presidency are likely to have significantly worse Democratic turn-out than under someone like Trump (who at least motivates Democratic turn-out). And to be super clear, I'm not arguing that the harm from this exceeds the additional harm from Trump himself. I'm just arguing that it's not clear enough to warrant attacking someone for not specifically voting for Biden (in a hypothetical Biden vs. Trump match-up).
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Jun 25, 2019 20:56
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Condiv posted:likewise, getting mad people in new york voted jill stein for president is very silly My embarrassing confession is that in 2012 I voted for Jill Stein (in a red state) instead of the Socialist candidate because the Socialist candidate wasn't on the ballot and I was too lazy to write them in. The way I rationalized it was "it'll look better if the most prominent left-of-Democratic candidate receives a lot of votes rather than it being split among multiple left candidates" but the real reason was laziness.
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Aug 22, 2019 05:19
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Prester Jane posted:I appreciate your intent friend but theflyingorc is never going to post in this thread. He doesn't want to actually debate or discuss this topic or have this conversation- he wants to shut it down. I don't think it's some malicious thing so much as the fact that, for most of these people, they are simply incapable of viewing politics as anything other than "the war against Republicans," and anything that isn't attacking Republicans is, in their mind, a distraction at best and at worst somehow harming the chances of defeating Republicans. It's not that surprising that this ends up being the case, given that US media does everything in its power to sell this framing to the public. So they'll sometimes be willing to entertain discussing the Democratic Party, but only to a point (and even then they're still only thinking in terms of "counteracting Republican harm"). The thing they're usually incapable of understanding, again due to media framing, is that both parties actively participate in perpetuating the suffering in our society and abroad. Instead of looking at the actual net harm and its sources (which they can usually afford to ignore, because most of these folks are pretty well off themselves), they instead view it as a battle between individuals, and Republicans sound a lot worse when you hear them speak, even if in practice 95+% of people suffering under Republicans would also suffer under Democrats. So it confuses them when the left acts like Democrats are a similar level of harmful to Republicans, since they see Obama speak and they see Trump speak and go "but the difference is so obvious!" The frustrating thing is that they have the advantage of the mainstream media sharing their perspective, so it's easy for them to stay in their comfort zone discourse-wise by simply responding to the latest things in the media. If the left tries to put things in context, they perceive it as "sealioning" and trying to force them to talk about something they don't really want to talk about. So they won't deny something like the harm from Obama's immigration policy, but that's not what they're talking about right now (and uncoincidentally it won't ever be what they're talking about thanks to the cooperation of the media, if they can possibly help it).
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Nov 1, 2019 04:36
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J.A.B.C. posted:So, I disagree with this somewhat, in that there is a definite better choice here. My point isn't that Obama is the same as Trump. My point is that they're both complicit in the vast majority of harm caused and allowed both domestically and abroad (thus the use of "similar" instead of "same"). It is meaningless to spend time and effort emphasizing how less bad one is than the other, since any reasonable evaluation of circumstances that aims to address our nation's well-being (and that of other nations ours effects) will realize that "the entire political establishment" is the cause. When it comes to the things that cause the majority of harm, Democrats and Republican politicians are in agreement. Distinguishing between Democrats and Republicans in this regard is similar to distinguishing between a "moderate" Republican and a more extreme one. The difference may exist, but that doesn't mean that focusing most of your attention on the Republicans is a good idea (since that's aiming for, at best, a result that continues to accept the majority of suffering our society produces).
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Nov 1, 2019 17:51
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I don't know if it's actually representative of any larger trend, but anecdotally I've definitely seen a large portion of people who would have previously been "vote blue no matter who" types flipping to the other side of that argument on places like these forums (or other online spaces with people under the age or 40 or so). Unless it's offset by some other shift (which it definitely might be, since Clinton had her own unique issues), I wouldn't be surprised if a smaller portion of the left is willing to vote for Biden than were willing to vote for Clinton.Cerebral Bore posted:It's not even clear that Biden is the lesser evil if you take long-term considerations into account. There's also really no argument for why anybody should be obliged to vote for the Dem candidate when the party establishment itself is clearly OK with losing. You don't even have to take long-term considerations into account. The point I always make regarding this is that there were huge state-level losses under Obama, while there at least appear to have been some gains under Trump. A Democrat as lovely as Biden virtually guarantees awful state-level (and probably federal congressional) results. Republicans do a lot (if not the majority) of their harm through state governments, so it is entirely conceivable for Biden to be worse on the whole than Trump. FilthyImp posted:I gave a close friend of mine massive amounts of poo poo for doing this in '16 but gently caress it, I can't vote for Biden, especially since he's straight out lying about his loving voting record with respect to entitlements. That was seriously insane; it was literally just as bad as anything Trump has ever done. The guy just blatantly and repeatedly lied, and doubled down on the lie when Sanders tried to point it out. I think my favorite one was the "9 SuperPACs support Sanders" one; where the gently caress in his dementia-addled brain did that even come from? I have no idea what could have even been misunderstood as that. The even scarier thing is that there's a good chance Biden didn't even realize that he was lying. He might just be that far gone. Djarum posted:Honestly I keep saying it but I feel like we are going to have a fracture within the party. It really is starting to become untenable between the progressives which are looking for movement on many issues effecting them and the centralist/liberal wing that want a status quo. This is also in opposition to the GOP that is so far to the extreme right now they have alienated all but the most radical and/or stupid. The problem is that it's ultimately a generational gap, and younger people are split more than older people. Among older people, you basically just have the culture war, with them generally agreeing on most other core ideological topics. Younger people, at least when they're involved with politics, seem to have more well-defined left/right-wing ideology. You can see this in how heavily they went for Sanders. Put another way, older Democrats and Republicans agree with each other more than they disagree, but the same is absolutely not true for younger left and right-wingers. Trump proves that there's space on the Republican Party (and within the US political environment in general) for someone who both appeals to right-wing youth and appeals to older right-wingers. But there is no such possibility for the left, because the Democratic establishment opposes anyone left-wing far more than either the Democratic or Republican establishments oppose Trump. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Mar 17, 2020 |
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Mar 17, 2020 03:50
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JerikTelorian posted:I'm genuinely not following this logic. Whether it's Trump or Biden generally privileged people are going to be doing somewhere from fine to great. Neither candidate has a non-zero chance of fixing things for the oppressed, and both will actively cause a large amount of harm. I've noticed that many liberals/Democrats seem to think that the choice is between "minor improvements" and "greater improvements." This is not the case. Most Democrats, like Biden, cause a net harm. The only reason Obama isn't an extremely obvious net harm is that the ACA offsets some of the harm he did (though even then the harm still probably outweighed any benefits from the ACA).
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Mar 19, 2020 19:21
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Venomous posted:Trump's gonna win again, folks I briefly watched some PBS earlier, and they had someone on talking positively/optimistically about how Trump's disapproval is a bit lower than his approval. It neglected to mention the fact that it's still better than it was in 2016 and pretty directly translates to a certain general election loss if it stays that way. The liberals will deceive themselves into thinking Trump is certain to lose again, and the result will be the same. I'm certain to the point where I'd actually be willing to try using that "bet on current events" website about Trump winning if Biden is nominated (and both of them survive until the general election). I think the people who believe Trump will be hurt by the coronavirus are gravely mistaken, and that it will actually result in people rallying around him (particularly in the absence of any strong Democratic leadership). The economy crashing will hurt some, but I don't think it'll be enough to make Trump lose. While "state of the economy" is historically an accurate predictor of electoral success, I subjectively have doubts that it will continue to be as applicable in the insane times we live in. Biden is also likely to suppress "youth" (where "youth" is everyone under the age of 40) to a pretty unprecedented degree. VitalSigns posted:Isn't it disgusting how Republicans all voted for a rapist because of team loyalty. Look, Republicans rape like *this*, but Democrats rape like *that*. It's completely different. The way Republicans rape is very rude and crass. Democrats maintain civility with their rapes. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Mar 31, 2020 |
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Mar 31, 2020 01:24
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Mellow Seas posted:There is value in discussing the moral question of how bad the "better" candidate can be before they're no longer worth voting for, but it seems to me that this thread has become about "will Biden be better than Trump?", which is not a moral question. We're all just guessing about Biden is going to do, so maybe we shouldn't judge people on a moral level because they have a different opinion on that particular prognostication. There are legitimate arguments to be made that Biden will be significantly better, and arguments that he won't (and I think those arguments are actually being put forth pretty well on both sides). Only one side here is characterized by demanding behavior from other people. The "vote blue no matter who" side is condemning others for not being willing to vote for Biden, while the people who aren't willing to vote for Biden are rarely actually condemning people for making the personal choice to vote for him as some sort of dubious harm reduction measure. Put another way, "there are reasonable arguments both in favor and against the idea that Trump would be worse overall than Biden" is effectively an argument against the people who are demanding that other people support Biden (because their argument relies on the idea that it's some extremely obvious axiomatic truth that Trump is a net harm compared with Biden).
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Apr 2, 2020 23:13
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RBA Starblade posted:You'll never change things if you surrender to the right, no, I don't think you will. I think that's effectively what trying to run a third party right now will lead to. The problem with your worldview is that you don't include the Democratic Party in "the right."
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Apr 5, 2020 01:32
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Cerebral Bore posted:Agreed. The fact that the thing you lot get most upset about is people using the incorrect name for your sportsball team really drops the mask, revealing that this is all a game to you and you're mad because your fanboy mentality can't stand that nobody actually likes your team. To these people, there is a deep and fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats (or Trump and Biden). They don't really examine this, because to them there's no need to. The Democrats can do evil, but they can't be evil, because the latter would imply some things that they aren't willing to accept. The left realizes that the primary source of harm in our country is bipartisan, with the difference between parties basically being intra-right-wing factional differences. Liberals still draw a hard line between the way they think of Democrats vs Republicans, even if they think some Democrats suck.
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Apr 8, 2020 22:38
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D-Pad posted:My four friends and I are walking through the desert, about to die of thirst. To our great relief, we come up upon a man selling water by the gallon for $5. Analogies/metaphors like this are revealing, because they directly imply that the person using the metaphor thinks that there's some deep and fundamental difference between (in this case) electing Trump and electing Biden (that is literally the difference between "having some water" and "having none"), and that Biden will do some moderate amount of good even if it would be better to have more. Though in an ironic way the analogy is accurate about a certain mindset, because (as another poster mentioned) it ignores the option of "forcibly take the water from the guy hoarding water while others die of dehydration." It's impossible to really communicate with someone who thinks this is reasonable, because their values and/or understanding of politics are too far divorced from those of the people they're talking to (in this case myself and other left-wing people).
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Apr 9, 2020 22:46
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The worst submarine posted:I want to be convinced that not voting for Biden is the correct thing to do. Biden is a rapist, supported bad policies, war crimes, etc. . BUT, it seems like him being in office will have the most likely positive long-term effect. His policies are more progressive for the most pressing issues (healthcare, climate change, immigration) when compared to Trump. Additionally, I have not seen evidence to support that 4 more years of Trump will lead to a significantly better socialist presidency afterwards... but if there are any articles, historical case studies, etc. about the path to Good poo poo and how that relates to Trump, I would love to read them. In terms of concrete consequences, Biden virtually guarantees massive congressional and state/local-level losses during his presidency, similar to Obama except possibly worse (though it might be mitigated a bit by Obama losing so many that there's only so much left to realistically lose). Trump at least guarantees a somewhat higher level of mid-term voting and a more involved (if still lacking) liberal opposition. Most of the harm Republicans do is probably actually at the state level, so there are dire consequences to this. Biden is also far more likely to do something like cut Social Security. Even Obama tried this, and Biden is more right-wing than Obama was. And he will absolutely perpetuate most Trump policies. He is just as likely to do most of the semi-decent things on his platform as Obama was to close Guantanamo or pass a public option. Basically, at best it is uncertain whether the "pros" of a Biden presidency outweigh the cons. And in such a situation, I see no reason to compel people to make that choice. (There's also the fact that all of this is completely irrelevant to the majority of Americans who don't live in swing states, none of whom have any reason at all to vote for Biden.) McCloud posted:Biden, at his absolute worst, is a return to Pre-Trump politics. That's not ideal but it's still 5 orders of magnitude better than what we have now. This is absolute nonsense. The difference in harm under Trump, while greater than the harm under Obama, is still marginal. It's absolutely not "orders of magnitude." You're comparing your perception of individuals rather than the actual concrete things happening and the magnitude of their impact on people. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Apr 10, 2020 |
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Apr 10, 2020 20:02
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volts5000 posted:There's more races than just Presidential. This hurts your argument, though. What happened downballot under Obama and what happened in the midterms under Trump? Electing Biden doesn't have positive effects on other races (which is what you seem to be implying here). volts5000 posted:Look, I'm sorry. It's a calculated vote. I wish to god I didn't have to vote for him. I wanted to vote for Bernie. I did everything I could to get Bernie to the general election. I've never given money to the DNC or Biden and I plan on never giving them any money in the future. Do you at least live in a swing state? I believe that "voting for Biden in a swing state" is at least an understandable personal decision, even if it's wrong to try to compel others to do so, but there's no good excuse for doing so otherwise.
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Apr 10, 2020 21:13
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I've been saying for a while that the final form of Democratic politics will be the Democratic Party offering to pay for one person's life-saving medical care and arguing that, by not supporting them, you are KILLING that person. Twitter will be filled with people posting the portrait of the hostage and textually shaking their heads at people for condemning them to death.
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Apr 11, 2020 00:49
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One thing that has always bugged me about the rhetoric about this stuff is that I genuinely don't see how Trump passes a line where he qualifies as fascist while someone like Biden doesn't. People say "because he's an explicit white supremacist" but...honestly he isn't actually explicit about it? He just makes no effort to distance himself from such people and uses more obvious dog whistles or condemns "the bad ones" of a minority group. And that really isn't very different from what Republicans have always done. He just does it to a greater degree. And in terms of actual policies, there isn't some profound difference separating Trumps' and Democrats', even if Trumps' are worse. To be clear, what I'm arguing here isn't that people shouldn't call Trump a fascist, but that such a label should be applied to the entire class of wealthy and powerful in the US.
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Apr 12, 2020 04:22
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Jabarto posted:Decorum. My most generous interpretation of this is that many Democrats (of any age really, but particularly older ones) have a powerful cultural distaste for Republicans that has its root in some very understandable stuff. My dad, for example, grew up in a fundamentalist Christian family/community in rural Missouri. As a result, he grew to despise that sort of person (and even though Trump obviously isn't remotely religious, his personality in many ways is similar to that of a charlatan fundamentalist preacher or something). That is the fundamental thing at the core of what drives him (and many other older Democrats who would consider themselves "very liberal"). And it's not even wrong, but it tends to give them blinders with regards to understanding that the entire bipartisan class of wealthy/powerful in our country is the real enemy, because what drives them emotionally is specifically associated with Republicans. It doesn't help that liberal-aligned media and pundits basically reinforce this constantly. So even if the facts about Biden are obviously bad, he doesn't fit the specific type of bad person that really makes these liberal voters see red. You might be able to get them to acknowledge all of this stuff, but the minute you stop talking to them they'll be focusing on Trump again, because Trump repulses them on an emotional level that Biden simply doesn't. More broadly, I would say that there are primarily two types of older Democrats. One is the "very liberal" type who are motivated by the sort of thing I mentioned above and spent their lives reading and listening to people like Al Franken, Molly Ivens, Charlie Pierce, etc. The other is the type who more or less have the same political beliefs as a "moderate" Republican but don't care about Republican "culture war" issues like gay marriage or abortion rights. Traditional mainstream media ecosystems exist to cater to both of these types, and this also gives the illusion that there's meaningful ideological variation among Democrats (that notably doesn't include the actual left).
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Apr 12, 2020 19:56
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Groovelord Neato posted:It's weird there are people that listen to Pod Save of their own volition. I don't think these people realize how genuinely bizarre it is for anyone who is supposedly "on the left" to enjoy listening to Pod Save America. Something is deeply wrong if someone can listen to that show without getting disgusted/angry, much less enjoy it.
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Jul 16, 2020 19:55
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I've listened to some PSA. Listening to people discuss politics in a way that refuses to acknowledge the fact that the Democratic Party and most Democratic politicians are harmful actors opposed to left-wing goals is deeply off-putting. An analogy that might make sense to the people who enjoy it - how would you feel about a show that treated the Republican Party and most Republican politicians as being generally good (or at least not outright harmful or malicious)? I imagine that listening to that would probably make you pretty angry! Except in a way liberal-aligned media can be even more infuriating, because it takes nominally left-ish values and treats the Democratic Party as being a good faith advocate for them. edit: Basically it is difficult to listen to political commentary that treats awful people and ideas seriously. It is like reading an en exceptionally bad D&D thread that you can't respond to. All the frustration and none of the catharsis. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 09:07 on Jul 17, 2020 |
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Jul 17, 2020 09:02
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ManBoyChef posted:Indeed. This is one of the things that really aggravates me to no end about the USPOL thread. Anytime a person makes a point about how the parties are similar you have a bunch of people sarcastically saying "the parties are the same! the parties are the same!". Its annoying because it adds nothing to any conversation. No one thinks the parties are exactly the same but the fact remains we have two right wing pro corporate parties. Yes the republicans are worse but by how much. Lets say you have 100 dollars in your bank account and one group will take 90 of it and another group will take 98 of it. Yes one group is objectively worse, but in the end it doesn't really matter because both groups are bad enough that if you are poor losing any amount of money will be a huge hit on your life. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact those posters have some comfort in their life and can afford the energy to think about things beyond where their next meal is coming from or how they are going to afford their meds, or what they can do about their kids birthday this year. In their minds the difference between the parties being huge is so obvious that it doesn't even warrant serious thought. The fact that Democratic politicians give lip service to stuff like racism or police brutality makes the aesthetics very different, and that has the biggest influence on the way they (and most people, really) view politics. Basically, to them, it's completely insane to say anything negative about the Democrats (unless it pertains to "efficacy in fighting Republicans"), because the Republicans are such a dire threat (and their crimes are generally highlighted in the media they consume, while those of Democrats are ignored). They view it as something akin to focusing on bad allergies when someone has cancer. The partisan nature of US politics and politics coverage in the media prevents them from understanding that, in this analogy, cancer is "the bipartisan political consensus," not the Republican Party. But they can't help but categorize things in a partisan way and make comparisons primarily on those grounds. SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:I don't get any insurance from aca, too poor. I did have to pay like 60 bucks because I didn't have insurance one year though Oh poo poo, you've summoned the people who will come and tell you that, actually, this is your fault for not properly taking advantage of subsidies.
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Jul 22, 2020 18:48
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Halloween Jack posted:Once you accept the concept of politics as "the science of the possible," which is just neoliberalism trying to sound inspiring, you can dismiss all other politics as stupid or insane. I'm not sure if this is what you're getting at, but another really huge factor (particularly among people who post on this subforum) is the idea that there's something inherently unreasonable and off-putting about not being optimistic about anything pertaining to the Democratic Party. From their perspective, being optimistic is just what a good person does, and believing a Democratic candidate will be bad is unreasonable until they've already served their political term(s). So you end up with people who will always believe that literally any Democratic politician might do good things, no matter what. I think this is largely because politics is just self-expression for them. The idea that Biden is just going to be bad and there's jack poo poo you can do about it (if he's elected) is not fun and fulfilling, so they reject it. The Politics Show is a fun show that they can not only watch, but even participate in (like American Idol or something - the audience gets to vote!). But it's just not as fun if there's no chance of a good ending, and you don't get to feel good about participating if everyone involved is bad. So they cling to the "we'll take the Biden administration and use it to do good things, somehow!" narrative, because that's a lot more palatable to them. Ghost Leviathan posted:I feel like it seems a common theme in centrist liberal attitudes is that when they're confronted with arguments that they don't have a ready-made rebuttal for or an attitude they don't understand, there's an extremely reluctance to actually try to understand it, to engage in any discussion or just ask about what people actually want and believe. I think it's largely the fact that they have a set of gut feelings that they're confident are true, but don't feel equipped to make the argument themselves. In some cases this can be reasonable - like if you read a persuasive report about something that influenced your opinion but don't feel confident with summarizing its contents to someone else. But in this case it's largely just the fact that the perception of politics they've absorbed from general exposure to US media and political discourse doesn't allow for ideas like "the Democratic Party is a harmful institution that is opposed to the left." The very idea is absurd to them in the same way as someone being an anti-vaxxer or something; they "know" that the idea is ridiculous. vvv This is another way to put it. They're unwilling to take an idea seriously unless it has some sort of presence among figures of authority, though this also includes a variety of mainstream media sources. Even if they don't feel comfortable refuting something the left believes, they will always be skeptical of it in a way that they'd never be skeptical about something that is part of some mainstream liberal narrative. The Venezuela attempted coup is probably the best semi-recent example of this; in the absence of any clear information, they'll just treat mainstream US media. These people would absolutely have supported the Iraq War, because being opposed to it wasn't an acceptable mainstream opinion until long after it started. Pingui posted:I think it has to do with a deference to authority that (to me) seems inherent to liberalism. If authority has not already engaged with the argument, when you do, you run the risk of saying something that authority disagrees with.
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Aug 5, 2020 06:10
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