this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
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this partisan nonsense is the biggest threat to the fediverse rn. when will people understand that the real fight is down vs. up, the little guy vs the elite mafia. left/right as an endless blamegame they use to keep us fighting each other, while they steal from everyone. the old divide & conquer, still works like charm. every other platform is already infected with it. if it gets to the fediverse, we're just gonna end up with a bunch of oppressive echo chambers much like reddit. if that happens I'll be gone
Little guys lapping up right wing propaganda sure make it extremely difficult to fight the elite, tho.
They become merely another instrument of the "up" of suppressing the "down" when you're feeling frustrated, helpless, and hopeless all the time.
it's important to see that both sides have extremes and to assume that anyone who tips the scale "left" or "right" is somehow more right or more wrong is what keeps us from being able to find common ground. turning the words "conservative" and "liberal" into slurs is equally damaging. we both have ways of lashing out at each other when we are not the enemy. I bet we can agree that extremism is dangerous regardless of which side of the fence it resides on.
Ha, you're being downvoted for being reasonable and speaking basic truths. Has this place already become what made reddit such a shit show?
They're probably being downvoted because presenting the political divide as an arbitrary choice between two equally valid options is a perspective that many would find naive at best and actively malicious at worst.
Politics is mess, I don't want to pretend that there's no nuance (I certainly don't agree with quite a lot of online leftist orthodoxy), and I won't pretend to have an answer for our increasing polarization, but the simple fact of the matter is that we are not dealing with two equally valid sides. "Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?", "Are vaccines a conspiratorial attempt at government control?", "Is climate change a severe and man-made phenomenon?", and "Are LGBT people basically just evil perverted pedophiles?" are not subjective questions one can have a casual opinion on. They are objective questions with objective answers, and to pretend otherwise is simply wrong.
Again, I'm very much not saying that the vague left is perfect by any means, but you only see one side start shooting at beer cans because a trans person had the audacity to exist.
let me start by acknowledging that I merely wanted to express that it's not just "extreme right buffoonery" that's a problem. to claim that there is no such thing as "extreme left
buffoonery" is misleading.
my comment clearly stated that the extremes on both ends are to be despised. politics is a game I don't wish to be judged on because I'm seriously apolitical. we do need to meet in the middle. I'm not saying we need to forgive the "buffoonery" but cut out the rotten fruit and make a fucking jam. ideals are not arbitrary in any way. our ideals are built through life experience. I'm seeing a whole lot of each side trying to dehumanize the other for not agreeing with their politics. The "right" has rational, reasonable, kind humans who believe in human rights. but the fact that they may have a stance on the nanny state that the country is becoming somehow makes everyone who's not a professed Democrat evil.
regarding hate speech, frankly I've experienced more than my fair share. but that doesn't count, right?
I get your point, really, and I don't even strictly disagree. As I said, I disagree with a fair bit of your standard Online Left positions. I unironically like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton and have the audacity to generally listen to economists; suffice it to say I've gotten more than fair share of online political hatred lol. Leftists will call me a shit liberal and conservatives will call me an evil gay communist.
But what must be realized is that the Republican party as it exists today is simply not an equally viable and rational alternative group of people who simply have some different thoughts on tax policy and the scoped of government. I direly wish it was, but it simply is not that. Polarization sucks, and I don't really have a clear answer for it, but the answer must not be taking the questions like "Are gay people secretly grooming your children?", "Is climate change a hoax?", "Was the 2020 election stolen from Trump?", "Should we legally impose Christianity at every level of society?", and "Is Hillary Clinton secretly a bloodthirsty cannibal that feeds off the youthful vitality of children?" and deciding that there are valid points on both sides.
I get that politics is exhausting, but being "apolitical" is a political choice. It's the decision that you're okay with the status quo and that you don't think it's worth making a fuss about. I'm originally from deep rural Missouri, and while it has since been voided by the Courts, I have (adult) trans friends who began developing suicidal thoughts because the state was going to ban hormone therapy. This was a regime that ostensibly claims to be for limited government arbitrarily inserting itself in the private medical decisions of consenting adults for no reason other than to appeal to a base of bigots. Things like this matter, whether you choose to pay attention or not. Being able to ignore them is a luxury not everyone has.
Good. If the concept of not tolerating hate speech bothers you, get out.
I don't tolerate hate speech, on either side of the fence.
God I am so curious as to what you consider hate speech "on the other side of the fence".
Yeah, me too.
We won't get any examples, though. At least not any examples of things real, relevant people actually said. The best they'll do is drop a dumptruck's worth of strawmen before flouncing off in a huff.
Yeah it's /r/Politics levels of "if you don't agree with you YOU'RE HITLER!!!!!!1!"
Reddit is just an empty framework that got filled by communities of humans. The shape of the framework did have some impact, but ultimately human nature is the biggest influence on the form that those communities took.
The Fediverse is a different framework, shaped a little bit differently but still basically the same. The same basic humans are building communities in it. I think all the smug "we're better than Reddit" stuff is going to look rather silly once the Fediverse gets anywhere close to being as big as Reddit is.
I hope it's not.
As opposed to the clearly smarter, enlightened little guys on the left. You're going exactly what they're describing.
You're just upset that your right wing hatred constantly gets called out.
You're implying that the left and right suppress each other equally, but frankly it's only the right trying to fuck over their fellow man for profit and power. Got nothing to do with being more enlightened or smarter. Compassion though... Ye, the left are more compassionate.
Of course feel free to prove me wrong...
Lets just take this to the extreme and see where shit lands.
Take the common leftist view. What happens to the country if we "got" our way. Everyone has healthcare coverage. Everyone with regard to their gender, orientation, race are treated equally and with dignity/respect. Everyone has a living wage. Everyone that wants to go to college can go to college without huge debt. Oh, we have to figure out how to pay for it.
Man that sounds fucking awful.
Now take it where the common right wing idiot that is consumed by the culture war wants to take it. Gay marriage outlawed. Transpeople wiped from the face of the earth. Fuck minorities. No minimum wage. Lower taxes for the 1%. Privatized social security, privatized medicare. No federal minimum wage. Gov't restriction of free speech.
And yes, I say right wing dipshits want to restrict free speech because they are the morons removing books. To quote Rage Against the Machine, "They don't have to burn the books, they just remove them" That is exactly what the right wing morons are doing.
The right getting their way leads to a dystopian shithole where only the wealthy have decent lives.
I would actually be ok arguing economics with a conservative. But the conservatives lost that fight when they embraced the religious right and decided to economically spend just as much as the liberals. Both parties are big spenders. So economics aren't a talking point anymore. It is purely a culture war that the right started.
Maybe you need to step back from the first order effects that your bias is saying and look deeper.
What is the cost of free health care? Where is it paid for?
What is the result of lower taxes (the right wing is for lower taxes for everyone, not just the rich - your 1% claim is an outright misrepresentation of their views): more money that can be used to invest.
there is a lot more to both. I'm countering your left wing bias by doing the same as you: cherry picking results that fit my narrative.
Going to take an easy one for you.
"What is the result of lower taxes (the right wing is for lower taxes for everyone, not just the rich - your 1% claim is an outright misrepresentation of their views): more money that can be used to invest."
We have the data over the past 70 years to show that is 1000% false. Straight up false.
Go look at economic investment in the 1950s to now. Seriously, go look it up. When we had the highest tax rates, especially corporate tax rates, we had the highest level of investment into research and salaries.
When you have the lowest tax rates, what you get is stock buybacks and huge salary payouts to executives. You obviously have done very little research in how low tax rates work in reality. Hint, it doesn't trickle down. And we know because we have hard facts and how the markets have worked over time.
EDIT: And I want to give you the reason why high tax rates lead to more investment. If you have a choice between lowering your tax burden by using it for research and salaries, you would rather do that than give it to the gov't. That is why high tax rates work.
The US currently has one of the worst cost-to-outcome ratios for healthcare of any developed country. So if anything, the cost would decrease.
"lower taxes for everyone" helps the 1% the most, and harms the bottom whatever% the most
trickle down economics isn't a thing
Taxes.
Except that you guys are paying retail + markup + profit for the investors + "we have a monopoly" fees + "lol, your other option is dying" surcharge.
We just buy healthcare at-cost and wholesale.
I pay like $2K a year in taxes towards healthcare. $2K invested in a socialized healthcare system buys services, service time, and supplies that would cost an American hundreds of thousands of dollars when paying for them as an induvial in a for-profit healthcare system.
Yeah. Sometimes I pay for healthcare I don't use. Sometimes there are inefficiencies in the system. It is not a perfect system. But it's also not making anyone go bankrupt due to a medical emergency.
Paying $100K just to save $2K is never going to be good math, no matter how creative we get with the accounting.
Definitely smarter than the group that thinks Trump should be a president and tries to deny science at every turn. You don't need me to tell you which group it is that denied global warming, denied the existence of covid-19, denied universal healthcare, host the Nazis and white supremacists, and so on, do you?
And when confronted with these kinds of questions the typical reaction is to ignore it or make excuses rather than looking at their own group with insight. Any conservatives who think it's okay for Nazis and extremists to house themselves in their group might as well join them. Otherwise, stop making excuses and look at the problems.
I’m trans and I will provide a safe space for kids even if you won’t. And you can’t stop me ^^
While I agree with you, class Co sciousness and warfare requires unity. I cannot stand with someone, be our situations as similar as they might be, if their stance is 'but not the brown/gay/whatever people'
All or none. I will not stand for discrimination. Not overt, not veiled as 'discussion', not ever.
I always love it when people reduce debates around whether the public existence of LGBT people is actually pedophilia or whether Black people being routinely murdered by police is an actual problem to being nothing more than a mere distraction against the Real Fight against the evil elite lizard people.
Listen, it's cool that these are the kinds of issues that obviously don't affect you or the people around you. But not everyone actually agrees that literally every issue ever can be reduced to being a sideshow of a greater class-based conflict. Do you not see how deeply patronizing it is to be told that the debates about your core identity are meaningless distractions that we need to stop talking about? I can see it being easy to believe that if your core identity isn't routinely made to be a political issue that can be debated, but not all of us are so lucky.
What OP doesn't seem to want to understand is that Left vs Right is Up vs Down.
The origins of Left vs Right as terms come from the days of the French Revolution. There was a vote called to ascertain the power of the King. Those who wanted to grant the King an Absolute Veto were asked to sit on the right side of the speaker's podium, those who were against, or wanted no king at all, were asked to sit on the left. There were many such votes.
Thus left vs right was born, the left represented the power of the people, and the right represented the power of the nobility.
Then conservatism was created, replacing birthright nobility for those who were merely rich and powerful.
Right and Left then became shorthand in the press for Conservatism vs those with more Democratic ideals, be it communist, socialists, or merely those who believed in taxing the rich and using that money to improve the lives of everyone. The press in Europe used the terms from almost the beginning, but it took a while for those terms to reach America.
Sadly, the Right figured out pretty quickly how to suppress and demonize the Left. They also figured out how to turn hatred to their advantage, to expand the ranks of the Right Wing supporters at the expense of the Left. Because you don't personally need to be super rich if the people you're taught to hate are super poor.
The thing is, the Left cannot abide attacks on those people. Which is why minority and lgbt+ rights are such a big part of the platform. Because those people are in fact part of The People, and the Left is the Power of the People. The goal is to lift everyone up, to protect everyone equally under the law.
After all, as Frank Wilhoit said;
I'll accept people actually care about black people in America being killed when those same people stop saying police are the only ones that should have guns.
Left vs right is literally the same thing as down vs up.
The way I see it, is that they are not exactly the same, but there seems to be a greater tendency in the "up-directed" people to be also right-leaning, also a greater tendency in the "down-directed" people to be also left-leaning, which makes sense, since many elements in those pairs of tendencies/ideologies almost line up, or are at least very compatible.
However, there IS also right libertarianism, and left authoritarianism, but those seem to be less probable than the opposites.
Take a look at the Political Compass mappings of famous politicians and political parties in different parts of the world: The up-right and down-left quadrants are almost always the most populous, while there are dots in the other two quadrants.
(See the "Elections" section on the left column, click on several elections in different locations.)
they dont mean up down on the political compass, they mean working class vs owning class
More poor people vote for Republicans than Democrats. So are the oppressed on the right, and the "owners" on the left?
Why do you say that?
Pew certainly disagrees.
Ah, my misunderstanding, then. Thanks for the correction :)
left, right. up, down. it's just a way to divide us so we aren't united against the common enemy...
Say sike right now
I would argue the up vs down is left vs right. Because it's ultimately a fight against capitalism and fascism. Because while it is ultimately rich vs poor, they're using the bigotry to get people to follow them, and simply ignoring genocide in order to hopefully get poor people put of poverty just means millions die along the way. We can't just say fuck it let the trans people die cause I'm poor. Then you're no better than the people you claim to be against.
So it should just be rich vs poor, but it's not, because too many people fall for their rich's tactics.