Just as we rejected slavery
Bro, you have a confederate flag hanging above your bed.
Oh, you rejected slavery because you're the party of Lincoln? Tell me, what was the flag that Lincoln actively fought against?
this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2024
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“…women as second-class citizens”. Dude, you’re the ones trying to limit access to female reproductive care.
We also rejected mercantilism... even though Trump's apparent economic strategy of 'remove all taxes and replace them we a 20% import tariff across the board' is basically a return to mercantilism.
We rejected second class citizenship for women... even though most Republicans seem to want to basically return to that by removing no fault divorce in addition to criminalizing abortion and basically ending sex ed.
We rejected Wilsonian globalism... and then fought and died in WW2 (which is where we rejected fascism) because we preferred to be isolationist until Japan and Germany declared war on us and then we built the fucking UN headquarters in New York (Wilson's League of Nations version 2.0).
In summary, they must have consulted with whatifalthist to get their version of American History.
In a (historically relevant reference) word: NUTS!
It's such a genuinely unhinged document. I was reading it after seeing some specific page numbers online and I wanted to see the original source. it's just a fucked view of the world.
Democrats: People shouldn't go into crippling debt for college. Let's make a law about it.
Republicans: OK so how much do you know about Moloch, enemy of mankind who is personally responsible for all of your problems?
🤣
😭
It’s an attempt to create a unified narrative that can tie together a number of disparate groups. Groups who have no chance of winning elections or joining another coalition. Groups whose goals and ambitions are so antithetical to public interest that they can never actually say what they want out loud.
The reason this document is so bizarre and unhinged is because it’s trying to speak the language of people who have to speak in a series of dog whistles to prevent being disregarded out of hand.
It’s a rallying cry to all those who are upset when they get held accountable for saying what they actually think.
I never put it together like that. Thank you. It all makes so much more sense now.
@undergroundoverground, next to you in this thread, also goes into how they cannot actually define anything as simple as "anti-woke". The rhetoric falls back to meaningless marketing-like-words (e.g. "common sense") that are, perhaps deliberately, open to personal interpretation. The only coherent platform is the one that exists in an individual's head, yet it is distinct from the next guy.
I, a non-violent person, really wish a nose-punch on anyone who uses the phrase common sense to bolster their position.
I feel bad for it, but I also really disdain the notion of common sense. It's common sense to stand loyal to your rapist buddy. It's common sense to throw rocks at people who speak with different dialects or worship strange gods.
We traded up common sense for deliberation and rationality when we tried agriculture so we didn't have to migrate so much.
I, a non-violent person, really wish a nose-punch on anyone who uses the phrase common sense to bolster their position.
Very likely, that's because every time "common sense" is used this way, it's a logical fallacy.
Description: Asserting that your conclusion or facts are just “common sense” when, in fact, they are not. We must argue as to why we believe something is common sense if there is any doubt that the belief is not common, rather than just asserting that it is. This is a more specific version of alleged certainty.
I personally think that it also functions as a thought terminating cliche, as appeals to "common sense" seem to wind up near the end of the thread.
I always think of "common" sense in the same aspect as a common trading card.
Not exactly something to brag about, I'm on the lookout for some rare or legendary sense. Haha.
And here we thought it was bad trying to get a coherent message accepted on the left. Leftist infighting is legendary because the left has no idea how to dog whistle, which is a good thing. But the fact that there are 900,000 splinter groups with wildly different ideologies perfectly willing to fight tooth and nail to be the One True Leftism means the left knows infighting. Experts at it even. That's why leftist policy is so timid and careful usually.
The right has ridden long and hard on the basic fact that most of their base are too stupid to think hard enough about ideology that they could worry about having to make them all work together. You easily get anti-vax moms riding alongside armband-wearing nazis on the right, because they're both too dumb to realize that they're supporting each other.
But all that is finally starting to come to a head (hopefully) as the current Democrat contenders are talking actual policy, as in, things they will do on a legal, prescriptive, professional level to enact changes. The right has gotten away with not doing anything for a long time because the left became basically the opposition group instead of actual challengers.
So they have to put their actual desires on paper, AND get them universally accepted by everyone on the right. It all looks a little different in that light. Seeing abolishment of birth control right next to their desire to abolish Civil Rights is making them sweat. These are NOT universally held positions of people on the right.
And honestly, most on the right, even the most frothing zealots, they don't really want social disruption and rollbacks to the dark-ages. They are children. They are toddlers. They want to be heard and be recognized that they are angry, and they want to share that anger with the rest of their own little WWE Wrestlemania audience that lives in a fantasy world. That's all. They don't want to work on coalition building, they don't want to phone-bank, they don't want to have debates, they don't want policies signed into law that will change their comfortable lives.
These are people who really need to discover some kind of Dungeons and Dragons gaming system that appeals to their anger and stupid worldbuilding.
It's all appeal to emotion
A good narrative is captivating. It's really simple and comforting to know that the world is good vs evil and you're on the good side. Those guys are on the devil's side and we must stop them at all costs or it will be THE END OF AMERICA!! ** Dramatic yelling **
It's easy to convince less educated people using fear and misdirection. What are they gonna do? Check the sources and think critically about the topic? Lol
Convincing someone that thinks you're their mortal enemy is difficult. That's why you have to be their best friend. Show them that you care for their opinion and ask them to explain to you. Show genuine curiosity and then give them something to think about.
"Hey, I see your point man, but I don't know enough about this so I'm not sure. Hey I've found this article that has some interesting points. What do you think?"
It's not easy but I think this is what really creates change
My work has me with people, one on one, for an hour or so at a time. A year or so ago I decided I might be able to help some of my more brainwashed clients start to think for themselves.
The best way to do that, I've found, is like you said. I don't approach the subject like we are two different sides, but instead find points they make that are close to the truth and help nudge them a little more towards opening their eyes. It's actually been pretty successful and it really makes me feel like I'm doing some good in the world.
I don't want them to agree with whatever I think, I just want to to start actually looking at facts instead of going off emotion and bad information.
Hey I've found this article that has some interesting points. What do you think?
Oh, don't read that. That is all just propaganda, you can't let them get you.
-a literal response I've received, many times.
Trying to ask them real questions, like who "they" actually are that are trying to make your life in particular worse, is about as good as I have managed. But on some of the more egregious points, they always seem to think they have actual good serious sources on how trans people are actually all just predators or something. The more attentive ones may even be so kind as to add a "present company excluded"
My favourite part about "woke" is that, at its heart, its just an anonymous authority fallacy.
If you look up the actual meaning of "woke", in this context, wiki or anything reputable will tell you it means to be aware of and not want to perpetuate discrimination in society. So, not being allowed to fire someone just for being gay would fall under the definition of "woke."
Now, conservatives will tell you "no, we don't mean that stuff. Thats just "common sense." You see, we all had a big meeting and we decided, as one, that this right here is common sense. However, everything past this over here, thats all woke nonsense that we don't like.....
Of course, that meeting never took place.
What, can't you understand what were saying here? How come we all know what we mean by common sense and you don't? You're not stupid are you?....
So simple and obvious that they, apparently, can't explain or define their own meaning.
That's a lot of words for "my kids won't come to Christmas anymore and I don't know why, don't they know I raised them?"
Conservatives clearly don’t even understand words. They have wholeheartedly embraced fascism and this document claims they rejected it.
its not that they don't understand words, it's that words aren't communication for them. it's just checksums. confirming group membership and synchronization. affirming their (percieved) position.
Conservatives clearly don’t even understand words.
Which is wild because these are the same people who treat words like we found them in a fucking meteor crater and have to uphold the ancient definitions of gender, sex and relationships between people AT ALL COSTS.
Sounds woke /s
And that's the other part. In defining us as woke, they define themselves as sleepwalking
Words can have multiple meanings. Definitions really only exist because of a mutual understanding of the word, and memeology is just as important as etymology nowadays, when new words and new contexts can get introduced to huge audiences instantly.
Insisting words have one definition and that the elite get to decide it is the very meaning of wokeism.
In other words...war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength.
"...the very idea of America may be lost..."
operative word being "idea" here.
they'll lose their fantasy pre-civil rights pre awareness/tolerance madmen utopia.
So, once upon a time in Germany, around 1931, Reinhard Heydrich (the father of the genocide machine to later feature in the Holocaust) was tasked with starting the Sicherheitsdienst, sister agency to the Gestapo. See, Germany was going through a hard time, and while the communists wanted to try out that business Lenin was doing, the companies and interest behind the NSDAP wanted the people to fall behind an autocratic regime that would take care of them and make sure everyone stayed in their lane.
And Heydrich (who was still new at it but read a lot of cloak-and-dagger spy stories) worked out that the enemy within rhetoric served to keep the German people lawful. At first he started rounding up the wierdos (gays, sexual perverts, street beggars). Since no one liked the Jews (really, the whole world was on an antisemitic bender), he added them to the list. Then the communists. Then the trade unionists. And then everyone employed in a job that he thought wasn't serving the state very well. He really got going.
The first concentration camp was a warehouse in Berlin, but it filled up super fast, and in time he needed bigger spaces, and so new camps weren't just ad-hoc corrals but ghettos and more permanent prison camps for the growing contained population, in what was becoming The Jewish Problem: There were too many people to keep in ghettos and camps and (remember that global antisemitism) no-one else was willing to take Jewish refugees. Not even the United States. If only there was a way to make them disappear...
....and there was no one left to speak for me.
Need a ruling elite to make decisions for us...
The fuck I do...we stacked bodies when the British told us this same shit...these fuckers are the British...fuck them.
I was going to say that speaks ill of the British, but man the Tories are not helping my case.
Almost like it was the goddamn aristocrats tricking us into killing eachother all along.
We should have known when they told to stand in an empty field in a line and take turns shooting each other... and not to shoot the guys in the fancy hats.
Someone should remind them who the conservatives fought for back in the day
They have twisted that shit all around... remember these are the same idiots who fly the traitors flag and are proud of it. I'm from the south...and a minority...fuck that flag and fuck their heritage bullshit, the south is so much more than a bunch of slave owners bullshit. We should be able to be proud of the good stuff and drop the bad like a hot rock.
For real they should be celebrating apple pie and cornbread not slavery
Surely you meant sweet potato pie! Apples don't really grow down here.
But yeah, the southern heritage one should want to claim ought to be more about shrimp and grits and less about confederates and slavers. Those traitors are history, but no decent person would claim that hateful shit as their damn heritage. Unfortunately, we ain't about to run outta folks lacking decency anytime soon.
I want catfish and blackberry cobbler now
no, no they're far worse, and im aware that nobody gives the english quite the bastard credit they deserved.