What do you believe that most people of your political creed don't?
What do you believe that most people of your political creed don't?
Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain't dead. Remember, don't downvote for disagreements.
I'm anarchist left, but I do think every human should have the right to defend themself and thereforce should be able to bear arms
I'm not american if anyone's gonna ask
Freedom of speech for absolutely everyone, especially people I disagree with and that disagree with me
I believe that the stance against nuclear power (specifically, nuclear fission, as opposed to radioisotope power used by spacecraft) by greens undermines the fight to stop global warming, and that many of the purported issues with nuclear power have been solved or were never really issues in the first place.
For instance: the nuclear waste produced by old-gen reactors can be used by newer generations.
I believe that the vast majority of people are inherently good, and that tribalism and political divisiveness are some of the biggest issues we have to face.
Political differences arise mostly from different values, fears, education (or lack thereof), etc, but most people if you get to know them believe what they do because they believe it is genuinely good. But increasingly politics is focused on vilifying others, instead of trying to understand each other.
What's your political creed?
I would describe myself as fairly left, but I'm not the most educated on accurate political terminology
Y'all don't need to keep adding things to lgbtq or lgbt+. The q or + takes care of everything
I'm working on transitioning to using They/Them pronouns for everyone since they're completely neutral and fit every context. If your preference is Xe/Xem, I respect that—but unfortunately, my brain just doesn't have the bandwidth to keep track of multiple pronouns consistently. You get They/Them.
I think this is a better argument that "queer" is the best catch-all phrase. Honestly, come to think of it, if we can phase out LGBT in favour of "queer" entirely, then that gives republicans a harder time to separate the T.
I'm going to expect a lot of dislikes for this one...
Neutering/Spaying is animal abuse.
Stop out-woking one another, it's okay to be right silently in order to bring in fence sitters.
If someone says, "my spirit animal told me late-stage capitalism is evil" welcome them to the club with open arms, focus on how you're alike and trust them to work out their faux pas over time spent among like-minded peers.
Also cultural appropriation ≠ exploitation, we can stop clutching our collective pearls over these faux pas.
I vote we move to a new term, "cultural plagiarism," which more clearly relates to e.g. a white person stealing a black musician's work (as opposed to covering it and giving credit and royalties, which should be fine!)
In the spirit of my post, I'm glad you see a disparity in the term cultural appropriation like I do.
In the spirit of clarifying what I mean, cultural appropriation is using elements of another culture. What you described is exploitative, is very serious, and not what I'm referring to.
But I appreciate your input all the same.
I am very very very left wing, BUT I can get really annoyed with a lot of those "on my side" advocating for the most idealist of all idealism, as if it's a contest. Feels like a competition of "who's the bestest and mostest leftist of all". You scare people away and - not justifying it - but I get why some people get upset with "the left" because of this...
I am very very very left wing, but
Everytime I see someone say this I know without a shadow of a doubt that they're a centrist liberal.
I'm far left, but I believe that any citizen should be allowed to own any gun.
For what it's worth, the far left (internationally) is traditionally pro-gun. I wouldn't know what positions are about any citizen and any gun, but I wouldn't be surprised either to hear a socialist advocate for it.
[...] The whole proletariat [i.e. worker class] must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois [i.e. owner class] democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.
I dont know who told you leftists don't like guns, we like guns plenty. It's liberals who don't like guns. Us leftists know sometimes you got to throw a bomb into the carriage of a tzar. We leftists knowwhen you go on strike you should bring a gun with you, cuz the Liberals going to try to use the National Guard to murder you.
Eastern front of ww2 made so much more sense to me when I realised the left could also have guns.
Why any? Why not pistols or rifles with small magazines?
I don't like racism against white people or sexism against men. Do I think they're less urgent or worrying than bigotry directed at other groups? Sure. There's less hate against men and whites compared to other groups, and bigotry against them doesn't have the same social or political impact due to current systemic racism and sexism being directed at others. But bigotry is still bigotry, and I don't like bigotry against anyone.
As a woman I'm not a fan of calling men simple or easy. They've just been conditioned differently, and that's a continued part of the patriarchy.
I think it's important to differentiate systemic racism from bigotry. There are some people who have a definition of "racism" that actually means "systemic racism," and they make a more compelling case that "racism against white people" doesn't exist.
I'm of the opinion that systemic racism against white people is pretty rare, but you can find it in niche communities, not as much society as a whole. I also think of systemic racism as being about inequity rather than inequality; but if you were to consider it as being about inequality instead of inequity, then you could make a case that e.g. affirmative action is systemic racism against white people.
A lot of this is semantics, which is a distraction from real problem solving.
I don't like extreme leftists (they live in a bubble) but they've been right about everything and they are our best chance at resolving economic disparity
I'm curious how you square "they live in a bubble" with them being right?
Mental health focused communities exascerbate their members' issues
Only when there's no professional playing a role. A self-help group with professional oversight is great.
Immigration is universally a roaring net positive in all of history ; economically, socially, everything. It's more than disinformation when they spew talking points. It's hate. And most people complicit are just fully ignorant. USA lost their empire due to lack of education. Every other first world nations have their success in lockstep with the level of education they give their kids. A heist of all wealth has been conducted and you are viewing the aftermath. Elon will find your coffers empty. The real treasure, turns out, was the people.
counterpoint:
the labor market is a market, and as such regulated by the rule of Supply and demand. That implies: if the supply is increased, then the price is decreased. If the supply is decreased, then the price is increased.
In the context of the labor market, that means: If there's fewer workers in the country (which comes naturally with a smaller population), then the price for labor (a.k.a. wages) goes higher. That increases the Quality Of Life for the people, and is therefore a socially good thing.
More people also means more demand for things that require labour to create however. Your position is referred to as the lump of labour fallacy
Is it your political creed commonly against immigration?
From your post history you see left leaning which is just almost always pro-immigration.
China and DPRK strongly restrict immigration, whereas there are lots of neoliberals advocating immigration for free market reasons
We should try harder to keep weapons out of the hands of criminals, sometimes taxation is necessary and sometimes it's beneficial even if we don't factor in revenue, people will sometimes make decisions that are so bad that we have a moral obligation to intervene in order to protect them from the most disastrous outcomes
people will sometimes make decisions that are so bad that we have a moral obligation to intervene in order to protect them from the most disastrous outcomes
in archaic times, due to the primordial habit of turning people into slaves if they couldn't repay their debts, people were legally forbidden from going into debt at all, except if they could prove that they were a reasonable person and it was economically likely that they could pay back the debt. that was in order to prevent them from the bad fates of slaves; which makes sense to me.
That progressive people should prioritize economic equality ahead of social issues.
I'd argue nearly every single social issue is an economic one. Abortion? Anti-abortion laws are intended to force people to have kids they can't afford, making them desperate for work to keep their kids fed and clothed. Racial equality? I mean, do I need to say more than the fact that most minorities are statistically poorer? The only one that can be argued is purely social is Trans people, and I simply can't fathom letting people die for being who they are, or ignoring the blatant attacks on them from the right.
The left has become so focused on illegal immigrants and identity politics that they have abandoned working class economic issues and rural white voters and it has cost them elections.
If the left you're talking about is the dems, no the fuck they aren't. Dems aren't the ones constantly putting forth bills about Trans people. The most any dem has done is post some milqtoast "trans rights" sticker or something.
But I agree I think the dems shouldn't have justified the fear mongering about immigrants when the right started screeching about it. But that's also on news orgs justifying it.
Yup.
Can't care about your neigbors when you still have to worry about your own mouth to feed.
And you're not going to miss a days pay to protest or vote when you know neither candidate gives a shit about your health and well-being.
When you look at revolutions the tipping point was always the threat of going hungry and losing your home. That makes everyone desperate.
People should be free to vote outside the two party system secure in the knowledge that their vote will still be counted if their preference didn't win.
Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
Strongly agree, though is this really an unpopular take?
Lessee... I suppose my hottest take is that no lives are sacred. I believe that human expansion into more 'wild' domains is a mistake and that national and state parks' availability should be limited (geographically - you may not venture into the Deep Parks). This probably borders on some vaguely eco-fascy beliefs, and I recognize human's inexorable curiousity and desire to explore, but you will never find me mourning a human victim of a wild animal.
We can disagree a bit about the sacredness of life but I think we agree about oreseving nature. Yet I think national parks are both a good and a practical necessity. If the general public can’t get a taste of wilderness they will not value it, and will not protest its demise. So it’s a balancing act— in a perfect world sure have some very large untouched reserves, but if you care about any wilderness surviving then national parks are a must imho.
Just so. The periphery of the parks may be visited- a shared border between worlds where the most intrepid of both may briefly meet, but just as bears and raccoons are driven out of suburbs, so too should people be driven from the deeper parks.
As for the sanctity of life, it's more of a balancing in my eyes. No life should be valued so as to cause undue stress to survivors. But I suppose my rather callous attitude is anathema to most.
Does that also apply to hypothetical martian settlements? If people ever technically managed to live on mars.
There's definitely no higher life on mars (or we would have already found it), and it's also unlikely that there's any life at all - not even microbial life (due to an absence of liquid water on the surface).
Yes? I'm not so optimistic about humans becoming interplanetary, but if it were to happen, I'd make noise to try and limit any human settlement. I'd argue that if humans want so badly to be off this rock, they can make space arcologies designed around themselves rather than inserting themselves where they ought not be and fucking up wherever they land.
I lean pretty hard left who is also pro death-penalty (IN VERY SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCES)
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If the case has absolutely been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
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All appeals have been exhausted.
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Proof is absolutely undeniable.
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Guilty party shows no remorse.
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Crime is suffiently heinous (mass murder, child killing, serial killers, etc...)
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A legitimate psychiatric board has deemed that there is little to no chance at rehabilitation nor does the guilty party show any inclination to want to rehabilitate.
if ALL those things are true, (plus some that I haven't even considered) then I would rather execute them than pay for their living expenses for the rest of their natural life, or worse see them released at the end of their sentance absolutely knowing that they'll do it again.
I think we should create a system where people have a choice. Life in prison or death. I think k it would clear up a lot of the ethical issues of the death penalty.
that's an interesting angle I'd not thought of before...
No proof is absolutely undeniable. Especially not in an age when generative AI will soon be able to fabricate evidence easily.
A lifetime imprisonment can be more inhumane than a death sentence.
Change my mind.jpg
(If there is enough solid proof ofc. You can't roll back a death penalty)
Edit: in italics
A lifetime imprisonment is more inhumane than a death sentence.
Change my mind.jpg
Most death row inmates fight for their life all the way until execution. That's proof enough.
(If there is enough solid proof ofc. You can’t roll back a death penalty)
How is the verity of the conviction related to how humane the punishment is?
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I don't really know what constitutes a "political creed," really, so I don't know how to answer.
He means who do you circlejerk with on tinternet
I believe in the possibility of bigfoot being real.
Okay, but where is it now?
Ah, you must be a anarcho-monarchist anti-kakistocrat, are famed for their disbelief of bigfoot.
There are some who call me Tim. I can summon controversy without flint or tinder.
Seeing as people have pushed out to every tiny corner of the country if it exists they would've found physical remains by now.
No they haven’t. Not even close.
And even if they did, you think a people-shy creature is just going to remain in the same exact spot for someone mapping out an area to come across them?
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Religion can be a force for good. For social cohesion and a feeling of belonging. That it often isn't speaks more to the samesuch cultural and emotional rot that has affected literally everything than to religion unto itself.
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It actually makes perfect sense for a country to want to limit or tariff importation of goods. This, if done right, can bring industrialisation into the country. You can't have a nation that is all middle-managers, despite the First World's best attempts to become that, it's just fundamentally unsustainable. And while you can have a nation that just produces/exports raw materials, this is ultimately bad for the people in that nation.
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I think if we eliminated money, we would just invent it again and call it something else.
Well yah. The alternative is barter and farmers only need so many cell phones and software developers.
The alternative is barter
No. Never has been.
That intellectual property, both copyright or patents, doesn't serve its theoretical purpose and just acts as a legal shield for the monopolies of big corporations, at least in our capitalistic system, and it limits the spread of information
In theory, a musician should be protected against abuse of their music. In practice, all musicians need to be on Spotify through one of the few main publishers to make any decent money, and their music will be used for unintended purposes (intended for their contract at least) like AI training
In theory, patents should allow a small company with an idea to sell its progressive product to many big corporations. In practice, one big corporation will either buy the small company or copy the product and have the money to legally support its case against all evidence, lobbying to change laws too. Not to mention that big corporations are the ones that can do enough research to have relevant patents, it's much harder for universities and SMEs, not to mention big corporations can lobby to reduce public funding to R&D programs in universities and for SMEs.
And, last but not least important, access to content, think of politically relevant movies or book, depends on your income. If you are from a poorer country, chances are you cannot enjoy as much information and content as one born in a richer country.
And to add to that, scientific papers should be published in open-access journals, instead of Wileys et al. And Universities could run and host these journals, as it is part of their core duty: To preserve and spread knowledge.
Essentially, universities and libraries seem to have a lot in common. Both preserve and spread knowledge.
In theory, a musician should be protected against abuse of their music.
You mean like with copyright (IP) laws?
Patents and copyright originated to protect everyone. Charles Dickens complained that his books were rampantly copied. Without them any invention by the little guy would be immediately stolen and ramped up into production at levels the little guy can never match. Why would I work on anything if it can just be stolen with no legal protection? Universities and SMEs constantly issue patents, if they can't commercialize them themselves they can license them to someone who can.
chances are you cannot enjoy as much information and content as one born in a richer country.
What? The internet is full of free info.
The real issues are things like:
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Insanely long copyright periods. Sorry but your grandkids/Disney shouldn't profit from your work. 70+ years later.
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Patent camping. Either do something with it or lose it.
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Patent lawsuit factories. The patent office makes money off of fees and is too quick to hand out patents that are overly broad or trivial. You have business that just hoard patents with no intention to use them except to sue others.
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I believe it does function in as it does in theory, but the justification to the public is what you list as "in theory." Regulations like IP laws are only allowed to pass because they support the profits of those who hold the IP.
I would love to see IP law burned to the ground. A more realistic goal in the meanwhile might be to get compulsory licensing in more areas than just radio.
As someone who was in a supportive relationship with a transgender person for 3 years and who personally struggles associating with my own gender (masculinity was never my thing lol), I never really got into the stating my gender pronouns.
I get why it's done for the times it matters and can do so in a sensitive space, but I get the sense it's usually done as public compliance (like a cis neolib as an email sig), which can lead to shallow support or worse, resentment. What we ultimately need is more genuine contact with people different from ourselves because that helps reduce "othering" a group.
Oh, but I do tend to default to "they" out of old internet habits. Always disliked the assumption all gamers are men.
I do think stating pronouns at the beginning of conversations is a bit clunky, but in almost every internet interactions (including email),having a reference to someone's pronouns helps both when they're trans and when it's faceless. Like if someone's has a gender neutral name, it can save confusion between a group message or email chain to be able to refer to them with the right pronouns.
I've heard that use case before, and it's fairly reasonable in a faceless contract. Funny enough, my father is a perfect case study, his name is rather unique and one letter off from a common feminine name so he gets misgendered quite frequently as a cis man (plus, to make matters worse, hes very insecure about his masculinity and is sensitive about being called a sissy because his father abused him).
Thinking on his use case, it might help him to have pronouns at work, but according to him people pick up on his pronouns almost immediately because they hear it from a co-worker in reference to him, there is almost never a completely blind email despite it being a rather large city hall. In other words, only people who misgender him are spam. While pronouns wouldn't have stopped the abuse and bullying growing up, the culture of acceptance behind the trend probably would have.
Ironically, he won't do the pronouns because he's a bit conservative leaning. And his alcoholic, homophobic ass certainly didn't do me any favors when I dated a transgender person.
It makes me uncomfortable to state my personal pronouns. Years of growing up as a woman on the internet makes me not want to reveal my gender, even when it's obvious (like in person).
Sounds like my sister and a good friend of mine, the latter who prefers playing games as a male character to avoid the attention. I totally get where you're coming from on that.
because that helps reduce “othering” a group
Which is, ironically, what the pronoun-stating thing was supposed to avoid. Personally I agree that it's not really necessary, and that it actually is a form of compelled speech.
I don't do it either, but i'm an older queer so i see it as painting a target on my back.
That, too. Things have regressed, it is definitely a target now.
Ima be honest. I just don’t fuck with pronouns. I’ll typically use they even if I know what their preferred ones are. That or whatever feels better for what I’m talking about.
I am progressive as heck, but wow the Republicans fixed the DMV here by running it like a business. Not every part of government is amenable to that (which is where they go wrong) but some departments really can.
Also I am pro choice very much so, but personally wouldn't have, and didn't have, any abortion, I don't like it, find it horrifying. Like, my personal choice was hell no. I understand that the consequences of prohibiting abortion are much, much more damaging than allowing them, and do also think the existing woman has more rights than the potential person so maybe that isn't a political difference.
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I'd argue the pandemic is what fixed the dmv, not running it like a business.
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It's often lost that in the pro-choice conversation, chosing to keep the pregnancy is also a valid choice.
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Transgender people in many states are probably not happy about the DMV. (I'm Canadian and cis so I may not understand this much.)
That's not anything to do with the running of the DMV though, I mean now when you go the process is smooth and on time, when it used to be a mess. They made it so most of the stuff you used to have to go wait all day to do, can now be done by appointment at the tax collector office, it's a huge and very organized process. The employees there don't make the rules, the bigotry is a different problem and comes from the state not the county.
It seems like the atmosphere is changing now but I've been saying this for years.
The language of privilege is backwards and counter productive.
what does that mean?
language of privilege
i've never heard that phrase
I think he means the mental framework where levels of privilege are assigned to swaths of the population based a facet of their identity: white privilege, female privilege, vegetarian privilege, etc.
There can be too much political correctness at times.
I do feel like arguing semantics at almost all times steals some energy from the movement overall
It's less 'too much pc' and more 'purity politics' imo
There's a great post on tumblr that really fuckin' nailed it:
"The trannies should be able to piss in whatever toilet they want and change their bodies however they want. Why is it my business if some chick has a dick or a guy has a pie? I'm not a trannie or a fag so I don't care, just give 'em the medicine they need."
"This is an LGBT safe space. Of COURSE I fully support individuals who identify as transgender and their right to self-determination! I just think that transitioning is a very serious choice and should be heavily regulated. And there could be a lot of harm in exposing cis children to such topics, so we should be really careful about when it is appropriate to mention trans issues or have too much trans visibility."
One of the above statements is Problematic and the other is slightly annoying. If we disagree on which is which then working together for a better future is going to get really fucking difficult.
just a short reminder:
you can post a picture of a gun on facebook, because it is only a harmless picture of a machine that is solely built to kill people. definitely nothing that shouldn't be shown in public
if you do post a picture if an exposed female nipple, banned, because guess what? that's against the policy
Related: I believe it's ok, given certain contexts, to speak broadly and crassly to people who expect that. It's ultimately ineffective and therefore bad to come off as an pretenscious arrogant know-it-all, correcting everyone's grammar and word choices and any ignorance they have. I see some students in the labor movement and wonder if they're capable of expressing their knowledge to typical joe worker, without injecting French, German or Russian, or losing their temper at some unintentionally offensive ignorance. We're speaking broadly to regular people, don't alienate them with your academic knowledge.
That doesn't mean never correct crappy things people say, you can and should, but pick your battles. A climate scientist once told me, being correct isn't enough.
being correct isn’t enough
A very valuable lesson, and it's very fitting who said it
Abortion is not a moral hazard at all. Most people who might exist don't. The whole "everyone agrees abortion is awful..." shit is obnoxious. I legitimately do not care. I am far more concerned about the lives of actual children. Once we seriously tackle that issue, we can move upstream, and this should be viewed as both incentive and a purity test for those who pretend to care about the "unborn."
If they are so pro life I'd expect them to support universal healthcare but they very rarely do.
"everyone agrees abortion is awful…"
that doesn't make them right btw. hitler was democratically elected too; the majority isn't always right.
Do they present any actual arguments? That's what would be interesting, because that is something that can be discussed.
Agreed.
Couldn't care less about fetuses. I do care about the people carrying fetuses and their quality of life, however.
I've thought this for a long time. Until every living person has virtually every one of their needs met at virtually all times, abortion isn't even on the table as something to worry about. We have a responsibility for what we have already, not some potential human that has plenty of other ways they would never make it to adulthood.
I am unsure about when it stops being moral to terminate a foetus/baby. I think it's somewhere between 6 and 14 months, but that's just my gut feeling. Some people are astonished that I would even consider that it could be after birth, but it's not like any sudden development occurs at the moment of birth.
but it’s not like any sudden development occurs at the moment of birth.
You mean other than breathing its own air and no longer being physically connected to its mother's womb? I'd call that pretty significant. I would argue that the moment it breaths its first breath on its own rather than as a part of its mother's uterus, it becomes a murder victim, not an abortion.
I'm really appreciating how much restraint y'all guys are showing with the downvotes. Thanks everyone.
I'm a pro-downvote extremist and you've just made an enemy for life
I think we need to figure out how to make leftism more appealing to centrists, and particularly to the cis/straight/white/male demographic.
It depends on the material conditions. Also there is a reason "centrists" even exist as they are now and appear to you as some kind of constant monolith. Or as Marx did put it "Ideas of ruling class are the ruling ideas"
IMO the biggest problem is media. They report through a center-right lens and focus on sensationalism. So all people see of the left is the "check your privilege cis white boy" and "anarchists have burned down the entire city" BS lines instead of the vast aid efforts and daily work.
I feel like one obvious answer is "stop being so eager to alienate cis straight white men"
I think a lot of conversation is "men go to therapy" but therapy alone isn't enough? We kind of cast men off of having all the privilege in the world without recognizing that patriarchy hurts them too, and in lots of facets of their lives in a way that just going to a therapist once a week does not help.
I think this advice is not very actionable as is, and needs more digesting into more specific strategies.
Like, for instance: let's avoid making people feel rejected by the left for having privilege, and instead focus on guiding privileged people so that they can use their privilege to help the cause.
it will become automatically appealing to them the moment that is pays out economically for them. if they could afford more under a leftist politics, than under the current politics, people are gonna be all for it.
The white nationalist movement preys on alienated young white men (more than other groups). Creating avenues for including these people in our movement means less people we have to fight.
I'm not saying everyone is able to fit into our movement, or they may require so much education that we just don't have the resources to depropagandize them, but as a mass movement, more is generally better.
I think the most insidious part is that the far right feeds on men's anger and negative emotions and just keeps telling them that if they go farther right, if they become more dominant alpha male, it'll make all their negative emotions go away. And then when it doesn't, they just keep pushing right.
That is a controversial opinion here.
(And I agree with it. I don't know what the way is, but I hope it can be found)
When you're coming from a position of extreme privilege and you're either a bit stupid or lack empathy or general social awareness being treated equally with "lesser people" (like women, brown people or people from particular religious backgrounds) can seem an awful lot like you're being discriminated against.
I think the first thing to do is to shift sentiment toward solving the problem of how to make things appealing to centrists and the apolitical. Let's get "I agree -- but that has bad optics so let's focus on something else first" into our lexicon. Once the left is able to be more strategic about this, then I think we'll gain a lot more strides. I have some thoughts about what that might look like, but it's outside the scope of this post.
As a person in that demographic it’s wild to me that leftism isn’t appealing… we’re supposed to just blame everything on everyone but ourselves I suppose?
The person on my left whispers about equality, and the benefits of social safety nets. The person on my right yells lies that equality means I have to give up things, and that social safety nets will be abused by people who want to steal the fruits of my labor. The person behind me (financially) says nothing, they’re too busy just trying to live. The person ahead of me points to the person behind getting food stamps and screams “how dare they take your taxes” while they quietly steal the actual fruit of my labor.
Any time leftism gets loud enough to get enough attention to appeal to anyone, rightism is already loudly complaining about the noise. If one doesn’t think about it too much, all they’ve heard is negativity about the left and positivity about the right. Call it brainwashing, gaslighting, or indoctrination, but rarely do the facts of both sides come to play. You have to work to find the truth of leftism while also working to ignore the bullshit being screamed from the right.
Fundamentally, what Centrists want is stability, for people to get along, to find solutions that the majority on both sides would agree with. For the status-quoish state of stability.
A Centrist would be a Liberal (as its defined today, and not how it was defined in the 70's/80's) before they would be a Leftist. They perceive Capitalism as a stable foundation of the society.
To get a Centrist to believe in Leftist ideals you'd have to try and show that Leftism is also stable, AND describe how the transition/change to Leftism on its own would not be an unstabilizing thing. And also how Capitalism is a dead-end alley for the species ultimately, and how its ultimately hurtful to a society by encouraging fighting and competition between its members.
You'd also have to show Centrists that Rightists would understand that Leftism works. Centrists want both Leftists and Rightists to be 'happy' (loaded word I know, but you get the gist of what I'm trying to opine on).
No idea how to do all that, but IMO that's what would need to be done. You'd have to get the Right on board with Leftism, and you'd have to show Centrists that moving to Leftism won't be destabilizing to their current way of existing.
Best guess would be to appeal to common belief systems (safety, fairness, freedoms, respect) that all three pillars would have in common.
An overall generic example would be to prove to a Rightist that a hand-out to someone is not being unfair, but its just helping someone out until they get on their feet, and can't be exploited, to try and "raise all boats" in society. And you'd have to tell some Leftists to stop trying to exploit the system, that they're now back on their feet, and that they need to put in as much effort as everybody else does.
For Leftists/Rightists stop yelling across the divide at each other, and start talking to each other, trying to understand what is important to them, and see if both sides can meet in the middle on those things that are important to both. Centrists will be happy that the fighting has stopped, and then you'd have to be extra careful not to destroy that non-fighting in trying to move the center to the left.
Oh, and do all of this while we have freedom of speech and people purposely trying to shape the narratives towards what they just want and to F with everybody else. A.k.a., "Free Will is a Pain in the Ass".
Thank you for coming to my 🧸-Talk.
I think an awful lot of them actually have more leftish values, but they are convinced (and there is a huge self reinforcing bubble of that mentality, between media, politicians, and voters) that only the weakest, most watered down version of that can possibly succeed, politically.
Leftism is unpopular by definition, especially to the privileged classes. Leftism seeks to upend the status quo, and loss aversion is a problem.
Not that efforts can't be made.
Leftism is unpopular by definition
This really depends how you define "leftism".
If you mean 'whichever side of politics is left of the population's center' then sure, it can't be a majority.
If you mean 'whichever side of politics is left of the political center' then that doesn't imply it's unpopular, and there's direct electoral evidence of 'left' parties achieving a majority government.
If you mean socialism and communism, they certainly aren't unpopular by definition. If anything, their definition makes them a mass movement of the proletariat, the vast majority of a post-industrial society.
Sometimes people are that rabid they need to be removed from existence
can you name any example? and also, who's the judge? can somebody else decide you're too rabid for their opinion?
well given that i already did and the whole concept and spirit of this post appears to have flown right over your head you're lookin' a wee bit trollish there bud.
That Trump is neither conservative (in any way) nor cares at all about any traditional Republican values
Trump and MAGA are regressive. They are hell-bent on taking this country back to the first half of the 20th century, in all the worst possible ways.
Huh. Mid 20th century? But that’s when America transitioned to relatively high and progressive income taxes instead of relying on tariffs. It’s also when massive state spending on education lead to a large chunk of Americans being able to care about something other than themselves, a precursor to progressivism in America and the civil rights movement.
If anything, I think Americans appear to want to go back to the Gilded Age, known for its massive inequality, corruption, and excessive-wealth-flaunting.
I agree and disagree.
I believe he doesn't actually care for anything but himself. He is racist and classist and what else. But I don't think it dictates his politics as much as you might would assume. He wants power and through his own racism, he released that "vague" racism works, but mostly the creation of the "others".
But I think his activities are deeply based in traditional republican values. That is why project 2025 exists. Republican think Tanks created it. You could argue that those aren't republican values but e.g. they pushed for a horrible school system for decades. Trump doesn't actually care about it, but he follows the plan because it aligns with government deregulation which he likes.
To your second point, I think you're somewhat right about that. However it's a weird mix of traditional Republican values and this new Nationalism. Republicans were traditionally for a small federal government (except military of course)
Humans aren't going to evolve towards intelligence. We're a pretty short-sighted stupid species. We're going to continue to devolve and kill ourselves off, one way or another.
Enter bioengineering: empathy virus
Wanting less/more immigration are both perfectly valid positions.
Immigration can provide opportunities to a country but can also cause issues and it's undemocratic and dangerous to demonize either position on the issue.
The DNC is the primary obstacle to progress and no progress is possible between now and when they go the way of the Whigs because of the rigged duopoly system.
The real question is how do they end? My hope is for a national dem and maybe a republican to break off to something like the working families party, something that exists, works at the ground level, but can be boosted by the optics of national politicians drawing attention to it.
the anti-work movement has been a blight on communism
I feel like it has the wrong name. But it is a baby step for many toward anticapitalist ideals.
Work is good, and can be beneficial. Working a job you hate because if you don't you'd starve is awful and should be done away with.
Do you see it as a waste of time or a distraction? I see it as a gateway drug.
That the dense city movement, of building up, instead of out, is ultimately ceding a huge proportion of our lives (our dwelling sizes and layouts, their materiality and designs, how the public space between them looks and feels, their maintenance and upkeep, etc. etc.) to soulless corporations trying to extract every dollar possible from us.
When we build out, people tend to have more say in the design and build of their own home, often being able to fully build it however they want because at a fundamental level a single person or couple can afford the materials it takes to build a home, and after it's built they can afford to pay a local contractor who lives nearby to make modifications to it.
What they don't have, is the up front resources to build a 20 story condo building. So instead they can buy a portion of a building that someone else has already built, which leaves them with no say in what is actually built in the first place. Ongoing possible changes and customizations are very limited by the constraints of the building itself, and the maintenance and repairs have to be farmed out to a nother corporation with the specialty knowledge and service staff to keep building systems running 24/7.
Yes, this is more efficient from an operating standpoint, but it's also more brittle, with less personal ownership, less room for individuality and beautification, and more inherent dependence on larger organizing bodies which always end up being private companies (which usually means people are being exploited).
In addition, when you expand outwards, all the space between the homes is controlled by the municipalities and your elected government, and you end up with pleasant streets and sidewalks, but when you build up with condos, you just have the tiniest dingiest never ending hallways with no soul.
And condos are the instance where you actually at least kind of own your home. In the case of many cities that densify, you end up tearing down or converting relatively dense single family homes into multi apartment units where you again put a landlord in charge, sucking as many resources out of the residents as possible. In the case of larger apartment buildings, you've effectively fully ceded a huge portion of the 'last mile' of municipal responsibilities to private corporations.
Yes, I understand all the grander environmental reasons about why we should densify, and places like Habitat 67 prove that density does not inherently have to be miserable and soulless, however, the act of densifying without changing our home ownership and development systems to be coop or publicly owned, is a huge pressure increasing the corporatization of housing.
In general, I disagree with you. I think the two things you fixated on (souless architecture and rentals) are bad approaches to density, but you will notice that for the most part, this is the form of "density" that places who are notoriously bad at density do. Its what happens when we deliberately regulate ourselves into not allowing other options.
There is a pretty crazy amount of "density" in well bit, low rise structures - though actually I dont personally hate on towers as a concept.
Also, i would like to highlight that a very small portion of people are living in newly built homes, and only a small portion are really able to make meaningful design impact. Most just buy the builder-grade suburban model home. The idea that suburban single family homes are some design panacae is just wrong.
In general, I disagree with you. I think the two things you fixated on (souless architecture and rentals) are bad approaches to density, but you will notice that for the most part, this is the form of "density" that places who are notoriously bad at density do. Its what happens when we deliberately regulate ourselves into not allowing other options.
Soullessness and rent-seeking is what happens when housing is controlled by for-profit entities, and once you start building housing as system that is bigger, more expensive, or more complex, then one person / small family / support network can manage, then you inherently need to cede control and responsibility to a larger outside entity, which ends up being a corporation.
Even cities like Boston that have a relatively large amount of mid rise housing still have massive housing costs that suck residents dry because it all ends up being landlord controlled.
Also, i would like to highlight that a very small portion of people are living in newly built homes, and only a small portion are really able to make meaningful design impact. Most just buy the builder-grade suburban model home. The idea that suburban single family homes are some design panacae is just wrong.
I'm no fan of suburbs, but at an inherent level (assuming no crazy HOA), you have far more control of any house that you own over any space in a building that you do. Your average 100 year old suburban home will have far more charm and look far more unique than your average 100 year old apartment unit or condo.
Condos and townhouses also spawned HOAs which are yet another layer of an even pettier form of nosey neighbor government you get to live under.
Get a home outside city limits if you can, then it's just county, state, and federal... Though depending on the city, municipal government isn't as bad as HOA typically.
grander environmental reasons
No. Humans are not separate from "nature".
Know the terrible intentions of "environmentalists" who would put you in battery cages.
Abortion is sometimes the less monstrous alternative in a horrible situation, and it should never be seen as less than that.
Women should have enough social safety nets that abortion would never even cross their minds.
It is mostly Capitalism with its focus on productivity and selling youth and beauty that pressures women into it, women are "freeing" themselves into Capitalistic slavery.From: "leftist" privileged cis het white guy, feel free to ignore or bash me
Alternative perspective: any time abortion us criminalized is a problem because in the case of the mother having a medical emergency, it's most ideal for the doctor to care for the patient and the patients needs. Adding any additional consideration of potential legal ramifications is clouding an already difficult situation.
In addition, the way laws are written for "exceptions for the mothers life" are not, and can not ever be utilized effectively. Can it be performed if the patient will die in 7 days? What about in 4? In an hour? What if the doctor says there's a 40% chance of death? What about a 40% chance of survival? Keeping in mind that these percentages are mostly just estimates used by doctors to convey meaning to patients. What if it's just the patient losing their fertility? Or losing a limb?
None of these questions can ever be effectively answered by legislature, because medicine is not so cut and dry, and therefore, any attempt by legislature to regulate abortion is effectively a ban, including for the life of the mother.
I didn't mean criminalize, I want women to have enough social security nets that abortion wouldn't cross their minds, except in the case of risk of death, then it falls under "the less monstrous alternative in a horrible situation".
Beginning with a well funded and promoted foster care and adoption systems.
No sane person is going to bash you because you are privileged, cis, het, white, and male. Rather, it is being privileged (etc.) that seems to cause people to say ignorant things. Mind you, I disagree with you about abortion -- if I got pregnant by accident I'd have an abortion in a heartbeat, despite having a safety net. But I appreciate you being brave to share your dissenting view in this thread.
This question is difficult to correctly answer, as anyone can define their own political boundaries. They can be wrong about those boundaries and they can define many different ones that are all valid. Is my "political creed" to be a communist? Which subset might that mean? Am I friendly with certain subsets despite disagreeing with them (yes) and if so would they potentially count as the majority? Am I a (de)famed Western leftist or part of a worldwide effort in terms of having a less popular view of a subject?
I would say that among the people with whom I have the most general agreement, my least popular opinion is the potential for imperial core workers to become radicalized and organized for the left. A very large amount of organized resources is constantly poured into efforts to prevent this from happening, including those that reinforce settler, white supremacist, and chauvinist attitudes that permeate our cultures. That means that our struggle is very challenging right now but also means that if those flows are ever cut off or undermined, there will be immense opportunity and we have to be ready to channel the inevitable accompaniment to the conditions (austerity) that got us to that place away from neoliberal fascistic movements.
Basically, there is a common pathway in understanding that goes from hope for revolution from within the imperial core (no successful precedents) to attempts to understand this and explain why it's least likely to happen there. This can lead to a self-defeating cynicism towards all imperial core organizing or to curb vision. But I think it is our duty to continually reformulate as needed to discovery organizable enclaves, to grow with current and upcoming conditions. We owe that to each other.
I think I agree with your unpopular opinion. It might be an unpopular opinion because it's conditionally-expressed, and conditionals are hard to reason about ("I think if X happens then Y would be a good idea" really sounds a lot like "I think Y is a good idea.")
Reading this reminded me about another unpopular opinion: I think "settler" and "colonizer" are poor terms for non-indigenous people broadly.
The settler mindset is taught to basically every American either through school or wider social conditioning. It is an ongoing challenge to left organizing and has to be unlearned so that one can take liberating actions rather than explicitly oppositional settler ones. It is a mixture of white supremacy, colonial chauvinism, national chauvinism and myth-making, and some other reactionary ingredients that many have trouble observing because they are so normalized. And indigenous people can have this same mindset to varying degrees just like a black American can internalize anti-black racism.
The core precepts taught about US history are fundamentally a lie to benefit this mindset. As Marx said, the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. A bit of seemingly harmless Americana like [fruit] picking, a little farmhouse that sells [fruit]-based goods. Well, about 100-200 years ago you can usually bet that land was native. Not much folksy history to draw on. Not much tradition, aside from what was imported and normalized by waves of settlers for which whiteness was invented by ruling class interests to mollify the newly white people and further exploit everyone else. An identity that rationalized the theft of that land, of "settling" it for the imported culture's definition of stewardship, of extraction for [fruit]. The history of that place is told as a "family farm for 7 generations". Its crop is picked by underpaid workers, many of them undocumented: the labor underclass established for the modern settler mindset. Wage slaves and sometimes actual slaves, something considered perfectly normal in the settler mindset. An actual horror and overt injustice often just a few meters away and yet everyone is not up in arms demanding equal treatment. Instead, they respond to the ruling class' demands to blame the marginalized for the bourgeoisie's harms, they call for cruelty and deportation or they call for the status quo in response. Rarely do they call for liberation or equal treatment. The idea of open borders is used by the far far right to ridicule the far right that also wants closed borders. The idea itself is considered absurd by the mainstream settler mindset, as they are told it is absurd because it is against settler interests. "Imagine having to make just as little money as a Spanish-speaking brown person!", they internalize. They pick the [fruit] by the pretty white farmhouse and talk about how nice it would be to own their own place just like this. So long as they eventually own a house - or believe they will - they tend to not organically question the system that benefits them, surrounded by a system that discourages or coopts such thinking.
It is a potent force to overcome and it is why a full socialist education in The West takes so long. So much to unlearn. So many potential pitfalls. So many places where you are basically asking a person to have empathy for others and not interpret this as a form of self-hatred and get all defensive. Because to understand US-based oppression is to hate it. To be revolted. To reject all forms of settler thought as best you can, as you refuse to ever intentionally celebrate genocide or chattel slavery or the crushing of entire nations' simple dreams of sovereignty, food security, intact families, and limbs.
The phrase "we aren't free until we're all free" applies to animals as much as humans, and thinking otherwise is straight up bigotry. That so few extend leftist thought to the rest of the living world is a travesty, if you've managed to come around to leftist thinking then you've absolutely been capable of challenging your pre-conceived biases and this is just another step in that process.
All that said, I'm not one to judge people for not agreeing with this. It took me an exceptionally long time and the right circumstances to finally reassess my reasoning and to realise it was absurdly flawed, hypocritical and informed by propaganda.
The animals we create are morally entitled to the exact same unconditional love and protection as our own children. Leftists practice tolerance but they're not really willing to go as far as actual compassion, empathy, and mercy. A lot of the things they tolerate, they should not.
Leftists practice tolerance but they're not really willing to go as far as actually compassion, empathy, and mercy.
Are there specific leftist philosophies that imply this? Or is this a bad faith generalisation?
I agree, animal rights are important. I am not sure that animals are worth as much as humans morally, but even so, the argument for shrimp welfare is extremely moving. Well worth reading. It's easy to imagine shrimp are undeserving of compassion because they are small, have tiny brains, and have a silly name.
Well, I didn't say all animals, I said the ones we create. When you create an individual, the act places you in that individuals debt. You don't own them, you owe them. We have a duty not to harm all individuals on Earth so far as we can help it, but we have far greater responsibilities to those individuals that we bring into existence. There is no difference, morally, between forcing a child and forcing an animal to exist.
Can you elaborate a bit more? I don't seem to understand what you mean.
You haven't met my parents.
I like the idea that people should be able to choose their representatives based on how they live, rather than where they live.
You sign up as a "gamer," or a "farmer" or a "soccer mom." Whatever you decide for that term. Your representative then wheels and deals and votes for laws that help you.
Any group that had 0.5% of the population willing to sign up would get their voice in the Legislature.
Is this different than proportional representation?
It would be proportional, but instead of your representation being based on your address it's based on a choice you make.
Think of it this way; you're a computer programmer who works from home in Hayseed, Iowa. Everyone lese in your town is a farmer or working in farm related business. Your voice will never be heard by the Congressperson.
Under the new system, your address would be irrelevant. You'd be voting for a computer person who knows exactly what you need.
That's one example. You might want to be part of the 'teachers' or 'gun owners.'
The original idea comes from a novel, "Double Star" by Robert Heinlein. He doesn't provide an actual constitution, but I do think it's a nice idea to play around with.
Yes. You might have a version of it in which every group gets one representative, whether it's "people who have visited Vietnam at least once" with 0.5% of the population or "customer service workers" with 20% of the population
This is exactly the political description described in Ann Palmer's "Terra Ignota." Government by consent, irrespective of geography. People would join with up to one Hive -- some embodied idealist motherly traits like the Cousins, others were strictly about the nationstates of old, like the European Union. It's four volumes, but is an interesting tale of 25th century political science.
Very cool. Thanks, I'd never heard of that book.
Robert Heinlein worked on some real political campaigns back in the day and it shows in his writings.
Another fun political writer is Ross Thomas. He was a WW2 veteran who went from being a Washington reporter to a crime novelist.
"The Fools In Town Are On Our Side" is about a plan to clean up a small Southern city by making it " so corrupt that even the pimps will vote for reform."
"The Porkchoppers" is about a Nixon era Union election. It's all about the nuts and bolts of running a dirty campaign.
Donald Trump isn’t stupid.
There's plenty of evidence that he actually is very stupid, and that he may even have a learning disability. To be honest, once you accept the thought that he may be mildly retarded, you can't unsee it. For example in the recent talk about rare earth minerals, it seems to me that Trump thinks rare earth is actually soil in the way he talks about it and it drives me nuts that the media doesn't point this out:
“We’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earth and other things...They have great rare earth. And I want security of the rare earth, and they’re willing to do it."
But he makes up for it politically with great skill in appealing to people's base emotions.
Yeah I'm starting to agree. At the very least, the aggregate of "Trump + his advisors" functions intelligently, which is what matters, and that's scary.
He is far from the first flim-flam snake oil man making it big and performing atrocities in America. You could even look at the founding of the country as a sort of real estate scam gone darkly awry.
I think of him as astoundingly stupid. But he ain't dumb.
Intelligence and stupidity have nothing to do with each other. He can do stupid things out of pride, narcissism, etc., and still be an otherwise intelligent person.
I don't seem to have a political creed anymore.
I believe in honesty and being honourable.
The invention of money was a blight on our society. Abolishing it immediately is the first step to proper environmental recovery.
What the systems of getting people their food, supplies would look like, I don’t know, but having corporations hoarding wealth and polluting everything needs to stop.
Money can and should be abolished, but the best way to do so is to work towards a fully publicly owned and centrally planned economy and work towards the use of labor vouchers, which are destroyed upon first use. Eliminate production for profit and replace it with production for use.
A few related thoughts.
- Money, capital, and profit are not the same things.
- Labor vouchers are a form of money.
- Every time you give fiat money back to the government which owns the “money printer,” that money has been in effect destroyed.
- I’m not of the opinion that money should be abolished, not even necessarily “eventually.” Maybe a time will come when it makes sense to, but I don’t have the foresight to speak meaningfully to that.
Idk how we'd get rid of money, but it needs to be done. We're literally the only species on the planet with this concept and we're suffering for it.
As a USian, while I think gun violence is a preventable mass tragedy that unfolds daily here I also think that when minorities, indigenous people, women, queer people or really anybody who isn't a white christian rightwing man talks about wanting to own a gun to protect themselves while living in this country I can't disagree. If you don't understand the very real threat of police violence that you can't resist or stop, and the very real threat of other kinds of violence that police will NOT step in to stop because of who you are, you can't really argue against owning guns in the US to people that have no other choice than to take this kind of thing seriously.
I think handguns should be made much much much more illegal, since the handgun is actually the tool of state violence and oppression, it is the tool of surprise murder and intimidation. On the other hand if you carry a rifle you have to state your capacity for lethal violence, there is no hiding it or revealing it like a powertrip or gotcha card, which isn't to downplay the terror and violence that evil rightwing terrorists have wrought upon the US with assault rifles, but at this point I don't think owning a hunting style rifle or a shotgun as somebody who lives in the US is an unreasonable idea, especially if you have become a convenient political and literal target for the right.
To be clear, the whole stupid idea that owning an ar15 with a 30 roung mag, bumpstock and quick change mags somehow makes you safe to a home defender that breaks into your house at 3am when you pull it out and proceed to shoot 30 rounds erratically in the general direction of something you hear, sending bullets careening through the walls of your neighborhood and more likely killing somebody's kid sleeping in their bedroom than doing anything to make you safer IS pathetic and spits on actual real gun culture.
Also I want to note that people who roleplay as mil-sim types by spending actual thousands of dollars on pseudo-military equipment to live powertrip fantasies are by and large hilariously pathetic, especially because they are usually completely and utterly blind to (or worse directly supportive of) forms of authoritarian violence (state or otherwise). See lots of loser white dudes showing up in 24k worth of weekend warrior dress up GI Joe gear to defend the incredible threat to civil liberties that society expecting people to wear masks during a pandemic represented.... Good job chuds! You saved the day!
The point of concealed carry, in my eyes, is that people don't know you have it and are more wary to start shit in general. Open carry just means they wait till you're asleep to lynch you.
Its still horrifying either way.
I think things become much more chaotic and prone to quickly escalating to lethal applications of violence if there is the constant threat that anybody could be concealed carrying and more importantly that if someone felt the need to carry a firearm that they would likely conceal it.
Bringing a large visible rifle into a situation still escalates the threat of violence, but at least it does it in a clear and unambiguous way. There is no excuse to shoot the teenager dressed in basketball shorts and a wifebeater with absolutely no where to hide a rifle because you saw somebody else nearby with a rifle and you think the unarmed teenager might be concealing one. (There really is almost never an excuse to shoot anybody unless they are holding a gun and aiming it at you, and maybe even not then if you are on the one antagonizing them).
The US is a country where police not unregularly shoot innocent people, often unarmed black men or other minorities, and handwave away any responsibility for the needless violence by suggesting there might have been a handgun...
With a hunting rifle or shotgun there is no ambiguity about your intentions in a space or how you will potentially react to lethal threats of violence. There is no conveniently conflating other innocent and unarmed people with the people holding rifles or shotguns and easily getting away with it. On the other hand there is no surprising people by entering a space under false pretexts about your capacity or intentions around violence with a rifle or shotgun, since carrying a large weapon immediately identifies you as someone carrying a large weapon.
My point is, concealed carry is only effectively a right or privilege if society gives you the permission to arbitrarily carry around the means to end many peoples' lives in your pocket, which is something really only extended willingly and consistently to white, christian conservative men. Carrying around a hunting rifle or a shotgun is a different story.
Look at the way handguns are used in US media, they are treated as status symbols of power and righteosness. Shows and movies constantly rely on the revealing, obtaining and losing of handguns to portray changes in the power of characters (lazy fucking writing but that is another rant...). To US culture the handgun is the ultimate object of empowerment and of personally distributed justice and that says everything you need to know about handguns really.
(also, if you are someone who actually needs to protect yourself with a handgun, you already know who you are, this conversation is irrelevant)
quick change mags
I'm sorry, what? Are there slow change mags?
I'm generally leaning towards progressive or left-wing ideas, but with a few exceptions.
- While I support the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion, I believe that DEI initiatives are highly susceptible to exploitation because of the widespread and largely uncritical public support of the concept (or even just the abbreviation) with little regard to the implementation; and by tokenizing ethnicity, gender, and identity, it is at risk of doing what it was meant to prevent.
- I believe that law enforcement is a deeply flawed system to say the least, but ultimately necessary because the alternatives are lawlessness or ineffectual systems. This is of course colored by my European perspective where guns and driver's licenses aren't handed out like candy.
- The "tolerance is a social contract" mentality is hurting society. A person who experiences rejection and exclusion from progressive communities for voicing "intolerant" opinions will not be interested in reconciliation, and will inevitably fall in with a more radical group where they experience acceptance and belonging, where they will never be exposed to different ideas and their views will never be challenged. Integration should be sought whenever reasonable.
The last point is especially important to me. I grew up in a fairly conservative environment, and it took me a lot of conscious effort to un-learn my prejudices and learn acceptance. But whenever I get downvoted and shouted down for voicing an opinion that aligns with conservatives, or simply isn't "leftist" enough, it makes me want to distance myself from "leftist" ideology and adds to my disillusionment.
The first point is a fairly common opinion among communists, who understand "DEI" to be a liberal cooption of liberationist language and thought that tokenizes identities and reworks the concepts in favor of exploiters (and was doomed to be shed the moment it was less profitable for exploiters).
It may be beneficial to consider the second point with some nuance that is often neglected in order to agitate. Again with communists, you will find many that hate their country's cops but acknowledge the necessity in a post-revolutionary framework, either in their own visions for their own revolution or in defending the actions taken by their comrades that rapidly discover the need for some form of organized enforcement. One way to think about this is that the police are an arm of the state, and who that state serves via its structures and nature changes how they operate. In OECD countries, cops primarily serve capital. They protect profits based on shop owner complaints, shut down capital-inconvenient demonstrations, etc, and spend little time helping average people. In many capitalist countries, cops are underpaid and openly corrupt, so they do the same things while being more obvious bribes. In countries run by socialists, cops of course still do many cop things, but you will find them spending more of their time on other tasks, there are fewer per capita, and the job of being a cop in capitalist counties has been split into many different jobs that don't involve having a gun or otherwise carrying out the worst actions taken by cops. So, in short, it is entirely coherent to hate your local cops as an arm of capital that will beat you for protesting while not condemning the mere existence of cops in other countries while also understanding that we want to create a society free of them.
For the third point, it really depends on what you mean by accepting. Socialists need to educate people where they are, warts and all, but you also cannot be taillist and morph your work into accepting reactionary positions. That defeats the entire point of rejecting reactionary positions. Patience in explaining is valuable, tacit agreement with racism/xenophobia/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/etc is counterproductive. In addition, getting dunked on can and does create results. Despite growing up conservative and getting dunked on by those to your left, you now think of yourself as non-conservative. Are you sure none of those dunks ever led you to question your positions?
I can't address the entire reply since it's 3 in the morning, but I just want to point out something.
I'm not a communist. I'm not a socialist, or a Marxist-Leninist. I don't consider myself to be a "leftist" (which I see as an overly broad term), and I'm sure as hell not a centrist. If my views are inconsistent, it's because I don't follow any single doctrine.
Hey dude, I just wanted to let you know there is an option in your settings so you don't see upvotes or downvotes.
Lemmy (AFAIK) doesn't even show you your total upvotes (karma... whatever it's called) by default either. None of these imaginary points fucking matter.
So why don't you do yourself a favor and uncheck these boxes and not give a fuck what others think about your comment.
I know I have.
(Lemmy is rad as fuck)
But whenever I get downvoted and shouted down for voicing an opinion that aligns with conservatives, or simply isn't "leftist" enough, it makes me want to distance myself from "leftist" ideology and adds to my disillusionment.
Why does disillusionment with the people involved in a movement influence your opinion on the ideals behind the movement?
Should the idea itself be bigger than the people that espouse it? If empathy and compassion are worthy goals, you don't just give up on them because other folk don't display them. If rejecting sexism is a worthy goal, you don't dial up the sexism because some folk think you don't go far enough in rejecting it.
It's more accurate to say that I'm growing disillusioned with the movement as a whole and the people who claim allegiance with it, not its ideals. I support the ideals that I find right and just, and given limited options (votes and such), will support the people who promote those ideals.
Rationally, it shouldn't; but we're human, so it does.
There is even a rational viewpoint too -- we can synergize if we work together with people who align with us and back a common interest, instead of all independently voicing slightly different political voices. But if other people in that group do something we really dislike, it tempts us to drift away and align with a different and smaller group instead.
So what is the alternative to "downvoting" someone's opinion? You can't support it, obviously, that would be stupid. I just see no other way than "downvoting", saying "well, I see where you're coming from, but your opinion is wrong and doesn't achieve what you want".
I think downvoting serves to make an opinion less visible, so you should remember that when you are downvoting someone you disagree with, it is serving to make their opinion less visible. Downvoting hostile or dangerous or low-quality comments is good, but downvoting dissenting opinions in general leads to polarization.
I would rather spend time in a community with many different perspectives than just one perspective, which is why I don't downvote people simply because I disagree with them.
Hexbear doesn't have downvotes, you are encouraged to reply and actually address the bad comments.
Your example is about as spicy as lukewarm water. The responses I got involved the words "bootlicker", "nazi", "fascist", and "chud", various expletives, called into question my mental health and respect for minorities, and listed several examples of why holding those views made me the scum of the earth.
I think on the Left we have a "virtuous" cycle/feedback loop that results in increasingly outlandish positions.
Essentially, for most people there's a serotonin feedback when people upvote, applaud, reteeet etc. People, responding to incentives like anyone else shift their online discourse to match.
Similarly, even beyond the positive feedback, on thr Left no one wants to be a white cis male contradicting the feelings, emotions or arguments of a POC or LGBTQ+ person.
The Right doesn't really have this problem as the Far right opinions are generally understood to be reprehensible to most people so those movements have evolved to work on dog whistles etc.
It's a structural issue but one that puts us out of touch with the mainstream (consider defund the police, transgender athletes or immigration until we were getting murdered in the polls and it was too late to do anything.)
on the Left we
Where on "the Left"?
no one wants to be a white cis male contradicting the feelings, emotions or arguments of a POC or LGBTQ+ person
Maybe liberals don't. And I wouldn't consider them to be on the left.
Why would you want to police emotions or feelings of others?
Arguments on the other hand should be based on logic. And as long as you're respectful, one can disagree.
Your attempt at making all these different scenarios look the same, makes me question your position and honesty in this conversation
The Right doesn't really have this problem as the Far right opinions are generally understood to be reprehensible to most people
This is just purely false and inaccurate. There are plenty of people who agree with far right talking points
Edit: why was I not surprised to see that you are one of those "leftist" (read liberal) who is fine with the Palestinian genocide as long as it's your team that carries out the genocide?
THAT is why we have to be careful. Precisely because of fake allies like you, who say they are on your side while condoning a genocide behind your back.
But sure, talk again of "virtuosity tests" and the "Left"...
The concept of "throwing the baby out with the bathwater"
There's no nuance from the left. The left polices itself like the radical right thinks they (the party of law and order) do.
Had a podcaster get dropped by their long time partner because there were lewd text messages sent.
I'm tired of the reactionary bullshit, currently Dawkins and Gaiman are being dropped, and I understand not wanting to associate/support Dawkins' current views, the guy wrote very persuasive works that shouldn't lose value because he lost his empathy.
I still read and enjoy enders game despite knowing what a tool Card turned into, how is it so difficult to separate art from the artist?
If you're paying a rapist for their work and encouraging people to pay the rapist that's helping the rapist. Completely fine by me if you pirate the books and don't tell other people to buy them.
It depends on how large the negative impact of the person or organization because of their view is or how much negative impact it would have on me to boycott it. Like I won’t ever buy a Tesla because Musk is doing a lot of harm to people and should not get a single cent from me but I don’t really care the new Linkin Park singer is or was a scientologist. I won’t buy Nestle products and it’s surprisingly easy to do as there are enough alternatives. But as much as I would like to drop Whatsapp because Meta sucks, it’s simply the main communication service here in Germany.
I think you’ve got to draw some lines and stand by them but you don’t need be 100% Jesus either.
There’s no nuance from the left.
I would say there are many, many thick volumes of nuance, with reams of footnotes to evidence supporting it.
But progressive liberals are not going to engage with any of it.
Meanwhile the far-right floats on clouds of self-contradictory nonsense.
This whole comic is comedic gold, but this tiny part is especially funny to me somehow
I'm someone who is generally skeptical when accusations of sexual misconduct are made against someone I admire(d), but even I have to admit the case against Gaiman is very strong. I'd say he deserves to be dropped.
Dawkins' anti-theist works and his reactionary views are related to one another. As with Hitchens and Sam Harris, their work was poorly researched and was forwarded because their real agendas were based on chauvinist attitudes, particularly against muslims.
Dennett was the only good one and unfortunately he passed away. PZ Myers is less knowm but also didn't bite on the islamophobia bait.
Based on the various accounts, Gaiman is a cruel and explpitative rapist and I find it difficult to appreciate words about charm or love from such a source.
Do you have any other examples of people who should not be rejected by the left? Who was the podcaster?
PS always kill your heroes. Being of the left means doing work and building organizations that (in addition to trying to prevent) withstand the inevitable failures of prominent figures.
There's no nuance to the left... as compared to the right?
how is it so difficult to separate art from the artist?
Can you have art without an artist? Can you have an artist without art? No. Art is a human expression. It comes from a person. AI art might be technically accomplished but it only says something when a human is in control of the AI. You can just kind of tune out that aspect of a work of art and try to enjoy it divorced from its act of creation, its context, the artist's intentions, etc, but in doing so you are effectively censoring the art and not engaging with it on its own terms. The artist is an integral part of the work.
I'm centrist so I probably believe in something that offends both sides.
Why are you centrist? To clarify, if you make your political decisions yourself but almost always happen to align with one of the parties, I would consider you in that party rather than a centrist.
I think the way to respond is "what do you believe that most centrists don't" -- though I feel like centrists are varied enough that you'll have trouble with this.
While I have progressive ideas and believe the Republicans rule with malace, I also strongly believe the democrats rule with incompetence.
I would love to run for president on the party of burn down the two party system and restart from there. Make politics boring again and not some partisan winner take all spectacle. We keep pushing to out 'wing' the 'wing' and it is driving us to some bad extremes.
So yes, I will vote straight ticket Democrat for 99% of the time, but I am also disgusted by the fact anyone is even allowed to do that and people have little party letters by their name. If you didn't research your candidate to at least know their name, then you shouldn't be voting for them.
It is mind-blowing to me that some things are not seen as human rights and are instead seen as political posturing. In Texas we had barbed wire intentionally strung up in the Rio Grande river with the intention to drownd people and it took multiple rounds of court cases to make them take it out. Somehow killing people is acceptable rather than booking, ticketing, and sending back. Politics have now taken a place above literal lives. At the same time, when I express this I have democrats immediately agreeing and adding "just let them in!" Or "just let them stay and we will figure it out" and that is where I stop them and ask, is that what I said? No. Simply that human life is worth more than politics. Again, stringing up barbed wire in a river to intentionally drown people it true malice. But saying let them all in and figure it out later is naive at best, and incompetence at its worst.
Democratic politicians tend to be cynical more than ignorant, friend. They feign incompetence because taking actions is against their larger strategy of holding to whatever the current status quo is or whatever pleases donors (these are usually the same).
We're talking about a group that acts like it can't deliver on basic platform promises because of a parliamentarian they can just fire and replace like the GOP has done reoeatedly and then turns around and breaks plenty of its own rules when a SocDem grandpa (Bernie) gives people some hope for positive change.
The party relishes in scapegoats for inaction because they do not, in actuality, oppose the status quo nor even most of the changes made by e.g. Trump. Their opposition is performative, it is meant to get someone to do that 99% voting for them thing and then call it a day politically. Their main agenda is to say there is no acceptable alternative beyond their controlled neoliberal duopoly.
"Make politics boring again" simply means you have no connection to the immense violences carried out by that status quo, or do not recognize them as such. Tell me, for which period of time was US politics boring? During slavery? Settler colonial genocide of the people who lived here? Jim Crow? Labor fights? Imperial conquests throughout the Americas, Hawaii, The Philippines? Both World Wars? The Great Depression? The Cold War and its many sponsored coups and genocides? The forced unequal exchange for the countries it dominates? The frequent hot wars it begets around the world?
The acab movement has caused more harm than it has salved. Furthering the ideas that there are no good cops means that nobody good will become a cop in the future, furthering the issue
In capitalist states, the core mission of the police is to 1) protect the bourgeoisie’s private ownership of the means of production and to 2) discipline the proletariat, cracking heads if necessary. Historically in the US, they began as slave patrols, because slaves were private property, i.e., means of production.
The issue is structural, there are no "good cops" in the same way there are no "good pimps" or "good slave owners."
There were some slave owners who were kind to their slaves, taught them to read, allowed them to have some free time and make a small amount of money.
That doesn't mean that what they were doing was morally acceptable. They still were buying and selling human beings like property.
Policing, especially in the USA is rotten to the core. There are absolutely some cops who are kind people, who become police officers out of a naive belief that they can do good for society as a whole in that profession.
But those people don't usually last long. They either leave after seeing the ugly underbelly, or they become corrupted by the system. The police will always act in the interest of the rich and powerful, or else they get fired. If they are told to break up a protests, they will always comply. If they are told to block a corporate skyscraper so that protesters cannot get into it to stage a sit-in, they will do it, even as ultra wealthy oligarchs stream safely past them to conduct horrifically corrupt dealings that hurt and kill millions of people across the world.
The cop's job is also to go around trying to bust people for crimes. If a cop comes up to you out of the blue and starts up a conversation, 99% of the time they are fishing for information, trying to sus something out. They aren't just trying to be friendly, they are doing their job. In the US at least, the cops are allowed to lie to you in an investigation in order to try to get you to admit guilt. They are allowed and trained to do it, to use all kinds of trickery to manipulate you into a confession, or to get Intel that helps them.
In addition, the examples people frequently cite as good things the cops do would be better done by non-cops. First aid? Suicide intervention? Disaster relief? Theft deterrence? Wellness checks? Those are all things that would be better done by non-cops if we funded and grew those kinds of organizations instead of further militarizing the police.
ACAB has never meant that all cops are evil people, it means that no matter how good of a person a cop is, they will always be empowering a corrupt and evil system.
Why don't we see the same sentiment about paramedics, firefighters, and heck, even soldiers? Because the systems that those folks are a part of don't have the same corrupting effect. Even soldiers are generally looked on much more favorably than cops, even though politically and socially, there is a large amount of overlap. Part of this is propaganda, but another factor is the standards soldiers are held to in the US. They are expected to carry themselves extremely well, and can be severely punished, even jailed for misconduct.
As a personal anecdote, I grew up in both worlds. My dad and several members of my family were both in the military and were cops. I was around both cultures a ton. I've had many bad encounters with police officers over the years, and that's with me knowing all the classic, "always keep your hands visible and comply" stuff that my dad and his cop friends told me.
I've never had a single negative encounter with an on-duty soldier. They've always been extremely respectful and grounded. Like I said, just an anecdote, but interesting to think about. If cops could be fired or even jailed for relatively minor infractions, even have their lives destroyed like soldiers who are dishonorably discharged, ACAB would probably never have became a thing.
What an interesting take...I assume you will be down voted into oblivion, but it is thought provoking all the same. When I was younger I thought police helped people and I probably would have considered being a police officer. Now, I can't imagine who would want to and I immediately question anyone who would. I have to imagine this is causing the people who truly want to help people to avoid the profession.
I know a few people who are police, one being a very close friend who is now retired from being a cop. Not a single one of them is a bad person or cop. The stories I hear from them make me wonder why they would do it, and the universal answer is usually to help people. The best part is that of the six or so people I know counting my friends, they are all quitting because people treat them so badly juat for doing thier job, and they will be replaced with cops who show no compassion. I myself have many stories of cops being understanding and caring and, in turn, being very lenient. When I talk to people with the acab mentality, the police never go easy. It's odd how just treat people how you want to be treated works.
Step 1: proving ACAB wrong
Law enforcement is one of the last careers that still offers a pension, has a union that fights for its members, and is a good source of income without going into massive college debt.
Seems like something the left would be in love with, but systemic issues have demonized the entire profession. I think an influx on left-leaning officers would be great, but like politics- people who would be good at the job stay away from it.
Teen Vogue (I know, right?): Police Unions: What to Know and Why They Don’t Belong in the Labor Movement
Police unions have always been outliers among organized labor, and there are many reasons why the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union has long refused to allow cops (and prison guards) into its organization. […] Actually, police unions themselves used to be illegal, because local governments worried about the consequences of allowing armed state agents to organize. And historically speaking, the police have been no friend to workers, whether officers were shooting at the families of coal miners during the Battle of Blair Mountain, crushing the ribs of immigrant garment workers during the Uprising of the 20,000, or teargassing working-class protesters in Minneapolis after police killed George Floyd.
Necessities should be free for all.
Is that unpopular among Anarchists?
Voting is an important tool to help contain fascism in liberal democracies while building serious social movements. (Socialist - but hopefully this isn't actually unpopular with most socialists).
Then we should take great care in how we run our electoral system.
Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
I'm a strict leftist, that means, i believe that humans (in fact, all life) are valuable. Yes, you have to say that in these times. Lots of politicians these days seem to disagree with even that.
As a direct consequence, i advocate for UBI (universal basic income). Because the people need to live off something, and it is getting harder by the year to be successful through your own labor. (As numerous articles describe, - i won't link them here, because that would be out of scope - hashtag "working poor").
However, i think the borders must be closed. That affects both goods and migration. If the borders are closed, people stop competing with one another. Just a reminder: "compete" comes from Latin and basically means "fight". People are fighing against one another, and i think that makes a society sick. If the borders close, economy slows down considerably, and people stop competing.
What I find funny is that some days I'll be adamant about how bad UBI would be because of the cost, and the next, I'd be the loudest voice next to yours for its good. I feel it would be super easy to implement. Basically, you'd tax every company for every self checkout machine as if each machine is a person and the salary that would be paid to the person is instead of a machine would be used to fund it. I k ow its poorly worded, but I hope people have enough sense to understand what I mean.
Yeah, there's a lot of technicalities involved. Like, do you tax the companies directly, or rather the billionaires owning the companies?
My proposal so far is: Every person who has citizenship has to pay 3% of their total wealth off as wealth tax annually. Which makes sense because if they invest in stock, that stock likely goes up by more than 3% annually (after adjusting for inflation). So they don't even have to lift a finger to pay off that wealth tax. (Excluding a tax-free amount of $1 million). That would fund surprisingly much. I did some preliminary math, and in germany, such a wealth tax alone would provide every person with citizenship with approximately $120 /month.
Which is just a small support. UBI doesn't necessarily need to jump from 0 to 100%, maybe it's easier to introduce it slowly and then increase the value.
If i may ask: what makes you against UBI on some days?
Supporting UBI is not really a leftist thing. It was promoted by laissez-faire economists as a way to kill the welfare state (universal services) and is still formulated as such by its prominant proponents.
Why do you believe you are leftist rather than simply a fairly mainstream liberal? Liberals have pivoted to being openly in favor of immigration crackdowns in the US over the last few years.
Do people really stop competing with one another if the borders are closed? And if so, how? In my mind, neither open nor closed borders change anything in the amount of competition there is, it just changes the groups involved.
Christianity should be criminalized.
Upvoting because this is definitely a controversial take
Only Christianity, or all Abrahamic religions, or all spirituality?
Can i still like Jesus? Can i still study Christ as a historical figure?
What about ancient religious art? Destroy it?
What's the punishment if i get caught thinking about The Lord, or God forbid, praying!?
Just for context i am not religious or spiritual, but it seems like a thought crime.
Other Abrahamic religions play around with a lot of the same themes of excusing and encouraging ethnic cleansing and other classic biblical virtues-against-humanity such as massacring all living things in an entire city, but their stake in the present distribution of global power is much smaller, and they consequently represent a smaller threat to human life. I am not opposed to subsequent criminalization of Islam, as it is no better, but in the name of curbing the racist element which is highly likely to result from such policy, and also mindfully of the difficulty of phasing out Islam, I do not believe that it is productive to put it together on the chopping block with Christianity in the world we live in now. Judaism isn't so much of a problem due to its more widely practiced interpretative principle and due to its weaker practical hierarchy compared to Christianity.
Can i still like Jesus? Can i still study Christ as a historical figure?
I view following biblical orders as the defining characteristic of a Christian person. (This view is generally uncontroversial among Christians, who generally do not take seriously those who claim to be Christian without having faith in the Bible's inerrancy.)
There is a set of terrorist beliefs prescribed by the Bible that the average person who simply likes Jesus Christ as a literary figure probably doesn't hold. Those people tend to have different socialization and visible attitudes compared to Christians of the definitively violent variety, and aren't difficult to tell apart. I certainly do not believe those people should be gone after.
What about ancient religious art? Destroy it?
We must preserve the historical account of Christianity being the leading force of anti-intellectualism and collective narcissism of Christian nations, in addition to being an indispensable tool of fascism around the world and a significant contributor to solidification of Nazi rule in its time. Destroying the artistic record of history would not accomplish anything useful, much like how removing swastikas from museums of World War 2 wouldn't help with doing away with neo-Nazism.
What's the punishment if i get caught thinking about The Lord, or God forbid, praying!?
Refer to the legislation prohibiting display of Nazi symbols as implemented by many European countries. Countries like Germany have had a rough history with the way they implemented such legislation, with false-positive rulings and enforcement that were at odds with preservation of history and antifascist self-expression, but modern legislation against rehabilitation of Nazism is much better than that, and offers some valuable experience on how to tackle this inherently difficult problem.
Protests do more harm than good to a cause, especially annoying protests.
Protests are only good if they're annoying. They're meant to be annoying. They're meant to make other people notice, to stop traffic, to cause delays and ideally an economic hit to the city. If nobody felt the protest, how do you expect it to have an effect?
Protests are definitely meant to be noticed, and should also make you think. Ideally they should also be attractive for others to join, allowing the protest to gain momentum. But being annoying (at least to regular people) seems counter productive to that? Sometimes it is unavoidable, but I don't think it should be desired.
Of course being annoying to the body being protested against is definitely desired.
Protests aren't always for the "benefit" of nonparticipants, as much as for those taking part. Being surrounded by people with the same concerns as you who are also willing to take some kind of action is very heartening. Not only does it bring joy to people who may otherwise feel powerless or overwhelmed, it presents opportunities for making connections for further organizing.
Without public protests, you may have a lot of individuals that believe they are alone in their outrage. Feeling this, nobody will ever act and so be defeated without ever fighting at all.
Tariffs on Chinese goods are a good thing. And I honestly see why the next logical step is tariffs on Mexico because Chinese companies are already building in Mexico so they can assemble there and ship across the border and circumvent tarrifs.
I think China manipulates markets and damages the global economy while making consumers feel like they don't need to value the products they buy because they are so cheap. And I don't think we should be letting China off the hook for the Uyghur genocide/gluttony of human rights violations.
Buy local. I wish it was easier to buy American manufactured stuff.
My only issue with that is taking from regular people to fund it. Tax solely corporations, many of them view increased profits at any cost as the only objective, which means they have more to spare. If you take it from the people who take all the risk by investing their own money, I don't see that as fair. If I work hard to make a living, invest what I can to improve my life and future that shouldn't be touched by any tax. Where I'm from, we have capital gains tax of something assured, like 55%+. I don't see how that is fair. If I go bust, I don't get a hand out or do over, but if I succeed, I have to fork over more than half...
The fact that you have to ask means you'd judge people on skin color. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh because if the answer is yes, they're white, you'd attribute it to that but not bother looking any further. They are mostly white, but my friends wife isn't. I know my fair share of people who have had extremely bad interactions, too, and they are white. My brother was pulled out of his car at gun point for making an illegal turn. Do dwb happen sadly, yes, but those are not as frequent as you'd like to believe.
have to ask what?
Strong advocate for people under 25 and over 75 not having the vote.