lemm.ee

-2 points

9 months ago

You haven’t had to fall in line because you aren’t a leftist, and liberals are doing a good job in your eyes.

I’ve noticed this a lot on Lemmy: It’s a common arguing technique to simply tell the other person what their views are, and base your argument on that. In this case, you are 1,000% wrong. Wrong as hell.

I was registered third party for like the first ten years of my voting life, because I was disgusted with the Democrats. Bernie Sanders has been the only presidental candidate I’ve been genuinely happy with in recent memory. Don’t tell me what my views are, and assume that I must be saying what I’m saying because of what those imaginary views are.

while you get to vote for what you perceive as at minimum positive change.

I think this is where our fundamental disconnect comes in. Before I say anything else, I want to ask, what are things that have gotten worse under Biden, to you? Oil extraction and Gaza, I assume; what else?

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Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml

4 points

9 months ago

Don’t be surprised if I label you a liberal if you’re coming in batting full force for tepid, liberal Capitalist reform, and that leftists should be happy with it because it is good change.

Either way, Capitalism continues to erode, resulting in more disparity, less worker power, and no meaningful change in favor of Worker Ownership. Biden is doing a pretty good job for liberals, who wish to maintain the status quo, but for people who actually desire substantial reorganization of the economy into a worker-owned format, he’s done absolutely nothing.

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1 point

9 months ago

Whoops, we took a little turnoff towards the bad faith highway I guess.

You just told me even more aggressively what I believe. I asked a simple factual question:

What are things that have gotten worse under Biden, to you? Oil extraction and Gaza, I assume; what else?

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Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml

3 points

9 months ago

I answered, and it isn’t bad-faith. I said leftists are understandably upset that liberals are liberals, then you got upset and tried to convince me that actually, liberalism is good. It doesn’t work like that.

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1 point

9 months ago

You’ve explained to me your philosophy on what these words mean and how they apply a sufficient number of times; I don’t need to hear it again. I am asking a specific factual question. Just firmly repeating your worldview is not going to lead me to suddenly start to agree with it. You must normally have these discussions with very suggestible people or something if you expect it to work that way.

What specific policies has Biden done that made specific factual things in the world worse? This isn’t like a gotcha; I’m expecting there to be a real and somewhat-valid answer. I have my list of good things he’s done, but I wanted to hear your list first and genuinely hear you out. I thought that you were engaged enough in the topic that we’d actually be able to talk about it with that as the starting point, but I’ve given you a couple of chances now and you’ve just been trying to berate me with your worldview instead, so maybe not.

What are things that have gotten worse under Biden, to you? Oil extraction and Gaza, I assume; what else?

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Cowbee [he/him]@lemmy.ml

6 points

9 months ago

Let’s start over, we are clearly talking past each other. I’m going to list a set of assertions that I believe, as a leftist, that are common among leftists.

Capitalism itself is bad, and in constant decline.
Liberalism is a continuation of the Capitalist status quo, and thus Liberals seek to continue Capitalism.
By continuing Capitalism, disparity continues to rise. Letting a fire burn without putting it out is a bad thing.

Where among those 3 statements do you draw disagreement? I’ll retract my half-serious claim of you as a liberal, and ask you as a fellow leftist: where do you disagree with me here?

Following the previous 3 statements, we can look at Biden. Biden has done close to nothing to move away from Capitalism and towards Socialism. He’s put a few band-aids on a gaping wound, but that inaction in the face of the gaping wound is itself allowing the situation to deteriorate, such as skyrocketing housing prices, continuing rises in disparity, and an increasingly strangled working class.

I’ll add: I advocate for voting for the lesser evil. What my original comment was about, however, was getting liberals to understand and accept that they face a fundamentally different set of electoral issues from right wingers. Right wingers are fascists, and have openly fascist candidates to vote for. The GOP is actively appealing to the far-right. The DNC, however, is appealing to the center-right, and feels entitled to the votes of leftists because they aren’t as far-right.

That’s the key! Because the DNC is content with maintaining the Capitalist status quo, in the eyes of leftists, the DNC will always be a lesser of two evils. Even an extremely competent DNC would still be an extremely competent liberal Capitalist party, and would still be the lesser of two evils.

Does this make sense to you?

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0 points

9 months ago

Yeah. Pretty much everything in your second part, I agree with. In particular:

Biden has done close to nothing to move away from Capitalism and towards Socialism. He’s put a few band-aids on a gaping wound, but that inaction in the face of the gaping wound is itself allowing the situation to deteriorate, such as skyrocketing housing prices, continuing rises in disparity, and an increasingly strangled working class.

Pretty much this, I would agree with, and I think we’re on the same page in terms of needing to vote for him as the lesser of two evils while urgently trying to find some kind of better solution for the future before the end of the world comes (or, comes more than it already has).

Capitalism itself is bad, and in constant decline.

Liberalism is a continuation of the Capitalist status quo, and thus Liberals seek to continue Capitalism.

By continuing Capitalism, disparity continues to rise. Letting a fire burn without putting it out is a bad thing.

Where among those 3 statements do you draw disagreement? I’ll retract my half-serious claim of you as a liberal, and ask you as a fellow leftist: where do you disagree with me here?

So this is a significantly bigger discussion… I actually don’t think capitalism itself is bad. The fire analogy is actually really good, to me. Capitalism is a powerful tool, you need it in order to do things that are useful to get done, but if it gets out of control it’s incredibly dangerous. You need to have strong protections to keep it contained so it can do its job without taking over. Right now, in the US, it’s not contained, so a lot of the harm you’re talking about (increasing disparity) is entirely accurate.

Probably that viewpoint is gonna be popular with more or less nobody, and maybe you will reclassify me again as a liberal because of it, but you asked what I thought so that’s what I think on a sincere basis.

I think most people in government in DC are corrupted by corporate money. The Republicans have sort of lost the plot of even trying for coherent governance that’s good for anybody, rich or poor, but most of the Democrats are working diligently on behalf of the rich people. It’s a massive damn problem. I don’t think that’s because of “liberalism” in any abstract sense, any more than the Republicans are working for “small government”; I think it’s just open corruption. I think you would have to fix the influence of money in politics to even be able to talk about governance in terms of systems of belief or principle. Which is probably a lot of what you mean in terms of tearing down the systems of liberalism that are currently in charge of everything, so I suspect there’s a lot of overlap between how we see it on that score too, although maybe the labels are different.

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bigMouthCommie@fe.disroot.org

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3 points

9 months ago

caging kids at the border, for one.

allowing russia to invade ukraine isn’t exactly a highlight.

he lied to me about a $2,000 check

he broke a union strike

i don’t follow everything the man does because frankly i think electoral politics are a sham, but you can’t possibly think he’s made the world better.

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