Being a European, I am seeing extremists of both sides picking at each other.
No normal people left anymore?
It’s harder to see where the other side is coming from when you’re standing so far apart.
“Normal people,” or people anywhere in the middle of the two poles, who can see both sides still are generally pretty quiet now because they get attacked by one side for “sympathizing” with the other. I talk to both extremes daily in my line of work, and it’s exhausting to be respectful of either far-directional sentiment all day, every day
The far-left purity test alienates many mostly-left people.
You can be pro-choice, pro-women, all for supporting the poor, gay rights and trans rights - but if you dare suggest that maybe trans women shouldn’t be competing against born women in top-level sports, then the vocal left brand you as a transphobic TERF whose opinion isn’t even worth listening to. They would rather fight you over the 2% of things you disagree on, than embrace you for the 98% of values you have in common.
The vocal left want diversity in color, gender and sexuality - but they will not tolerate any diversity in thought or opinion.
Indeed, this is the major problem on the left. It’s why there’s so much interest online in centrist “anti-woke” discussions and podcasts. But it’s also fertile recruiting ground for the far right - if you’re excommunicated for the 2% difference and actually, effectively canceled (I mean like a twitter mob actually gets you fired or the like), you’re more inclined to go where people support you, and all too often, that’s now the far right.
Identitarinasm doesn’t lead anywhere good IMO on either side, and we would do well to re-think that on the “loud” part of the left.
No… They want people to be able to be themselves without being hounded by bigots. Somehow not a big going to ask imo. And yes, if you are talking about trans woman and AMAB people in that way and preventing women from joining sports (which has included all levels of sports), yes, you’re being transphobic.
The US doesn’t have a left wing party. We have a extreme right wing party, and a center right wing party. This both sides shit is stupid as fuck. “We want to ban gays” is extreme. “We want gay people to have rights” is not
I saw a comment on another post by a European explaining American politics to another European.
“Their left is our right, their right is our far right, and their far right are literal flag waving Nazis.”
Name one left extremist in a position of power.
Go ahead, tell on yourself.
Yes, so far at least the Democrats seem to be far less tolerant of extremists in politics. Maybe that’s untrue - but they tend to not be violent or wanting to overthrow the system. Part of it is how you define extremists - I’m more tolerant of people who want to campaign and try to make most any change via the democratic process via voting no matter their position. I’m less interested in those who feel we should invade the capital to try and overrule the outcomes of elections or violently intimidate opponents.
how you define extremists - I’m more tolerant of people who want to campaign and try to make most any change via the democratic process via voting no matter their position. I’m less interested in those who feel we should invade the capital to try and overrule the outcomes of elections or violently intimidate opponents.
Yes that’s the correct approach to define them.
The name “do nothing democrats” is sadly very accurate. They are just letting the right wing extremists walk all over us. I’d like to imagine how much better our political system would be if we simply had an age cap on political positions. Of course the people in power will never vote themselves out though.
You don’t need to be violent if the electoral apparatus is rigged to favor you (the right in American politics—I’m not making this up), but they are anyway. But if the electoral apparatus is rigged against you, if your party can get the most votes consistently and still lose, while your opponents make policy that literally kills people, if you’d still argue that extraelectoral measures are extremist, you’re not advocating democracy, you’re advocating acquiescence. The people of Germany would have been right to rise up against the Nazis (who only got 38% of the vote, btw), yeah? So where’s the line? Which standing up for yourself makes you righteous, and which an extremist?
I guess if you’re mostly happy with how something is then you’ve no reason to bring it up.
Nobody is writing long articles, posting tweets or appearing on TV shows to talk about it being quite nice that they can currently go and buy a beer from a shop. But someone could easily decide that they want to rile people up about the easiness of buying beer. And it all goes from there.
Alcohol consumption was like 800% higher before prohibition happened. It seems silly today, but alcohol abuse was a super rampant issue in the early 1900s.
You can always tell a disingenuous response with the both sides bullshit.
Oh yes. Extreme Left Wing ideas like: Trans people deserve human rights, We should feed our children, We should forgive college loans to borrowers that are being burdened so heavily with debt they can’t start a family or buy homes (and the impact of it on the US Economy), Everyone has the right to vote. Wow…
Lots of them, but normal doesn’t sell advertisements or make headlines. I see by the downvotes (or whatever Lemmy calls them) that you’ve been visited by the Reddit groupthink. It feels weird when it happens. Some of us just want everyone to get along…which feels radical in its own way.
The GOP/Nazi party is where humanity goes to die. Good thing they are in an ever shrinking minority.
Shrinking? They increased their seats in the house last election, and now control >50%.
The Republicans party is very much elderly people, uneducated people, and religious people.
The old people are dying, religion is on a steady decline.
The thing is that Republicans show up to vote because their bubble is largely fear driven politics.
They also have gerrymandering on their side, they limit polling places, they unconstitutionally use poll taxes that disproportionately affect minorities, they make voting harder by eliminating vote by mail… In short, they cheat like fuckin crazy and rile up their base to get out and vote.
I would not agree that they’re gonna disappear by 2028, but they are waning.
Globally, far right politicians are getting more votes.
GOP will be around for decades or more.
Everything you’ve said is true. But it was all true in 70s as well. Todays young people aren’t going to remain as progressive - every generation becomes more conservative over time. Hell, baby boomers were hippies. That Karen who votes for Trump and calls the HOA when you forget to take your bins in on time - there’s a good chance she was burning her bra for equal pay when she was in college.
They won the overall popular vote for the House by 2.8% in a midterm election with a somewhat unpopular President from the opposite party plus economic turmoil. The standard assumption would be that they’d blow it out. In the 2018 midterms, Democrats won the popular vote for the House by almost 10% under somewhat similar circumstances.
The fight doesn’t end at the ballot box, but it does start there. Everyone needs to vote. Vote in the primaries, vote in the general, vote in local elections, & vote in state & national elections. Make yourself heard, & organize.
This. I don’t care if you love your local representatives. If they are ok running as a Republican, vote them out.
I wish there were non republicans running. Usually there’s one person running, and they’re generally republican. And no - I don’t have the time to become a politician.
This is not going to stop porn. All it will do is criminalize the actors, producers, and viewers.
I’m reminded of the drug war, where they took a relatively harmless narcotic used disproportionally by minority populations at the time (Marijuana), and used it to criminalize and imprison large swaths of the population, especially within the black community.
It’s no coincidence that most of the folks targeted by this effort are women and sex industry workers, which skew liberal by a large degree. Note I’m not just talking about prostitution or porn actors, but the entire sex industry, including toys and books.
The GOP is scared shitless of the rising power of women in modern society, and being able to criminalize and consequently attack the revenue stream of sex industry workers is a way to blunt it. There’s also an element of class warfare involved, as OnlyFans or similar sites are often the most economical way for a young woman to lift herself out of poverty if she has no other marketable skills.
Marijuana was so they could arrest hippies. Cocaine was so they could arrest black people.
Source: one of the guys responsible for the war on drugs straight up said it.
Crack was for black people, cocaine was for rich people. That’s why 5g of crack got you the same sentence as 500g of cocaine
Actually, when William Hearst originally started the campaign in the 20s to take out the hemp farmers that were competing with his timber business (he bought up most of Humboldt so he could corner the paper market), he targeted Hispanics (primarily Mexicans) with Marijuana in his articles about drug crimes and how they were ruining America. Henry Ansligner bought it hook, line and sinker, and he set the tone until the 40s, when hemp was briefly made legal for the war effort. Note that Jack Herer’s The Emperor Wears No Clothes does an excellent job illustrating this historical relationship.
Once the Beats started smoking weed in 50s, hemp was criminalized again, and the prohibition was expanded to felony status as law enforcement started targeting the evolution of the Beat movement, the hippies.
The subsequent prohibition on cocaine products was targeted at black neighborhoods (as per the GOP intention during the Nixon/Reagan era), and was built upon the “successes” of the previous marijuana prohibition.
This is why I don’t think they’ll stop at porn.
The GOP is scared shitless of the rising power of women in modern society, and being able to criminalize and consequently attack the revenue stream of sex industry workers is a way to blunt it.
I agree that this is a big part of the war on porn. These stuffy prudes are seeing soceal/cultural norms changing before their eyes and they hate it.
I also think they’re using it as an angle of attack to undermine online privacy/security in an effort to chill free speech/expression online. It’s all about control.
It is mind boggling to me that in the year 2023 we’re complaining about porn, LGBT existence, and fucking book content. Isn’t this what we were laughing at 20 years ago? About book burnings and how stupid the previous generations were for fearing and banning media that challenged them?
It is mind boggling to me that in the year 2023 we’re complaining about porn, LGBT existence, and fucking book content. Isn’t this what we were laughing at 20 years ago?
It’s easy to forget because of how quickly the cultural zeitgeist shifted when it finally did, but the early 2000s was still very homophobic. Watching pretty much any comedy from that era reminds you of just how common the punchline to jokes was just, “teehee they’re gay.”
In the early 2000s it was exceptionally common to hear things referred to as “gay” if they were “bad” in some way. Chandler’s “Dad” in friends is one I look back on and shudder. I understand when boomers say things like “things were different back then, but our ability to reflect and do better is what moves our species forward. Not dig in and scream no!
Yup been watching Scrubs and while a still funny show a lot of the time, there’s still a lot of jokes that make me cringe. I’m sure it’s like that for any show in that era.
You should watch the documentary show about the duggars and how they’re part of a huge cult that systemically indoctrinates kids, fucks them, and gets them into politics. It’s disgusting. It’s an organized push of quiverfull fundamentalist shit being pushed into law.
Dungeons and Dragons. Tabletop roleplaying game. Because it featured demons, magic, etc with elaborate books documenting it all, conservatives condemned it.
The real impact of the 9/11 attacks: There is direct line from shock and confusion to nationalistic rhetoric and “'OOORAH!”- patriotism to the rise of the Tea Party, the growing influence of the Evangelicals up to the emergence of Trumpism and Qanon.
