this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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Past week, been seeing a lot of anti liberal stuff on lemmy. So, you've got people from the outside trying to destabilize the u.s. saying, both sides are the same, democrats are just as bad as Republicans. This creates a scenario that created Trump becoming president in the 1st place. It's done on purpose.
Now, I understand that democrats, liberals aren't perfect. But we have one side trying to set up detention camps, threatening to kill political rivals, consumed with hate. Other side trying at least to be better people.
I'm asking honestly, I would like to learn. Why is the both sides mindset becoming so prevalent?
Both sides ARE bad, but one side is blatantly evil. I was hoping that rise of the internet would make more people aware of it, but somehow it got worse. After 2004 election, I was convinced that the voters will start making a more informed decision, but 2016 proved me wrong.
Liberalism is used, cynically (imo), as a cudgel, to vote against real progressive politics. We can't have healthcare-for-all because we have to pick the side that isn't insane or else we get the insane group. And so on, and so on…
Look at how the Biden admin endorses genocide in Gaza. They completely ignore the masses of protesters calling for a ceasefire. How can they get away with this? "The other side is worse."
A truly responsive party would not stick its thumb in the eye of the people. It's not that both sides are equally awful. It's that both are awful and one uses the other to retain power.
Yes but the problem is despite all their blustering online, people only actually engage at the endgame stage of politics. All these "ideologically pure" leftists are doing jackshit to either ensure progressive leftist ideals win out over liberal ideals in the currently viable sorta left-presenting party or to support independent leftist political parties and groups in down-ballot, local elections, and community policy projects. No, instead these oh-so-great morally-superior "real leftists" instead want to bitch and moan about futility and then opt-out on big voting day while spouting virtues as if their behavior doesn't prevent real progressive change for the better, incremental though it may be.
And to very clear, I'm not taking the "fall in line or get out of the way" democrat bullshit stance here. If you really believe in the policy and values of a third party, please vote for them. I will never accuse an involved voter of throwing a vote away. I'm specifically talking about the large chunk of the left who are only left in theory, not practice, the ideological cosplayers who pretend anything less than absolute is not worth fighting for but who don't put in any effort to ensure that what they want even ever has a chance of ending up on the ballot in front of them.
It's easy to stand on virtue and say you won't support the lesser of two evils, but unless you're actively working on an alternative, the simple fact is that your abstained position enables the worst-case scenario which will have real-world impact. If we believe in leftist ideals, we should believe in reasonable harm reduction where possible. Same applies here.
I see this as a terminally-online thing personally. The folks who walk the walk at a local level don't tend to spend the time arguing with folks about it on Twitter because they've got real outlets for political action. Therefore, their reach is far lower - if you're not in that local community, you probably wouldn't know they exist at all.
A lot of the most annoying castigating on Twitter imo comes from people who are overwhelmed by big problems, or are genuinely marginalized/traumatized in some way, but don't have an outlet IRL to take action and therefore the Internet takes its place. It's formed like an attempt at online political action, but really it's venting. And considering that social media platforms are incentivized to widely spread ideas that make people angry - because that boosts engagement - it's worth considering their reach online is much, much wider than people posting about measures on their local ballots, or organizing locally, etc.
I think of my friend Val, who teaches self-defense and organizes for collective defense of queer folks and their families. She's just about the most sincere lefty I've ever met, and she's not even remotely online because she has no need to be - her people are around her. I aim to take a page out of that book tbh.
I don't disagree with you, but I do think it's worth considering that there might be vastly more chronically online people than you think.
I don't really have a sense for how common they are across the board - but ofc lots of folks are. I was myself at one point, and still am to some extent but in a much healthier way I think. It's certainly something that can change over time and I think more and more people are experiencing social media burnout. I try to be optimistic because if there's hope for me there's hope for everyone else.
And it also means that I'm constantly surprised at the number of people I meet near me who are engaged and doing things for the community and I just wouldn't have seen em online.
Let's be more honest. Both sides are horrible.
Yes, one side is "trying to set up detention camps, threatening to kill political rivals, consumed with hate". The other side isn't trying to better people. The vast majority (there are a handful of exceptions) of people in politics are trying to gain power and money for themselves and for their friends.
The biggest difference is that they haven't yet crossed the line into actively trying to destroy our democracy.
That's certainly enough reason to support that side over the other one. But it's not the "good side".
Bunch of career politician parasites the lot of them.
Their only interest is in getting re-elected. If it can't be fixed in four years, it won't get done because it's the next guy's problem.
People who are either trying to help shift the window further right, or fucking morons who are fascist apologists
True. Also liberals are better than fascists.
So you are going to vote for something you know is actively bad? Wow. You're the problem.
There are degrees of bad. I'll vote for eating a week old sandwich over not voting at all and hoping other people don't vote for us all eating sandwiches filled with dog shit.
To quote Vaush: "If the choice is between 99% Hitler and 100% Hitler, you choose 99% Hitler. Full stop."
Wrong.
If your choice is two Hitlers, you kill both the fuckers. Full stop.
There is always another option, you don't have to accept shit.
Killing politicians doesn't improve the system asshole
better yet, don't quote vaush
Why?
One side who supports detention camps at home and the other side who supports detention camps abroad.
Fucking wonderful choices we have here.
What you might be missing is that an ethical global policy will "harm" rich nations initially, liberals are still invested in capitalist outcomes and both side ism is true in that sense, both side are in fact invested in preserving capitalism. In a weird way, trump destroying America has had good outcomes for the global poor and even poor within the U.S.
What are you talking about destabilising the US? 😆 This is a decentralized platform, not reserved for the US people, in case you have not realised yet. The country where I am from actually is very good generally at not dividing people in only 'left' and 'right'. Centrist parties have carried the country for the most part. We have a welfare society that most people in other countries seem to look up to. In my country, being liberal is considered right wing (nationalist conservatists considered most right wing). Don't forget that most people with an opinion have good reason to believe what they do. And everyone should be respected. Democracy wasn't invented so a bunch of US leftists could create an echo chamber and complain about people who listen to both sides. People who vote for a party you don't like are not automatically evil. One could argue your leftist parties in the US seem very eager to support the zionist regime in waging a war on civil citizens, aka. supporting the murder of political rivals, genocide, segregation, apartheid. As an outsider, the US political debate mostly looks very clownish, because both sides are just throwing stones whilst living in a glass empire. You need to check yourselves.