if you corner a liberal and confront them with enough facts and history they can usually be browbeaten into conceding that it's not a democracy, and then after five minutes of cable news they are back to pretending that their vote means as much as the donations Jeff Bezos makes
this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2024
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This is why media criticism is how I try to start deprograming libs. Citations Needed is probably the easiest option for them to get into.
Have to interrupt that backsliding or you'll never get anywhere.
Nima and Adam do have the advantage of being able to go in to soothing NPR stupor voice mode between exasperation and knowledge dumps. It's one of the liberal's key metacognitive weaknesses.
Exactly what I was thinking -- it's a very similar presentation style to classic lib slop.
This right here. Bullying and browbeating has its place in larger discourse but in my opinion, and based on my own experience, you have more success changing people's minds when you learn them down the path to feel like they figured it out for themselves.
Bullying, like posting, is for the audience. If done right (and that's a real easy line to cross) it can sway people listening in, but it's effects on the subject are all over the place.
If you're actually trying to change the mind of the person you're talking to, they first have to respect you, and even then anything beyond friendly cajoling is more likely to backfire than succeed.
The problem is bullying is fun and feels good, and the biggest proponents of it will angrily dismiss any criticism of it as a tactic.
This is why I'm skeptical of most of the "I managed to talk my Lib/Chud friend/family member into being a socialist" narratives you see online. Seems like you just bullied them into conceding you were right, and I suspect 9/10 they'll just wait a week till the memory or you owning them fades and then watch some Fox/MSNBC and be right back on their bullshit.
I agree. Both Dems and Reps use pseudo-socialist talking points (pro worker, anti rich) so a lot of it is already ingrained in the US psyche. It is not dissonant for them to agree with socialist arguments one day and then with republican newscasters the next day. I’ve had staunch libertarians tell me that they actually want communism more than communists.
Ah yes, the classic libertarian fall back of 'Despite having no understanding of my own ideology, I actually understand what your ideology wants better than you do. What, no I haven't actually read anything about it, I just remember history class really well.'
God i feel that, im like fucking sisyphus trying to get libs to remember or read anything
Won't even take five minutes. In one breath they'll admit that voting does nothing, then they'll go right back to fearsturbating about what might happen if Mussolini von Hitler (D NY) doesn't win.
2020 is worse than you recall, Buttigieg and Klobuchar are phoned by Obama the weekend before Super Tuesday to drop out and endorse Biden, who'd ate shit worse than them in the preceeding contests. Warren stays in, reneges on everything she'd campaigned on to work with a Super PAC just so she could get 3rd in her home state.
i'd forgotten about this shit. So much happens so fast it's just disaster and defeat after disaster and defeat. None of it sticks
I don't think they care, nor do they think it's something to care about. I think for most of them "democracy" is a sacred religious state that has nothing to do with any method of decision making. It signifies holiness, not the day to day bureaucracy of government function. The "democracy" that is at stake for them isn't control of government by the demos, but some kind of spiritual conflict within the American Civic Religion where Trump, as a political outsider not annointed by the system, is a god of evil threatening the ACR's "good" god that they call democracy".
They're completely insane. It's completely irrational religious fanaticism. They're not engaged in political struggle, they're participating in a spiritual ritual where every four years they find out if their faith was strong enough and if the world will be ruled by the god of good or the god of evil. Absolutely delusional, fanatical devotion to a world of magic and spirits.
That's why none of it matters, the death, the misery, the poverty. The world isn't ruled by economics and policy, it's ghosts and devils. They can't effect the material reality around them, they can only lend their faith to the divine power that beats back their idea of evil, and if evil wins at the ballot box it's because they lacked faith and spiritual purity, not anything to do with the vulgar material world.
Just fucking religious madness, it's the only explanation i can beat in to a shape that fits this bullshit.
You can even hear it in how they talk if you can make yourself stop treating them as rational people. Their talk about the "end of democracy" and "the last election" isn't expressing the collapse of the electoral system or a change in government. They mean it's the end of the world. We're in their eschaton, their final battle between good and evil, and they genuinely believe the world will end and we'll have a thousand years of darkness or something if Trump wins. They can't think of political organizing after the election, or of any political action beyond voting, because how could any action they take except casting their holy ballot effect things? They cannot act, only their gods can act. All they can do is perform the rituals their gods demand.
warhammer 2k
the systems laid down by more competent learned ancients have become so mysterious and self-sustaining that everything has devolved into a series of complex rituals
are USians likely to notice
Death to America
Every four years a new cohort of USians is old enough to pay attention to elections and gets to learn how undemocratic the US actually is, as opposed to what they learn in school.
Anyone who doesn't get the lesson the first time is hopeless, though.
Anyone who doesn’t get the lesson the first time is hopeless, though.
It's hard to imagine even one other situation where we'd apply this thinking. It may actually take people a while to change their axiomatic political beliefs.
Our comrades must understand that ideological remolding involves long-term, patient and painstaking work, and they must not attempt to change people's ideology, which has been shaped over decades of life, by giving a few lectures or by holding a few meetings.
It’s hard to imagine even one other situation where we’d apply this thinking.
How about learning to not touch a hot stove?
Maybe, but "owie that's hot!" is pretty different from "my entire political worldview that is reinforced by every part of mainstream culture is wrong in a way that would require a mass national movement to change."
Well, yeah? That's my point.
If someone doesn't figure out why they keep getting burned because the media is telling them the burning sensation is being caused by Russian bots, I don't have a lot of hope.
The DNC won a lawsuit after the 2016 primary by arguing in court that they're a private corporation and do not have to even pretend to be democratic, they could pick anyone they want and ignore primary votes and it wouldn't break any laws. This made zero impact on the voting public and the devoted Dem voters will gaslight you and deny there was anything weird about the 2016 election. If you point them to the book written by the DNC chair at the time where she outright says they fixed the primary, they'll do the Westworld "Doesn't look like anything to me" + blank stare
One of many things that will immediately raise my bloodpressure to pre-hypertension is trying to beat this information through the ceramide laced brainal dome of the average liberal.
the ceramide laced brainal dome
It just rolls off the tongue doesn't it lol
I was trying to think of "cranial" but I couldn't find it and made something up. : (
lol it's ok 
Kamala Harris, handpicked successor 
To be fair, westerners have been conditioned to not even think about any alternative to the status quo, so to them the only choice is the two major parties.
And when the other party is the GOP you can see how the "lesser of two evils" voters are created.
Not justifying the vote blue no matter who types, just reminding that the vast majority is condition to be scared to death of revolution, so they hold their nose and that's how we get nerds like Biden. Americans are a sad, scared, brainwashed, oppressed people with a Gucci belt
Democrats will tell you with a straight face that the Democratic party is a private organization
Did you just tell me to vote for a cheeto????
on this day we are both cheetos
no lol things will have to get a lot worse to precipitate any kind of mass class consciousness triggering in the US i think
This clusterfuck + a loss to Trump would at least cause a lot of discourse. The question would be if that produces any change in how the party's run (big changes are unlikely, but smaller ones are possible).
Most don't even seem to comprehend how undemocratic the electoral college and the senate are.
no. they were really angry with the bernie stuff in 2016 but they seem to have forgot their own criticism about it as soon as the election season ended.
for them democracy = voting on a ballot
If you have faith in the system, you don't keep receipts in the same way we do.
I've had to explain it to people for years that the primary process doesn't need anybody to vote. All the groups are private entities and not governmental, if they ask their dues paying members or the general public to vote for a candidate they do so because they want to and not because they have to.
furthermore they are all centralist parties (DNC and RNC) at their core and vanguardist for the capitalist class
as always every single accusation is a confession
This is the first time that BlueMaga types have been disenfranchised. I feel like a lot of them will just stop voting but will tell their friends they still do