chapotraphouse

It's a bit odd to frame voting as inherently deontological and the AES model as consequentialist. Independent of some involved philosophical argument, the choice of political system is prima facie orthogonal to the question of meta-ethical frameworks. A consequentialist, for example, could just as easily espouse voting.

a country that can deliver that level of material gains to the poor and middle class and still have the most billionaires in the world.

I mean, some of them are creaming there pants. Despite what the Internet makes it seems, not all of them are rabid china haters. Even this lib I'm talking about said "China dominates all the supplies for renewable tech not because they are evil but because their government is smarter than ours".

If they understand how the Chinese model and chinese democracy works, that just makes them not liberals anymore.

...[T]he guy got less votes and won with 0 trickery involved...

What are you talking about? The dastardly Ruzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzins tricked our wholesome keanu chungus white American patriots into vooting for Cheeto Benito!

"Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners."

I wonder what it is that keeps even the most politically engaged, and highly educated libs, like the one you are referring to, on the treadmill for so long?

The system is still working well enough for them to not really question it too deeply. They see Drumpf mucking things up on MSNBC, but their daily lives are still basically the same, and treat-filled. (This is why they get angry and not curious when you tell them that it’s possible to change things without necessarily voting or doing peaceful protests.) For me at least, as a liberal I sacrificed so much to the system and just kept getting fucked so hard in return that (with the proper guidance) I couldn’t help but start asking deeper questions.

I wonder what it is that keeps even the most politically engaged, and highly educated libs, like the one you are referring to, on the treadmill for so long?

If the existing political system is untenable, then that means that they are morally required to overthrow it, an endeavor that involves a lot of hard work, personal risk, and sacrifice. As Nechayev said:

The revolutionary is a doomed man. He has no personal interests, no business affairs, no emotions, no attachments, no property, and no name. Everything in him is wholly absorbed in the single thought and the single passion for revolution.

The revolutionary knows that in the very depths of his being, not only in words but also in deeds, he has broken all the bonds which tie him to the social order and the civilized world with all its laws, moralities, and customs, and with all its generally accepted conventions. He is their implacable enemy, and if he continues to live with them it is only in order to destroy them more speedily.

The revolutionary is a dedicated man, merciless toward the State and toward the educated classes; and he can expect no mercy from them. Between him and them there exists, declared or concealed, a relentless and irreconcilable war to the death. He must accustom himself to torture.

I think it goes back to the Western Chauvinism problem. Progressive libs, even if they earnestly want a future with a more empowered working class, have too much emotional attachment to the assumption that the tools necessary for such a future are in the liberal democracy toolkit. The ideology is that the solution must always be within this particular precept, and if it isn’t working right now it just means we haven’t plumped its depths enough to find it.

I wonder what it is that keeps even the most politically engaged, and highly educated libs, like the one you are referring to, on the treadmill for so long?

Ideology

I wonder what it is that keeps even the most politically engaged, and highly educated libs, like the one you are referring to, on the treadmill for so long?

Not being aware of alternatives.

We just have to for people who won't take the money but not now because we need to run the safe old guy because this is the most important election of our lifetime™

He literally called industry control of the country "populism". So the lib non-understanding has evolved beyond what we expected.

The only way liberals change is by being personally effected by the negative aspects of capitalism. It doesn't necessarily have to be the person. It could be someone they care about.

There's another avenue that I think a lot of us on hexbear took. It was being worn down by online comments chipping away at the contradictions of our preprogrammed views. However, I think that avenue is only for people capable of self reflection.

I'm often surprised to hear how some hexbear came here from the CHUD side. But I'm older than a lot of people here. I didn't grow up with 4chan and spaces like that. The internet wasn't as consolidated when I was more impressionable so it was harder to find fringe views if you were like me and mainly used the internet for music purposes. That being said, I was like 13 when 9/11 happened and everyone including me were heavy into revenge, the military and islamophobia. I don't really remember being heavy into the islamophobia though. I did grow up using gay as an insult but me and my friend group quickly outgrew it. Oddly enough I credit our boy scout group with curbing those behaviors. While there was a lot of "boys will be boys" mentality in the scouts, our leaders who were just our dads were very good at teaching us right from wrong in that area. It was pretty progressive for the time even if the parents didn't believe what they taught us.

I feel like I was always a leftist at heart, but I got sheepdogged by Obama (my first election). I grew up hating bush and the Iraq war. I always liked "hippie music" and it's messages. I read Abbie Hoffman at 14. There just wasn't much of a movement outside of lib protests in the early 2000's. I fell in with the hippie kids at school more as a social thing, but I went vegetarian because of a friend making the argument.

The beginning of my radicalization came from Calvin and Hobbes and being interested in the Woodstock era.