Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain’t dead. Remember, don’t downvote for disagreements.
Stop out-woking one another, it’s okay to be right silently in order to bring in fence sitters.
If someone says, “my spirit animal told me late-stage capitalism is evil” welcome them to the club with open arms, focus on how you’re alike and trust them to work out their faux pas over time spent among like-minded peers.
Also cultural appropriation ≠ exploitation, we can stop clutching our collective pearls over these faux pas.
I vote we move to a new term, “cultural plagiarism,” which more clearly relates to e.g. a white person stealing a black musician’s work (as opposed to covering it and giving credit and royalties, which should be fine!)
In the spirit of my post, I’m glad you see a disparity in the term cultural appropriation like I do.
In the spirit of clarifying what I mean, cultural appropriation is using elements of another culture. What you described is exploitative, is very serious, and not what I’m referring to.
But I appreciate your input all the same.
I figured your objection to the term “cultural appropriation” is that people use it to refer to exploitative things as well as what I view as innocent things like a professional dancer who is white dancing to an anime song or something. That’s why I proposed a new term, to help differentiate these things.
Yes! I love it, thank you for that follow up. That’s exactly what I mean.
Cultural appropriation is specifically a method in which suppressing groups deny the cultural heritage of oppressed around. To call it a faux pas is ridiculous and ignorant
Respectfully, I disagree with your definition of cultural appropriation, but i agree it’s wrong to deny others the right to identify with their heritage or cultures.
Cultures borrow from one another, it’s just the nature of having multiple societies in proximity. I would argue (outside of the realm of exploitation) more often than not, cultural appropriation doesn’t come from a malevolent place, nor does it restrict anyone from otherwise enjoying their own heritage and culture. Some 9 year old wearing a Halloween costume of a Disney princess that isn’t their own race isn’t the crime we make it out to be. Worst case scenario it’s a faux pas, best case scenario, that kid took an interest in a group of people they are not familiar with and learned about them.
Also, as another commenter pointed out, the term cultural appropriation is used to cover a wide variety of offenses, so this disagreement could potentially come from that.
Edit: clarity
Mental health focused communities exascerbate their members’ issues
Only when there’s no professional playing a role. A self-help group with professional oversight is great.
The acab movement has caused more harm than it has salved. Furthering the ideas that there are no good cops means that nobody good will become a cop in the future, furthering the issue
What an interesting take…I assume you will be down voted into oblivion, but it is thought provoking all the same. When I was younger I thought police helped people and I probably would have considered being a police officer. Now, I can’t imagine who would want to and I immediately question anyone who would. I have to imagine this is causing the people who truly want to help people to avoid the profession.
I know a few people who are police, one being a very close friend who is now retired from being a cop. Not a single one of them is a bad person or cop. The stories I hear from them make me wonder why they would do it, and the universal answer is usually to help people. The best part is that of the six or so people I know counting my friends, they are all quitting because people treat them so badly juat for doing thier job, and they will be replaced with cops who show no compassion. I myself have many stories of cops being understanding and caring and, in turn, being very lenient. When I talk to people with the acab mentality, the police never go easy. It’s odd how just treat people how you want to be treated works.
Sure they might be good for you, their friend. They might not fell endangered by random dog and shoot it. They might even not beat their partner. But what they will do if encouter person shoplifting food? Someone having a tiny amount of drugs? Or if ordered to beat and/or arrest the protesters, like the students peacefully protesting Gaza genocide? ACAB is not a personal theory, it’s systemic. Systemically your good friends are still the armed opression arm of capitalist government and a footsoldiers in the class war against vast majority of society.
You’re under the impression that they were my friends first, which aside from one, who was s cop in another city, I was not. Ony after opening a place of business and being vandalized and had things stolen did I get to know some. The ones I did become more familiar with are definitely the kinds of police you want. They use discretion first, try hard to de escalate a situation, and the last thing they want to do is make a bad situation worse for anyone. And per your questions about how they would treat people, the ones I know would help before punish, as per your examples, they’d buy someone a meal or defuse a tough situation.
The way you describe them all as soldiers working against everyone is a tough statement to take simply because when you don’t need them, ACAB, but when you do need them, they can’t get there soon enough. Sadly, the bad cops everyone sees is all we’ll be left with once all the good ones leave because of that sentiment. Then you’ll see the “soldiers” you’re talking about.
The good ones I was talking about, the ones I know, half have retired early, because no matter how much good they try to do, reasonable they try to be the only rhe thing people see is an enemy. I don’t look forward to the day when all we are left with is the bad ones, and it’s coming sadly.
I’m asking this in good faith, but are you/your police friends white? Historically speaking, minorities have been profiled, been more likely to be arrested, and been subject to harsher sentences than white people have. This is no small part to the reason that the ACAB sentiment runs much deeper in minority populations. And I say this as a white man with a mother and brother that work for the police.
Step 1: proving ACAB wrong
In capitalist states, the core mission of the police is to 1) protect the bourgeoisie’s private ownership of the means of production and to 2) discipline the proletariat, cracking heads if necessary. Historically in the US, they began as slave patrols, because slaves were private property, i.e., means of production.
Law enforcement is one of the last careers that still offers a pension, has a union that fights for its members, and is a good source of income without going into massive college debt.
Seems like something the left would be in love with, but systemic issues have demonized the entire profession. I think an influx on left-leaning officers would be great, but like politics- people who would be good at the job stay away from it.
Teen Vogue (I know, right?): Police Unions: What to Know and Why They Don’t Belong in the Labor Movement
Police unions have always been outliers among organized labor, and there are many reasons why the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union has long refused to allow cops (and prison guards) into its organization. […] Actually, police unions themselves used to be illegal, because local governments worried about the consequences of allowing armed state agents to organize. And historically speaking, the police have been no friend to workers, whether officers were shooting at the families of coal miners during the Battle of Blair Mountain, crushing the ribs of immigrant garment workers during the Uprising of the 20,000, or teargassing working-class protesters in Minneapolis after police killed George Floyd.
The issue is structural, there are no “good cops” in the same way there are no “good pimps” or “good slave owners.”
There were some slave owners who were kind to their slaves, taught them to read, allowed them to have some free time and make a small amount of money.
That doesn’t mean that what they were doing was morally acceptable. They still were buying and selling human beings like property.
Policing, especially in the USA is rotten to the core. There are absolutely some cops who are kind people, who become police officers out of a naive belief that they can do good for society as a whole in that profession.
But those people don’t usually last long. They either leave after seeing the ugly underbelly, or they become corrupted by the system. The police will always act in the interest of the rich and powerful, or else they get fired. If they are told to break up a protests, they will always comply. If they are told to block a corporate skyscraper so that protesters cannot get into it to stage a sit-in, they will do it, even as ultra wealthy oligarchs stream safely past them to conduct horrifically corrupt dealings that hurt and kill millions of people across the world.
The cop’s job is also to go around trying to bust people for crimes. If a cop comes up to you out of the blue and starts up a conversation, 99% of the time they are fishing for information, trying to sus something out. They aren’t just trying to be friendly, they are doing their job. In the US at least, the cops are allowed to lie to you in an investigation in order to try to get you to admit guilt. They are allowed and trained to do it, to use all kinds of trickery to manipulate you into a confession, or to get Intel that helps them.
In addition, the examples people frequently cite as good things the cops do would be better done by non-cops. First aid? Suicide intervention? Disaster relief? Theft deterrence? Wellness checks? Those are all things that would be better done by non-cops if we funded and grew those kinds of organizations instead of further militarizing the police.
ACAB has never meant that all cops are evil people, it means that no matter how good of a person a cop is, they will always be empowering a corrupt and evil system.
Why don’t we see the same sentiment about paramedics, firefighters, and heck, even soldiers? Because the systems that those folks are a part of don’t have the same corrupting effect. Even soldiers are generally looked on much more favorably than cops, even though politically and socially, there is a large amount of overlap. Part of this is propaganda, but another factor is the standards soldiers are held to in the US. They are expected to carry themselves extremely well, and can be severely punished, even jailed for misconduct.
As a personal anecdote, I grew up in both worlds. My dad and several members of my family were both in the military and were cops. I was around both cultures a ton. I’ve had many bad encounters with police officers over the years, and that’s with me knowing all the classic, “always keep your hands visible and comply” stuff that my dad and his cop friends told me.
I’ve never had a single negative encounter with an on-duty soldier. They’ve always been extremely respectful and grounded. Like I said, just an anecdote, but interesting to think about. If cops could be fired or even jailed for relatively minor infractions, even have their lives destroyed like soldiers who are dishonorably discharged, ACAB would probably never have became a thing.
I’m a strict leftist, that means, i believe that humans (in fact, all life) are valuable. Yes, you have to say that in these times. Lots of politicians these days seem to disagree with even that.
As a direct consequence, i advocate for UBI (universal basic income). Because the people need to live off something, and it is getting harder by the year to be successful through your own labor. (As numerous articles describe, - i won’t link them here, because that would be out of scope - hashtag “working poor”).
However, i think the borders must be closed. That affects both goods and migration. If the borders are closed, people stop competing with one another. Just a reminder: “compete” comes from Latin and basically means “fight”. People are fighing against one another, and i think that makes a society sick. If the borders close, economy slows down considerably, and people stop competing.
Supporting UBI is not really a leftist thing. It was promoted by laissez-faire economists as a way to kill the welfare state (universal services) and is still formulated as such by its prominant proponents.
Why do you believe you are leftist rather than simply a fairly mainstream liberal? Liberals have pivoted to being openly in favor of immigration crackdowns in the US over the last few years.
What I find funny is that some days I’ll be adamant about how bad UBI would be because of the cost, and the next, I’d be the loudest voice next to yours for its good. I feel it would be super easy to implement. Basically, you’d tax every company for every self checkout machine as if each machine is a person and the salary that would be paid to the person is instead of a machine would be used to fund it. I k ow its poorly worded, but I hope people have enough sense to understand what I mean.
Yeah, there’s a lot of technicalities involved. Like, do you tax the companies directly, or rather the billionaires owning the companies?
My proposal so far is: Every person who has citizenship has to pay 3% of their total wealth off as wealth tax annually. Which makes sense because if they invest in stock, that stock likely goes up by more than 3% annually (after adjusting for inflation). So they don’t even have to lift a finger to pay off that wealth tax. (Excluding a tax-free amount of $1 million). That would fund surprisingly much. I did some preliminary math, and in germany, such a wealth tax alone would provide every person with citizenship with approximately $120 /month.
Which is just a small support. UBI doesn’t necessarily need to jump from 0 to 100%, maybe it’s easier to introduce it slowly and then increase the value.
If i may ask: what makes you against UBI on some days?
UBI sounds like keeping capitalism on life support after it attempted suicide (again).
I’d give a functional UBI system 4 generations before it’s useless much like the minimum wage.
I’d give the revolution in the US zero % chance of success, which one is better?
I’d give revolution a greater chance of success than UBI coming without equal or greater social functions taken away to compensate. Revolution is practically an inevitability, UBI is closer to a dream.
Do people really stop competing with one another if the borders are closed? And if so, how? In my mind, neither open nor closed borders change anything in the amount of competition there is, it just changes the groups involved.
If there’s no free trade, you don’t try to undercut the prices of your neighbor’s factory. You just produce your thing, and that’s it.
Wait, which borders are you talking about? The borders of each individuals property? So everyone should be self-sufficient, with no trade happening at all?
no i meant that in a metaphorical sense. no free trade means that there’s no “getting ahead” (because you can’t flood a foreign market with your cheap products), so people put in less effort.
Yes but which free trade are you talking about? Because if you close borders so trade only happens within one country, then there will still be competition within the country. I.e. your neighbor’s factory. That’s why I ask which borders you mean exactly… Because usually “close the border” means closing the border of the country to imports/exports of goods/humans of other countries.
Yes but i suspect that competition would be less fierce within the country, for two reasons:
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the central government can stand in and regulate that “a factory may only produce a specific amount of goods”. such regulation works better on the smaller level, because regulatory oversight is easier to achieve.
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i guess that maybe the competition could naturally be less fierce. Consider: you would not want to pick a fight with the neighbour that lives directly next door; because you still have to get along well with him. It’s easier to be in fierce competition with somebody who is on the other side of the world, because you will probably never see them again.
That makes sense, but this approach first requires the will to actually regulate in this manner. Because “just” closing the border right now would just keep capitalism unchecked, just within the country. Most people don’t even meet their next-door neighbor that often, countries are usually still big enough that I don’t think your second point does very much.
Otherwise, it does theoretically sound good. However, I don’t think just any country at this point could be entirely self-reliable, some just have an impossible land-to-people ratio that is only possible by importing food from other countries. I don’t have that much information about this, though, so might be false, I don’t know how much land you need and how the agrarian situation is like for many countries.
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While I have progressive ideas and believe the Republicans rule with malace, I also strongly believe the democrats rule with incompetence.
I would love to run for president on the party of burn down the two party system and restart from there. Make politics boring again and not some partisan winner take all spectacle. We keep pushing to out ‘wing’ the ‘wing’ and it is driving us to some bad extremes.
So yes, I will vote straight ticket Democrat for 99% of the time, but I am also disgusted by the fact anyone is even allowed to do that and people have little party letters by their name. If you didn’t research your candidate to at least know their name, then you shouldn’t be voting for them.
It is mind-blowing to me that some things are not seen as human rights and are instead seen as political posturing. In Texas we had barbed wire intentionally strung up in the Rio Grande river with the intention to drownd people and it took multiple rounds of court cases to make them take it out. Somehow killing people is acceptable rather than booking, ticketing, and sending back. Politics have now taken a place above literal lives. At the same time, when I express this I have democrats immediately agreeing and adding “just let them in!” Or “just let them stay and we will figure it out” and that is where I stop them and ask, is that what I said? No. Simply that human life is worth more than politics. Again, stringing up barbed wire in a river to intentionally drown people it true malice. But saying let them all in and figure it out later is naive at best, and incompetence at its worst.
Democratic politicians tend to be cynical more than ignorant, friend. They feign incompetence because taking actions is against their larger strategy of holding to whatever the current status quo is or whatever pleases donors (these are usually the same).
We’re talking about a group that acts like it can’t deliver on basic platform promises because of a parliamentarian they can just fire and replace like the GOP has done reoeatedly and then turns around and breaks plenty of its own rules when a SocDem grandpa (Bernie) gives people some hope for positive change.
The party relishes in scapegoats for inaction because they do not, in actuality, oppose the status quo nor even most of the changes made by e.g. Trump. Their opposition is performative, it is meant to get someone to do that 99% voting for them thing and then call it a day politically. Their main agenda is to say there is no acceptable alternative beyond their controlled neoliberal duopoly.
“Make politics boring again” simply means you have no connection to the immense violences carried out by that status quo, or do not recognize them as such. Tell me, for which period of time was US politics boring? During slavery? Settler colonial genocide of the people who lived here? Jim Crow? Labor fights? Imperial conquests throughout the Americas, Hawaii, The Philippines? Both World Wars? The Great Depression? The Cold War and its many sponsored coups and genocides? The forced unequal exchange for the countries it dominates? The frequent hot wars it begets around the world?
I’m generally leaning towards progressive or left-wing ideas, but with a few exceptions.
- While I support the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion, I believe that DEI initiatives are highly susceptible to exploitation because of the widespread and largely uncritical public support of the concept (or even just the abbreviation) with little regard to the implementation; and by tokenizing ethnicity, gender, and identity, it is at risk of doing what it was meant to prevent.
- I believe that law enforcement is a deeply flawed system to say the least, but ultimately necessary because the alternatives are lawlessness or ineffectual systems. This is of course colored by my European perspective where guns and driver’s licenses aren’t handed out like candy.
- The “tolerance is a social contract” mentality is hurting society. A person who experiences rejection and exclusion from progressive communities for voicing “intolerant” opinions will not be interested in reconciliation, and will inevitably fall in with a more radical group where they experience acceptance and belonging, where they will never be exposed to different ideas and their views will never be challenged. Integration should be sought whenever reasonable.
The last point is especially important to me. I grew up in a fairly conservative environment, and it took me a lot of conscious effort to un-learn my prejudices and learn acceptance. But whenever I get downvoted and shouted down for voicing an opinion that aligns with conservatives, or simply isn’t “leftist” enough, it makes me want to distance myself from “leftist” ideology and adds to my disillusionment.
There is an option in your settings so you don’t see upvotes or downvotes.
Lemmy (AFAIK) doesn’t even show you your total upvotes (karma… whatever it’s called) by default either. None of these imaginary points matter.
So why don’t you do yourself a favor and uncheck these boxes and not give a fuck what others think about your comment.
I know I have.
(Lemmy is rad)
So what is the alternative to “downvoting” someone’s opinion? You can’t support it, obviously, that would be stupid. I just see no other way than “downvoting”, saying “well, I see where you’re coming from, but your opinion is wrong and doesn’t achieve what you want”.
Your example is about as spicy as lukewarm water. The responses I got involved the words “bootlicker”, “nazi”, “fascist”, and “chud”, various expletives, called into question my mental health and respect for minorities, and listed several examples of why holding those views made me the scum of the earth.
I appreciate you keeping it real. It sucks that this community’s response to dissenting views is so often hostility. I haven’t looked at your comment history so maybe you really are a fascist, I don’t know; if so, this doesn’t apply. But if not – I do wish people would think about how to bring people around to their point of view instead of rejecting them.
Well yeah, but that doesn’t invalidate the “tolerance is a social contract” mentality, it invalidates baseless accusations and extreme hostility. What I said is the actual intended result of the “don’t tolerate intolerance” mentality. If that is fine with you, then you don’t actually have any issue with the mentality itself, but with the implementation.
I think downvoting serves to make an opinion less visible, so you should remember that when you are downvoting someone you disagree with, it is serving to make their opinion less visible. Downvoting hostile or dangerous or low-quality comments is good, but downvoting dissenting opinions in general leads to polarization.
I would rather spend time in a community with many different perspectives than just one perspective, which is why I don’t downvote people simply because I disagree with them.
Hexbear doesn’t have downvotes, you are encouraged to reply and actually address the bad comments.
The first point is a fairly common opinion among communists, who understand “DEI” to be a liberal cooption of liberationist language and thought that tokenizes identities and reworks the concepts in favor of exploiters (and was doomed to be shed the moment it was less profitable for exploiters).
It may be beneficial to consider the second point with some nuance that is often neglected in order to agitate. Again with communists, you will find many that hate their country’s cops but acknowledge the necessity in a post-revolutionary framework, either in their own visions for their own revolution or in defending the actions taken by their comrades that rapidly discover the need for some form of organized enforcement. One way to think about this is that the police are an arm of the state, and who that state serves via its structures and nature changes how they operate. In OECD countries, cops primarily serve capital. They protect profits based on shop owner complaints, shut down capital-inconvenient demonstrations, etc, and spend little time helping average people. In many capitalist countries, cops are underpaid and openly corrupt, so they do the same things while being more obvious bribes. In countries run by socialists, cops of course still do many cop things, but you will find them spending more of their time on other tasks, there are fewer per capita, and the job of being a cop in capitalist counties has been split into many different jobs that don’t involve having a gun or otherwise carrying out the worst actions taken by cops. So, in short, it is entirely coherent to hate your local cops as an arm of capital that will beat you for protesting while not condemning the mere existence of cops in other countries while also understanding that we want to create a society free of them.
For the third point, it really depends on what you mean by accepting. Socialists need to educate people where they are, warts and all, but you also cannot be taillist and morph your work into accepting reactionary positions. That defeats the entire point of rejecting reactionary positions. Patience in explaining is valuable, tacit agreement with racism/xenophobia/sexism/homophobia/transphobia/etc is counterproductive. In addition, getting dunked on can and does create results. Despite growing up conservative and getting dunked on by those to your left, you now think of yourself as non-conservative. Are you sure none of those dunks ever led you to question your positions?
I can’t address the entire reply since it’s 3 in the morning, but I just want to point out something.
I’m not a communist. I’m not a socialist, or a Marxist-Leninist. I don’t consider myself to be a “leftist” (which I see as an overly broad term), and I’m sure as hell not a centrist. If my views are inconsistent, it’s because I don’t follow any single doctrine.
Yes, and I didn’t label you as any of those things. I sharee that the first two points overlap with some communist ways of thinking, which I view as a positive. I list the third point as food for thought and I was fairly qualified in how I described your politics so as to match what you had said and no more.
But whenever I get downvoted and shouted down for voicing an opinion that aligns with conservatives, or simply isn’t “leftist” enough, it makes me want to distance myself from “leftist” ideology and adds to my disillusionment.
Why does disillusionment with the people involved in a movement influence your opinion on the ideals behind the movement?
Should the idea itself be bigger than the people that espouse it? If empathy and compassion are worthy goals, you don’t just give up on them because other folk don’t display them. If rejecting sexism is a worthy goal, you don’t dial up the sexism because some folk think you don’t go far enough in rejecting it.
Rationally, it shouldn’t; but we’re human, so it does.
There is even a rational viewpoint too – we can synergize if we work together with people who align with us and back a common interest, instead of all independently voicing slightly different political voices. But if other people in that group do something we really dislike, it tempts us to drift away and align with a different and smaller group instead.
Sure, if you fall out with a group, you might end up shifting your views when a new group you join sees things slightly differently. Lots of progressive groups fight and argue with each other over the specifics, and it often gets quite heated. But that’s not the same thing as radically shifting your moral compass to point in another direction altogether.
It’s more accurate to say that I’m growing disillusioned with the movement as a whole and the people who claim allegiance with it, not its ideals. I support the ideals that I find right and just, and given limited options (votes and such), will support the people who promote those ideals.
I don’t really know what constitutes a “political creed,” really, so I don’t know how to answer.
Poor choice of words, perhaps. I meant those who generally share your political opinions in other respects. For instance, “anarcho-communist” or “libertarian”
Sure, but I do feel that by the time you’ve picked a niche label, you’ve filtered out where you disagree.
I don’t think so. Labels only have so much resolving power. They represent people who are broadly aligned in values, but not necessarily on every specific issue.
For instance, I think most libertarians have individual dissent from their norm on various topics. It should be easy to find examples in the case of libertarianism, but I believe this applies to other political ideologies too.
“Libertarian” is far more broad than, say, Marxist-Leninist or Anarcho-Communist. When you go from “Marxist” as an umbrella to “Marxist-Leninist” as a category within Marxism, you are generally conforming to that specification’s tendencies. At that point of specificity, there are more “solved” questions than unsolved.
Oh yeah sure. More solved questions than unsolved seems like a good way to put it. But there are still points of dissent though.
He means who do you circlejerk with on tinternet
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The real question is how do they end? My hope is for a national dem and maybe a republican to break off to something like the working families party, something that exists, works at the ground level, but can be boosted by the optics of national politicians drawing attention to it.
The concept of “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”
There’s no nuance from the left. The left polices itself like the radical right thinks they (the party of law and order) do.
Had a podcaster get dropped by their long time partner because there were lewd text messages sent.
I’m tired of the reactionary bullshit, currently Dawkins and Gaiman are being dropped, and I understand not wanting to associate/support Dawkins’ current views, the guy wrote very persuasive works that shouldn’t lose value because he lost his empathy.
I still read and enjoy enders game despite knowing what a tool Card turned into, how is it so difficult to separate art from the artist?
Dawkins’ anti-theist works and his reactionary views are related to one another. As with Hitchens and Sam Harris, their work was poorly researched and was forwarded because their real agendas were based on chauvinist attitudes, particularly against muslims.
Dennett was the only good one and unfortunately he passed away. PZ Myers is less knowm but also didn’t bite on the islamophobia bait.
Based on the various accounts, Gaiman is a cruel and explpitative rapist and I find it difficult to appreciate words about charm or love from such a source.
Do you have any other examples of people who should not be rejected by the left? Who was the podcaster?
PS always kill your heroes. Being of the left means doing work and building organizations that (in addition to trying to prevent) withstand the inevitable failures of prominent figures.
I think Lindsay Ellis didn’t deserve the hate she got for comparing Raya to The Last Airbender.
I would agree. Both are just a standard Hero’s Journey where they build a team and increase their power to then resolve the major conflict. And both use East Asian culture essentially as a fantasy element to entertain a Western audience in a relatively respectful way. Most audience members don’t get most of the references because they aren’t familiar with the narratives or traditions to which they are referring. They just understand it as “other” and don’t see a deeper meaning. In that sense they are both somewhat exploitative, though these examples are very far down on my list of grievances against capitalist entertainment media.
There’s no nuance to the left… as compared to the right?
how is it so difficult to separate art from the artist?
Can you have art without an artist? Can you have an artist without art? No. Art is a human expression. It comes from a person. AI art might be technically accomplished but it only says something when a human is in control of the AI. You can just kind of tune out that aspect of a work of art and try to enjoy it divorced from its act of creation, its context, the artist’s intentions, etc, but in doing so you are effectively censoring the art and not engaging with it on its own terms. The artist is an integral part of the work.
It depends on how large the negative impact of the person or organization because of their view is or how much negative impact it would have on me to boycott it. Like I won’t ever buy a Tesla because Musk is doing a lot of harm to people and should not get a single cent from me but I don’t really care the new Linkin Park singer is or was a scientologist. I won’t buy Nestle products and it’s surprisingly easy to do as there are enough alternatives. But as much as I would like to drop Whatsapp because Meta sucks, it’s simply the main communication service here in Germany.
I think you’ve got to draw some lines and stand by them but you don’t need be 100% Jesus either.
There’s no nuance from the left.
I would say there are many, many thick volumes of nuance, with reams of footnotes to evidence supporting it.
But progressive liberals are not going to engage with any of it.
Meanwhile the far-right floats on clouds of self-contradictory nonsense.
This whole comic is comedic gold, but this tiny part is especially funny to me somehow
I’m someone who is generally skeptical when accusations of sexual misconduct are made against someone I admire(d), but even I have to admit the case against Gaiman is very strong. I’d say he deserves to be dropped.
People should be free to vote outside the two party system secure in the knowledge that their vote will still be counted if their preference didn’t win.
Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
Strongly agree, though is this really an unpopular take?
It definitely was unpopular before the election. I was banned in some places for saying it
I think if we eliminated money, we would just invent it again and call it something else.
Depends on what you consider “money” and what Mode of Production you have.
Anything you exchange as a representation or substitute for something else of value. I think communism would reinvent what I consider money but wouldn’t use it as it’s used under capitalism.
Some Communist theoreticians consider Labor Vouchers to be distinct from money, as they would be destroyed upon first use and serve more as a “credit” for labor, and would eliminate the concept of accumulation of money from labor exploitation and exchange.
I am aware of this. It’s functionally no different than a dollar bill. The fact that I intend to melt down an axe after I use it to chop a tree down doesn’t make it not an axehead. If I used that same axe to hack my neighbor to death, well, that’s a completely different use. In the case of communist ‘money’, I think we would cease using money to kill our neighbor.
It’s functionally no different than a dollar bill.
In the case of communist ‘money’, I think we would cease using money to kill our neighbor.
Seems like a big difference to me
I don’t understand how the issues of money persist if you can only earn LVs through labor, and can’t be accumulated through Capital ownership. Why would you kill your neighbor?
I wouldn’t kill my neighbor? Was that too complicated an example? I think that money, like an axe, is a tool that can be used differently in different contexts. ‘Money’ isn’t the issue. How it’s used is the issue, which is why I think we would invent it. You don’t solve the ‘issues’ of an axe. You don’t solve the ‘issues’ of money. Capitalism uses stand-ins for value to harm people, but I am not convinced it’s an inherent trait of value stand-ins. I think LV’s are money, so I think you think that is true also.
I’m asking what’s wrong with money that carries over to LVs. Why is money an issue?
Well yah. The alternative is barter and farmers only need so many cell phones and software developers.
The alternative is barter
No. Never has been.
The phrase “we aren’t free until we’re all free” applies to animals as much as humans, and thinking otherwise is straight up bigotry. That so few extend leftist thought to the rest of the living world is a travesty, if you’ve managed to come around to leftist thinking then you’ve absolutely been capable of challenging your pre-conceived biases and this is just another step in that process.
All that said, I’m not one to judge people for not agreeing with this. It took me an exceptionally long time and the right circumstances to finally reassess my reasoning and to realise it was absurdly flawed, hypocritical and informed by propaganda.
Voting is an important tool to help contain fascism in liberal democracies while building serious social movements. (Socialist - but hopefully this isn’t actually unpopular with most socialists).
Then we should take great care in how we run our electoral system.
Videos on Electoral Reform
First Past The Post voting (What most states use now)
Videos on alternative electoral systems we can try out.
Abortion is sometimes the less monstrous alternative in a horrible situation, and it should never be seen as less than that.
Women should have enough social safety nets that abortion would never even cross their minds.
It is mostly Capitalism with its focus on productivity and selling youth and beauty that pressures women into it, women are “freeing” themselves into Capitalistic slavery.From: “leftist” privileged cis het white guy, feel free to ignore or bash me
No sane person is going to bash you because you are privileged, cis, het, white, and male. Rather, it is being privileged (etc.) that seems to cause people to say ignorant things. Mind you, I disagree with you about abortion – if I got pregnant by accident I’d have an abortion in a heartbeat, despite having a safety net. But I appreciate you being brave to share your dissenting view in this thread.
Alternative perspective: any time abortion us criminalized is a problem because in the case of the mother having a medical emergency, it’s most ideal for the doctor to care for the patient and the patients needs. Adding any additional consideration of potential legal ramifications is clouding an already difficult situation.
In addition, the way laws are written for “exceptions for the mothers life” are not, and can not ever be utilized effectively. Can it be performed if the patient will die in 7 days? What about in 4? In an hour? What if the doctor says there’s a 40% chance of death? What about a 40% chance of survival? Keeping in mind that these percentages are mostly just estimates used by doctors to convey meaning to patients. What if it’s just the patient losing their fertility? Or losing a limb?
None of these questions can ever be effectively answered by legislature, because medicine is not so cut and dry, and therefore, any attempt by legislature to regulate abortion is effectively a ban, including for the life of the mother.
Upvoting because this is definitely a controversial take
Only Christianity, or all Abrahamic religions, or all spirituality?
Can i still like Jesus? Can i still study Christ as a historical figure?
What about ancient religious art? Destroy it?
What’s the punishment if i get caught thinking about The Lord, or God forbid, praying!?
Just for context i am not religious or spiritual, but it seems like a thought crime.
Other Abrahamic religions play around with a lot of the same themes of excusing and encouraging ethnic cleansing and other classic biblical virtues-against-humanity such as massacring all living things in an entire city, but their stake in the present distribution of global power is much smaller, and they consequently represent a smaller threat to human life. I am not opposed to subsequent criminalization of Islam, as it is no better, but in the name of curbing the racist element which is highly likely to result from such policy, and also mindfully of the difficulty of phasing out Islam, I do not believe that it is productive to put it together on the chopping block with Christianity in the world we live in now. Judaism isn’t so much of a problem due to its more widely practiced interpretative principle and due to its weaker practical hierarchy compared to Christianity.
Can i still like Jesus? Can i still study Christ as a historical figure?
I view following biblical orders as the defining characteristic of a Christian person. (This view is generally uncontroversial among Christians, who generally do not take seriously those who claim to be Christian without having faith in the Bible’s inerrancy.)
There is a set of terrorist beliefs prescribed by the Bible that the average person who simply likes Jesus Christ as a literary figure probably doesn’t hold. Those people tend to have different socialization and visible attitudes compared to Christians of the definitively violent variety, and aren’t difficult to tell apart. I certainly do not believe those people should be gone after.
What about ancient religious art? Destroy it?
We must preserve the historical account of Christianity being the leading force of anti-intellectualism and collective narcissism of Christian nations, in addition to being an indispensable tool of fascism around the world and a significant contributor to solidification of Nazi rule in its time. Destroying the artistic record of history would not accomplish anything useful, much like how removing swastikas from museums of World War 2 wouldn’t help with doing away with neo-Nazism.
What’s the punishment if i get caught thinking about The Lord, or God forbid, praying!?
Refer to the legislation prohibiting display of Nazi symbols as implemented by many European countries. Countries like Germany have had a rough history with the way they implemented such legislation, with false-positive rulings and enforcement that were at odds with preservation of history and antifascist self-expression, but modern legislation against rehabilitation of Nazism is much better than that, and offers some valuable experience on how to tackle this inherently difficult problem.
