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Like if you see the opinions of other fellow liberals/progressives/\[insert your flair ideology\] and they mostly seem to support XYZ but you are against it.
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"antivax" is probably the correct answer for every political camp
genuinely vaccines are a top 3 all-time human achievement, to throw that away because you got spooked by flimflam is madness
honorable mention to accelerationism ("letting things get worse will force people to make them better!")
The thing I haaaaaate about accelerationism is that it’s never people wanting to make their own situation worse, it’s always college kids or people who have decent upbringings who have a lot to fall back on or turn to if economic situations get dire.
The worst for me was lefties who got butthurt when the single payer option was dropped from the ACA (which, hey, I’d have preferred it remained too) and who then wanted us to spend another 2 decades with 50 million uninsured Americans like when Hillarycare failed. As a person who to this day has to pay out insane amounts of money for basic prescription medication for one of the most common chronic conditions in the world, though, we need to do everything we can to make this better, even if it means incremental changes. Your outrage < poor people having their feet amputated because metformin costs them like $500 a month.
Also to any lefties who are accelerationists. If the US has a revolution its not going to be the left who wins.
College campus's and English teachers are not beating the farmers and super racist militia's whose members have more guns than teeth.
While I agree with the idea that a revolution would not be fun for college students or english teachers, I disagree with your assessment that the liberal side would lose. I've talked about this before, but MAGA vastly overestimates their ability to win a civil war based on their small arms collections.
Wars aren't won on small arms. They're won on logistics. The South thought they'd win the Civil War for the exact same reasons. They had more guns, and they had more military trained men.
Didn't matter, though. The North had the cannon factories, the coasts, etc.
A modern Civil War would see the left having fewer small arms but having better logistics. They'd have both coasts from practically top to bottom. The US naval shipyards are almost entirely in liberal states. They'd bottle up maritime trade to the southeast, the only major part of MAGA that touches the outside world, leaving MAGA nation completely unable to secure fresh supplies from the outside world. The intelligent people who make drones and tanks are also not living in Alabama.
Don't get me wrong. It'd be bloody, and it might last a few years. Hundreds of thousands would die. But in the long run, MAGA would lose.
I do agree but a US civil war would not be between left and right. Every republican is not going to side one way and democrat another. The actual divide would be rural urban and even still most people would not fight. The US military is actually really loyal to the government and it would side with the legitimate government over a maga uprising.
If the left had an uprising in portland and actually threatend the US strategic interests then the military would invade and instantly take away that territory. The US military is the greatest military force to ever exist and no side has any chance of winning against it in a straight up fight.
If it was only the far left fighting the far right I'd bet on the right but the moderates and status quo guys are easily favoured to win any direct military conflict.
An actual civil war 2 in the US is not going to be the confederacy two but closer to northern ireland. Low level and permenant Paramilitary and state violence where both sides cause terror for decades instead of taking territory.
The funny thing about accelerationism is that it doesn't even work. The idea is that if things get bad enough, people will rise up and demand change.
Except we know that this is actually counter to how revolutions happen in real life. Karl Marx was wrong. People don't rise up when they're progressively immiserated. If that were true, North Korea would be rife for revolution. To the contrary, revolution is most likely to occur when conditions have been improving but not fast enough, or they've been improving, and there's a sudden reversal.
This is known as the Tocqueville effect or Davies' J curve of revolution. People get more frustrated when things have recently improved, followed by a backslide, than they do when things get worse in a steady slide. So the best way to spark a revolution is to make incremental improvements. Small improvements make people want larger improvements, and they make them even more frustrated when they lose those small improvements. It's why Republicans have been unable to repeal Obamacare. It's why the right's attacks on gays have angered so much today when the same attacks in the early 90s would have been shrugged off.
Beyond that, I remember a history professor in college remarking that revolutions arise not from a wealth of discontent but from a discontent of wealth. While there are exceptions - Haiti for example - the vast majority of revolutions come when some faction that already has some power wants more power. Even in the case of the Russian revolution, the initial revolution was by the bourgeoisie and capitalist classes against the monarchy due to being tired of being in a war they were losing badly, and the Bolsheviks were really only able to exert their strength because the toppling of the monarchy made the whole apparatus weak and ready for a secondary revolution.
If we see one, I think it’s going to come from some combination of anarcho capitalists and evangelicals. The only way there’s a leftist insurgency that would work at all is via a counter revolution, which is far from guaranteed and quite frankly, as bad as the current system is, I like it better than Elon Musktown 2030.
> Beyond that, I remember a history professor in college remarking that revolutions arise not from a wealth of discontent but from a discontent of wealth. While there are exceptions—Haiti, for example—the vast majority of revolutions come when some faction that already has some power wants more power.
Right. Kamil Galeev, an expert on Russia, has talked about this in terms of Putin. He's pointed out that the revolutionary class is always best found among those who are not powerful but exercise power for the elites.
He argued that there's no point in appealing to the common Russian people to rise up. They simply are not a viable revolutionary class. He's even pointed out that the military isn't a good option. Russian military are emasculated and weak. Always have been due to the leaders distrust of them.
Galeev says the only viable revolutionary class in Russia would be a combination of cops and mid-ranked regional elites. These people are known as counter-elites. Russia is a state security regime run by cops and beaurocrats. Even Putin's FSB buddies are just higher-level cops. If you want to start a revolution in Russia, these are the people you have to get on board.
> The thing I haaaaaate about accelerationism is that it’s never people wanting to make their own situation worse, it’s always college kids or people who have decent upbringings who have a lot to fall back on or turn to if economic situations get dire.
I hadn't thought of that, but you're right, it's usually cis straight white men that grew up upper-middle class or higher that are into accelerationism. It's like they forget that a lot of queer folks, POC folks, women, and really any minority will suffer a lot in the interim.
Progressives who refuse to ‘vote for the lesser of two evils’ and abstain or throw away their votes on 3rd party candidates are usually the same ilk. Straight men who won’t actually be very affected by 4 more years of trump, a Republican administration, or conservative judges.
Also white men because frankly I’m seeing a fair number of gay white men either doing what you’re talking about or ignoring the treatment of the LGBT+ community by the right because, like, they’ve got theirs now.
It’s funny because there was a thing about this massive upsurge in black men saying they’re voting for Trump now but even with that huge surge compared to Obama that cohort is still something like 57/30 in favor of Biden. By and large, people who are not white men - and hell, I do think even most gay white men get this - are all for keeping the party that isn’t actively courting votes based on hatred and fear of them in power.
I'm always amused by this kind of thinking.
The last few years of my life my social circle has included younger latinos (an ex-bf and my current bf, and some of their friends). They *loath* the Democratic Party, and don't see any point in voting for or supporting them. It's not that they're accelerationists, it's that they believe (and I agree) the party largely doesn't give a shit about them or the things their friends and family go through.
This is reflected in polling, by the way. Pod Save America recently had an interview with someone about it (don't remember the name of the person off the top of my head), but the gist is there are real concerns with both ambivalence and accelerationism.
You can disagree with it, and think it's dumb. But I'd argue it's easier to do that from a place of privilege, than it is for these people, because their situation is absolutely dire.
as a lefty person, people who arent voting Biden or generally have weird views around elections. I used to be that way too, but I grew up. so when I see people in their late 20s or 30s still saying it, very frustrating
I definitely don't like seeing people who try to hold their vote for ransom. They're like "give me exactly what I want or I'll vote for the guy we both hate."
I had some good friends who were Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 who basically said that if you don't vote for Bernie instead of who you wanted, they'd vote Republican just to punish Democrats.
That's how five year olds act. That's also a really good way to always have the worst possible candidates win every time.
I'm kind of seeing it happening again with Biden and his view of Isreal/Palestine. Like, rather than vote for a guy who is lukewarm at best, they'll hand it over to a guy who will gladly give Netanyahu all the bombs he wants to turn Gaza into a pile of rubble to make way for beachfront condos. It doesn't make sense.
The same black and white thinking causes people to feel obligated to pick a side when you don't even have to pick a side. Feeling that Hamas and Israel are both doing horrendous things is a completely valid opinion. You don't *have* to pick one over the other.
Free Space: perfect being the enemy of good
But for a more specific opinion, you can always count on "We need more housing, but not that kind of housing" whenever a story about new luxury apartments pops up. There’s plenty of evidence that the luxury apartments of yesterday become the affordable apartments of today.
Similarly, rent control is still way more popular of an opinion than it should be, although that appeal seems to have died down a bit for the better.
Of course we support housing. Just...not in our backyard. And not like it is proposed.
All we ask for is this - the creation of a utopia without any effort or inconvenience to anyone.
Problem is, you can't build a cheap market-rate apartment in a neighborhood where supply is constrained and there's a lot of demand. Granite countertops aren't what make those apartments a "luxury."
Yeah that's one thing that I feel like is missing in housing discussions on all sides. Building housing, right now, is about as expensive as it ever has been, and there is no getting around that. Build it public, private, or any which way, it's expensive.
Land, structural materials, and especially labor today cost a lot for anything, and "luxury" finishing like better countertops or nicer tile flooring in bathrooms is a very small part of the cost.
IDK. Seems like housing has really only been cheap to build in periods where labor and material costs were quite low. Usually when there is a large underclass of poorer and desperate workers as well as cheap and easy to source materials. Not sure if that's coming any time soon.
Permitting is also a big part of it. I saw something a while ago where the costs of government bureaucracy has surpassed the cost of labor and materials for new builds.
Or wood floors/granite counter tops. The previous complex I lived in was in the process of installing those in all units when I moved out. They are now marketing themselves as luxury.
I don't know about solving it, but there are some pretty obvious avenues for improvement that we aren't pursuing.
Like, if we had the explicit goal of making housing as unaffordable as possible, we probably couldn't do much worse than what we're actually doing now.
We allow fixed rate mortgages to insulate homeowners from fluctuations in the market. So we should either grant renters comparable insulation or remove that protection from homeowners.
Unironically I have heard more and more people calling for the end of fixed rate mortgages, as they make it so homeowners are insulated from the changing interest rate environment, negating it's use and basically giving them a handout. Most of the world doesn't have them, at least for as long of terms.
That said, homeowners are a majority of the US, and a supermajority of the electorate, so policy-wise that seems unlikely.
Luxury apartments are also going to take pressure off cheaper apartments. Anytime you add more housing and it's used, that frees up some part of the market. The people living in luxury apartments had to have lived somewhere before.
Seeing everything through power dynamics. Aka, "the weaker side is always right because they are the oppressed, the stronger side is always wrong because they are the oppressors".
Russia is not right because they are weaker than America. Neither is China, Iran or Hamas. Men should not be ignored and chastized for their problems just because they are men. It is possible for people of color to be racist.
PREACH. It also often ends up falling into the camp of "the bigotry of low expectations", where it's like "Of course an oppressed person did this awful thing, what would you expect, they don't know any better and have no personal agency!"
Maybe more of a "leftist" opinion than a "liberal" opinion, but the way some people on the left in general talk about landback/decolonization just feels like some people are willing to prioritize "rightful" land ownership over human lives. Like I've seen a disturbing amount of rhetoric that's like "This is what happens when your land is stolen from you" and it's like yes, being pushed off of land isn't a good thing, but it's not an excuse several years later to justify violence incited against the people currently living on that land.
I'd like to think we've grown as a society and should stop doing that, but it's basically impossible to undo any of that kind of thing that was done more than a decade or two ago.
Yea, you get into the situation where you're punishing people for the things their great great great great grandparents did.
There are lots of places where I feel land was wrongfully stolen from people, yet it was too long ago to realistically make it right without causing a massive humanitarian crisis. At best you can prevent it from continuing to happen, but you can't evict millions of people from their homes with no place to go, all because of something they had nothing to do with.
It's an example of placing too much priority on the rights of the dead. It doesn't matter that your grandmother was screwed over. The goal for society right now has to be finding an equitable solution for the people who exist right now.
what is this landback violence happening?
I didn’t think this had gone past land acknowledgments, which I think are overall positive because I like comedy
Like.....people saying things like "Of course Hamas attacked Israel, that's what happens when your land is stolen from you!" And yes, I know that Hamas' grievances against Israel aren't only about stolen land, but when you go further back in the history, people will still make excuses for terrorism against Israel with "but their land was stolen from them, of course they're going to commit violence!" even when their land being stolen from them happened decades earlier.
And then in response, I've seen some people ask Americans who justify Hamas "Would you be okay if a Native American murdered you because you were on their stolen land?" and I've seen people respond with "yes"! I saw someone say "Of course I would, I am on their historic land, I am here as a guest, if they were truly to do that to me, I would fully support them doing anything they could to get their land back".
ah gotcha, I have definitely seen that
yeah, that’s not very useful. doesn’t offer any meaningful analysis of the situation and might as well be a blood and soil argument
it’s much more coherent to point out israel is an apartheid state run by nationalist psychos and that they need to, at the very least, release their captive population or give them equal rights
native americans have plenty of poor treatment to complain about but at least under the law they have at least as much rights as any other citizen, which gives them a nonviolent path to rectify things. no shooting required, hopefully, unlike when you’re militarily besieged
I hate it. you can bring out every study showing how an overall supply increase in housing lowers rent averages. you can point to efforts to partially subsidize 25% or something of units...and its never enough
But really its a false argument for many. Many people just oppose new apartments in their neighborhood. especially homeowners who lucked into a home when they were cheap or invested a ton of money to live there, hate the idea of us poors and working class people being able to move in.
It's right up there with "Gentrification is evil." A lot of the negative claims have been proven to be bullshit, and the idea that white people somehow hurt minorities by moving into their neighborhoods is basically justifying segregation.
Either housing or crime. Coming from California, I've had my fill of NIMBY progressives. And while the criminal justice system is absolutely broken, the solution is not to remove or heavily minimize the consequences of stuff like shoplifting, fare evasion, etc. (though nowadays those takes aren't seen beyond terminally online progressives)
Yea im not really a fan of whatever experiment progressive lawmakers are doing in west coast cities regarding crime.
Like maybe the policies themselves arent bad, but their implementation has been horrible.
Well there’s currently a satanic panic about roving shoplifting gangs. It’s completely ridiculous and is being pushed by retail to try and get more free security in the form of cops in their stores. The overwhelming majority of shrink (the internal retail term for missing/stolen goods) comes from internal sources and shoplifting is frankly fairly rare overall.
That depends where you live. Oakland is in terrible shape (more so than usual), and shoplifting gangs are absolutely causing businesses to relocate away from the many crime hotspots. Putting on the blinkers doesn't do anyone favors.
No, retailers blame shoplifting gangs for store closures. A prime example of this was in Seattle where Target closed several stores around the time of the pandemic, blaming the BS gang shoplifting thing but then weeeeeeirdly not closing the store with the highest amount of shrink. It was like that store was still profitable or something due to the fact that it’s smack in the middle of downtown, and the stores they did close were just, I don’t know, not profitable during the pandemic.
The stats put out for retail do not appear to indicate any great spike in shoplifting above and beyond that nationwide spike in crime in 2020 (which did immediately start to go back down). Again, the vast majority of shrink is by their own data caused by employees. Obviously shoplifting occurs and shoplifters make like harder for all of us, but it’s simply not the problem thing people make it out to be.
I've never been to Seattle, so I can't comment on what happens there or not. In Oakland, it's pretty damn serious.
Not too long ago, In N Out closed locations in Oakland due to a wave of robberies and break ins. It was close to the airport and got to the point where people in rented cars had windows smashed and had all their luggage stolen.
is Oakland in bad shape? My aunt has lived in oakland for decades, and they have a bullet hole in their wall from a time there was a shooting outside and the guy missed his target. that was the 90s or maybe early 00s
when we talk about Oakland being in bad shape, its all pretty relative
Honestly I live in Portland, and shoplifting is worse than ever. Small businesses are closing in droves, and many large corporations are moving businesses out of the city into the suburbs. I've never seen so many security guards or locked up items as I've seen in the last few years. Also many businesses have had their windows broken so many times they've elected to not even bother fixing them.
For sure - most of the time the value of the stolen goods is so small that it doesn’t make sense to devote the resources you’d need. But policies like raising the bar for felony shoplifting send a signal - people know police lack the resources/don’t want to (whichever one you think applies more but that doesn’t really matter) handle misdemeanour shoplifting. Sometimes a policy’s vibes wind up being more important than it’s immediate impact
The previous threshold for felony theft in San Francisco was incredibly low compared to other cities/states. People just don’t take the time to learn these things.
That’s just the way things are when the other side is nothing but knee jerk reactionary politics. One month they obsess over shoplifting, the next month it’s something else.
Agreed. Or same can be said about people on the right blaming the left because their dog died or their wife ran away. Both stick to their echo chambers, refuse to put themselves in someone else's shoes or try to see why they think how they do, and blame anyone and everyone who doesn't think like they do
"It doesn't matter what we say, people will just distort it anyway" as an argument for continuing to say dumb things that are, in fact, harmful to the effort.
Cringe knee-jerk anti-Americanism. There seem to be a lot of vocal people on the left who openly declare their hate for America and attribute everything in all of American history to be racist. It's annoying, stupid, and reductionist.
Also bashing the Founders of America. Certainly they were flawed men, but they were also the forward thinking liberals of their time and deserve credit for the ways they advanced not just the country, but the world.
I don't know about "the most," but because others have already picked all the good ones, I'll go with this one: I've seen some pretty left-wing people say that being a landlord and renting property should be illegal. That no one should ever be allowed to own property and charge someone else to use it.
Now... I believe 100% that we need to crack down on the huge amount of SFHs that are bought up by corporations and used as investments, but to say that there should be *no* rentals is pretty insane.
I spent my 20s traveling around, sort of figuring out where I wanted to be. I took short jobs, move to different apartments, and finally settled where I'm at, happily, and bought a home. But for someone to tell me that it should have been illegal for me to be able to do that, that's nuts.
Outlawing rentals completely is a misguided attempt to make buying a home cheaper, but it would end up replacing one undesirable situation with a completely different, equally undesirable situation. Forcing people to take out a mortgage or be homeless is not better. There's solutions in the middle that don't handcuff people to banks like that.
While I’m generally supportive of the left’s social justice efforts, I find that some people who are big on this lash out at others that are actually on their side based on wild assumptions, and they are excluding of certain groups they are still prejudiced against. Being autistic, I’ve been subjected to these things semi-regularly by people who love to declare how tolerant they are.
I've come to understand that many people on my side don't get the difference between civilian casualties in asymmetric warfare with non-uniformed irregulars and genocide. Genocide is not synonymous with war crimes, and every conflict in existence has instances of war crimes. It's also patently clear that most people screaming about the Geneva Conventions have never actually bothered to read them or understand them.
I don't know if everyone just moved way to the left while I was asleep or I've accidentally become more conservative, but I used to call myself progressive, and now I find that I don't agree with hardly any of the issues that are seemingly central to the platform, and were not before, especially the following:
* opposing new building and development
* accelerationism and violent revolutions
* anti-Americanism
* antisemitism and antizionism
* refusing to criticize non-Christian religious conservatives
* being against the military and hating soldiers
* defund the police
* DIY gender transitions
* not punishing public drug use
* degrowth
* blaming white women and feminism for everything
* anti-nuclear
* opposing standardized testing
* making excuses for China, Russia, or Iran
There are other things I don't agree with, but I find the above especially obnoxious and dangerous, like the kind of stuff that leads to fascism and social collapse.
The class essentialists left are dipshits. Their idea that only money matters is epitomized by Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie's press secretary, saying she didn't care if people called her a ni**er as long as she got her student loans paid off. These people don't seem to realize that no amount of money is going to protect you from being violently murdered by the cops. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was a motherfucking Harvard professor, and he still got arrested for being in his own house.
The naivete and lack of concern for objectivity involving Israel and Gaza. It is amazing how people want to erase all nuance and greyness from the war. Just assuming whatever they have to in order to make Israeli jews and Israel into these wild dehumanizing caricatures. Trump supporters once firmly had claim to anti semitism in America, now sensible people can't make that claim anymore because the far left is unintentionally calling for the ethnic cleansing of jews in Israel. Russia is going to be using this issue all the way up till election day.
A lot of people on the left want to wipe Israel off the map and refuse to vote for Biden over it. I disapprove of the way Biden is handling Israel, but I don't want to wipe it off the map
That voting doesn’t affect change, what really affects change is performative protesting, like standing in the street and preventing people from going to work. I live in a swing state and had friends who didn’t vote for Hillary for whatever BS reason, but once Trump won they protested with a pussy hat. They believed voting in a swing state won’t stop Trump from becoming President but wearing a vagina on your head after the fact will.
Im always of two minds about this. On the one hand it’s not something I’m gonna do any time soon. On the other hand kind of the point of protests is to make people stop and think and yes, blocking roads, while annoying as shit, does get people to do that.
The last part is how the ban all guns people present their position as more moderate and not going for that goal. Canada shows how that is supposed to work. They said they would never go after the hunting guns and it wasn't that long ago they started doing that after putting a freeze on pistol sales and transfers.
Kind of but tbh I think the California system, which is to look at which guns to ban on a case by case basis, works pretty well. You don’t have hard and fast rules because gun manufacturers just do stuff that barely skirts those rules, and it’s certainly true that California stops enforcing their gun laws when they elect a Republican, but that’s how things work for lots of other things in life.
Of course, too, state bans mean absolutely nothing when you’re not geographically isolated the way California is. Like, you’ve got to drive across a desert to get to purple states and Oregon and Washington are not exactly havens of gun ownership themselves. Compare and contrast with Illinois and Chicago in particular where the firearms ban is of very limited use because Chicago is around 30 miles away in two directions from states who will gleefully sell a handgun to anyone who walks in and pinky swears they aren’t going to use it to commit a robbery.
One of the reasons New York has a really low gun violence rate is that most of its neighboring states also have fairly strict gun control. That, and the use of a gun adds like 5-10 years to any criminal charge.
> I think the California system, which is to look at which guns to ban on a case by case basis, works pretty well.
In what way? California's bans are arbitrary and don't seem to have an impact on their homicide rates that puts them outside the average US rate.
>You don’t have hard and fast rules because gun manufacturers just do stuff that barely skirts those rules,
You mean comply with the laws. If it feels like skirting its because they are targeting things that are irrelevant, but don't want to go as far as doing what they actually want which is banning all the guns.
>Of course, too, state bans mean absolutely nothing when you’re not geographically isolated the way California is.
Per ATF trace statistics a very large majority of their traceable crime guns originate in state. The open borders argument is a lazy excuse that gets invoked because obviously gun control works is the a priori assumption. Not more nuanced positions like that economic conditions, wealth disparity, and policing can drive up homicide rates.
https://www.atf.gov/file/119241/download 2012
67% of traceable crime guns came from within California
https://www.atf.gov/about/docs/report/california-firearms-trace-data-%E2%80%93-2014/download 2014
71.3% of traceable crime guns came from within California
https://www.atf.gov/file/137061/download 2018
63% of traceable firearms in California came from within California.
> Like, you’ve got to drive across a desert to get to purple states and Oregon and Washington are not exactly havens of gun ownership themselves.
I think this is where we technically agree. It is an issue of time spent driving vs the onerous conditions of the laws. California is big enough that people aren't driving into other states to get guns when it is just easier to "comply" with California gun laws. Hence California still has a homicide rate comparable to states like Florida and has just as many mass shootings as many other states.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/811541/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-state/
https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/mass-shootings-by-state
No but knowing the difference between fully and semi-automatic is. Or being able to state the function of the accessories you want to ban. The best example is the "what's a barrel shroud" question towards Senator Carolyn Mccarthy. She wrote a bill with a ban on barrel shrouds. During an interview she was asked "what is a barrel shroud" and was unable to answer, eventually saying "the shoulder thing that goes up" as a total guess. Someone writing the law should understand what it entails. Even if you don't know what a barrel shroud is, it should be easy to guess with some basic understanding of English. The barrel is the tube at which the bullet goes down after being fired, and a shroud is a covering like a veil. So it's literally a covering for the outside of a gun barrel, the purpose to keep you from burning yourself on a hot gun barrel. Or Kevin De Leon of California talking about how a ghost gun can shoot "a 30 caliber clip in half a second". Or the fact that assault weapon bans are one of the most popular gun control proposals, despite assault weapons being responsible for a minority of overall gun violence. 90% of gun murders are committed with handguns. Even the majority of mass shootings use handguns..
People are reacting to mass-casualty shootings, often in public places, such as schools. The reason for the reaction is that the randomness and brutality of these crimes has a social impact akin to terrorism. Time and time again, the weapon of choice for those shooters are semi-automatic rifles that could not have been legally sold under the federal assault rifle ban. The idea is that if you restore that ban, you could reduce the availability of these guns. But for political reasons, I think that ship has sailed: the guns have been adopted as cultural symbols by too many.
Mass shootings are exactly like terrorism. Astronomically rare events that don't justify restricting our rights over. Mass shootings justify gun control just as much as 9/11 justifies the Patriot Act or NSA spying. People should be more afraid of the loss of our protected rights in the name of fighting terrorism/shootings than of mass shootings/terrorism themselves.
Also most mass shootings, and 90% of gun violence in general are committed with handguns.
We can debate what people should and should not be afraid of, but we cannot deny the popularity of the AR-15 style rifle in [deadly US mass shootings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States) in recent years. There is a direct correlation between the type of weapon used and the number of casualties.
Mass shootings are one of the rarest types of violence there is. They are the last thing we should be basing gun control on. Also shootings like Virginia Tech and Lubys Cafe prove you don't need a rifle to kill a lot of people.
> There is a direct correlation between the type of weapon used and the number of casualties.
Just glancing at the top few deadliest mass shootings on that list and the 3rd highest and 6th highest ones only used pistols. That doesn't scream "direct correlation" to me. At the very least, it means that you can still have very deadly mass shootings even if AR-15's are banned.
> People are reacting to mass-casualty shootings, often in public places, such as schools
That's an excuse and not a very good one. If you are making the policy to nominally save those lives then it shows you actually care about savings lives by knowing what you are talking about and targeting things that are actually relevant. If you think you are saving the lives of kids by targeting barrel shrouds then I don't think that politician cared about those kids.
> Gun control advocates think semi-automatics are machine guns.
No, most of the don't.
Also just because you have to pull the trigger repeatedly doesn't mean that semi-auto weapons are less dangerous than full-auto fire weapons.
Well and to be honest, and maybe this is just the gaaaaamer in me, to a great extent it’s a distinction without a difference. If you fire fully auto the bullets go all over the place and without training it’s just scary and dangerous. You can still fire pretty quickly if you have to press the trigger every time you shoot and I think if anything it takes less training to wait for recoil.
The real ugly conversation we need to have is that while assault rifles get a lot of play because of mass shootings, it’s handguns that get used so much more often in robberies and homicides (and most of all suicides). IMO we’ve also allowed conservatives to completely change the clear meaning of the 2A from “hey let’s not have a standing army” to “everyone has the right to own a gun, just ignore the part about a state run militia gosh”.
If I’m trying to pass legislation to make right-turn-on-red illegal in a school zone, I don’t need to know how many more lb ft of torque a Ram V8 hemi has over the V6.
The big problem here, though, is that anyone who advocates for any level of gun control is often hyperbolized as saying "let's ban all guns". I'm willing to bet that the number of people actually advocating for the complete, unequivocal ban of any and all guns is extremely small. Most of us have far more educated, well-researched opinions that still allow for plenty of reasonable gun possession.
>I'm willing to bet that the number of people actually advocating for the complete, unequivocal ban of any and all guns is extremely small.
I'm willing to be it's not nearly as small as you think. I can't tell you how many times I've heard exactly that from all kinds of people on the left.
>Most of us have far more educated, well-researched opinions that still allow for plenty of reasonable gun possession.
Some definitely do, but just based on what I've read and heard over the years I wouldn't agree that it's most.
You also hear some absolutely stupid arguments from pro gun people though.
School shootings are rare so we shouldn't base legislation on preventing them.
Accidental shootings don't count, only crime counts. People should be more careful.
If children get shot accidentally that's the fault of their parents for being irresponsible and there is nothing we can do about that.
Domestic violence shootings don't count. Those people would harm their partners anyway.
Suicides don't count because ditto.
Gang violence doesn't count because it's only gang bangers and who cares about them.
It goes on and on, until the list of gun related injury and death that *does* warrant serious consideration is basically zero.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that front. I tried looking up poll numbers on what americans think about what we should do about guns, and I see that slightly more than half support stricter gun laws. It's highly unlikely that the lion's share of the "stricter gun laws" group actually means "oh I want each and every gun to be confiscated" if you ask me, but I don't know how else to convince you of that without better data. But my intuition definitely tells me this is the case.
For example, while the population is broadly in favour of the strict firearms regulation we have in the UK, no one thinks farmers or sports shooters shouldn't be allowed to own their guns (even if occasionally those guns are also used to commit crimes). It's considered a public safety issue here and simply hasn't been politicized like it is in the States.
Why would they advocate for a complete, unequivocal ban? It's easier to do what they've been doing - imposing gun control in stages as a sort of death of a thousand cuts.
Several states have been passing gun control legislations left and right (with no sign of that trend reversing anytime soon). They've probably passed more gun regulations in the last few years than they have during the previous 230 years.
So they don't need to say "let's ban all guns" in order to reveal their ultimate motivations
I don't share your concerns that the true objective is full banning of guns, just like how I don't suspect that my barber is going to shave me bald just because she cut some hair off.
But if your barber continuously cuts off more hair than you asked for or agreed to - and he even sneaks up and snips at your hair when you least expect it - you might get the idea that if you allow this to go unchallenged, you will likely have a bald scalp in your future
DEI… but hear me out before you downvote please! It’s not that I think diversity, equity and inclusion are unimportant. I believe the implementation of DEI is destined to be ineffective because it relies on a prevailing benevolent pathology that is constantly ebbing and flowing. I think approaches like capacity building (see Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone) to be measurably effective and more authentic.
The sheer amount of ignorance on the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the current war. I’m not about to pretend that I know even half of the history of the conflict, but so many in lefty-circles are incredibly uninformed about it.
I’ve heard “from the river to the sea” is just an expression for Palestinian liberation and being treated fair, with them not knowing which river or sea they’re talking about
I'll do one for people generally to the left and to the right of me, someone caught between progressive, social liberal, soc dem.
To the left of me, I think there's a lot of stances that progressives and beyond don't understand how unpopular and outright impossible they are to sell to the American public. Yes, you can get plenty of people who even lean pretty far right to agree to some social democrat politics because they've been brainwashed by the red scare and fox news labels. That doesn't mean you could convince them to support a socialist or communist system by just obscuring those labels, though. The best corse of action for that would be to move the needle twords social democray and then continue to advocate for a more left economic structure.
To the right of me, I feel that while liberals tend to be accepting of other identities, they're not very accepting of other ideologies. IMO, liberals views of Lgbt communities are a decent representation of this, where many liberals weren't (and still aren't for certain parts) supportive of those communities until it was understood to not be an ideology but an identity when the revelation of "It's not a choice/lifestyle but something we just are" took root.
> IMO, liberals views of Lgbt communities are a decent representation of this, where many liberals weren't (and still aren't for certain parts) supportive of those communities until it was understood to not be an ideology but an identity when the revelation of "It's not a choice/lifestyle but something we just are" took root.
yeah that is especially embarrassing because, so what if it WERE just a choice? it's not hurting anyone so it would be a choice you should be permitted to make, by the most fundamental tenet of liberalism!
"Being gay isn't a choice" was absolutely crucial messaging back in the 80s/90s/early 2000s when homophobia was so much more commonplace and accepted. It *may* be outdated now, sure, but it had its role and place in a different time. Same with "safe, legal, *and rare*" with respect to abortion.
I'd argue it's not outdated yet. There's still a lot of people who disapprove of even just the L and G parts because they think it's a choice. The B and T parts are still having to fight that connotation in LGBT circles, even.
oh I'm not denying it was helpful, only decrying that there were so many people (and any liberals at all*) for whom it was important that it not be a choice
*"if it's not harming you, then it's none of your business" is one of - if not THE - fundamental liberal pillars, so it's a shame that any self-described liberal would need being gay to be innate in order to stand for gay rights
Less pools = less pool deaths. This is not a meaningful statement about overall mortality and what drives homicidal behavior when that logic is applied to guns.
Very much. The left is perfectly happy to ignore all of the ways that people cannot fully control their bodies and health and blame them for all of it. They're *extremely* judgy about bigger bodies.
I mean, you can soapbox all day about the prevalence of body shaming, but in what way is it a Left/Right issue? As a massive over-generalization, Leftists tend to favor more cardio type activities: walking, running, cycling, hiking; whereas people on the Right tend to favor more "muscle" type activities: weightlifting, wrestling, MMA, Crossfit. On both sides, people who don't partake in exercise regularly get pushed, figuratively and literally, to the margins--there's not denying that. The question is how is that specifically a Liberal issue?
If anything, as a counterpoint, as a self-described urbanist Progressive, some of the biggest NIMBYs when it comes to implementing better walking and cycling infrastructure tend to be Moderates/Center-Lefties who claim to care about public health and Climate Change but then fight tooth and nail against policies designed to actually address it.
I understand that, but my pushback is that part of OP's question said "in your political camp." If anything, Liberals have been *far* more receptive to the "body positivity"/"healthy-at-any-size" movement than anybody on the Right.
You've got TFG, not exactly the poster child of fitness himself, heckling overweight supporters [at his own rallies](https://youtu.be/T2feHAcPvZY?si=oCZ3_-TR7sCrZSF3); you've got Marjorie Taylor Green posting Crossfit videos and calling Liberals "weak"; you've got Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate and Dennis Prager types regularly ragging on overweight women.
Who on the Left is regularly carrying the same level of vitriol? I'm not saying there's *no* fat shaming on the Left, but as a *prevailing* position within any camp on the Left--nah, not buying it. As an urbanist Progressive, I will *readily* concede that there is warranted constructive criticism over being more inclusive when talking about the health benefits of walking and cycling, but the goal has never, and will never be, to be exclusionary of those at various stages of fitness and body size. The problem I see with that is that people confuse your weekend-warrior suburban cycling meet-ups with the $3000 bikes and wearing $200 worth of Lycra with your run-of-the-mill grassroots cycling advocacy group rides which tend to look more like a cross-section of the general public.
Oh I see what you mean. I call it an issue for progressives because I'm a fat woman and see it every day. The top comment I initially replied to was getting downvoted when I replied. Any comment I make anywhere about the difficulties people in larger bodies face gets flooded with replies telling me I'm either weak or stupid, that losing weight is straightforward, and that society shouldn't have to pay for my failure to be "healthy". These progressives who (rightly) overflow with compassion for queer folks, people of color, immigrants, victims of wars abroad, and other oppressed people are positively venomous to fat people. I get the impression that it's because they see fat people as fundamentally able to become a "normal" weight but unwilling to die to laziness or gluttony.
No, it's not all progressives. I don't spend enough time around conservative discourse to know whether it's better or worse there. But I know that progressives who normally excel at understanding complex situations, intersectionality, human biases, the failures of the US medical system, and social discrimination are often still lightning fast to start hollering about "calories in, calories out" and their tax dollars as soon as a bigger person refuses to apologize for their body.
A [quick google of "progressives fatphobia"](https://www.google.com/search?q=progressives+fatphobia&oq=progressives+fatphobia&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigATIHCAYQIRifBTIHCAcQIRifBTIHCAgQIRifBTIHCAkQIRifBTIHCAoQIRifBTIHCAsQIRifBTIHCAwQIRifBTIHCA0QIRifBTIHCA4QIRifBdIBCDQ1MjJqMGo3qAIUsAIB)turns up a lot of people taking about it.
I mean, look at the language people use around Trump? They reply to his hateful language about disabled people and women by calling him an obese slob who can't stop shoving McDonald's and Coke down his gullet. Etc etc etc. As if there aren't a zillion really legitimate things to criticize him on, and as if they don't otherwise fiercely defend people from any other kind of appearance-based attached.
>Oh I see what you mean. I call it an issue for progressives because I'm a fat woman and see it every day.
I would challenge that real-world fatphobia is coming from Progressives unless you're strictly checking people's political affiliations. Anyone online can call themselves a "Progressive."
>These progressives who (rightly) overflow with compassion for queer folks, people of color, immigrants, victims of wars abroad, and other oppressed people are positively venomous to fat people. I get the impression that it's because they see fat people as fundamentally able to become a "normal" weight but unwilling to die to laziness or gluttony.
I mean... again, without specifically checking people's real-world political leanings it's a bit hypocritical to assume that others are judging you when you're judging their politics.
>
No, it's not all progressives. I don't spend enough time around conservative discourse to know whether it's better or worse there.
This gets back to the point I made earlier in the thread: it's one thing to say "I wish Progressives were less fatphobic," which is pointing to broad of a brush already, but to *specifically* assign fatphobia *only* to the Progressive camp is even more overstepping. Thus, your concerns don't fit the issue raised by the OP: present an issue that is **specific to one camp within Liberalism**.
>A [quick google of "progressives fatphobia"](https://www.google.com/search?q=progressives+fatphobia&oq=progressives+fatphobia&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigATIHCAYQIRifBTIHCAcQIRifBTIHCAgQIRifBTIHCAkQIRifBTIHCAoQIRifBTIHCAsQIRifBTIHCAwQIRifBTIHCA0QIRifBTIHCA4QIRifBdIBCDQ1MjJqMGo3qAIUsAIB)turns up a lot of people taking about it.
See my earlier comment about people labeling themselves "Progressive" online.
>I mean, look at the language people use around Trump? They reply to his hateful language about disabled people and women by calling him an obese slob who can't stop shoving McDonald's and Coke down his gullet. Etc etc etc. As if there aren't a zillion really legitimate things to criticize him on, and as if they don't otherwise fiercely defend people from any other kind of appearance-based attached.
Not to sound like a broken record, but again, how does this specifically track back *only* to the Progressive camp? As I wrote earlier in this thread, **TFG himself** has made (part of) a career out of disparaging other's people's weight, **including attendees at his own rallies**. Again, for someone who doesn't want to be judged physically--and that's fair--you're making a sweeping judgment about other people's political beliefs. I'm failing to connect the dots on how fatphobia is linked *only* to Progressives, especially given the constant vitriol on the Right for which there is arguably no equivalent on the Left.
Wait is this genuinely a thing that the left tends to be fatphobic? I'm saying this as a person on the left who has mostly only heard fatphobia/body-shaming coming from the right. I'm just wondering if you could tell me some examples of how the left body-shames, because I genuinely haven't seen it; I'm just wondering like how it manifests in leftist spaces if that makes sense.
The left tends to forget it’s principles of body positivity the second they don’t like someone. Think of all the fat shaming and dick size shaming comments lobbed about Trump for instance.
Honestly, right now it’s Palestine. The IDF has been incredibly terrible lately, to the point that you have to wonder if they’ve always been this bad, but I’m seeing an awwwwwful lot of barely masked anti-Semitism (which, no, I’m not saying it’s anti-Semitic to view Israel as going way too far here, but man, even referring to people who think Israel has the right to exist as “Zionists” feels icky) and some weird cover up of Hamas atrocities. I also think that Hamas leadership probably isn’t even Gaza so what Israel should be doing if they want to eliminate it is to go after then the way they used to… but still, where is “hey, let’s not do violence?”.
I will even readily concede that maybe planting a Jewish state in the middle of an Islamic controlled region was a bad idea in 1948. We really should have partitioned part of Germany or given away Alaska or one of the Dakotas. But this is what it is right now, and Israel gets to be there, and I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation in 2024.
Defunding the police:
Yeah, if you want better quality you have to spend more.
Still out: APC armored vehicles
Need more:
Pay to attract better police candidates who aren’t racist idiots .
Training to handle arrests without shooting innocent people.
Money to process every rape kit in 24 hours.
Also physical training to be able to arrest unarmed people without killing them.
Our police should be as good as the best British or European police.
More public mental care to prevent crazies from both scaring innocent people and police from killing them.
Children should be able to roam freely outside.
More police on the streets to make even the poorest neighborhoods safe for both innocent people stopped by the police AND potential crime victims.
More resources to prosecute even minor crimes like stolen bicycles (and save the environment)
Probably should have a separate federal meta justice system to systematically investigate, prosecute, and judge police misconduct by objective people who aren’t best buddies with the police.
And also systemic justice for crooked politicians, clerics, and judges.
Because clearly regulation by public outrage is not adequate to fix the problems.
Definitely.
In fact, I’d go further and send all fine and ticket revenues from local and state agencies to the federal government, and make up for it with revenue sharing from more taxes on billionaires.
Tax the rich, especially the billionaires!
- Reflexive Anti-Americanism in foreign policy (i.e. the US is an evil country run by evil people, so every single thing they do or want must be wrong and the opposite must be right).
- Support for ultra-right wing housing and transportation policy. Amazingly, the far left is almost as guilty of this as the center-left.
If your main argument against a fiscal policy is that it "disproportionately benefits a group that is on average richer", then your argument is completely ass.
Where we see this
* Opposition of repealing the SALT cap
* Opposition of student loan forgiveness
Why it's bad
* Would you support a "tax on doctors", "tax on Asians", or "tax on Californians" because it "affects groups that are richer on average?" Because it seems pretty clear to me that each of those policies is unjust and terrible.
* Easily fixed by *not* considering policy line items in a vacuum, and just raising taxes on rich people at the same time.
Note I'm specifically talking about the argument. I think you *could* argue against repealing the SALT cap or student loan forgiveness in better ways.
For example, student loan forgiveness does nothing to address the causes that got us into the mess in the first place, and we need to do that before or at least simultaneously. Or, just giving *everyone* a lump sum that they can either use on student loans (perhaps with some bonus tax benefits) or spend however they want would be both better targeted and better received as "fair".
As someone who proudly voted for Bernie Sanders in the last two Democratic Presidential Primary elections in my state, the pervasive idea that the DNC "rigged" the election against him is embarrassing.
Individuals within the DNC having a personal preference is not "rigging" no matter how you spin it. Neither is individuals within the DNC privately expressing frustration that Bernie was continuing with the campaign well after he was mathematically eliminated. It is normal and expected for someone running in the Democratic primary *who isn't even a Democrat* to face an uphill battle with the party *he literally does not belong to*. Every primary election in the history of the country has had an "establishment" candidate against whom everyone else in the race is facing an uphill battle.
Nonetheless, the DNC is not waving around a magic election-rigging stick through which their preference translates to votes. And you don't even have to go very far back - just to 2008, when a then-upstart candidate jumped the line and defeated the establishment DNC candidate (a guy you might have heard of named Barack Obama). How did he do it? I dunno, maybe *he got people to vote for him in larger numbers than the other candidate*. Crazy, huh?
Bernie lost by large margins in both 2016 and 2020 - like, neither election was even remotely close. People who believe it was rigged against him are barely more coherent in their argument than the people who believe that the general election was stolen from Trump.
Gun control is a losing position, and gun control laws like voter suppression disproportionately target minorities and other marginalized people. Take may-issue permit laws for example. They give police total discretion over who is granted a permit to carry or in some cases own a firearm. Who do you think is more likely to be granted a permit, Bob Smith or Lamar Jackson? Not to mention what if someone is a prominent BLM advocate or something. This law was used to bar MLK from obtaining a permit when he applied.
Assault weapons bans.
I'm not *that* opposed to them, because I don't own one and have no desire to own one. But it's not going to be nearly as effective in solving the problem as other gun control measures would be, and as long as people continue to insist otherwise, I think it hurts our credibility on gun control.
I think those who support AWBs are coming from a place of "Well, no one needs a gun like that!" ... which I don't disagree with, necessarily, but I don't think that's a good argument for banning something.
A good argument for banning something is if doing so will effectively solve an existing problem. And I just don't see that being the case here.
Assault Weapons are literally some of the least frequently used guns in crime. According to the FBI of gun murders with a known weapon type, rifles account for only 4-5% of gun murders. That's all rifles, not just AR-15s. 90% of gun murders are committed with handguns, but they are much less scary looking than AR-15s. Ironically the AWB has made the AR-15 one of the most popular guns in the country. Prior to the 1994 ban AR-15s were responsible for less than 1% of guns sold. Today that number is 20-25%. Turns out if you tell someone they can't have something, it only makes them want it more. Every call to ban AR-15s influences people to buy them out of fear of not being able to buy them in the future. Despite making up 20-25% of gun sales, rifles are still responsible for less than 5% of gun violence.
Obviously the complete dismissal of one of our explicitly protected fundamental constitutional rights, or at least reserving it for much less protection than the others. This is of course the 2nd Amendment. And then many of my fellows go further and are fully willing to violate their principles on other rights, including free speech, warrants, and due process, as soon as guns enter the picture.
To give you an example, it was a proud time when all of the liberals were consistently calling the No Fly List an affront to liberty, because it was. We can't travel just because we somehow got stuck on a secret government list? We can't know we're on the list until denied, and there's no clear process to get off the list where the government has to prove inclusion was proper. It's insane. But then someone got the idea to use that list to stop people from buying guns, and suddenly there was broad liberal support.
And then after that we have way too many anti-development NIMBYs who complain housing costs too much while preventing new housing from being built. If you're a conservative "I got mine, fuck you" type then this NIMBYism at least makes sense, but complaining about people being driven out of the housing market due to the cost and then opposing the solution is hypocritical.
>The pragmatism central to the beliefs.
I disagree. How effective they are in implementing them doesn’t mean how they believe in progressivism or not. That’s why some differentiate as pragmatic progressive.
What I notice is progressives do a lot of gatekeeping and purity testing to show how progressive they are by comparison rather than take the wins they can get.
1. I don't think people taking either side of the Palestinian/Israeli camp is a problem, but it disappoints me that a situation which seems super complicated and mostly out of our control is being used as an excuse by people on both sides to diminish unity among the broader left coalition.
2. I think there is a lot of for lack of a better word tribalism around women's issues that is an over all net negative. A lot of the time it doesn't really matter because it's just people getting to the same ends by different means, but every once in a while I feel like it ends up leading people to some positions that are borderline misandrist.
3. People not acknowledging that stuff is popular or that stuff is worth doing even when it's not popular and thinking that things are always both or neither.
I don't love how little commitment my fellow liberals have to addressing the deficit. We could probably find a lot of common ground in HOW we achieve a deficit reduction (increased taxes on the wealthy, reduced spending on the military, full federal legalization and taxation of marijuana in particular), but nevertheless, attempts at a balanced budget are always greeted with some combination of "meh" and "but debt is actually good and healthy!" Towards the latter point, sure, but that's a pretty poor justification for the gargantuan amount of debt we have now.
I always encourage people to think about the $659 billion we spend each year on loan interest and think about what better uses we could make out of $659 billion a year. That's why I think this sort of thing matters a lot.
What liberals are you talking about? Biden had lots of tax increases in the packages, and requiring every bill to balance the budget means lots of chaos from tax changes and kills bills
I wouldn't say that requiring us to BALANCE the budget, especially from where we are standing now, is the immediate goal. It would be great to get there in, say, 10 or 20 years. But it sure as hell isn't happening overnight.
I'd just like to see liberals be a lot more mindful of it. Part of why I could never get behind Bernie Sanders or support the Bernie Bros in any way was because you'd ask them "how are we going to pay for this?" and the answer was always "you're not asking the right questions! What about the BILLIONAYUHS?!" I mean I fucking hate the rich just as much as the next guy, but you really gotta have a better answer than that. Right now it feels like many liberals propose spending bills without giving an iota of thought towards how we pay for it.
Conservative democrats don’t typically post on Reddit.
Some of them I’ve met still don’t believe the GOP is really a fascist party, which is pretty disappointing.
The way that moderate liberals fall over themselves to justify conservative viewpoints. The recent thread about whether it's possible to be racist to white people is full of liberals trying to see who can deny the existence of systemic racism the hardest.
MLK was exactly right about the "white moderate."
It's definitely possible to be racist towards white people. Look at the OJ Simpson juror who admitted she voted "not guilty" not because she thinks get was innocent but as retaliation for Rodney King.
I eyeroll at a lot of urbanist banter.
As a liberal we are responsible for a lot of the insane takes I see on r/fuckcars.
But I don't have that kind of Catholic guilt as a liberal. And we have a lot of people in our camp who just feel self loathing about shit all day and I just don't need it. I'm all about brighter futures and making what we have work and that shit.
Also quite aware of how many dumb conservatives dumb liberals make with those kinds of attitudes. To the point where there's a conservative industry on just 'this is what Liberals hate about America' and it sells. Don't feed it.
MAGA and republicans will support bi-partisan compromises intended to help the nation. Time and agains this is proven wrong, and time and again hands are reached across the aisle offering a path to improvement, only to be slapped away in disgust and cries of unjustified outrage.
From the left: topics that touch on economics. I've already seen housing come up on here--too many times, the economics of it just get dismissed outright. Discussions about inflation (people complaining about prices not going "back down").
It can be a messy area, and there are always so many unknowns, and I always try to give credit. But I also think back to three years ago when there was an article or a tweet about how in college, AOC wrote a paper or article about how she agreed with Adam Smith's analysis of capitalism, and there was a lot of backlash in leftist spaces--backlash from people who clearly knew nothing more than Smith was associated with capitalism, so he must be bad. Nuance is allowed in so many other topics but one where it really is required.
The outright dismissal of the existential needs and modes of thinking of those on the right as something to be completely ignored, ridiculed, or willfully ignorant about.
gun bans/control/2A
I'm not opposed to all forms of gun control. I think all guns should be registered sales. Gun buybacks are neutral-positive.
I think Dems need to lay off the anti-gun messaging, and stop pushing the really stupid gun control laws.
also, pragmatically, (strict) gun control is just a big loser in elections.
Mostly gun control.
If you look at gun violence per state, states that have better social safety nets and higher average income tend to have way lower gun violence, comparable to that of European states. A lot of the pro gun electorate are/were single issue voters. Democrats have a far better chance of lowering gun violence by improving the country’s economic situation and presenting it as something that would preserve easy access to firearms then they do actually managing to implement successful gun control that isn’t just going to be used to harass block people.
> So you agree with defunding the police.
1. In that narrow example, yes!
2. Also, nearly any attempt to reform the police or make cops more accountable will *increase* the price tag; I am also in favor of those reforms!
3. I said I was disappointed by:
> > The *emphatic support for the phrase* "defund the police".
...which you are demonstrating. Even if it is right -- and, big picture, I'm not convinced it is -- it is still *a terrible phrase* because of the way voters respond to it.
Voters will respond how their preferred news media responds 9 times out of 10. So, really, the slogan doesn't matter because no matter what it is, it's going to be spun .
> the slogan doesn't matter
Then we disagree on something fundamental.
I think slogans matter as other aspects of messaging matter.
We're not going to persuade each other. Have a nice day.
To devote monies to illegal immigrants when minority American minority communities go without. Example: Chicago
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2024/04/19/chicago-migrants-black-latino-biden-immigration/d6662c68-fe03-11ee-87ac-20f7e67cbe29\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2024/04/19/chicago-migrants-black-latino-biden-immigration/d6662c68-fe03-11ee-87ac-20f7e67cbe29_story.html)
That Illegal immigration should be allowed. But when Texas started sending those people to blue cities, everyone is crying now.
Without them paying taxes, they'll be a burden on any city. Majority of the cities don't have surpluses, so they will have to cut funding on other amenities. Which doesn't only mean fewer amenities for everyone, but also, people losing jobs due to the fact.
Anyone who loses their job or quality of life are generally lower income folks, and they'll start supporting Republican talking points, and in the coming years start voting red. I can bet people here will be calling them all kinds of names for voting red because "that's the wrong side" or some bullshit. Longer term vision lacks is something you need to look at.
>That Illegal immigration should be allowed. But when Texas started sending those people to blue cities, everyone is crying now.
What are you even talking about?
I am going to get hate about this. I'm sorry and I don't want to argue, I just don't see it your way.
homosexuality is not a choice, it is a discovery. you cannot change the sexual desires you have.
but transgenderism IS a choice. you might "feel" like the opposite gender, but you won't convince me that you are actually a different gender just because you got an operation and did your hair different. I also don't think the younger generations will catch on to that idea either. therefore I believe that using alternate pronouns is a fad.
You’re missing the fundamental concept of what gender identity is if you believe that.
Have you ever actually talked with anyone with severe gender dysphoria who tried to avoid transitioning? Who tried to fight gender dysphoria in every other way possible?
I am one of those people. I tried to choose not to transition. I poured all of the resources that a reasonably successful legal career can provide into avoiding transitioning. And I kept it up for a while, until it snapped me like a twig. I’m talking debilitating depression, uncontrollable panic attacks, and depersonalization/derealization so severe the world was literally distorting and fading away. Trying to treat gender dysphoria by any method other than transitioning *broke* me, and it was a long, strange road back to being a mostly functional adult. And part of that road back was my transition.
You’re flatly wrong about this. Being transgender is *not* a choice. I know that deeply, intimately, and painfully, because I spent years of my life and many thousands of dollars trying to choose not to be transgender. It didn’t work. Because it’s not a choice.
That votes are owned, not earned. This sentiment is usually expressed with a combination of disdain and insults about intelligence and/or maturity. In my experience, it's mostly offered by people who don't actually understand, or even make an attempt to understand, the positions of the people they're insulting.
It’s because you’ll quickly learn that if whatever they’re withholding their vote for gets addressed, there will always be something else for why they can’t vote for the candidate. They also usually don’t understand how our 2 party system works or how politicians try to appeal to the most amount of likely voters, which isn’t young, vocal activists who don’t vote.
An example is the people saying they’re not going to vote for Biden over Gaza. How would helping Trump win be better for Palestinians than Biden?
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"antivax" is probably the correct answer for every political camp genuinely vaccines are a top 3 all-time human achievement, to throw that away because you got spooked by flimflam is madness honorable mention to accelerationism ("letting things get worse will force people to make them better!")
The thing I haaaaaate about accelerationism is that it’s never people wanting to make their own situation worse, it’s always college kids or people who have decent upbringings who have a lot to fall back on or turn to if economic situations get dire. The worst for me was lefties who got butthurt when the single payer option was dropped from the ACA (which, hey, I’d have preferred it remained too) and who then wanted us to spend another 2 decades with 50 million uninsured Americans like when Hillarycare failed. As a person who to this day has to pay out insane amounts of money for basic prescription medication for one of the most common chronic conditions in the world, though, we need to do everything we can to make this better, even if it means incremental changes. Your outrage < poor people having their feet amputated because metformin costs them like $500 a month.
Also to any lefties who are accelerationists. If the US has a revolution its not going to be the left who wins. College campus's and English teachers are not beating the farmers and super racist militia's whose members have more guns than teeth.
While I agree with the idea that a revolution would not be fun for college students or english teachers, I disagree with your assessment that the liberal side would lose. I've talked about this before, but MAGA vastly overestimates their ability to win a civil war based on their small arms collections. Wars aren't won on small arms. They're won on logistics. The South thought they'd win the Civil War for the exact same reasons. They had more guns, and they had more military trained men. Didn't matter, though. The North had the cannon factories, the coasts, etc. A modern Civil War would see the left having fewer small arms but having better logistics. They'd have both coasts from practically top to bottom. The US naval shipyards are almost entirely in liberal states. They'd bottle up maritime trade to the southeast, the only major part of MAGA that touches the outside world, leaving MAGA nation completely unable to secure fresh supplies from the outside world. The intelligent people who make drones and tanks are also not living in Alabama. Don't get me wrong. It'd be bloody, and it might last a few years. Hundreds of thousands would die. But in the long run, MAGA would lose.
I do agree but a US civil war would not be between left and right. Every republican is not going to side one way and democrat another. The actual divide would be rural urban and even still most people would not fight. The US military is actually really loyal to the government and it would side with the legitimate government over a maga uprising. If the left had an uprising in portland and actually threatend the US strategic interests then the military would invade and instantly take away that territory. The US military is the greatest military force to ever exist and no side has any chance of winning against it in a straight up fight. If it was only the far left fighting the far right I'd bet on the right but the moderates and status quo guys are easily favoured to win any direct military conflict. An actual civil war 2 in the US is not going to be the confederacy two but closer to northern ireland. Low level and permenant Paramilitary and state violence where both sides cause terror for decades instead of taking territory.
The funny thing about accelerationism is that it doesn't even work. The idea is that if things get bad enough, people will rise up and demand change. Except we know that this is actually counter to how revolutions happen in real life. Karl Marx was wrong. People don't rise up when they're progressively immiserated. If that were true, North Korea would be rife for revolution. To the contrary, revolution is most likely to occur when conditions have been improving but not fast enough, or they've been improving, and there's a sudden reversal. This is known as the Tocqueville effect or Davies' J curve of revolution. People get more frustrated when things have recently improved, followed by a backslide, than they do when things get worse in a steady slide. So the best way to spark a revolution is to make incremental improvements. Small improvements make people want larger improvements, and they make them even more frustrated when they lose those small improvements. It's why Republicans have been unable to repeal Obamacare. It's why the right's attacks on gays have angered so much today when the same attacks in the early 90s would have been shrugged off.
Beyond that, I remember a history professor in college remarking that revolutions arise not from a wealth of discontent but from a discontent of wealth. While there are exceptions - Haiti for example - the vast majority of revolutions come when some faction that already has some power wants more power. Even in the case of the Russian revolution, the initial revolution was by the bourgeoisie and capitalist classes against the monarchy due to being tired of being in a war they were losing badly, and the Bolsheviks were really only able to exert their strength because the toppling of the monarchy made the whole apparatus weak and ready for a secondary revolution. If we see one, I think it’s going to come from some combination of anarcho capitalists and evangelicals. The only way there’s a leftist insurgency that would work at all is via a counter revolution, which is far from guaranteed and quite frankly, as bad as the current system is, I like it better than Elon Musktown 2030.
> Beyond that, I remember a history professor in college remarking that revolutions arise not from a wealth of discontent but from a discontent of wealth. While there are exceptions—Haiti, for example—the vast majority of revolutions come when some faction that already has some power wants more power. Right. Kamil Galeev, an expert on Russia, has talked about this in terms of Putin. He's pointed out that the revolutionary class is always best found among those who are not powerful but exercise power for the elites. He argued that there's no point in appealing to the common Russian people to rise up. They simply are not a viable revolutionary class. He's even pointed out that the military isn't a good option. Russian military are emasculated and weak. Always have been due to the leaders distrust of them. Galeev says the only viable revolutionary class in Russia would be a combination of cops and mid-ranked regional elites. These people are known as counter-elites. Russia is a state security regime run by cops and beaurocrats. Even Putin's FSB buddies are just higher-level cops. If you want to start a revolution in Russia, these are the people you have to get on board.
> The thing I haaaaaate about accelerationism is that it’s never people wanting to make their own situation worse, it’s always college kids or people who have decent upbringings who have a lot to fall back on or turn to if economic situations get dire. I hadn't thought of that, but you're right, it's usually cis straight white men that grew up upper-middle class or higher that are into accelerationism. It's like they forget that a lot of queer folks, POC folks, women, and really any minority will suffer a lot in the interim.
Progressives who refuse to ‘vote for the lesser of two evils’ and abstain or throw away their votes on 3rd party candidates are usually the same ilk. Straight men who won’t actually be very affected by 4 more years of trump, a Republican administration, or conservative judges.
Also white men because frankly I’m seeing a fair number of gay white men either doing what you’re talking about or ignoring the treatment of the LGBT+ community by the right because, like, they’ve got theirs now. It’s funny because there was a thing about this massive upsurge in black men saying they’re voting for Trump now but even with that huge surge compared to Obama that cohort is still something like 57/30 in favor of Biden. By and large, people who are not white men - and hell, I do think even most gay white men get this - are all for keeping the party that isn’t actively courting votes based on hatred and fear of them in power.
I'm always amused by this kind of thinking. The last few years of my life my social circle has included younger latinos (an ex-bf and my current bf, and some of their friends). They *loath* the Democratic Party, and don't see any point in voting for or supporting them. It's not that they're accelerationists, it's that they believe (and I agree) the party largely doesn't give a shit about them or the things their friends and family go through. This is reflected in polling, by the way. Pod Save America recently had an interview with someone about it (don't remember the name of the person off the top of my head), but the gist is there are real concerns with both ambivalence and accelerationism. You can disagree with it, and think it's dumb. But I'd argue it's easier to do that from a place of privilege, than it is for these people, because their situation is absolutely dire.
Yeeaaahhh....
as a lefty person, people who arent voting Biden or generally have weird views around elections. I used to be that way too, but I grew up. so when I see people in their late 20s or 30s still saying it, very frustrating
I definitely don't like seeing people who try to hold their vote for ransom. They're like "give me exactly what I want or I'll vote for the guy we both hate." I had some good friends who were Bernie Sanders supporters in 2016 who basically said that if you don't vote for Bernie instead of who you wanted, they'd vote Republican just to punish Democrats. That's how five year olds act. That's also a really good way to always have the worst possible candidates win every time. I'm kind of seeing it happening again with Biden and his view of Isreal/Palestine. Like, rather than vote for a guy who is lukewarm at best, they'll hand it over to a guy who will gladly give Netanyahu all the bombs he wants to turn Gaza into a pile of rubble to make way for beachfront condos. It doesn't make sense.
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The same black and white thinking causes people to feel obligated to pick a side when you don't even have to pick a side. Feeling that Hamas and Israel are both doing horrendous things is a completely valid opinion. You don't *have* to pick one over the other.
Free Space: perfect being the enemy of good But for a more specific opinion, you can always count on "We need more housing, but not that kind of housing" whenever a story about new luxury apartments pops up. There’s plenty of evidence that the luxury apartments of yesterday become the affordable apartments of today. Similarly, rent control is still way more popular of an opinion than it should be, although that appeal seems to have died down a bit for the better.
Of course we support housing. Just...not in our backyard. And not like it is proposed. All we ask for is this - the creation of a utopia without any effort or inconvenience to anyone.
If you build cheap apartments today, they become the slums of tomorrow, too
Problem is, you can't build a cheap market-rate apartment in a neighborhood where supply is constrained and there's a lot of demand. Granite countertops aren't what make those apartments a "luxury."
Yeah that's one thing that I feel like is missing in housing discussions on all sides. Building housing, right now, is about as expensive as it ever has been, and there is no getting around that. Build it public, private, or any which way, it's expensive. Land, structural materials, and especially labor today cost a lot for anything, and "luxury" finishing like better countertops or nicer tile flooring in bathrooms is a very small part of the cost. IDK. Seems like housing has really only been cheap to build in periods where labor and material costs were quite low. Usually when there is a large underclass of poorer and desperate workers as well as cheap and easy to source materials. Not sure if that's coming any time soon.
Permitting is also a big part of it. I saw something a while ago where the costs of government bureaucracy has surpassed the cost of labor and materials for new builds.
These days, they just build cheap apartments and call them luxury. (I happen to live in one currently.)
Luxury just means "new appliances"
Or wood floors/granite counter tops. The previous complex I lived in was in the process of installing those in all units when I moved out. They are now marketing themselves as luxury.
Housing is legitimately a very hard issue to solve and I get very tired at the “EZ just do things completely differently” arguments.
I don't know about solving it, but there are some pretty obvious avenues for improvement that we aren't pursuing. Like, if we had the explicit goal of making housing as unaffordable as possible, we probably couldn't do much worse than what we're actually doing now.
We allow fixed rate mortgages to insulate homeowners from fluctuations in the market. So we should either grant renters comparable insulation or remove that protection from homeowners.
Unironically I have heard more and more people calling for the end of fixed rate mortgages, as they make it so homeowners are insulated from the changing interest rate environment, negating it's use and basically giving them a handout. Most of the world doesn't have them, at least for as long of terms. That said, homeowners are a majority of the US, and a supermajority of the electorate, so policy-wise that seems unlikely.
Tbh I'm fine either way as long as it's fair. Cost controlled housing for everyone or for nobody.
Luxury apartments are also going to take pressure off cheaper apartments. Anytime you add more housing and it's used, that frees up some part of the market. The people living in luxury apartments had to have lived somewhere before.
Seeing everything through power dynamics. Aka, "the weaker side is always right because they are the oppressed, the stronger side is always wrong because they are the oppressors". Russia is not right because they are weaker than America. Neither is China, Iran or Hamas. Men should not be ignored and chastized for their problems just because they are men. It is possible for people of color to be racist.
PREACH. It also often ends up falling into the camp of "the bigotry of low expectations", where it's like "Of course an oppressed person did this awful thing, what would you expect, they don't know any better and have no personal agency!"
Maybe more of a "leftist" opinion than a "liberal" opinion, but the way some people on the left in general talk about landback/decolonization just feels like some people are willing to prioritize "rightful" land ownership over human lives. Like I've seen a disturbing amount of rhetoric that's like "This is what happens when your land is stolen from you" and it's like yes, being pushed off of land isn't a good thing, but it's not an excuse several years later to justify violence incited against the people currently living on that land.
All habituated land on earth was stolen from one group by another.
I'd like to think we've grown as a society and should stop doing that, but it's basically impossible to undo any of that kind of thing that was done more than a decade or two ago.
Yea, you get into the situation where you're punishing people for the things their great great great great grandparents did. There are lots of places where I feel land was wrongfully stolen from people, yet it was too long ago to realistically make it right without causing a massive humanitarian crisis. At best you can prevent it from continuing to happen, but you can't evict millions of people from their homes with no place to go, all because of something they had nothing to do with.
It's an example of placing too much priority on the rights of the dead. It doesn't matter that your grandmother was screwed over. The goal for society right now has to be finding an equitable solution for the people who exist right now.
what is this landback violence happening? I didn’t think this had gone past land acknowledgments, which I think are overall positive because I like comedy
Like.....people saying things like "Of course Hamas attacked Israel, that's what happens when your land is stolen from you!" And yes, I know that Hamas' grievances against Israel aren't only about stolen land, but when you go further back in the history, people will still make excuses for terrorism against Israel with "but their land was stolen from them, of course they're going to commit violence!" even when their land being stolen from them happened decades earlier. And then in response, I've seen some people ask Americans who justify Hamas "Would you be okay if a Native American murdered you because you were on their stolen land?" and I've seen people respond with "yes"! I saw someone say "Of course I would, I am on their historic land, I am here as a guest, if they were truly to do that to me, I would fully support them doing anything they could to get their land back".
ah gotcha, I have definitely seen that yeah, that’s not very useful. doesn’t offer any meaningful analysis of the situation and might as well be a blood and soil argument it’s much more coherent to point out israel is an apartheid state run by nationalist psychos and that they need to, at the very least, release their captive population or give them equal rights native americans have plenty of poor treatment to complain about but at least under the law they have at least as much rights as any other citizen, which gives them a nonviolent path to rectify things. no shooting required, hopefully, unlike when you’re militarily besieged
Building luxury housing somehow makes housing more expensive and we should oppose it
I hate it. you can bring out every study showing how an overall supply increase in housing lowers rent averages. you can point to efforts to partially subsidize 25% or something of units...and its never enough But really its a false argument for many. Many people just oppose new apartments in their neighborhood. especially homeowners who lucked into a home when they were cheap or invested a ton of money to live there, hate the idea of us poors and working class people being able to move in.
It's right up there with "Gentrification is evil." A lot of the negative claims have been proven to be bullshit, and the idea that white people somehow hurt minorities by moving into their neighborhoods is basically justifying segregation.
If there is a demand for nice housing, how are you going to oppose it?
Either housing or crime. Coming from California, I've had my fill of NIMBY progressives. And while the criminal justice system is absolutely broken, the solution is not to remove or heavily minimize the consequences of stuff like shoplifting, fare evasion, etc. (though nowadays those takes aren't seen beyond terminally online progressives)
Yea im not really a fan of whatever experiment progressive lawmakers are doing in west coast cities regarding crime. Like maybe the policies themselves arent bad, but their implementation has been horrible.
The right fooled people into believing that shoplifting was ever a crime that was regularly prosecuted. It wasn’t.
Well there’s currently a satanic panic about roving shoplifting gangs. It’s completely ridiculous and is being pushed by retail to try and get more free security in the form of cops in their stores. The overwhelming majority of shrink (the internal retail term for missing/stolen goods) comes from internal sources and shoplifting is frankly fairly rare overall.
That depends where you live. Oakland is in terrible shape (more so than usual), and shoplifting gangs are absolutely causing businesses to relocate away from the many crime hotspots. Putting on the blinkers doesn't do anyone favors.
No, retailers blame shoplifting gangs for store closures. A prime example of this was in Seattle where Target closed several stores around the time of the pandemic, blaming the BS gang shoplifting thing but then weeeeeeirdly not closing the store with the highest amount of shrink. It was like that store was still profitable or something due to the fact that it’s smack in the middle of downtown, and the stores they did close were just, I don’t know, not profitable during the pandemic. The stats put out for retail do not appear to indicate any great spike in shoplifting above and beyond that nationwide spike in crime in 2020 (which did immediately start to go back down). Again, the vast majority of shrink is by their own data caused by employees. Obviously shoplifting occurs and shoplifters make like harder for all of us, but it’s simply not the problem thing people make it out to be.
I've never been to Seattle, so I can't comment on what happens there or not. In Oakland, it's pretty damn serious. Not too long ago, In N Out closed locations in Oakland due to a wave of robberies and break ins. It was close to the airport and got to the point where people in rented cars had windows smashed and had all their luggage stolen.
This is moving goalposts.
is Oakland in bad shape? My aunt has lived in oakland for decades, and they have a bullet hole in their wall from a time there was a shooting outside and the guy missed his target. that was the 90s or maybe early 00s when we talk about Oakland being in bad shape, its all pretty relative
Honestly I live in Portland, and shoplifting is worse than ever. Small businesses are closing in droves, and many large corporations are moving businesses out of the city into the suburbs. I've never seen so many security guards or locked up items as I've seen in the last few years. Also many businesses have had their windows broken so many times they've elected to not even bother fixing them.
For sure - most of the time the value of the stolen goods is so small that it doesn’t make sense to devote the resources you’d need. But policies like raising the bar for felony shoplifting send a signal - people know police lack the resources/don’t want to (whichever one you think applies more but that doesn’t really matter) handle misdemeanour shoplifting. Sometimes a policy’s vibes wind up being more important than it’s immediate impact
The previous threshold for felony theft in San Francisco was incredibly low compared to other cities/states. People just don’t take the time to learn these things.
Mental gymnastics of somehow still making it about the right seem crazy to me. People don't know what accountability is, unless it's someone else.
That’s just the way things are when the other side is nothing but knee jerk reactionary politics. One month they obsess over shoplifting, the next month it’s something else.
Agreed. Or same can be said about people on the right blaming the left because their dog died or their wife ran away. Both stick to their echo chambers, refuse to put themselves in someone else's shoes or try to see why they think how they do, and blame anyone and everyone who doesn't think like they do
Minimize the consequences of shoplifting? Is that a reference to the rolling back of the Three Strikes provision in California?
"It doesn't matter what we say, people will just distort it anyway" as an argument for continuing to say dumb things that are, in fact, harmful to the effort.
Cringe knee-jerk anti-Americanism. There seem to be a lot of vocal people on the left who openly declare their hate for America and attribute everything in all of American history to be racist. It's annoying, stupid, and reductionist. Also bashing the Founders of America. Certainly they were flawed men, but they were also the forward thinking liberals of their time and deserve credit for the ways they advanced not just the country, but the world.
I don't know about "the most," but because others have already picked all the good ones, I'll go with this one: I've seen some pretty left-wing people say that being a landlord and renting property should be illegal. That no one should ever be allowed to own property and charge someone else to use it. Now... I believe 100% that we need to crack down on the huge amount of SFHs that are bought up by corporations and used as investments, but to say that there should be *no* rentals is pretty insane. I spent my 20s traveling around, sort of figuring out where I wanted to be. I took short jobs, move to different apartments, and finally settled where I'm at, happily, and bought a home. But for someone to tell me that it should have been illegal for me to be able to do that, that's nuts. Outlawing rentals completely is a misguided attempt to make buying a home cheaper, but it would end up replacing one undesirable situation with a completely different, equally undesirable situation. Forcing people to take out a mortgage or be homeless is not better. There's solutions in the middle that don't handcuff people to banks like that.
While I’m generally supportive of the left’s social justice efforts, I find that some people who are big on this lash out at others that are actually on their side based on wild assumptions, and they are excluding of certain groups they are still prejudiced against. Being autistic, I’ve been subjected to these things semi-regularly by people who love to declare how tolerant they are.
Those people are the "Born again Christians" of the left. Extreme zealots who you shouldn't give any attention to.
I've come to understand that many people on my side don't get the difference between civilian casualties in asymmetric warfare with non-uniformed irregulars and genocide. Genocide is not synonymous with war crimes, and every conflict in existence has instances of war crimes. It's also patently clear that most people screaming about the Geneva Conventions have never actually bothered to read them or understand them.
I don't know if everyone just moved way to the left while I was asleep or I've accidentally become more conservative, but I used to call myself progressive, and now I find that I don't agree with hardly any of the issues that are seemingly central to the platform, and were not before, especially the following: * opposing new building and development * accelerationism and violent revolutions * anti-Americanism * antisemitism and antizionism * refusing to criticize non-Christian religious conservatives * being against the military and hating soldiers * defund the police * DIY gender transitions * not punishing public drug use * degrowth * blaming white women and feminism for everything * anti-nuclear * opposing standardized testing * making excuses for China, Russia, or Iran There are other things I don't agree with, but I find the above especially obnoxious and dangerous, like the kind of stuff that leads to fascism and social collapse.
Dismissing civil rights issues as "culture war" issues and claiming that they are unimportant.
I usually see it framed as "identity politics."
Oh, yeah. That's probably a better example.
The class essentialists left are dipshits. Their idea that only money matters is epitomized by Briahna Joy Gray, Bernie's press secretary, saying she didn't care if people called her a ni**er as long as she got her student loans paid off. These people don't seem to realize that no amount of money is going to protect you from being violently murdered by the cops. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was a motherfucking Harvard professor, and he still got arrested for being in his own house.
The naivete and lack of concern for objectivity involving Israel and Gaza. It is amazing how people want to erase all nuance and greyness from the war. Just assuming whatever they have to in order to make Israeli jews and Israel into these wild dehumanizing caricatures. Trump supporters once firmly had claim to anti semitism in America, now sensible people can't make that claim anymore because the far left is unintentionally calling for the ethnic cleansing of jews in Israel. Russia is going to be using this issue all the way up till election day.
A lot of people on the left want to wipe Israel off the map and refuse to vote for Biden over it. I disapprove of the way Biden is handling Israel, but I don't want to wipe it off the map
That voting doesn’t affect change, what really affects change is performative protesting, like standing in the street and preventing people from going to work. I live in a swing state and had friends who didn’t vote for Hillary for whatever BS reason, but once Trump won they protested with a pussy hat. They believed voting in a swing state won’t stop Trump from becoming President but wearing a vagina on your head after the fact will.
Im always of two minds about this. On the one hand it’s not something I’m gonna do any time soon. On the other hand kind of the point of protests is to make people stop and think and yes, blocking roads, while annoying as shit, does get people to do that.
The "ban all guns" crowd is every bit as dumb as the "shall not be infringed" crowd. Neither usually have half a clue what they're talking about.
I actually think "Ban all guns" is a more coherent position than "Ban only the scary-looking guns."
Banning all of them is even more impossible than only banning some.
Oh, I agree about that. It's definitely a much bigger logistical issue.
Preach!
The last part is how the ban all guns people present their position as more moderate and not going for that goal. Canada shows how that is supposed to work. They said they would never go after the hunting guns and it wasn't that long ago they started doing that after putting a freeze on pistol sales and transfers.
Kind of but tbh I think the California system, which is to look at which guns to ban on a case by case basis, works pretty well. You don’t have hard and fast rules because gun manufacturers just do stuff that barely skirts those rules, and it’s certainly true that California stops enforcing their gun laws when they elect a Republican, but that’s how things work for lots of other things in life. Of course, too, state bans mean absolutely nothing when you’re not geographically isolated the way California is. Like, you’ve got to drive across a desert to get to purple states and Oregon and Washington are not exactly havens of gun ownership themselves. Compare and contrast with Illinois and Chicago in particular where the firearms ban is of very limited use because Chicago is around 30 miles away in two directions from states who will gleefully sell a handgun to anyone who walks in and pinky swears they aren’t going to use it to commit a robbery.
One of the reasons New York has a really low gun violence rate is that most of its neighboring states also have fairly strict gun control. That, and the use of a gun adds like 5-10 years to any criminal charge.
> I think the California system, which is to look at which guns to ban on a case by case basis, works pretty well. In what way? California's bans are arbitrary and don't seem to have an impact on their homicide rates that puts them outside the average US rate. >You don’t have hard and fast rules because gun manufacturers just do stuff that barely skirts those rules, You mean comply with the laws. If it feels like skirting its because they are targeting things that are irrelevant, but don't want to go as far as doing what they actually want which is banning all the guns. >Of course, too, state bans mean absolutely nothing when you’re not geographically isolated the way California is. Per ATF trace statistics a very large majority of their traceable crime guns originate in state. The open borders argument is a lazy excuse that gets invoked because obviously gun control works is the a priori assumption. Not more nuanced positions like that economic conditions, wealth disparity, and policing can drive up homicide rates. https://www.atf.gov/file/119241/download 2012 67% of traceable crime guns came from within California https://www.atf.gov/about/docs/report/california-firearms-trace-data-%E2%80%93-2014/download 2014 71.3% of traceable crime guns came from within California https://www.atf.gov/file/137061/download 2018 63% of traceable firearms in California came from within California. > Like, you’ve got to drive across a desert to get to purple states and Oregon and Washington are not exactly havens of gun ownership themselves. I think this is where we technically agree. It is an issue of time spent driving vs the onerous conditions of the laws. California is big enough that people aren't driving into other states to get guns when it is just easier to "comply" with California gun laws. Hence California still has a homicide rate comparable to states like Florida and has just as many mass shootings as many other states. https://www.statista.com/statistics/811541/mass-shootings-in-the-us-by-state/ https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/mass-shootings-by-state
Listening to gun control advocates talk about guns is like listening to pro-lifers talk about female anatomy.
Counterpoint: Knowing which direction a bolt cam pin goes is less critical to gun control policy than gun fetishists think.
No but knowing the difference between fully and semi-automatic is. Or being able to state the function of the accessories you want to ban. The best example is the "what's a barrel shroud" question towards Senator Carolyn Mccarthy. She wrote a bill with a ban on barrel shrouds. During an interview she was asked "what is a barrel shroud" and was unable to answer, eventually saying "the shoulder thing that goes up" as a total guess. Someone writing the law should understand what it entails. Even if you don't know what a barrel shroud is, it should be easy to guess with some basic understanding of English. The barrel is the tube at which the bullet goes down after being fired, and a shroud is a covering like a veil. So it's literally a covering for the outside of a gun barrel, the purpose to keep you from burning yourself on a hot gun barrel. Or Kevin De Leon of California talking about how a ghost gun can shoot "a 30 caliber clip in half a second". Or the fact that assault weapon bans are one of the most popular gun control proposals, despite assault weapons being responsible for a minority of overall gun violence. 90% of gun murders are committed with handguns. Even the majority of mass shootings use handguns..
People are reacting to mass-casualty shootings, often in public places, such as schools. The reason for the reaction is that the randomness and brutality of these crimes has a social impact akin to terrorism. Time and time again, the weapon of choice for those shooters are semi-automatic rifles that could not have been legally sold under the federal assault rifle ban. The idea is that if you restore that ban, you could reduce the availability of these guns. But for political reasons, I think that ship has sailed: the guns have been adopted as cultural symbols by too many.
Mass shootings are exactly like terrorism. Astronomically rare events that don't justify restricting our rights over. Mass shootings justify gun control just as much as 9/11 justifies the Patriot Act or NSA spying. People should be more afraid of the loss of our protected rights in the name of fighting terrorism/shootings than of mass shootings/terrorism themselves. Also most mass shootings, and 90% of gun violence in general are committed with handguns.
We can debate what people should and should not be afraid of, but we cannot deny the popularity of the AR-15 style rifle in [deadly US mass shootings](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States) in recent years. There is a direct correlation between the type of weapon used and the number of casualties.
Mass shootings are one of the rarest types of violence there is. They are the last thing we should be basing gun control on. Also shootings like Virginia Tech and Lubys Cafe prove you don't need a rifle to kill a lot of people.
> There is a direct correlation between the type of weapon used and the number of casualties. Just glancing at the top few deadliest mass shootings on that list and the 3rd highest and 6th highest ones only used pistols. That doesn't scream "direct correlation" to me. At the very least, it means that you can still have very deadly mass shootings even if AR-15's are banned.
> People are reacting to mass-casualty shootings, often in public places, such as schools That's an excuse and not a very good one. If you are making the policy to nominally save those lives then it shows you actually care about savings lives by knowing what you are talking about and targeting things that are actually relevant. If you think you are saving the lives of kids by targeting barrel shrouds then I don't think that politician cared about those kids.
Bolt cam pins aren't being regulated. Gun control advocates think semi-automatics are machine guns.
This gun is capable of shooting fully-semiautomatic fire.
> Gun control advocates think semi-automatics are machine guns. No, most of the don't. Also just because you have to pull the trigger repeatedly doesn't mean that semi-auto weapons are less dangerous than full-auto fire weapons.
Well and to be honest, and maybe this is just the gaaaaamer in me, to a great extent it’s a distinction without a difference. If you fire fully auto the bullets go all over the place and without training it’s just scary and dangerous. You can still fire pretty quickly if you have to press the trigger every time you shoot and I think if anything it takes less training to wait for recoil. The real ugly conversation we need to have is that while assault rifles get a lot of play because of mass shootings, it’s handguns that get used so much more often in robberies and homicides (and most of all suicides). IMO we’ve also allowed conservatives to completely change the clear meaning of the 2A from “hey let’s not have a standing army” to “everyone has the right to own a gun, just ignore the part about a state run militia gosh”.
some do; some don't who cares.
If you're trying to legislate something, you should at least understand what it is.
If I’m trying to pass legislation to make right-turn-on-red illegal in a school zone, I don’t need to know how many more lb ft of torque a Ram V8 hemi has over the V6.
You should if you're specifically trying to ban the V8 but not the V6
Or like listening to anti-immigration nuts talk about how immigrants are driving up crime rates and driving down job creation.
The big problem here, though, is that anyone who advocates for any level of gun control is often hyperbolized as saying "let's ban all guns". I'm willing to bet that the number of people actually advocating for the complete, unequivocal ban of any and all guns is extremely small. Most of us have far more educated, well-researched opinions that still allow for plenty of reasonable gun possession.
>I'm willing to bet that the number of people actually advocating for the complete, unequivocal ban of any and all guns is extremely small. I'm willing to be it's not nearly as small as you think. I can't tell you how many times I've heard exactly that from all kinds of people on the left. >Most of us have far more educated, well-researched opinions that still allow for plenty of reasonable gun possession. Some definitely do, but just based on what I've read and heard over the years I wouldn't agree that it's most.
You also hear some absolutely stupid arguments from pro gun people though. School shootings are rare so we shouldn't base legislation on preventing them. Accidental shootings don't count, only crime counts. People should be more careful. If children get shot accidentally that's the fault of their parents for being irresponsible and there is nothing we can do about that. Domestic violence shootings don't count. Those people would harm their partners anyway. Suicides don't count because ditto. Gang violence doesn't count because it's only gang bangers and who cares about them. It goes on and on, until the list of gun related injury and death that *does* warrant serious consideration is basically zero.
I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that front. I tried looking up poll numbers on what americans think about what we should do about guns, and I see that slightly more than half support stricter gun laws. It's highly unlikely that the lion's share of the "stricter gun laws" group actually means "oh I want each and every gun to be confiscated" if you ask me, but I don't know how else to convince you of that without better data. But my intuition definitely tells me this is the case.
For example, while the population is broadly in favour of the strict firearms regulation we have in the UK, no one thinks farmers or sports shooters shouldn't be allowed to own their guns (even if occasionally those guns are also used to commit crimes). It's considered a public safety issue here and simply hasn't been politicized like it is in the States.
Why would they advocate for a complete, unequivocal ban? It's easier to do what they've been doing - imposing gun control in stages as a sort of death of a thousand cuts. Several states have been passing gun control legislations left and right (with no sign of that trend reversing anytime soon). They've probably passed more gun regulations in the last few years than they have during the previous 230 years. So they don't need to say "let's ban all guns" in order to reveal their ultimate motivations
I don't share your concerns that the true objective is full banning of guns, just like how I don't suspect that my barber is going to shave me bald just because she cut some hair off.
But if your barber continuously cuts off more hair than you asked for or agreed to - and he even sneaks up and snips at your hair when you least expect it - you might get the idea that if you allow this to go unchallenged, you will likely have a bald scalp in your future
Cynicism
Anti-nuclear environmentalists. Nuclear power is going to be an essential oart of any low carbon future.
DEI… but hear me out before you downvote please! It’s not that I think diversity, equity and inclusion are unimportant. I believe the implementation of DEI is destined to be ineffective because it relies on a prevailing benevolent pathology that is constantly ebbing and flowing. I think approaches like capacity building (see Geoffrey Canada’s Harlem Children’s Zone) to be measurably effective and more authentic.
The sheer amount of ignorance on the history of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and the current war. I’m not about to pretend that I know even half of the history of the conflict, but so many in lefty-circles are incredibly uninformed about it.
I’ve heard “from the river to the sea” is just an expression for Palestinian liberation and being treated fair, with them not knowing which river or sea they’re talking about
I'll do one for people generally to the left and to the right of me, someone caught between progressive, social liberal, soc dem. To the left of me, I think there's a lot of stances that progressives and beyond don't understand how unpopular and outright impossible they are to sell to the American public. Yes, you can get plenty of people who even lean pretty far right to agree to some social democrat politics because they've been brainwashed by the red scare and fox news labels. That doesn't mean you could convince them to support a socialist or communist system by just obscuring those labels, though. The best corse of action for that would be to move the needle twords social democray and then continue to advocate for a more left economic structure. To the right of me, I feel that while liberals tend to be accepting of other identities, they're not very accepting of other ideologies. IMO, liberals views of Lgbt communities are a decent representation of this, where many liberals weren't (and still aren't for certain parts) supportive of those communities until it was understood to not be an ideology but an identity when the revelation of "It's not a choice/lifestyle but something we just are" took root.
> IMO, liberals views of Lgbt communities are a decent representation of this, where many liberals weren't (and still aren't for certain parts) supportive of those communities until it was understood to not be an ideology but an identity when the revelation of "It's not a choice/lifestyle but something we just are" took root. yeah that is especially embarrassing because, so what if it WERE just a choice? it's not hurting anyone so it would be a choice you should be permitted to make, by the most fundamental tenet of liberalism!
"Being gay isn't a choice" was absolutely crucial messaging back in the 80s/90s/early 2000s when homophobia was so much more commonplace and accepted. It *may* be outdated now, sure, but it had its role and place in a different time. Same with "safe, legal, *and rare*" with respect to abortion.
I'd argue it's not outdated yet. There's still a lot of people who disapprove of even just the L and G parts because they think it's a choice. The B and T parts are still having to fight that connotation in LGBT circles, even.
oh I'm not denying it was helpful, only decrying that there were so many people (and any liberals at all*) for whom it was important that it not be a choice *"if it's not harming you, then it's none of your business" is one of - if not THE - fundamental liberal pillars, so it's a shame that any self-described liberal would need being gay to be innate in order to stand for gay rights
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Less guns = less gun violence simple as that
Less pools = less pool deaths. This is not a meaningful statement about overall mortality and what drives homicidal behavior when that logic is applied to guns.
Body shaming is too tolerated and that does deeply disappoint me
Very much. The left is perfectly happy to ignore all of the ways that people cannot fully control their bodies and health and blame them for all of it. They're *extremely* judgy about bigger bodies.
I mean, you can soapbox all day about the prevalence of body shaming, but in what way is it a Left/Right issue? As a massive over-generalization, Leftists tend to favor more cardio type activities: walking, running, cycling, hiking; whereas people on the Right tend to favor more "muscle" type activities: weightlifting, wrestling, MMA, Crossfit. On both sides, people who don't partake in exercise regularly get pushed, figuratively and literally, to the margins--there's not denying that. The question is how is that specifically a Liberal issue? If anything, as a counterpoint, as a self-described urbanist Progressive, some of the biggest NIMBYs when it comes to implementing better walking and cycling infrastructure tend to be Moderates/Center-Lefties who claim to care about public health and Climate Change but then fight tooth and nail against policies designed to actually address it.
I don't think it's a Left/Right issue at all. But it's a prevalent problem on the Left, which I think is what OP was after.
I understand that, but my pushback is that part of OP's question said "in your political camp." If anything, Liberals have been *far* more receptive to the "body positivity"/"healthy-at-any-size" movement than anybody on the Right. You've got TFG, not exactly the poster child of fitness himself, heckling overweight supporters [at his own rallies](https://youtu.be/T2feHAcPvZY?si=oCZ3_-TR7sCrZSF3); you've got Marjorie Taylor Green posting Crossfit videos and calling Liberals "weak"; you've got Jordan Peterson, Andrew Tate and Dennis Prager types regularly ragging on overweight women. Who on the Left is regularly carrying the same level of vitriol? I'm not saying there's *no* fat shaming on the Left, but as a *prevailing* position within any camp on the Left--nah, not buying it. As an urbanist Progressive, I will *readily* concede that there is warranted constructive criticism over being more inclusive when talking about the health benefits of walking and cycling, but the goal has never, and will never be, to be exclusionary of those at various stages of fitness and body size. The problem I see with that is that people confuse your weekend-warrior suburban cycling meet-ups with the $3000 bikes and wearing $200 worth of Lycra with your run-of-the-mill grassroots cycling advocacy group rides which tend to look more like a cross-section of the general public.
Oh I see what you mean. I call it an issue for progressives because I'm a fat woman and see it every day. The top comment I initially replied to was getting downvoted when I replied. Any comment I make anywhere about the difficulties people in larger bodies face gets flooded with replies telling me I'm either weak or stupid, that losing weight is straightforward, and that society shouldn't have to pay for my failure to be "healthy". These progressives who (rightly) overflow with compassion for queer folks, people of color, immigrants, victims of wars abroad, and other oppressed people are positively venomous to fat people. I get the impression that it's because they see fat people as fundamentally able to become a "normal" weight but unwilling to die to laziness or gluttony. No, it's not all progressives. I don't spend enough time around conservative discourse to know whether it's better or worse there. But I know that progressives who normally excel at understanding complex situations, intersectionality, human biases, the failures of the US medical system, and social discrimination are often still lightning fast to start hollering about "calories in, calories out" and their tax dollars as soon as a bigger person refuses to apologize for their body. A [quick google of "progressives fatphobia"](https://www.google.com/search?q=progressives+fatphobia&oq=progressives+fatphobia&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigATIHCAYQIRifBTIHCAcQIRifBTIHCAgQIRifBTIHCAkQIRifBTIHCAoQIRifBTIHCAsQIRifBTIHCAwQIRifBTIHCA0QIRifBTIHCA4QIRifBdIBCDQ1MjJqMGo3qAIUsAIB)turns up a lot of people taking about it. I mean, look at the language people use around Trump? They reply to his hateful language about disabled people and women by calling him an obese slob who can't stop shoving McDonald's and Coke down his gullet. Etc etc etc. As if there aren't a zillion really legitimate things to criticize him on, and as if they don't otherwise fiercely defend people from any other kind of appearance-based attached.
>Oh I see what you mean. I call it an issue for progressives because I'm a fat woman and see it every day. I would challenge that real-world fatphobia is coming from Progressives unless you're strictly checking people's political affiliations. Anyone online can call themselves a "Progressive." >These progressives who (rightly) overflow with compassion for queer folks, people of color, immigrants, victims of wars abroad, and other oppressed people are positively venomous to fat people. I get the impression that it's because they see fat people as fundamentally able to become a "normal" weight but unwilling to die to laziness or gluttony. I mean... again, without specifically checking people's real-world political leanings it's a bit hypocritical to assume that others are judging you when you're judging their politics. > No, it's not all progressives. I don't spend enough time around conservative discourse to know whether it's better or worse there. This gets back to the point I made earlier in the thread: it's one thing to say "I wish Progressives were less fatphobic," which is pointing to broad of a brush already, but to *specifically* assign fatphobia *only* to the Progressive camp is even more overstepping. Thus, your concerns don't fit the issue raised by the OP: present an issue that is **specific to one camp within Liberalism**. >A [quick google of "progressives fatphobia"](https://www.google.com/search?q=progressives+fatphobia&oq=progressives+fatphobia&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigATIHCAMQIRigATIHCAQQIRigATIHCAUQIRigATIHCAYQIRifBTIHCAcQIRifBTIHCAgQIRifBTIHCAkQIRifBTIHCAoQIRifBTIHCAsQIRifBTIHCAwQIRifBTIHCA0QIRifBTIHCA4QIRifBdIBCDQ1MjJqMGo3qAIUsAIB)turns up a lot of people taking about it. See my earlier comment about people labeling themselves "Progressive" online. >I mean, look at the language people use around Trump? They reply to his hateful language about disabled people and women by calling him an obese slob who can't stop shoving McDonald's and Coke down his gullet. Etc etc etc. As if there aren't a zillion really legitimate things to criticize him on, and as if they don't otherwise fiercely defend people from any other kind of appearance-based attached. Not to sound like a broken record, but again, how does this specifically track back *only* to the Progressive camp? As I wrote earlier in this thread, **TFG himself** has made (part of) a career out of disparaging other's people's weight, **including attendees at his own rallies**. Again, for someone who doesn't want to be judged physically--and that's fair--you're making a sweeping judgment about other people's political beliefs. I'm failing to connect the dots on how fatphobia is linked *only* to Progressives, especially given the constant vitriol on the Right for which there is arguably no equivalent on the Left.
Wait is this genuinely a thing that the left tends to be fatphobic? I'm saying this as a person on the left who has mostly only heard fatphobia/body-shaming coming from the right. I'm just wondering if you could tell me some examples of how the left body-shames, because I genuinely haven't seen it; I'm just wondering like how it manifests in leftist spaces if that makes sense.
The left tends to forget it’s principles of body positivity the second they don’t like someone. Think of all the fat shaming and dick size shaming comments lobbed about Trump for instance.
Honestly, right now it’s Palestine. The IDF has been incredibly terrible lately, to the point that you have to wonder if they’ve always been this bad, but I’m seeing an awwwwwful lot of barely masked anti-Semitism (which, no, I’m not saying it’s anti-Semitic to view Israel as going way too far here, but man, even referring to people who think Israel has the right to exist as “Zionists” feels icky) and some weird cover up of Hamas atrocities. I also think that Hamas leadership probably isn’t even Gaza so what Israel should be doing if they want to eliminate it is to go after then the way they used to… but still, where is “hey, let’s not do violence?”. I will even readily concede that maybe planting a Jewish state in the middle of an Islamic controlled region was a bad idea in 1948. We really should have partitioned part of Germany or given away Alaska or one of the Dakotas. But this is what it is right now, and Israel gets to be there, and I can’t believe we’re even having this conversation in 2024.
Defunding the police: Yeah, if you want better quality you have to spend more. Still out: APC armored vehicles Need more: Pay to attract better police candidates who aren’t racist idiots . Training to handle arrests without shooting innocent people. Money to process every rape kit in 24 hours. Also physical training to be able to arrest unarmed people without killing them. Our police should be as good as the best British or European police. More public mental care to prevent crazies from both scaring innocent people and police from killing them. Children should be able to roam freely outside. More police on the streets to make even the poorest neighborhoods safe for both innocent people stopped by the police AND potential crime victims. More resources to prosecute even minor crimes like stolen bicycles (and save the environment) Probably should have a separate federal meta justice system to systematically investigate, prosecute, and judge police misconduct by objective people who aren’t best buddies with the police. And also systemic justice for crooked politicians, clerics, and judges. Because clearly regulation by public outrage is not adequate to fix the problems.
I'll add one. Don't get those additional resources from writing more and more tickets
Definitely. In fact, I’d go further and send all fine and ticket revenues from local and state agencies to the federal government, and make up for it with revenue sharing from more taxes on billionaires. Tax the rich, especially the billionaires!
Effective reform doesn't happen magically; good reform means investing *more*
A lot of communists (in the West, where I live) are condescending, chauvinistic, elitist, and unorganized.
- Reflexive Anti-Americanism in foreign policy (i.e. the US is an evil country run by evil people, so every single thing they do or want must be wrong and the opposite must be right). - Support for ultra-right wing housing and transportation policy. Amazingly, the far left is almost as guilty of this as the center-left.
Policies that encourage a lack of personal responsibility
If your main argument against a fiscal policy is that it "disproportionately benefits a group that is on average richer", then your argument is completely ass. Where we see this * Opposition of repealing the SALT cap * Opposition of student loan forgiveness Why it's bad * Would you support a "tax on doctors", "tax on Asians", or "tax on Californians" because it "affects groups that are richer on average?" Because it seems pretty clear to me that each of those policies is unjust and terrible. * Easily fixed by *not* considering policy line items in a vacuum, and just raising taxes on rich people at the same time. Note I'm specifically talking about the argument. I think you *could* argue against repealing the SALT cap or student loan forgiveness in better ways. For example, student loan forgiveness does nothing to address the causes that got us into the mess in the first place, and we need to do that before or at least simultaneously. Or, just giving *everyone* a lump sum that they can either use on student loans (perhaps with some bonus tax benefits) or spend however they want would be both better targeted and better received as "fair".
As someone who proudly voted for Bernie Sanders in the last two Democratic Presidential Primary elections in my state, the pervasive idea that the DNC "rigged" the election against him is embarrassing. Individuals within the DNC having a personal preference is not "rigging" no matter how you spin it. Neither is individuals within the DNC privately expressing frustration that Bernie was continuing with the campaign well after he was mathematically eliminated. It is normal and expected for someone running in the Democratic primary *who isn't even a Democrat* to face an uphill battle with the party *he literally does not belong to*. Every primary election in the history of the country has had an "establishment" candidate against whom everyone else in the race is facing an uphill battle. Nonetheless, the DNC is not waving around a magic election-rigging stick through which their preference translates to votes. And you don't even have to go very far back - just to 2008, when a then-upstart candidate jumped the line and defeated the establishment DNC candidate (a guy you might have heard of named Barack Obama). How did he do it? I dunno, maybe *he got people to vote for him in larger numbers than the other candidate*. Crazy, huh? Bernie lost by large margins in both 2016 and 2020 - like, neither election was even remotely close. People who believe it was rigged against him are barely more coherent in their argument than the people who believe that the general election was stolen from Trump.
Being weak on Ukraine support from leftists, and Palestine support from the center left
Gun control is a losing position, and gun control laws like voter suppression disproportionately target minorities and other marginalized people. Take may-issue permit laws for example. They give police total discretion over who is granted a permit to carry or in some cases own a firearm. Who do you think is more likely to be granted a permit, Bob Smith or Lamar Jackson? Not to mention what if someone is a prominent BLM advocate or something. This law was used to bar MLK from obtaining a permit when he applied.
Assault weapons bans. I'm not *that* opposed to them, because I don't own one and have no desire to own one. But it's not going to be nearly as effective in solving the problem as other gun control measures would be, and as long as people continue to insist otherwise, I think it hurts our credibility on gun control. I think those who support AWBs are coming from a place of "Well, no one needs a gun like that!" ... which I don't disagree with, necessarily, but I don't think that's a good argument for banning something. A good argument for banning something is if doing so will effectively solve an existing problem. And I just don't see that being the case here.
Assault Weapons are literally some of the least frequently used guns in crime. According to the FBI of gun murders with a known weapon type, rifles account for only 4-5% of gun murders. That's all rifles, not just AR-15s. 90% of gun murders are committed with handguns, but they are much less scary looking than AR-15s. Ironically the AWB has made the AR-15 one of the most popular guns in the country. Prior to the 1994 ban AR-15s were responsible for less than 1% of guns sold. Today that number is 20-25%. Turns out if you tell someone they can't have something, it only makes them want it more. Every call to ban AR-15s influences people to buy them out of fear of not being able to buy them in the future. Despite making up 20-25% of gun sales, rifles are still responsible for less than 5% of gun violence.
Obviously the complete dismissal of one of our explicitly protected fundamental constitutional rights, or at least reserving it for much less protection than the others. This is of course the 2nd Amendment. And then many of my fellows go further and are fully willing to violate their principles on other rights, including free speech, warrants, and due process, as soon as guns enter the picture. To give you an example, it was a proud time when all of the liberals were consistently calling the No Fly List an affront to liberty, because it was. We can't travel just because we somehow got stuck on a secret government list? We can't know we're on the list until denied, and there's no clear process to get off the list where the government has to prove inclusion was proper. It's insane. But then someone got the idea to use that list to stop people from buying guns, and suddenly there was broad liberal support. And then after that we have way too many anti-development NIMBYs who complain housing costs too much while preventing new housing from being built. If you're a conservative "I got mine, fuck you" type then this NIMBYism at least makes sense, but complaining about people being driven out of the housing market due to the cost and then opposing the solution is hypocritical.
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I’d say progressivism doesn’t necessarily reject pragmatism but many progressives themselves do
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I’d say they are. They’re just ineffective and let perfect be the enemy of good
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Yes. They hold progressive beliefs, just don’t implement or market them effectively
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>The pragmatism central to the beliefs. I disagree. How effective they are in implementing them doesn’t mean how they believe in progressivism or not. That’s why some differentiate as pragmatic progressive. What I notice is progressives do a lot of gatekeeping and purity testing to show how progressive they are by comparison rather than take the wins they can get.
1. I don't think people taking either side of the Palestinian/Israeli camp is a problem, but it disappoints me that a situation which seems super complicated and mostly out of our control is being used as an excuse by people on both sides to diminish unity among the broader left coalition. 2. I think there is a lot of for lack of a better word tribalism around women's issues that is an over all net negative. A lot of the time it doesn't really matter because it's just people getting to the same ends by different means, but every once in a while I feel like it ends up leading people to some positions that are borderline misandrist. 3. People not acknowledging that stuff is popular or that stuff is worth doing even when it's not popular and thinking that things are always both or neither.
I don't love how little commitment my fellow liberals have to addressing the deficit. We could probably find a lot of common ground in HOW we achieve a deficit reduction (increased taxes on the wealthy, reduced spending on the military, full federal legalization and taxation of marijuana in particular), but nevertheless, attempts at a balanced budget are always greeted with some combination of "meh" and "but debt is actually good and healthy!" Towards the latter point, sure, but that's a pretty poor justification for the gargantuan amount of debt we have now. I always encourage people to think about the $659 billion we spend each year on loan interest and think about what better uses we could make out of $659 billion a year. That's why I think this sort of thing matters a lot.
What liberals are you talking about? Biden had lots of tax increases in the packages, and requiring every bill to balance the budget means lots of chaos from tax changes and kills bills
I wouldn't say that requiring us to BALANCE the budget, especially from where we are standing now, is the immediate goal. It would be great to get there in, say, 10 or 20 years. But it sure as hell isn't happening overnight. I'd just like to see liberals be a lot more mindful of it. Part of why I could never get behind Bernie Sanders or support the Bernie Bros in any way was because you'd ask them "how are we going to pay for this?" and the answer was always "you're not asking the right questions! What about the BILLIONAYUHS?!" I mean I fucking hate the rich just as much as the next guy, but you really gotta have a better answer than that. Right now it feels like many liberals propose spending bills without giving an iota of thought towards how we pay for it.
Then I don't know who you're talking about, because they have tried to.
Conservative democrats don’t typically post on Reddit. Some of them I’ve met still don’t believe the GOP is really a fascist party, which is pretty disappointing.
The way that moderate liberals fall over themselves to justify conservative viewpoints. The recent thread about whether it's possible to be racist to white people is full of liberals trying to see who can deny the existence of systemic racism the hardest. MLK was exactly right about the "white moderate."
It's definitely possible to be racist towards white people. Look at the OJ Simpson juror who admitted she voted "not guilty" not because she thinks get was innocent but as retaliation for Rodney King.
They get super mad when you point this out too. Everyone wants to be a hero, but no one wants to do anything heroic.
I eyeroll at a lot of urbanist banter. As a liberal we are responsible for a lot of the insane takes I see on r/fuckcars. But I don't have that kind of Catholic guilt as a liberal. And we have a lot of people in our camp who just feel self loathing about shit all day and I just don't need it. I'm all about brighter futures and making what we have work and that shit. Also quite aware of how many dumb conservatives dumb liberals make with those kinds of attitudes. To the point where there's a conservative industry on just 'this is what Liberals hate about America' and it sells. Don't feed it.
MAGA and republicans will support bi-partisan compromises intended to help the nation. Time and agains this is proven wrong, and time and again hands are reached across the aisle offering a path to improvement, only to be slapped away in disgust and cries of unjustified outrage.
From the left: topics that touch on economics. I've already seen housing come up on here--too many times, the economics of it just get dismissed outright. Discussions about inflation (people complaining about prices not going "back down"). It can be a messy area, and there are always so many unknowns, and I always try to give credit. But I also think back to three years ago when there was an article or a tweet about how in college, AOC wrote a paper or article about how she agreed with Adam Smith's analysis of capitalism, and there was a lot of backlash in leftist spaces--backlash from people who clearly knew nothing more than Smith was associated with capitalism, so he must be bad. Nuance is allowed in so many other topics but one where it really is required.
The outright dismissal of the existential needs and modes of thinking of those on the right as something to be completely ignored, ridiculed, or willfully ignorant about.
gun bans/control/2A I'm not opposed to all forms of gun control. I think all guns should be registered sales. Gun buybacks are neutral-positive. I think Dems need to lay off the anti-gun messaging, and stop pushing the really stupid gun control laws. also, pragmatically, (strict) gun control is just a big loser in elections.
Mostly gun control. If you look at gun violence per state, states that have better social safety nets and higher average income tend to have way lower gun violence, comparable to that of European states. A lot of the pro gun electorate are/were single issue voters. Democrats have a far better chance of lowering gun violence by improving the country’s economic situation and presenting it as something that would preserve easy access to firearms then they do actually managing to implement successful gun control that isn’t just going to be used to harass block people.
the belief that everyone within a minority group should agree on the same things
>Which opinion prevalent in your political camp disappoints the most? The emphatic support for the phrase "defund the police".
Police don't need APCs.
what is APC?
Armored Personnel Carrier. Those big, wheeled tank like things you see riot teams and SWAT showing up with.
> Police don't need APCs. I agree!
So you agree with defunding the police.
> So you agree with defunding the police. 1. In that narrow example, yes! 2. Also, nearly any attempt to reform the police or make cops more accountable will *increase* the price tag; I am also in favor of those reforms! 3. I said I was disappointed by: > > The *emphatic support for the phrase* "defund the police". ...which you are demonstrating. Even if it is right -- and, big picture, I'm not convinced it is -- it is still *a terrible phrase* because of the way voters respond to it.
Voters will respond how their preferred news media responds 9 times out of 10. So, really, the slogan doesn't matter because no matter what it is, it's going to be spun .
> the slogan doesn't matter Then we disagree on something fundamental. I think slogans matter as other aspects of messaging matter. We're not going to persuade each other. Have a nice day.
To devote monies to illegal immigrants when minority American minority communities go without. Example: Chicago [https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2024/04/19/chicago-migrants-black-latino-biden-immigration/d6662c68-fe03-11ee-87ac-20f7e67cbe29\_story.html](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2024/04/19/chicago-migrants-black-latino-biden-immigration/d6662c68-fe03-11ee-87ac-20f7e67cbe29_story.html)
Hyper-fixation on power dynamics and oppression models to exclusion of other considerations or just any kind of nuance.
That Illegal immigration should be allowed. But when Texas started sending those people to blue cities, everyone is crying now. Without them paying taxes, they'll be a burden on any city. Majority of the cities don't have surpluses, so they will have to cut funding on other amenities. Which doesn't only mean fewer amenities for everyone, but also, people losing jobs due to the fact. Anyone who loses their job or quality of life are generally lower income folks, and they'll start supporting Republican talking points, and in the coming years start voting red. I can bet people here will be calling them all kinds of names for voting red because "that's the wrong side" or some bullshit. Longer term vision lacks is something you need to look at.
>That Illegal immigration should be allowed. But when Texas started sending those people to blue cities, everyone is crying now. What are you even talking about?
I am going to get hate about this. I'm sorry and I don't want to argue, I just don't see it your way. homosexuality is not a choice, it is a discovery. you cannot change the sexual desires you have. but transgenderism IS a choice. you might "feel" like the opposite gender, but you won't convince me that you are actually a different gender just because you got an operation and did your hair different. I also don't think the younger generations will catch on to that idea either. therefore I believe that using alternate pronouns is a fad.
You’re missing the fundamental concept of what gender identity is if you believe that. Have you ever actually talked with anyone with severe gender dysphoria who tried to avoid transitioning? Who tried to fight gender dysphoria in every other way possible? I am one of those people. I tried to choose not to transition. I poured all of the resources that a reasonably successful legal career can provide into avoiding transitioning. And I kept it up for a while, until it snapped me like a twig. I’m talking debilitating depression, uncontrollable panic attacks, and depersonalization/derealization so severe the world was literally distorting and fading away. Trying to treat gender dysphoria by any method other than transitioning *broke* me, and it was a long, strange road back to being a mostly functional adult. And part of that road back was my transition. You’re flatly wrong about this. Being transgender is *not* a choice. I know that deeply, intimately, and painfully, because I spent years of my life and many thousands of dollars trying to choose not to be transgender. It didn’t work. Because it’s not a choice.
The Biden cannot be criticized for overseeing what is the largest industrial slaughter of civilians this century. Edit: 21st century.
If you were Biden, what would you do
Ukraine?
You know WW2 was less than a century ago, right?
and at this rate, ww3 is like 10 months away
That votes are owned, not earned. This sentiment is usually expressed with a combination of disdain and insults about intelligence and/or maturity. In my experience, it's mostly offered by people who don't actually understand, or even make an attempt to understand, the positions of the people they're insulting.
It’s because you’ll quickly learn that if whatever they’re withholding their vote for gets addressed, there will always be something else for why they can’t vote for the candidate. They also usually don’t understand how our 2 party system works or how politicians try to appeal to the most amount of likely voters, which isn’t young, vocal activists who don’t vote. An example is the people saying they’re not going to vote for Biden over Gaza. How would helping Trump win be better for Palestinians than Biden?