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Cake day: February 18th, 2021

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  • So what are you saying? That objectivity doesn’t exist? That there is no way to run a society that objectively does a better job at making people as a whole feel comfortable? That it’s ideal for people with opposing ideologies to exist (I used to think that when I was a libertarian but over time realized that having an ideology coexist with another ideology that wants the first ideology gone simply doesn’t work well at all, so we need to find the ideology that works better and progress from the other one).

    I would argue that there is no objective right or wrong, but also that people in general have certain shared interests and usually some sort of a common moral ground. Like basically nobody wants to be in a concentration camp. People don’t like being endangered by others, so basic laws are agreed upon to minimize this, like don’t murder or rape people. And people want to be free to do things they want to do, so if they don’t cause significant problems to another person they should be allowed. There might not be an objective “right” but there is an objective “this is what this person wants” for every person which means that there is a way to balance these interests to come up with a set of principles that objectively makes a society that is comfortable for as many people as possible. So since I naturally want to be comfortable and I know other people naturally want to be comfortable and societies tend to be more efficient and comfortable when people cooperate, working toward these principles is how we successfully do that, and this is what I will use as my basis for right and wrong.

    However, when one person’s freedom infringes on the freedoms of another person, this is where major problems arise and compromises need to be made. With the goal being to have a society that is comfortable for as many people as possible, this means that there is an objectively best compromise that meets this goal, and what people need to do is figure out what that “objectively best” compromise is, which happens by understanding the context of every party involved in this conflict. So whether an action is “right” in terms of making a society that is comfortable for as many people as possible is dependent entirely on the context, not the action itself. Which means that while actions such as killing another person are normally “wrong” as it infringes on the freedom of another person, if killing that person helps society reach the goal of being as comfortable for as many people as possible (i.e. the person is actively oppressing people based on characteristics they cannot change and killing them would help stop that), then killing that person is “right” in terms of that moral context.

    This is the basic idea that separates “fascism” from “antifascism” (and other similar ideas such as “racism” vs “antiracism”), in that they may use similar tactics but when you look at what those actions are objectively doing to people, one is promoting discrimination based on characteristics people cannot change leading to a more unequal society that deviates from this ideal, and the other is countering that, leading to a less overall unequal society and progressing toward that ideal.

    The challenge is that this objectivity in terms of what actions are “right” and “wrong” is still being discovered and debated on, and putting those disagreements in light so they can be resolved is important for making social progress. But in the end, whether a person or a society is “fascist” is an objective measure and in my view there is nothing wrong with combating this through any means possible.


  • Hitler firmly believed he was making “society better for basically everyone”. The Christian Nationalists and White Supremacists firmly believe their getting into power via a Trump administration will make “society better for basically everyone”.

    Well for Hitler and White Supremacists they clearly weren’t making “society better for basically everyone” and all it takes to understand this is basic logic that they support one superior race and commit genocides against other races. We can argue that our thinking may be flawed and biased all we want, but that doesn’t change the objective reality that Hitler’s genocide is very well documented and that it clearly caused massive amounts of harm and suffering.

    Christian Nationalism is more nuanced having been a Christian myself previously, and deconversion fucking sucks. But if they want to make a convincing argument that Christian Nationalism is a good thing, they need to prove that God actually exists and there’s enough things in the belief system that contradict scientific observation that they have no real argument supporting this. The various other pieces of bullshit they brainwashed me for 18 years with does not help their argument either (like my science teacher who was trying to convince us that dragons and dinosaurs exist right now but very few people have discovered them). Science has more ground in objective reality than religion does, and the amount of innovations science has helped us with that religion hasn’t shows us that one clearly works better than the other when it comes to progressing.

    The wrinkle that you overlook is that there are many wildly varying viewpoints about what is “good”. Being “inclusive of everyone” for example, is something that most Christo-fascists would abhor, their bible notwithstanding.

    So because other people’s definition of “good” is targeting people for how they were born, nobody should do anything to protect them? Why do you think these ideologies are worth defending? They’re a danger to myself and my friends. If you want to convince me that genocides are good for humanity, you’re going to need to be a lot more convincing than that.

    if one group ignores the rule of law because they are “right” then the other group feels fully justified in doing the same. And because we have a democracy and that democracy doesn’t enshrine progressive ideas into law, we can’t ensure groups with ideas we find abhorrent don’t use our precedent to impose those ideas on us.

    Guess what? While good people are arguing about whether it is right to do things that aren’t normal or expected to progress their agenda, horrible people are going to take the initiative and do them and then it’s too late. Life isn’t a democracy, it’s a battle between rulers that are engaging in genocides and doing other extreme human rights abuses versus everyone else. There’s a reason why aggressive people consistently end up at the top. If we want any sort of chance whatsoever of dethroning the genociders and abusers, being aggressive is the only way that even has a chance at happening. Same reason leftists and even liberals now are buying up guns. The law has a history of being weaponized to keep people marginalized, we cannot rely on law to save humanity when that law comes from the same people that are humanity’s biggest threat.

    And on top of that the very reason the Democrats lost to Trump is because Trump is an actually interesting candidate promising to make radical changes, aligning with the interests and identities of many Americans, and building a shared vision and hope for the future. While meanwhile the Democrats fuck around doing basically nothing, they flip-flop on their stances whenever its convenient for them, they make vague statements that do nothing to give people any sort of inspiration, and they act like they’re out of touch with the population. If we want to stop Trump while the Democrats continue to not due shit, our best bet is a sort-of left-wing “Trump” that has the same sort of enthusiasm, energy, and vision that can inspire people to unify and fight for the social good.

    Have you ever tried to negotiate or educate someone when you are angry? Like say your neighbor keeps playing loud music and you really want them to stop. If you come out yelling at them and are visibly angry you -might- get them to stop, but you have made an enemy. If you approach them in an open-minded way that acknowledges their rights and autonomy you have a much better chance of a constructive dialog that gets you what you want.

    Approaching capitalists in an open-minded way rarely works. They operate on a system of optimizing to what benefits them the most economically, and if it benefits them economically for you to not have rights no conversation is going to change that. It’s more likely to work for people who are socially conservative or lower-class economic conservative, but capitalists are generally a lost cause.

    Maybe it helps to be reminded that we still have a lot of power, especially at the local level…

    Well funny enough in my very local area the protestors who bent laws and got arrested for it have had a bigger impact on political discussion than any single other event that has happened here. And other cities within my state have made it illegal to feed homeless people, yet activists did it anyways and even sued the government and ended up on national news for it. It seems like the most interesting people here have no problem with ignoring the rule of law, and I respect them for that.


  • What makes a society good is being inclusive of everyone regardless of how they were born and working through cooperation to achieve goals and look out for each other. A society where people are intentionally neglected for another group’s economic gain is not a desirable society unless you’re a fascist. However, ideologies are not people and ideologies that promote an unequal society do not need to be tolerated, and people who pose a danger due to their actions to the people around them in a society that would otherwise be more fair do not need to be tolerated either.

    Neither authoritarianism nor ignoring the rule of law are inherently bad. In reality, law isn’t words written on a piece of paper - it’s people with political motives that hold authority over law enforcement and the criminal justice system. The words themselves hold no authority, and they depend on the people to actually follow them, so the people can collectively choose to ignore them or change their meaning and now suddenly the law is different even though the words didn’t change one bit. The political motives the people who decide the law have generally favor a society that supports corruption and inequality, so there is nothing inherently wrong with breaking the law, especially if it makes everyone’s lives better.

    Fascism is a specific type of authoritarianism that basically does the opposite to a society of what it should look like. Utilizing authority to make society better for basically everyone is not fascism. Utilizing authority to dehumanize a subset of people for the economic gain of a “superior race” is fascism.



  • sudoer777@lemmy.mltopolitics @lemmy.worldTrump wins.
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    13 days ago

    No, the blood is on liberals who allow the Democrats to support a genocide and get away with it without losing their votes to an anti-genocide candidate. Also on the Democrats for making their platform regressive and boring in favor of their donors so people lose interest in them and they lose.





  • I just don’t get how people are looking at Harris’ stance as being pro-genocide.

    Blinken stated here:

    In speaking with him the other day after he made his decision about not seeking re-election, what he’s intensely focused on is the work that remains over these next six months to continue the efforts, the work that we’ve been doing, particularly trying to bring peace to the Middle East, ending the war in Gaza, putting that region on a better trajectory

    However, as you said earlier:

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken is the one who wields the power to deny Israel’s aid.

    Regarding:

    There’s way more background on why Blinken has only stopped two aids and also because of classification reasons, not every stopping of aid can be published

    I would like to hear more on this.

    A lot of the funds that Israel is getting, is funding they secured before the Gaza invasion.

    I did come across this where apparently Israel secured funding through a deal with the Obama administration.

    I’m not sure what other reasons there may be that Blinken isn’t stopping the military aid which I would like to hear, but it seems to me like both the Obama and Biden administrations are the ones that pulled us into the genocide and that Blinken is playing the “we are working toward a ceasefire” card while not stopping the genocide, and figures like Harris are also playing the same card while pushing the same anti-protest rhetoric as Zionists. This article does suggest that Harris isn’t going to have Blinken as Secretary of State and that her new pick might be more critical of Israel so it seems like there’s at least some chance she might deviate from what Biden is currently doing; however, the article also suggests that she will have a similar approach to foreign policy as Biden. Aside from that, with the track record of Democrats historically supporting Israel and siding with donors against the interests of people along with their recently having dropped multiple progressive issues, I don’t think people are convinced that Harris (and many Democrats in general) is going to stop the genocide (not saying that Trump who openly supports Israel is going to be any better).



  • Trump is targeting mostly far-right evangelicals who have a common vision on what they want the country to look like. He has a lot of energy when doing so, and because of how similar their interests are he could get away with all sorts of stuff and they would still vote for him.

    Harris (and Democrats in general) is the only alternative mainstream candidate that everyone else has, and that “everyone else” consists of all sorts of people with conflicting interests: liberals, neoliberals, centrists, progressives, leftists, different religious groups or cultures, varying economic demographics, racial minorities, LGBTQ, and immigrants for instance. They’re trying to appeal to all of them at once, but because they don’t have a shared vision, nobody is happy and they get more scrutinized. To make at least some of them happy, they need to focus on certain groups and deprioritize the interests of other groups. However, once they do that then the groups they deprioritize get angry since they no longer have representation, and the groups that are still there remain skeptical because of the history of not working for their interests in the past.

    The advantage that third parties like PSL have is that from the start, they’re trying to appeal to a specific group of people with a common vision like Trump is instead of trying to play both sides with conflicting groups and making nobody happy. The problem (aside from the election duopoly bought out by corporations) is that they are a very small political minority so they have no real chance of winning the election without winning over people from other groups which is a challenge, especially when there are many more unknowns when it comes to progressing than there are when it comes to reverting to a previous state so there is more fragmentation due to those sort of disagreements.



  • A lot of (and probably most of) the people supporting Stein currently are Muslims whose main interest in voting is regarding the genocide, and on social issues are generally more conservative (and may not agree with her on stuff like LGBTQ) and may not align with either major political party so likely wouldn’t be voting otherwise. I’ve seen a lot of Muslims support Stein on social media and the Stein rally I went to was almost entirely Muslims which is where I’m getting this impression. This is a case where the main parties need to earn their votes, and voting for Stein does not mean voting for Trump because they might not have voted blue either way.

    (And regarding Lemmy drama most of the people here are voting PSL anyways so trying to convince people here not to vote for Stein is pointless because it’s the wrong audience.)






  • Considering how I’m in Texas where Trump is going to win regardless of who I vote for, I’m considering voting third party as a threat to the Democratic Party to fuck off with their far-right politics and if enough people do that in solid states then maybe it will help scare them into platforming less shitty candidates. In a swing state or barely blue or red state though where voting actually determines who wins then voting blue is probably the better option since the contest is between Harris and Trump and Trump is worse.