It's more important to get people to realize where their interests align with yours and use that to further those interests than to make sure they have the same opinion on every issue. And there are exceptions and degrees of importance and it's actually really fucking hard and complicated to determine if someone will stand with you in important struggles, but sometimes you have to accept that social change is a process of continual movement and reorganization and someone making a gross joke is less important than if they'll help you get the biggest boot off your neck when it counts.
From the liberal brainworms that I've worked for a while to get rid of, I think a big part of the practice of being a liberal today is a need to try to get everyone to agree with your opinion, as a goal in and of itself.
Is someone who fights for universal healthcare because they would benefit from it while holding reactionary social views a morally good person or a morally bad person? In practice, I don't really see a reason to care about the answer.
If you can educate someone and change their mind, do that. If not, but you can incite them to take good actions for bad reasons, do that. Otherwise, fight against them as as enemy. You might end up doing all three with the same person on different issues.
From the liberal brainworms that I’ve worked for a while to get rid of, I think a big part of the practice of being a liberal today is a need to try to get everyone to agree with your opinion, as a goal in and of itself.
A lot of this is cause liberals see this as the only way to enact change. You need to win the battle of ideas so that 51% of voters agree with you, and good things happen.
It's more important to get people to realize where their interests align with yours and use that to further those interests than to make sure they have the same opinion on every issue. And there are exceptions and degrees of importance and it's actually really fucking hard and complicated to determine if someone will stand with you in important struggles, but sometimes you have to accept that social change is a process of continual movement and reorganization and someone making a gross joke is less important than if they'll help you get the biggest boot off your neck when it counts.
From the liberal brainworms that I've worked for a while to get rid of, I think a big part of the practice of being a liberal today is a need to try to get everyone to agree with your opinion, as a goal in and of itself.
Is someone who fights for universal healthcare because they would benefit from it while holding reactionary social views a morally good person or a morally bad person? In practice, I don't really see a reason to care about the answer.
If you can educate someone and change their mind, do that. If not, but you can incite them to take good actions for bad reasons, do that. Otherwise, fight against them as as enemy. You might end up doing all three with the same person on different issues.
A lot of this is cause liberals see this as the only way to enact change. You need to win the battle of ideas so that 51% of voters agree with you, and good things happen.
That sounds... dialectical 😎