We need to stop Trump from being elected or he will destroy democracy.
We need to shoot all the Trump supporters.
Nooooooooo, not like that!
You can, if you stop abstaining or voting third party out of protest. You can’t blame the electoral system for being ineffective if you don’t use it right.
Y’know the old saying about the best and second best times to plant a tree? Sweeping political change takes time. You need progressive candidates to prove themselves on local and state levels.
It’ll take 6 years to replace every governor and congressperson, and based on the landscape I see, at least 5-10 years to promote enough progressives to a position suitable to candidacy. 15-20 years of voting for capable progressives in every race from school board to governor will provide us with a rich crop of experienced candidates.
That does mean voting lesser evil until you can get proven progressives on the ticket. That’s just reality. If you don’t vote for a candidate that wins, you didn’t get even the most meager semblance of representation. Not getting what you want because the voters that disagree with you outnumber the ones that agree is the fundamental principle of democracy. Show up. Vote, for someone who might win.
Republicans planted their tree 50 years ago. Progressives’ best move in the next few elections is show up in droves to big tent blue wave, and then splinter when the Republican party is defunct.
If your idea of democracy means executing slaveholders, then we deserve slaveholders
This is a situation where edginess is producing a political message of unserious murder fantasies. Slaughtering tens of millions of people for voting for the wrong guy is bad, actually. Putting every single one of them in a re-education camp? Sure. Killing the pro-Trump politicians manipulating them? If that's the best you can manage. Killing everyone who voted for Trump? You're just a fucking edgelord venting bile and deserve to be ignored or ridiculed, and should shut the fuck up before you discredit revolutionary leftism even further.
Criticism taken. I think a large cause of my edginess is that I have no real skin in the game and have never suffered real hardship in my life: I talk a lot of shit because I've never been hit. I'm not the one who will be bearing the brunt of the result of the shit I spew. I'm a "former" chud (based on my unhinged edgelordery and utter lack of real life political organizing, I can't really say the "former" part in good faith) and that left a massive stamp on my personality that I can't seem to get rid of. I discredit revolutionary leftism because I am (not so) deeply down neither revolutionary nor leftist. All of my closest friends are chuds and I rarely, if ever, push back against them like I should. I continue to stick to my own personal reactionary status quo instead of putting any modicum of effort into improving myself.
You may notice that I have had this account for barely over a month. I go through a cycle of making an account either on here or on lemmygrad, getting along fine with everyone for awhile, eventually flying off the handle and saying some utterly demonic shit, becoming ashamed of saying said demonic shit, and deleting my account out of embarrassment. I've reached a point where I will delete this account. I'll keep it for maybe another day or two as I'm interested in your and others' feedback, but I think this time I'm not going to make a new one so I can avoid putting my foot in my mouth (keyboard?).
Holy shit dont delete your account, i rarely see anyone anywhere with any kinna ability to self-reflect. Bad takes are fine if you also listen to criticism and change them
I realized I came of a bit harsher than I meant to (the "you" in that last sentence was meant to be general, not particular). Anyway, I think that while you did say something demonic, just kicking yourself and then taking on a new persona is not a good way to improve. Self-flagellation is a pathological response to shame that often takes the place of being motivated by that shame to improve, when that latter scenario is the only extent to which shame is a good thing and not a pathological emotion.
There are a bunch of people here who are ex-chuds (or no longer identify with chuddery anyway). I think the best thing to do -- besides getting out there and meeting more people, which would hopefully make you less misanthropic -- is to seek advice from them on how one reconditions themselves. Any advice I might give wouldn't be that helpful because, due to circumstances of my birth, I'm coming from being a former dem rather than chud.
And as the other fellow said, it would be better to not delete your account, though it's up to you. The reason I immediately came down so hard on this take is that it's not that uncommon among hexbears to just be fantasizing about a Day-of-the-Rope-but-Leftist and, as I said before, I strenuously object to indulging in that kind of thinking.
I don't know if I would phrase what they said as demonic, I mean it's blatantly wrong but it's an understandable reaction to being told that X person is an existential threat to basically everyone over and over again ad nauseum. At some point you either start thinking every single person voting for them is just straight up evil or hilariously naive and it's really hard to admit that most people are just that lost in the sauce so it makes sense for some people to (VERY INCORRECTLY of course) assume the first is true
just kicking yourself and then taking on a new persona is not a good way to improve. Self-flagellation is a pathological response to shame that often takes the place of being motivated by that shame to improve, when that latter scenario is the only extent to which shame is a good thing and not a pathological emotion.
This is true. It's been my response to me not doing my best for a long time now and it hasn't really helped me.
And as the other fellow said, it would be better to not delete your account, though it's up to you.
H think I'm gonna keep this account. I can overreact to things pretty often, and logging out for awhile I've calmed down a lot. Besides, I think the pun for my username is too good to throw into the void.
It's okay, we all start somewhere. I think they meant the general you, not you specifically, or at least that's how I read it. I wouldn't upbear something I thought was being pointedly mean like that even if I otherwise agreed with it. I think you're being hard on yourself, it sounds like you've come quite far already for someone who's environment is (I'm guessing) not conducive to the kinds of thoughts you're learning to think. Many of us were reactionary/reactionaries once, and to go from that to developing a collective conscience is a painful enough metamorphosis as it is. Please be forgiving with yourself comrade, and know that others will be too.
If I deleted my account every time I said something fucking stupid, I'd be on my 30th account by now. Just let it ride. Own your L's and try to improve.
You're right that killing all the voters is ghoulish but literally every politician involved should probably be tried at the Hague and sentenced to death. To pretend that is some sort of moral failing is just absurd, I would love to be able to rehabilitate them too but people are rightfully angry because of a whole host of reasons, mostly consisting of their unwillingness to do the bare fucking minimum required of international law to help the disenfranchised in their own country
There's a line between reason and tone policing, and a line between militancy and LARPing, and "killing all Trump voters" is definitely on the wrong side of the second line while "all revenge is bad" is definitely on the wrong side of the first line.
I'm too tired for this argument, but I'll have it anyway: All revenge is bad. Revenge is an idealist, destructive, sadistic behavior that should be treated like the pathology it is. Now, it's not totalizingly bad in the sense that some people taking revenge invalidates the entire project that they were associated with, some locals beating an piece of shit police chief to death after a city has been liberated is not such a big deal, but from a theoretical perspective we need to acknowledge that it is never good, nor is it even neutral, but rather it is, in fact, always bad, even if in some cases the bad that is facilitated is insignificant compared to whatever good a given project seeks to accomplish.
Just seems like an excuse for tone policing of you're going to be putting so many qualifiers on it
What? You think I get my rocks off on "tone policing"? Why would I seek an "excuse" for it? It's not even a question of tone, it's a question of real content, real actions, because it is a question of rehabilitative versus retributive justice.
I agree with you completely then, at least when everyone involved is calm. Restorative justice is always better than killing people or making them suffer for no reason except some sort of glorified sadism. I do think, though, that there are lots of things that are considered "revenge" normally that really aren't in a retributive vs rehabilitative justice sense. I don't think some peasant killing a king or lord in a revolt is revenge, even though it might have some very similar emotions, because it's done due to a lack of other practical options available to attempt to rehabilitate them. Same for pretty much most other political ruling classes when it comes to those situations.
The place we're likely to disagree is when it comes to premeditated and spontaneous revenge. I actually think someone being angry and taking revenge in response to an injustice is an understandable response, granted of course that it is an actual injustice done to them and not some sort of reactionary mental gymnastics. But this is particularly defined by the lack of space for rational thinking. The moment someone's able to "take revenge served cold" and actually does so it becomes super questionable to me, because it means they weighed their options and decided to go stab someone for next to no direct benefit to themselves.
I mean, if someone is really mad and pulls some shit, that doesn't make it not incorrect, it just means there were mitigating factors to the misdeed. The logical consequence of saying people just aren't responsible for themselves when they are angry is that they would feel emboldened to give in to their worst impulses when they are angry despite the fact that being mad does not actually negate your ability to control yourself, just makes it harder.
(And of course of killing is the only viable option, go for it)
I had to just disengage, they were so thoroughly anti-reading and deliberately misrepresenting my words that it was no longer worth engaging.
It's good to disengage when you start losing hair and it's just an internet slapfight anyway, but for future reference you could have argued it much more effectively by explaining how, for instance, Israel stopping attacking Gaza is the majority position, M4A is the majority position, the right thing is frequently the majority position but the "democratic" system of liberalism frequently gives them no way to instate this demand.
As a historical example, we can look at the liberal provisional government in 1917 Russia. They addressed maybe some of the popular demands, but one of the biggest ones, withdraw from the Great War, they refused to budge on. Because they refused to budge on this and other issues, making the ballot box invalid as an approach, they left the bullet box as the only one remaining.
Edit: In our case, you can add in the conspiracies and confluence of liberal media to make humanitarianism electorally nonviable, but without the first part they will just brush it off.
You're correct, absolutely, I was too focused on systems and not on examples.
Oof watching the smoke from their braingears could be so much funnier if they didn't always produce the exact same product outta their mouths. Honestly get the same feeling "talking" to a LLM
I'm glad someone took the mantle of effort poster while I was shitposting and mostly avoiding getting dragged into a useless argument about 'half the population'
"You can, if you stop abstaining or voting third party out of protest. You can’t blame the electoral system for being ineffective if you don’t use it right.".
You can’t blame the electoral system for being ineffective if you don’t use it right.
My favorite quote from the exchange. We should just rig the elections like the GOP and DNC. Then we can go around and blame all the other countries for running sham elections. First target: Vuvuzelia.
It’ll take 6 years to replace every governor and congressperson, and based on the landscape I see, at least 5-10 years to promote enough progressives to a position suitable to candidacy. 15-20 years of voting for capable progressives in every race from school board to governor will provide us with a rich crop of experienced candidates.
The Kingdom of Conscience will be exactly as it is now. Moralists don't really have beliefs. Sometimes they stumble on one, like on a child's toy left on the carpet. The toy must be put away immediately. And the child reprimanded. Centrism isn't change -- not even incremental change. It is control. Over yourself and the world. Exercise it. Look up at the sky, at the dark shapes of Coalition airships hanging there. Ask yourself: is there something sinister in moralism? And then answer: no. God is in his heaven. Everything is normal on Earth.
