I wasted way too much time arguing with liberals on the internet and I just need to vent my frustrations. They turned inaction into a virtue: they call it “pragmatism”. Vote for Biden, don’t question the genocide. They reject the “idealism” of action, critique or even the simple act of imagining the alternative. They consider themselves to be the adults in the room while they are nothing more than reactionaries themselves enabling the worst perversions of this capitalist-realist system.
It’s so frustrating to see this, to see their smug self-sanctification when they just follow the line of the least resistance, when all the effort they put is into retaining their own comfort. They talk about “saving democracy” while attempting to squash any dissent, while being hostile to any alternative that is not a liberal democracy.
They react violently to anything that could imaginably threaten the system exactly because they are comfortable in it. They know that they sit atop the piles of corpses of those murdered for their baubles, the oil for their cars and gas for heating their suburban homes. And they find it unimaginable to ever sacrifice even the smallest of those comforts.
They wear slogans of human rights on their chests but whenever it’s the time to walk the walk, they melt into the thin air, always finding an excuse why it’s not the right time. Why Biden can actually violate the Geneva Convention, why all they can do in a face of the genocide is to shrug.
As it goes in Disco Elysium:
“KINGDOM OF CONSCIENCE – 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.”
Did someone disagree with you and you confused it with squashing dissent and reacting with violence?
I’m not tryin to be jokey about it, maybe that’s unfair. I am more or less one of the liberals you’re talking about and I can largely agree with a lot of your criticism in general (and I get it, getting frustrated at people who are defending an unjust system and won’t get the point of how important it is to change). At the same time, the whole point of discourse and engaging with someone on the internet is to exchange ideas; you might have something new to bring to the table that they need to listen to, or they might have something new that you need to listen to. Isn’t that fair?
I voted third party for years and years because of exactly the frustration you’re talking about, and now in this particular election I’m talking a lot about “saving democracy” in a way I wasn’t before when I was arguing with people about earlier elections… it’s not always some kind of mean liberal trick, where they’re pretending to care about something like that just to squash your dissent.
The problem is that liberals are entrenched in a status quo. They recognize that systems are broken but aren’t willing to give up those systems and instead talk about “fixing” systems that are working as intended and therefore can’t be “fixed.” Even progressive liberals are still mostly right wing so they still want things to work the way they do. For example, liberals may be pro-union but they still intrinsically believe in a company’s right to extract the maximum amount of value from it’s workers - They believe in that relationship, in the company’s ownership of that created economic value rather than the worker’s.
That’s why you see most Democrats, especially voters, attacking leftists far more than you ever see them attack Republicans. They agree with Republicans on most things (which is why elections have become exclusively culture wars - they all agree that late stage capitalism is bae,) but leftists represent another way entirely and that threatens their status quo. For example, single payer health care. We could see better care for FAR cheaper than we pay privately, but even most liberals just see it as “paying for everyone else” even if their out of pocket cost is lower and by definition EVERYONE is paying into it.
To be clear, I’m speaking generally, not about you personally. I don’t know you so I’ve no grounds to judge you. I’m sure you’re a perfectly fine internet rando. :P
That’s why you see most Democrats, especially voters, attacking leftists far more than you ever see them attack Republicans. They agree with Republicans on most things (which is why elections have become exclusively culture wars - they all agree that late stage capitalism is bae,) but leftists represent another way entirely and that threatens their status quo.
I 100% agree with this, as it applies to the political class of Democrats. Most Democratic voters, as far as I’ve experienced, actually have wildly more left-wing views than the DNC or establishment candidates will let them vote into action. E.g. Bernie Sanders was the most popular politician for years after 2016, and still polls as more popular than either Biden or Trump.
For example, single payer health care.
Most voters don’t know what that is, I think, but if it’s explained to them or if they’re asked about “Medicare for all,” they’re in favor of it. It’s mostly just the Democratic establishment that blocks it being able to come to fruition (I mean, when combined with absolutely rabid world-is-ending fanatical opposition from the Republicans.)
To be clear, I’m speaking generally, not about you personally. I don’t know you so I’ve no grounds to judge you. I’m sure you’re a perfectly fine internet rando. :P
Hey, thank you! You’re perfectly fine too. It is grand.
I can assure you that after years of active engagement in politics in various forms I can differentiate between arguing and what is just using the privilege of entrenchment in the system to dismiss any opposing view as illegitimate.
Those people almost never engage with presented points. They prefer to construct their own strawman because then they can attack it with the well-hammered propaganda slogans. And if all else fails, there’s invariably someone to accuse anyone who is to the left of them as being either a trumpist or russian troll for a thunderous applause.
Those people almost never engage with presented points. They prefer to construct their own strawman because then they can attack it with the well-hammered propaganda slogans.
My experience has been the exact opposite. If I see a conversation where one side is using strawmen or talking points, it’s almost universally the pro-Gaza anti-Biden side (edit: I (over)simplified and made less inflammatory).
I won’t say this has never happened to you from the other side, just saying my experience. For what it’s worth, I can only speak to my own behavior and I try to make a serious effort not to do this – so like here’s an example. This is me having one of the discussions you’re talking about, and I think my interlocutor was speaking in perfectly good faith and I don’t think they were a shill, I was pretty happy with the conversation overall, but still he kept repeatedly telling me that I wasn’t willing to support the cause of Gaza by giving opposition to Biden, even as I kept repeatedly explaining to him that that wasn’t accurate, and where I actually stood on it. I won’t say that’s a strawman; like I say I think it was genuine misunderstanding / persistent assumption on his part instead of anything bad-faith. But it definitely stood out to me as “like bro how can you not get this, we went over this so many times.” And that’s like a 90th percentile result; almost everyone I talk to about it is way less open-to-listening-to-me than that.
the pro-Gazan side? are you anti-Gaza?
I’m extremely pro Gaza. I just couldn’t think of a better way to say it than that oversimplified way.
Are you trying to say something coherent?
Roderick Day, Masses, Elites, and Rebels: The Theory of “Brainwashing”
Anyone working in counter-propaganda can testify to a curious experience: we’ll put in hours of careful research collecting an impeccable set of resources that undermines some warmongering narrative, and we’ll eagerly share it with someone who claims to despise racism in all its forms — say, an outspoken opponent of the West’s so-called “War on Terror.” Unexpectedly, we are met with a response that is somewhere between chilly reticence and downright hostility. What’s going on?
[Westerners are] generally smug bourgeois proletarians who intelligently seek out as much racist propaganda as they can get their hands on. This is because it fundamentally makes them feel better about who they are and how they live.
Westerners are willingly complicit in crimes because they instinctively and correctly understand that they benefit as a class (as a global bourgeois proletariat) from the exploitation enabled by their military and their propaganda — organs of coercion and consent. We’re not as stupid as we’re made out to be. This means that we can be reasoned with, that there is a way out.
None of this is meant to downplay the scale of the propaganda project. I’ve spent enough time chasing down leads on different intelligence fronts and their plots to know that they are real and have real effects. I do not deny that the outcomes we observe are at all times incentivized and enforced both overtly and covertly by our various societal superstructures (police, education, culture) and that principled and effective truth-tellers have been assassinated. I reject only the common misconception that propaganda “manufactures consent” (Chomsky) or “invents reality” (Parenti), because it exaggerates the feat accomplished by propagandists, and, in doing so, it obscures the real material basis that has historically made even the working poor in the imperial core complicit.
Edit to add: Not only did your post get downvoted but also reported as Spam or Abuse ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Why am I not surprised in the slightest.
And yes. All those propaganda efforts find very ripe ground with the imperial middle class. My favorite is how easily people fell for the idea of “supplier framework of greenhouse emissions” that makes it seem that it’s all some ten guys collectively emitting all the world’s carbon dioxide - simply because it exonerated all of the middle class’ senseless consumption. It doesn’t make sense under even the slightest scrutiny - but they simply don’t care. It makes them feel good about themselves so they swallow the propaganda; hook, line, sinker, pole.
I don’t think that is a good example. The capitalist class, particularly in the carbon fuel sector, has run been running a propaganda campaign for decades to have people view climate change through the lens of our individual responsibility as consumers instead of viewing it communally/systemically/politically.
Big Oil Is Trying to Make Climate Change Your Problem to Solve. Don’t Let Them
The fact that they’ve been running with one angle for some decades before it got exposed doesn’t mean they couldn’t have changed it. They’re not that stupid.
I’m not sure what you mean. That particular propaganda angle is just one component of a multigenerational, full-spectrum class war project. The scientists hired by big oil who predicted the climate crisis long ago
As early as 1958, the oil industry was hiring scientists and engineers to research the role that burning fossil fuels plays in global warming. The goal at the time was to help the major oil conglomerates understand how changes in the Earth’s atmosphere may affect the industry – and their bottom line. But what top executives gained was an early preview of the climate crisis, decades before the issue reached public consciousness.
