I don’t have much of a problem either way as I don’t think I’ll be engaging in political discussion on this website past this post but it seems like any sort of non-left wing opinions or posts are immediately trashed on here. That’s fine. There’s clearly a more liberal audience here and that’s okay. I just don’t want Lemmy to become a echo chamber for any side and it seems to be that way when it comes to politics already.
Mostly making this post just to drum up discussion as I’m new here.
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Depends on what we call “right wing”.
I keep asking, and have probably asked more than fifty times over the last 4 years, what right-wing Americans stand for other than the “culture war”. Why would someone call themselves a conservative/Republican if they are opposed to the Republicans’ stances on minorities, stances on LGBT+, stances on gestures broadly at Florida, etc. What’s left of the ideology when you take those things out, especially considering that the right has pretty demonstrably dropped their support for “fiscal responsibility”, “small government”, “anti-judicial activism”, and “opposing the influence of Russia”.
Most of the time, that question just gets ghosted. Like, over 90% of the times I’ve asked it, it’s just been a conversation-ender. The rest of the time, the answers boil down to “my bigotry is more fine-grained than that”. They’re good friends with Mexicans and Asians and African-Americans, but hate Muslims. Or they’re fine with gay people, but feel transgender people shouldn’t exist. Or they love gay people and minorities, as long as they’re all Christian whether they want to be or not. These folks call themselves Republicans not because they hate everyone the Republican party hates, but because they hate one (or a few) groups that the Republicans hate.
Your comment is a pretty good attack on what the GOP has become. My criticism is that the GOP doesn’t represent all of right-wing political ideology. I think most people, or at least people like me, aren’t dogmatically locked into any party or ideological label. I have some views which conservatives would agree with and plenty that they wouldn’t. Overall, I think that most conservative-oriented communities are narrow-minded at best, and openly racist and authoritarian at worst. But the left-leaning communities aren’t great either. They (justifiably) want to insulate themselves from the hateful parts of the right. Unfortunately, this often devolves into an echo-chamber without real discussion. I’m hoping Lemmy as a whole doesn’t devolve down either path.
That’s fine, but then there is a burden to both understand why your adjacency to this evil force makes people uncomfortable, and to rhetorically separate yourself from it as needed. This is just the unfortunate reality of how deranged mainstream conservatism has become.
I consider myself pretty libertarian in the grand scheme of things, but I am fine with an echo chamber where basic human rights are respected. I believe that my vision of society has no place for bigots or theocrats and that such people should be treated legally the same as fraudsters or thieves. And I think it’s absolutely insane that this would be considered controversial in a good faith conservative circle. The real conservatives I know would understand that an inclusive, well represented society is a productive and ideologically secure society.
Unfortunately, this often devolves into an echo-chamber without real discussion.
I haven’t seen a discussion about the merits of different tax policies (and no, “cut all the taxes!” isn’t a policy), or the role of local/state/federal government, or social service policy (and no, “stop all poor people spending!” is not a policy), or the appropriate division of power between executive/legislative/judicial, or anything like that, in decades. W was president the last time I saw any form of media having a real discussion about those things.
Before 2015 or so, there were a handful of people in my circle who identified as conservative that could have a real, nuanced, complex conversation about public policy with; people who I thought were incorrect, but who could articulate their points well enough that I could kind of see where they were coming from, and we could come out of a discussion with a better understanding of each other, and maybe one or the other of us might even have softened on a given position in the process. It was possible to find basic, fundamental points on which we agreed, and use those as a foundation for a broader discussion.
Since 2016, all of those people, to a man, have become Q-anon deep-state groomers-coming-for-our-kids frazzledrip climate-hoax hunter’s-laptop gays-have-it-too-good morons. Not a single one of them still believes in any of the fundamental points of agreement we used to have, from which a productive discussion could be based. They have entirely left reality behind in favor of Jewish space lasers and (the latest talking point) “every father thinks about his daughter that way!”.
I have not met someone who identifies as a conservative or a Republican who isn’t on that same train for a very long time.
This has been exactly my experience as well, and why I am increasingly comfortable with skepticism of unqualified conservative voices as a default.
I have been having good faith debates over real policy with conservatives for three decades. Since Carter more or less. I know what that debate looks like. But since 2016, I know two types of former conservative - the reformed, who were awakened to the monstrosity that Trump created. And those who openly embraced fascism like a parasite embraces dog shit.
Every person. Every single one so far, who has been equivocal on this topic has turned out to be quietly the latter. The ones belonging to the former group are very open about feeling dumb and misled, even victimized. They express loudly and often the nature of their reform to anyone who will listen.
I think a lot of the other posts covered my thoughts on the issue but I wanted to add something less about politics and more about lemmy itself:
unwelcome on Lemmy
There is no one Lemmy, it’s a bunch of federated instances. You made this post on the beehaw instance. Some instances will have their own personality and rules, but if you don’t like them, the beauty of the lemmy and the fediverse is that you can just create another instance. I haven’t done a ton of searching yet, but I imagine that conservatives and right-wing personalities will carve out their own corner eventually.
I imagine that conservatives and right-wing personalities will carve out their own corner eventually.
They have, and most of those instances have been defederated from the rest of the fediverse because they breed a bunch of toxicity and hatred that spills into other instances if you don’t defederate from them. I don’t know of any conservative spaces that haven’t been defederated from most others tbh. I think sh.itjust.works still federates with a lot of them though, at least last I heard.
They’re having a vote on it right now. It’s been a month since the community at large asked for defederation, and will be friday at the earliest before they defederate. In that timeframe, users of sh.itjust.works have skewed farther and farther right and gotten more and more toxic (@[email protected] can help discuss this as they originated from sh.itjust.works before moving here), and whereas sh.itjust.works started as the instance I felt more confident about refederating with someday, lemmy.world has done more to crack down on the kinds of behavior that got their instance defederated in the first place. It seems that @[email protected] has a similar philosophy to what we do over here, but wants more permissive signups under the belief that streamlined community joins will grow the community more organically than checking beforehand that users will follow the rules of the road.
Can confirm. Sh.itjust.works has gone to shit and several of the responses I’ve received - and the areas where they (the admins and moderators that is) have remained conspicuously unresponsive - indicate to me that they are, by and large, quite sympathetic to alt-right views, hence their very slow delay. I get the impression that they come at this from an Enlightened Centrist angle, so I don’t think they consider themselves sympathetic. it’s that kind of sympathy where they think it’s fair to equally tolerate group A that just wants to exist and group B that openly calls for violence against group A. Both sides amirite?
I don’t really want to get down to it too much more than that.
Hopefully.
Liberalism is also a right wing ideology.
There are greens, yellow, and reds. Greens agree with you, yellow may not agree but you can have a constructive conversation, and red are people who never will and will only double down and care little for evidence or logic. Angloworld conservatives are reds. They are fascist.
I would say it’s not strictly prohibited, it’s more about the attitude and treatment towards other people. The modern conservative attitudes lately have been focused around hate and discrimination of minority groups and foreigners. It’s extremely hard to look past that and the other outrageous alt right views related to anti-vax, 5g conspiracy theories, etc. A lot of loud conservative figures have been pushing anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-womens rights, anti-poor regulations and this is not welcome here. This makes it hard to accept a conservative viewpoint.
If the discussion is focused around political views for the economy, government regulation, etc, and engages in civil discussion and disagreement, a willingness to attempt to understand the other person’s view, and not resorting to insults or hate, then differing viewpoints are not exactly a problem. Anything suggesting that minority groups or other humans are inferior or don’t have a right to exist or have personal rights and freedoms is definitely not welcome.
In short, it’s difficult to say due to the modern conservative “hot topics” which dehumanize groups of people. Being conservative doesn’t automatically mean you aren’t welcome here but hate and discrimination are certainly not welcome.
Conservative ideology of maybe twenty years ago would likely have a lot better chance at meaningful discussion as opposed to right now. At this time, the political right in the US have thrown full-throated support for policies that many people (rightfully) feel are abhorrent.
For less repugnant topics, say, fiscal responsibility, that one is also a tough one to talk about seeing as the right is trying to gut every social program they can think of while doing all they can to cut taxes for the rich.
I know there are sane conservatives out there, but until that party steers their ship away from bigotry, hatred, and destroying the middle and lower class, you’ll probably not find a lot of discussion. Which is a shame because I think we do need two strong parties with differing viewpoints, but when the other viewpoint is rampant discrimination and further enriching the wealthy.
20 years ago they were panicing over video games and gay marriage try again
20 years ago there wasn’t an attempted insurrection and a massive conspiracy militia movement.
Yeah the Republican party was still dumb then but it’s absurd to claim that they were the same then as now. At that point they believed what Fox told them instead of Fox having to report what they believe.
undefined> 20 years ago there wasn’t an attempted insurrection and a massive conspiracy militia movement.
There wasnt but they still wanted to pack the courts and ban abortion, we can’t pretend any of these ideas are good, not to mention the decades of failed trickle down economics
I feel like there is an idealization of far right conservatism that makes people believe that if we can just move past Trump and trumpism that things will go back to normal. That said republicans used to be more subtle and attempted to keep an air of respectability and civility about them, but a lot of the problem beliefs we had.
Tough on crime but not for white collar big crime politics, tax cuts for the wealthy, anti union stuff, racial dog whistling, gutting social programs, evangelical faux christian nonsense, election fraud, appointing judges, and etc were all present 20 years ago.
And regarding LGBT stuff both sides sucked 20 years ago, but conservatives were way worse.
Going back to at least reagan it’s been a shitshow it’s just decades of Reagan era neocon strategies coming up against impotent neolibs has brought us to where we are today. The current strategy is also far more transparent and aggressive and angry so things feel less civil, but sometimes I wonder if maybe thats not a bad thing. It’s easier to rally against trump than it is to rally against a guy you feel like you’d like to have a beer with.
I feel like it’s not a matter of which side and more if the position that someone tries to advertise is clearly lacking empathy or consideration towards others.
If that’s all the right-leaning topics are about, I don’t know what to tell you really.
Honestly, my big thing with right-wingers is that they come with no proof, and get mad when you start asking for facts and figures. Right now, I can see the effects of 40 years of trickle-down economic theory: it means that you need a degree to get just about any decent job in this country, and also unions should not exist because reasons. It really kind of biases me against right-wing talking points, to the point that I need to see proof. Treat it like a math problem and show your work or gtfo.
my big thing with right-wingers is that that they come with no proof, abd get mad when you start asking for facts and figures.
This post itself is a classic example of that… OP came with a “waaah there’s no place for right-wing discussion when lemmygrad gets a free pass”, disregarding the fact Beehaw has defederated with lemmygrad already. Then when many wonderful users come in to open the dialogue, saying “hey, there’s a place for you, here’s what we can discuss on this instance and here’s what you should take elsewhere”, there’s no interest in continuing discussion from OP (maybe they will reply later in the coming days).
Certain comments, like that from user @nicholas are full-on ragebait, leaving no room for discussion, and intending to antagonize each other by suggesting “everyone right of Bernie Sanders gets shit on here, just you watch the people that will reply to me”. The vibe I want in an online community is like a nice discussion at a coffee shop, the last thing I want is a direct escalation to a shouting match so I try to avoid goading people into that.
If your “conservative / right wing opinion” is that austerity measures are a good thing, then the most generous interpretation of that is that you’re just a moron. As it turns out, though, today’s “conservative / right wing opinions” are way worse than that. Things like “trans people aren’t people”. Or “we should do a treason”. Or “bribing supreme court justices is totally fine”. If you hold any of those opinions, the most generous interpretation of that is that you’re evil. And probably also stupid. That is the MOST generous interpretation, mind.
Saying that austerity is always bad is pretty dumb too. Economic policy is hard. It’s not a simple as shoving one lever in one direction as far as possible forever.
For example, “austerity” could mean ending corporate subsidies, taxing the wealthy, auditing the wealthy, reducing the military budget, canceling freeway expansions, etc. Too much public debt can absolutely be a bad thing and needs to be controlled.
I concede that you’ve got a point that austerity isn’t an all or nothing proposition. But your examples are laughable. No country that has implemented “austerity measures” has ever interpreted that as “ending corporate subsidies”, or “taxing the wealthy”, or in any way fucking with the wealthy or military’s purse. It just doesn’t happen. I agree, that would be an amazing thing. But it just doesn’t exist in human history. What ends up happening instead is that they cut the educational budget. Or they cut social programs, like housing subsidies or food subsidies. Because governments aren’t run by the lowest common denominator, who actually benefits from those programs. They’re run by the wealthy. So no government is going to fuck over its supporters by cutting their benefits.
I think we need to have better conservative content. All of what your describing sounds like negative characterizations of conservatives made by far left individuals.
Yes, there are some absolute morons in the world. Probably a lot of them. But not all conservatives are morons, despite what many left leaning people would like to believe due to the polarization brought about by social media echo chambers.
I have yet to see a modern conservative position that is more backed by real world evidence than whatever more progressive position it opposes.
Climate change? Denying overwhelming scientific consensus. Gun control? “It doesn’t work”, even though it works in every other western country. Healthcare? “But the death panels will decide if you get to live”, they don’t exist, and are used as pretense to ignore all those people who die because they can’t afford treatment. Car infrastructure? It’s literally better for drivers if more people are using transit or cycling. Student loans? I don’t even know what the argument is here except “I had to pay them so everyone else should too”. The money certainly isn’t going towards the teachers.
Some of these are US specific, but the sentiment is the same everywhere. The list goes on and on. If someone refuses to listen to any reason or evidence and instead bases their worldview on only their own, limited lived experience, why shouldn’t they be characterized as a moron? And if they understand that their view isn’t based in reality and they hold it anyways, why not call that actively malicious?
I’ve always loved the irony of the argument that if the government pays for healthcare, there will be “death panels” that decide who gets treatment and who doesn’t. Because those already exist under and directly because of a system of private healthcare funding where if you don’t have enough money, you’re refused treatment. Meanwhile under a system of public healthcare funding, people get treatment based on who’s most in need of the resources available, and that’s only if the system is already over capacity.
Lmao fucking seriously.
Routinely my primary fucking care physician will approve a prescription just for my fucking insurance to say you know what, we will BLOCK that medication from being released to you at the pharm cuz we don’t wanna pay for it yet. Try again next week!!
god fucking damnit like let me just pay for it out of pocket!! They won’t let me.
Private insurance death panels are alive and well lol
I would agree with you, but at least in the US majority of conservatives fully embraced those moronic ideas.
The people that call themselves conservatives no longer are conservatives, their only goal is how to hurt “liberals”.
At this point true conservatives that still care about the country started voting for democrats or not vote at all, but they are now labeled as RINOS.
I know it is a loaded term, and many will quickly dismiss it, (but it is correct given the definition), but the party was taken over by fascists and real conservatives aren’t doing anything to take their party back.
At this point true conservatives that still care about the country started voting for democrats
Compared to most countries, Democrats are conservatives. And Republicans are extreme right wing.
The US doesn’t have a left wing party. Nor even a truly centrist one.
You are essentially using a “no true Scotsman” defense here, which is wild given the public stances of America’s Conservative Party, the GOP.
You act like they are talking about outliers but the whole GOP is in lockstep with those awful stances and decisions. You say we need better conservative content? I say you need better conservative leadership because the majority of conservatives follow what they are fed of fox, oann, and whatever other sources of disinfo
Come back to us when the official party line isn’t supporting the big lie, or attacking climate change or attacking science and vaccines and masking, or that trans people shouldn’t exist, or that students should not be given the forgiveness that those with money get (PPP vs student loan forgiveness), or that Russia and Putin are not our allies nor role models, I could go on and on and on.
You want a better conservative image? You need better conservatives first. Talk about putting the cart before the horse
You say what we mention is mischaracterizations made by the left. Please, point out which are untrue
due to the polarization brought about by social media echo chambers.
Due to the actions of recent right wing political parties whe gaining any power.
That’s a bit like saying
"How dare you call us all arsehole. Because we keep voting for arseholes to lead our parties. "
Unless you and others are prepared to form a right wing that opposes these ideas. Then that is the reputation the right deserves.
For the record, I would not consider myself right wing. But I do oppose many leftist ideologies. Grievance studies (Critical race theory, queer theory, and other ideologies based in post modern belief systems), for instance, are eroding many useful and productive enlightenment ideas. Color blindness is a legitimate way to reduce racism. Instead, leftists believe they should elevate group identity at all costs, thereby expanding and heightening racism. Queer theory denies human physiology, elevating the idea that everything is socially constructed. This framework is a grave distortion of the reality.
I agree that conservatives need to do a better job with their policies. Trump was a stain, and the few (okay maybe more than a few) loud idiots in the party make conservatism look bad. But if left wingers only get their information about right wingers from hyper left sources, we are going to have a lot of distorted views.
On social media, people are served more and more radical content. Much of that content includes great distortions of the “other side,” which pushes people further into an untenable and undesirable belief system.
We need more debate and we also need people to stop simply calling the other side morons.
Queer theory denies human physiology, elevating the idea that everything is socially constructed
You’re already getting pushback on your other points, so I thought I would weigh in here. Biologically speaking, sex is multifaceted, variable, and somewhat malleable. Even anatomically or physiologically scientists say that gender and sex are not as simple or clean cut as you are making it out to be. Additionally, gender diverse people can be found across all cultures and throughout history - transgender people are not an invention of the post-modern era.
I don’t think that acknowledging the reality that human experience is complex and multi-faceted is a left wing value. It is evident to anyone who honestly engages with scientific consensus and with the lived experiences of LGBTQ folks that those people exist. They’re not going anywhere, and I don’t think it’s especially “left wing” to say we ought to make space for them in society to just live their lives as they are.
To be absolutely clear to anyone who runs across this, this person has been banned from our instance, you don’t need to report it again. The only reason this reply is still up, is for others to see all the ways in which this person is wrong and the whole they dug themselves when they did reply to someone and were rightfully reported and ejected from our instance.
Colour blindness is not a way of combatting racism.
If you have a real world system, and you bias it heavily to be unequal, then you try and correct it by biasing it to be equal, the average output is still vastly unequal, and the absolute best case scenario you can hope for is that it will trend towards equality over time without ever reaching it.
There’s a reason that people who actually study and think about the topic come out as antiracist and people who don’t think it about it except when it inconveniences them just wish everyone would stop talking about it and we could pretend like it didn’t exist.
Yes, it is. There are a lot of academics that have fallen prey to post modern ideologies like anti racism. But there are also academics that haven’t, like myself and John McWhorter.
‘nuh uh I don’t believe that’ isn’t an argument.
I’ve explained how balanced system + inequality + balanced system = inequality, and you’ve just said “nuh uh that’s not convenient for me”.
Grievance studies (Critical race theory, queer theory, and other ideologies based in post modern belief systems), for instance, are eroding many useful and productive enlightenment ideas.
Have you studied any of these yourself? Or are you relying on characterizations of them you heard in media?
Color blindness is a legitimate way to reduce racism.
In theory, sure. But in practice it often gets used as a rug to sweep racism under.
Instead, leftists believe they should elevate group identity at all costs, thereby expanding and heightening racism.
Keep on mind this is a society where certain groups have been marginalized and terrorized for decades or even centuries. “Elevating” them is only a reaction to that long-entrenched bigotry. But (what’s that quote?..) when you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression. Attempting to bring historically marginalized groups into equal footing with mainstream groups probably will look like they’re being “elevated” to the people who enjoy the privilege of being accepted broadly by default.
Yes, I have a Ph.D., you will encounter grievance studies and post modern ideologies when you pursue this path. I have indeed studied the philosophical foundations of these ideologies. I don’t agree with post modern ideologies, nor do I agree that you can state that something is purely constructed by a culture. An individual is defined both by their physiology and their societal structure. It’s physiology and culture. Post modernism denies objective truth. I believe in objective truth. I also believe in intentionality, which post modernism denies. We could go on. Stop using the “have you actually studied this” argument and actually engage in productive debate. An appeal to academic authority is really not useful here.
It seems some forget, for instance, that the native population of America benefitted greatly from their encounters with colonial people from France and Britain. They sold and traded items. They learned knew technologies. Hell, many native tribes fought alongside the Americans during the American revolution. They also fought alongside France. The whole situation of the American colonies is really messy. Anyway, colonialism is not a black and white issue.
It seems some forget, for instance, that the native population of America benefitted greatly from their encounters with colonial people from France and Britain.
ah, yes, the minimum of 30 million people killed just in the Americas really benefited. get out of here with this settler colonialist apologia, my dude. you are a textbook case of why nobody is interested in hearing out conservative “thought”, which appears to be impossibly tied to being pro-genocide.
Either you’re the stupidest person who has ever received a PhD in the world, or you’re a fucking liar. There’s absolutely no god damned way that you can hold this many imbecilic, counter-to-reality views while having had to engage with primary sources for the multiple years it took to achieve a PhD. Stop lying, seriously. Nobody buys your bullshit anyway.
Wow, what a shocking comment. Explains your original I suppose.
You can’t just lay judgement on something because you don’t like it. You need to actually understand it, hopefully your read the other responses you got with an open mind, lest ye drift deeper into bigotry via ignorance (chosen ignorance, at that)
The conservatives you’re describing are becoming more uncommon by the day. So much of conservative politics now is driven by misinformation and fear, I legitimately can’t remember the last time I had a constructive conversation with a conservative. They live in a different world, which makes constructive discussion almost impossible.
The issue is the party overwealming supports these ideas, we are not debating what color school busses should be or how we should ensure we have clean water into the future, we are instead debating should X group be allowed to live. An option that involves taking rights from others based on misinformation isn’t an opinion.
I think we need to have better conservative content.
Haven’t seen a lot of examples of that for many decades.
True. Many of them are just plain evil. But I would argue that the vast majority are some combination of evil and stupid.
Yes, this is true, many conservative people are smart - they worked out that in order to get money and power they can exploit conservative talking points easily because they don’t have to be truthful, thoughtful, or in any way care about other people
So, I commented earlier about why right-wing opinions are trash in general, but I realized that I never addressed the meat of your question, which was: “Are[sic] Conservative/Right-Wing opinions completely unwelcome on Lemmy?”. Which, I’ve gotta say, is an incredibly stupid fucking question. Lemmy is a federated space, which means that anybody can set up their own server, with their own rules, and be part of the wider “Lemmy”. A much better question, since you’re posting on beehaw.org is: “Are Conservative / Right-Wing opinions completely unwelcome on Beehaw?”, which is answerable based on knowledge of the administrator(s) of Beehaw.
But, really, any fascist dipshit with a spare server and an internet connection can start their own Lemmy instance, and they’d fucking love your stupid fucking Right-Wing Opinions.
So, in short, your question is stupid, and your opinions are trash. Thank you, and goodnight.
Others have already provided a lot of detailed answers to the OP, and the question in and of itself isn’t necessarily harmful even if it misses the point of federation. But this level of aggression is really unnecessary - please keep it nice if you’re participating on Beehaw.
Conservatives I can deal with, but modern right wingers have lost their goddamn minds.
And the entire issue is that a lot of people who view themselves as moderate conservatives are enabling this ideological brain rot by not vocally disassociating it with more reasonable conservative positions. Because of that, I am way more comfortable saying that conservative voices should be viewed with suspicion than I used to be.
My brother is conservative. Small C. He recognises that the Tories are a shower of pricks and wants them to actually do conservative things, rather than focus on race baiting and hatred. I can talk politics with him, and enjoy doing so even though I’m getting more and more commie as every year passes.
He’s not a right wing shithead.
What opinions do you mean specifically? The question you asked is too vague to help us sort out the welcome from the unwelcome.
Remember: “lower taxes for businesses” is a mainstream conservative opinion, but so are “children should not be allowed to know of the existence of gay people” and also “Breonna Taylor probably deserved to die” and also “Dr. Fauci is a mass murderer” and also “Trump won in 2020” and also “more brown children should be put in those cages”, etc., etc., etc.
If the conservative mainstream is so hateful and bigoted that most of their opinions would not be allowed on a well-regulated platform, that is not the fault of the platform and it does not suggest that the platform has to change just to accommodate conservatives.
One issue is that it sometimes gets hard to discuss something like “lower taxes for businesses” because some people will assume you want to murder all gay people and others come along who actually do want to do that and think they are on you’re side…
When positions are too simplifed into left vs right and all your other positions are assumed to be in line with the left vs. right debate there will never be any real discussion.
Sure. The people who make that assumption are being rational in doing so, IMO.
Part of the reason for this is that people use the “lower taxes” thing as an excuse for, for example, having voted for Trump. “Oh no I’m not into all the cruel shit, I’m just a Fiscal Conservative™️” won’t convince anyone because nowadays you can’t vote for “lower taxes for businesses” without also voting for “trans people are all pedophiles”. Check your nearest Republican state legislature for verification of that fact.
Of course, the other important caveat is that “lower taxes for businesses” is usually packaged with “more deregulation”, which is in itself cruel, always implemented haphazardly, and never promotes the safe and sustainable economic growth that is promised.
This reply is accurate and probably one of the reasons why you see entirely different platforms for people from different political positions. This isn’t the platforms fault, the fault lies with a lot of factors.
-The people who have accepted intolerance as a feature instead of a bug in their political party. -The politicians who continue to rile up audiences using dog whistles.
-The media who allow dog whistles on the air un-critically as though it’s legitimate political discourse. Family Guy example
-Money in politics, specifically Rich people and corporations being allowed to use their pile of money to get whatever they want at everyone’s expense.
Wouldn’t that depend on the historic understanding of GOP politics in the United States? There was a time when the Democrats were the problematic group and the GOP were not…the tables have flipped. For me, personally, I am invested in Beehaw’s ‘Northern Star’ or guiding principle -> be(e) nice.
As a self described leftist, I’m open to discussing almost anything in a respectful manner. I’m not going to shit on anyone just for have a different opinion, but I’m going to argue my viewpoint when I feel led to. And I’m certainly going to call someone out for being bigoted, disrespectful, or spreading misinformation. A lot of those things are not well received by those on the right and may make them feel unwelcome, but that’s really not my problem.
Just had one of those conversations the other day, where “We don’t want racists around here” met with “why don’t you like conservatives”. It’s funny when they tell on themselves like that.
We all need less stupid, bigoted, selfish, aggressive, and violence-supporting people in our lives.
I don’t personally align with either political party but the fact that you didn’t see the irony in this before posting it is really something spectacular.
both sides r bad mkay?
No, One side is fucking evil, and would happily exterminate the amorphous “other” if they could get away with it. How does if feel to know that you and the KKK vote for the same things and people btw?
We don’t tolerate intolerance. If that sounds ludicrous to you, you should search for “the paradox of tolerance”.
Coming from a former hardcore conservative who listened to that snake Rush Limbaugh and his ilk every single day for hours for the better part of a decade, then moved to Los Angeles and learned quickly that everything he had been told was a fucking lie… Put away the dog whistles. You aren’t fooling anyone.
Genocide is evil? Next you’ll tell me the nazis were the baddies!
Is there a term for this 'both sides’ing? Politely declaring “both sides are equally bad” despite the glaring disparity?
False equivalency is the term I’d use to describe it.
Hi there. I’m trans. It wasn’t up to me. I didn’t choose to be. Life would be way easier if I wasn’t. I’m dealing with it as best I can so I can live my life. An entire political party is currently putting money and energy behind denying me healthcare. I’m an adult. I’m at a point where I can’t make hormones on my own but that doesn’t matter to them. The dysphoria I was experiencing prior to transitioning was straight up not compatible with continuing to live. You don’t even have to take my word for it - several doctors at different agencies agreed enough to write letters for me to start care. It is disingenuous to look at how conservatives are trying to, at best, make me very sick on a daily basis, or are, at worst, trying to put me in the ground and say “yeah, this is just as bad as the left’s typical talking points.”
If I were a cis person who couldn’t synthesize my own hormones for whatever reason, there would be nothing stopping me from getting this exact. Same. Treatment. These things don’t happen by accident. They happen because the hate is there to open the door and a lot of self-proclaimed “good” folks are real happy to watch it go down.
How do you reconcile with such an insanely disjointed false equivalency? Honest question.
I don’t care if you like either political party. Buy if you’re indifferent to fascists, then opposing fascists could look fascistic.
Please. Spare us. “I don’t support either political party but liberals are just as bad” is a very roundabout way of saying that you’re a Republican.
