63
Liberalism Will Cost Us the Earth
(inthesetimes.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
63 points (100.0% liked)
politics
19120 readers
2032 users here now
Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
- Post only links to articles, Title must fairly describe link contents. If your title differs from the site’s, it should only be to add context or be more descriptive. Do not post entire articles in the body or in the comments.
Links must be to the original source, not an aggregator like Google Amp, MSN, or Yahoo.
Example:
- Articles must be relevant to politics. Links must be to quality and original content. Articles should be worth reading. Clickbait, stub articles, and rehosted or stolen content are not allowed. Check your source for Reliability and Bias here.
- Be civil, No violations of TOS. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a (pejorative, pejorative). It’s NOT OK to say another USER is (pejorative). Strong language is fine, just not directed at other members. Engage in good-faith and with respect! This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban.
- No memes, trolling, or low-effort comments. Reposts, misinformation, off-topic, trolling, or offensive. Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.
- Vote based on comment quality, not agreement. This community aims to foster discussion; please reward people for putting effort into articulating their viewpoint, even if you disagree with it.
- No hate speech, slurs, celebrating death, advocating violence, or abusive language. This will result in a ban. Usernames containing racist, or inappropriate slurs will be banned without warning
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
No, not really. I'm not saying all ideologies are equally valid, nor am I saying that we should all be nihilists. I'm talking about belief being replaced by data, facts, and evidence. It's about making a distinction between subjective ideals and morals, and objective truths.
Every society is going to have their morals and ideals. That's a good thing, and a necessary thing, but not all systems are equally effective at turning an ideal into a reality. It's not enough to believe that a system will achieve the ideal, you have to rely on science and facts to construct the system that will achieve the ideal.
Biden and Harris just did this with the economy and lost every swing state, plus the electoral college and the popular vote.
You cannot tell people their lived reality is wrong because numbers on a piece of paper say otherwise.
You can't remove human emotions and feelings from humanity, and it looks pretty clear to me that the average American feels like liberalism isn't working for them, despite the economic numbers saying everything is great.
Ok, here's a truth: centrist liberalism cost the Democrats the election, as evidenced by the fact progressive policies were passed in states that didn't vote for Harris.
The Democrats, as evidenced by 2016 and 2024 (and arguably 2016), cannot win with just their liberal base. They need to court other voters, and they chose in 2016 and now 2024 to move right and try to court Republicans, who statistically will not vote for Democrats, instead of trying to appeal to the leftist/progressive wing of the party.
Sure seems like the data and the people are repudiating liberalism, so... Sure sounds like liberalism is the wrong one here, otherwise, wouldn't they have won?
I don't necessarily disagree, but if the problem isn't ideology itself but just that we have the wrong ideology in place, well, what do we replace it with? What's the "right" ideology? I'm not opposed to getting rid of liberalism, but I don't want to see it replaced with something that will be no better, or even worse, for the average person. Like I said, I don't think all ideologies are equal, and I DO think there are ideologies that are worse than liberalism. I don't want a worse ideology to replace liberalism, just because some people believed it was better. By all means, let's replace liberalism, I don't think it's working well enough, but let's use facts, data, and evidence to determine what that better ideology would be.
If it's the wrong ideology in place, the ideology itself is wrong. This is redundant.
Well, we keep trying liberalism and centrism, and it's not working, so how about literally anything else other than conservatism/fascism?
The one that actually benefits the people who are supposed to be represented by the system instead of the wealthy elite at the top. It's literally that simple:
Campaign on popular policies that the working and average person will actually want and benefit from.
Then keep running liberalist campaigns, shifting right every election, and keep snagging those L's.
Y'all keep thinking liberalism will work, and y'all keep demonstrably losing, so why are you so sure liberalism is better than any other ideology without trying anything else?
So just continue ignoring the electorate and their human and emotional wants and needs, and thus, keep losing. Got it. 👍
And you wonder why millions of Democrats stayed home. "I believe we should change the system, but I don't think the system is worth changing without hard facts, data, and evidence."
Go look at the 2024 election results, bud, and then check out the 2016 results, and then the skin-of-their-teeth 2020 Democratic win, and you'll see all the data, facts, and evidence you need.
Your ideology lost, and the fact y'all keep thinking "maybe if we do it again, but more conservative" is going to work election after election. It's literally the definition of insanity, but you want facts and evidence?
Sure.
What would that be? The liberals at least have specifics, they have a system. You have some vague goals. It's not enough to tell people you're going to make their lives better, you have to tell them how you're going to do it.
What would those be?
I don't.
I don't.
Yes, it did. It lost conclusively. But it's not liberalism. My ideology is democratic socialism, and, yeah, it lost. It was a massacre.
Biden adopted policies from Bernie's platform in 2020. Bernie runs on a solidly progressive (at least for the US) platform with actual goals and steps to reach them.
His campaign has admitted that, they know progressive policies will win.
The liberals have the status quo, which Americans repeatedly poll they don't feel is working for them anymore and they want change, and "we're not the Republicans."
I wouldn't call that specifics or a system, it's just "We're not the other guys." There's nothing in their messaging to give people hope.
And, just to add: these are supposed to be people who were elected to work on behalf of their constituents, many touting ivy league degrees and law careers.
They know what policies are popular, and they're supposed to be so smart, so why can't they figure out how to make it happen? Like, is their job supposed to be showing up to cast a vote a few times a year? They're supposed to be hearing our problems and finding solutions to them.
It's not enough the electorate has to give them money and support them regardless of their unpopular policies, they need us to draft their legislation too?
Bernie's 2016 and 2020 platforms, to use at the bare minimum as a framework to build off of.
A minimum wage increase that actually reflects what the American worker should be earning, with it tied to inflation.
Student loan forgiveness, that seems to be a big one. I'd argue they'd win a lot of people over if they ran on a platform to forgive credit card debt accrued during the insanity that was the Pandemic.
Stronger workers rights and stronger unions.
The end to price gouging and corporate greed. Making stock buybacks illegal or heavily fined, mandating money be put back into the company, taxing corporations and the wealthy via the appropriate means, ending tax loopholes for the wealthy. >
Ending Citizen's United, enshrining abortion/bodily autonomy/LGBTQ+ rights into law, enshrining voting rights, automatic voter registration at the age of 18, making voting day a federal holiday, or even making voting mandatory to ensure larger turnout.
Getting rid of the electoral college, changing FPTP, age limits or reform for elected officials, ending lifetime appointments for SCOTUS, SCOTUS ethics laws with actual teeth, expanding the SCOTUS.
I came up with those based on conversations with friends and coworkers and by just casually paying attention to the news. I have an associates degree from a community college, why am I being expected to brainstorm and come up with ideas for a liberal elite with ivy league training and access to national polls and research, and millions of dollars to further test which ideas would resound with voters.
Or go ask the Dems who won reelection on progressive platforms despite those states going to Trump. Or ask the electorate like they're supposed to during the primaries, but the DNC robbed us of those again because their hubris said "We're not fascism, regardless of candidate" would be enough to win.
And before you start "But Biden did those things/Harris campaigned on those things," did she? A significant chunk of Americans didn't know Biden dropped out on election day, do you really think they care about the minutiae of campaign policy? And do you really expect them to be inspired when they're being told "We're just gonna maintain the course"?
Then why keep defending it? The left and progressives keep asking for anything progressive, and the liberals ask us to meet them in the middle. We do, they take a step back, and ask us to meet them in the middle again.
They either run on progressive ideas, and put in the work I would expect of a mulimillion dollar national political organization to figure out what those policies are. From working class Americans, not their corporate masters deciding everything for us.
Or they keep losing. Americans want change, and they're tired of the excuses from the Dems while Repubs actually get things done. And make their constituents feel heard. Unlike the dem liberals, who seem to think they're enlightened and entitled to condescend to the rest of us because they know better. Their facts and data and evidence says so.
So you're either a troll, or completely out of touch with reality.
A Democratic socialist is asking me for popular, progressive policies that would reflect what the average person would want, while defending liberalism as a "necessary evil" because we don't know if any other system would be popular?
So let's just try nothing, got it.
I'm done with this conversation, at best your eyes wide shut, and at worst you're a troll. Any further information I have to convey, or any further questions you have that you think will be so profound, will be searchable via Google.
I'd recommend you start there, maybe with Bernie's website, since you claim to be a Democratic Socialist but don't seem to be familiar with the progressive platform of probably the most open and self-identified Democratic Socialist in American politics: Bernie Sanders.
You're confused. It's my fault. I said:
And you took that to mean I was defending liberalism. I'm not. I was positing that maybe the problem was deeper than liberalism. I never said that liberalism was a "necessary evil," but I get why you thought that. In the US, liberalism is the status quo, and American experts will tell you that facts and evidence support liberalism. But, contrary to what liberals think, they don't have a monopoly on facts and evidence. Some economic experts who have analyzed the facts and evidence and have to come to different conclusions than the liberal experts would be the economists Ha-Joon Chang and Yanis Varoufakis. Even here in the US there are experts who are critical liberalism, like the economist Richard Wolff. Wolff is a democratic socialist economist. Even the economist Joseph E. Stiglitz, while not a socialist, is critical of neoliberalism.
Fair enough. I would work on how you phrase your argument, cause I don't think I'm the only one who thought you were defending neoliberalism and liberalism.
But the Dems need to use the data and facts or non-corporate economists then, and message it so the average American understands this will mean more money for them, better benefits, protections, and comfort.
They're not going to research the positions and research of economists they've never heard of. They don't have the time, and many don't care, they just want to know if the end result will actually benefit them or not.
Not saying that's how it should be, but that it is how it is. Hence why I was saying a political machine with decades of ivy league education between them and millions of dollars at their disposal need to figure out how to get the 60% of Americans who don't vote, to vote.
And ignoring the human factor of politics while doubling down on data and facts that the average American couldn't relate to was a huge contributing factor for Harris losing.