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What do you think about Lemmy, so far?
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this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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When you say "left wing". I assume you use the US political reference, right?
Just so you know, in a lot of places, "US left wing" is further right than the most (non-fringe) right wing party there is.
And as such, the perception of politics in the US goes from "insane but maybe a step in the right direction" to "absolute evil and/or destructive/immoral"
My point, which I'm not trying to make to annoy or offend you, but you might want to reflect on: A lot of what is considered "political left wing" in the US, is "common sense" elsewhere.
So, you running into discussion forums is not necessarily that they are "left wing", but rather not deprived of morality, and share a different set of common sense values of creating a society that is fair, the vulnerable and sick are taken care of, no one is exploited, etc etc. That just happens to be "socialism" according to Americans, and otherwise the full political spectrum in my country as to the nuances on how to best achieve that.
It's not really "coping". Other than that, you are right about a lot of points. I am providing a Eurocentric point of view, as you put it. I have no other perspective or insight to share.
US politics are certainly lacking in morality relative to European farts. If listening to 5 seconds of Trump doesn't convince you, or the recent Republican debate... No rational mind or argument will.
It depends on the topic. What right-wing views of the Muslim world, India, etc. are we talking about? Women’s rights, other human rights issues aren’t going to go over well in any mainstream western focused site. US right-wing views are just a bunch of bad faith arguments. The smugness is one thing, but we don’t have to be tolerant of intolerance.
Find me one that isn’t based on a lie. It’s been a long time since it was just a matter of disagreement. I’m not throwing the term out, it’s true.
FWIW, I agree with you on both points. I also think the right has a huge issue with "bad faith" arguments though (way more so than the left).
e.g. the decade long "replacement for Obamacare" that's so much better and perpetually going to be released just after X. This is before Trump even entered the picture.
I'll give you another example, guns. I think the right has a point that it's a mental health issue, but they're not actually willing to change policies in a way that makes mental health care more accessible, so it's an incomplete solution/there's no way to actually get the job done.
Election fraud is another. I'm all for ensuring elections are done with integrity; however, when the efforts to "fix election fraud" aren't supported by real issues when they enter a court of law (where there's real skin in the game, not just words), and when these efforts are targeted at disenfranchising democrats and changing little in rural areas that's a huge red flag. For a specific example, see 1 ballot box per county during COVID (an urban county with over a million people could have the same number of ballot drop boxes as a rural county with a few thousand). Another example would be the absurdly long polling lines in Georgia and the laws attempting to ban people from even giving folks waiting in those lines water.
Independent state legislature theory was also another hellish policy idea out of right wing think tanks that would allow state house legislatures to outright negate votes (fortunately the US supreme court killed that -- but it should give you an idea for how dirty Republican reps are willing to be and where their moral compass is resting).
i.e., there are potentially interesting policy points in the right's voting base. However, the right's politicians are completely off the rails (and operating in a way that I don't believe any American should support -- both in demeanor and policy).
I know, I have friends with like 30+; I honestly don't care that they have them. I've increasingly seen an appetite from Democrats I know to just drop the damn guns thing. We really don't care about "taking all the guns", we just want people to stop shooting up school buildings and random public events in our cities. I don't think that's a big ask.
Here's where Republicans fall short. They give no potential solutions. If mental health isn't solved by "money and psychiatrists", why not? What will solve "metal health"? There's a fine line between yelling "IDK look over there" and making a quality suggestion. People love to talk about both sides and debates ... but there hasn't been a serious policy debate in this country at the national stage in years because one side decided to start yelling something with the substance of "DDDDURRRRRRRRRRRR DDURRRRRR DDDDDURRRRRR" (typical about "woke", "radical", "socialist", etc) rather than making actual points.
I can't even tell you why Trump's Obamacare replacement plan is or isn't a bad idea, because (again) he never presented one. He just said "there will be one". I don't vote for promised plans, if you want my vote you better have a plan. The Democrats do have (even if flawed) thought out plans; the Republicans (increasingly) don't.
I can't tell you what Trump's plan for this is either, because while you tie the gun and mental health crisis together and link them to the economy, the Republican party as a whole doesn't. There's not a policy position arguing "we're going to solve the gun problem by doing X". Here's the Republican platform for 2016, reused for 2020: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2016-republican-party-platform. I challenge you to find anything in there stating how they're going to address the left's concerns about gun violence.
This is the Democrat platform for 2020, see "Ending the Epidemic of Gun Violence" (and yes it includes a real plan for how to solve the migration/border problem by attacking it at the roots not "building a wall" -- which the cartels just dug tunnels under and cut through): https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020-Democratic-Party-Platform.pdf
You're welcome to disagree with parts of the gun plan, or the plan in its entirety, but it's a starting point. In a functioning Democracy, Republicans would come back with a serious proposal for "here's how to improve this situation in a way that protects gun rights." They have done no such thing. It would be one thing if this was "just" about guns, but it's not, they do this all the time.
This to me is missing the forest for the trees. Sure, there are definitely corrupt politicians on both sides. However, what are they getting done and who are they serving at the end of the day?
https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/biden-promise-tracker/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/promises/trumpometer/
Again, Trump promised to "repeal Obamacare and replace it with something so much better" (loose quote). Republicans before him like Paul Ryan made the same bogus claims. They all said "we'll get it out right after we repeal Obamacare". That's not a plan, that's a literal death sentence for some number of Americans (I won't make up an internet statistic). Hell no I'm not voting for that, and I immediately am going to question your motive as a politician for suggesting the moral equivalent of "take the worn tires off the car and only then check to see if there are even any other tires to put on the car" (carrying the metaphor further, people have places to be and things to get done, they don't need you breaking their cars in the middle of their day to day lives with no fix in sight).
Meanwhile, Joe Biden promised to make progress on the country's aging infrastructure and followed through with the infrastructure bill.
I am a policy and action oriented person, and the policies and actions of Republican politicians I find reprehensible and at times completely counter productive.
I'd encourage you (and your friends) to pay attention to the Democrats running in your area, and their actual policy stances. There is variance in the Democrat's platform (especially at the primary stage), and there is an appetite for compromise (they do it constantly, the infrastructure bill was passed because of compromise; it was not everything the majority of the party wanted -- far from it -- but it was what they could get done now). I'm willing to let guns go for other priorities, personally guns are not a "hell no" issue for me, and I know many other Democrats that agree. The country hasn't lost its mind, but the Republican party has, and their false compromise, hostage taking, and political theater is making it REALLY hard to get shit done.
You seem to give the benefit of doubt to Republicans, and then assume the worst of Democrats. We can provide Receipts of Republicans breaking the law, having massive conflicts of interest etc but that's ignored while Gossip about Democrats is treated as cold hard fact. This was rampant during 2016. Look at the Clinton Foundation vs The Trump Foundation. One of those is a real charity, the other is a grift. But the Real one was the one to get heavily scrutinized.
You dislike them, yet you’re repeating their talking points. The GOP is corruption personified. The left isn’t in the same stratosphere. It was the Republicans whose refused to vote on Judges during the Obama administration so they could stack the courts with questionable Judges. It’s the Republicans who fabricate voter fraud with no evidence to pass their voting restrictions that unfairly target legal voters that just happen to vote against them. It’s the Republicans who start up endless investigations without knowing what they are looking for. That’s three odd the top of my head. They’ve been up to it for forty years and recently straight up gave up creating a platform with any sort of governance instead just using wedge issues and fabricated culture war issues to make you think they’re doing anything for you. They aren’t, and they will turn on you the very second it benefits them because. If you haven’t noticed all the old reasonable Republicans are gone. The grifting crazies are the only ones left.
I don’t care to get into another Clinton conversation. I know how this goes. Laundry list of accusations with discredited evidence or implications that go nowhere because the vast majority of them stem from Republican strategists in the 90s who had a vested interest in defeating the Clintons.
Who is saying that? Right-Wing Media? There is no significant movement to completely open our southern border, nor is it something the current administration is demonstrably moving toward. What is happening is right-wing media creating a strawman in bad faith to misrepresent liberals opinions on the southern border. For example, not wanting to build a border wall doesn't not equate wanting an open border. Just like not wanting to buy a Suburban doesn't mean I want to walk to work. The border wall has been a thirty year grift that Republican politicians use to line the pockets of their donors through bloated contracts. Republicans have controlled the Presidency for 12 years over the last two decades. Why wasn't it already done? If you look into it, you'll find significant logistical issues including there being a river and terrain that isn't friendly to construction. There are areas where an existing wall cuts off US Citizen's farms and ranches, and where Border Control can't easily get to. Then there's the topic of Circular migration where preventing some migrants from leaving would double-down on your social services problem you mentioned.
This one again is not in any supported by any politicians or most people. "De-fund the Police" is a poor slogan any way you look at it. Yes, there are people that mean in literally. I can't blame them. The truth is there are areas of this country where the Police act more similar to organized crime than a protection force. This is not literally true the vast majority of the time, but you can't go 2 days without hearing about a situation where there's corruption, or unneeded escalation that causes another civilian death. The movement I'd like to see is to Reform the Police, but that doesn't really sound great in a protest march does it? Police should de-escalate situations, not escalate them. We hear these stories of mentally ill people who are not violent getting shot because someone calls the police to get them help, and the responding officer starts yelling with their gun out making everyone nervous and the mentally ill person gets shot. Or we see stories of overreacting to children, even arresting them for minor disobedience. We see an "us vs them" mentality coming out of the Police where they refuse to hold their own accountable. All of these things should be agreed upon universally imo. I've said this to some Gun-Loving friends before. Why should "he had a gun" be a reason for a cop to shoot you dead without getting your day in court? Last I checked conservatives are way into the 2nd Amendment, so this universal love for the Police, especially when they do wrong is puzzling to me.
I disagree that those two things have nothing to do with each other.
You have a constitutional right to bear arms right? If so, why does the possibility of you using that right give Carte Blanche to a Police Officer to shoot you dead and get away with it? I always hear that the right to bear arms is about standing up to tyranny… seems relevant to me. When Pro-Gun groups didn’t fight for Philando Castile it became crystal clear they are all full of shit.
I can’t take you seriously when you say “leftist” it’s straight out of right-wing propaganda. So I doubt you have “leftist friends” at all. You’re even saying the quiet part out loud. Trump immediately banned everybody from coming into the country from Muslim countries regardless of the reason. I don’t think you understand how difficult the Immigration process is. These people spent all the time and money to come here, were approved and were literally on planes when this happened. That’s some heartless xenophobic bullshit and idk how you could support that.
Migrant workers don’t take American jobs. This has been proven so much it’s not even much of a current Republican talking point. Southern states that have enacted strict immigration laws ended up having farms with no one to harvest as Americans didn’t want those jobs, for they pay that was offered at least. If you’re conflating this with people who immigrate legally taking jobs, that’s a different issue and American companies are the ones you should be mad at. It’s not as simple as you think, often it costs the company a lot and it would have been cheaper to hire an American.
Those protest movements have no elected power. This is a situation where systemic issues in policing really present two different outcomes. If your community was treated the same as the communities that these people are apart of, I’d wager the rhetoric would be similar or even more violent. Anti-Police rhetoric on the right was rampant in the 90s. Current conservatives care more about treating people they don’t like bad, so they are Pro Police every time an incident happens with a black person. We all should be calling for reform when a cop becomes Judge, Jury, and, executioner just because they think the person has a weapon. How 2nd Amendment advocates aren’t just as upset at the police as the community that is victimized by them is extremely telling imo.
I’ve run into you in other threads. Your expressed opinions are all conspiracy theories or right wing talking points. Your account is a couple days old. There’s nothing showing me you aren’t a troll. And if you’re not it makes no difference if everything you post is the same. 🤷♂️
I think the problem here is often not the ideology, but the way people go about it. I'm left-wing but I basically can't stand to talk to other left-wingers about politics as they're so sanctimonious, disrespectful, and hypocritical online. So the problem isn't that a platform is left-wing, but rather that there's left-wingers on it if you follow that logic. Please note I said if you follow the logic, not if you agree with it......before I get dog-piled on for saying something non-flattering about liberals.
Then there's Lemmygrad…
And Hexbear
Yea, it's a problem with most people who're heavily into politics these days I think. They're more concerned with dunking on the people that don't follow their beliefs than they are actually discussing issues. If they run into someone that isn't part of their echo chamber they can't handle it and start throwing insults.
"We must eat the billionaires. This is all the fault of capitalism. No wonder that's how they make their profit."
This sort of thing is 'leftist' everywhere.
Yeah, the US version.
No problem, no foul. We good.