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this post was submitted on 13 Feb 2024
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The left gets massacred for prosaic slogans like "Black lives matter" and "Trans rights are human rights" while the right straight up chants "Jews will not replace us" and nobody bats an eye. So I don't think the left's tone is the problem here.
And yes, for the record, black lives matter and trans women (note, no hyphen) are women.
The Left are the adults in the room. We need to speak clearly so the children do not think we are taking them to the dentist (we totally are but there's no need to trigger them).
The Right cannot change, it's in their nature. It's practically pointless to try. The best we can do is be tactical, and avoid scaring them.
And how well has being the adults in the room worked for us? In the US, it's done nothing but marginalize the left time after time. Our choices for leadership boil down to a contest between center-right and fascist, and fascist is winning.
The fact is, people want anger. People understand anger. People are angry, and for good reason. Our society is completely, utterly fucked, and everyone knows it, even if they don't quite know how or why. And it's precisely that sentiment that fascists like the MAGA movement prey upon. They give people something to blame for everything being fucked, while what laughingly passes for the left continues pretending everything is fine. And so people go to the right, over and over and over again, because at least the right acknowledges their anger.
There's a reason that the last time the left had a real moment in this country was when there were massive protests all over the nation, screaming at the top of their lungs, "BLACK LIVES MATTER!" and "DEFUND THE POLICE!" We finally let our anger show, and guess what? This country stood with us, over and over, and mobilized like hell to get Trump out of office. And then the Biden administration abandoned us and called for "civility" and "reaching across the aisle" like we all knew they would, and now the fascists are back.
We are not going to get anywhere as long as we keep trying to be the "adults in the room" and try to be "civil". We need to get fucking mad, and stay fucking mad, and do the work to make real change whether the other guys want it or not.
We can offer hope instead of fear. The right is steeped in fear, it fuels their entire ideology. If we are able to offer hope, hope is more powerful than fear.
But being the adults in the room we must remember who we are speaking to. We have to converse with them, not at them. If you converse at them, they will simply retreat into the fear bubble because it is familiar, comfortable, and makes them feel safe.
I'm not saying we don't offer hope. But hope and anger are not incompatible.
You can't offer hope for a better tomorrow unless you are willing to point out and fix the problems of today. And as long as we are avoiding scaring the right, we cannot do this.
Anger and hope are absolutely compatible, I have no idea why you would even say that.
You can point out and fix the problems of today while offering hope and solutions that lead to a better tomorrow.
I have no idea What kind of weird thought process led you to believe that these concepts are mutually exclusive.
I'm not sure why you think I think they are mutually exclusive. I said the exact opposite of that.
Speaking of mutual exclusivity, I'm not saying we shouldn't be mad, we have every right to be. The problem I have is with optics, we need to be smarter.
Another example is during the black lives matter protest, community buildings were torched. This was really dumb and made us look really stupid in the eyes of the right.
I totally understand torching the buildings of multi-million dollar franchises, but not locally owned stores and facilities.
And I'm not sure the Defund or BLM movements actually did anything. People noticed for sure, but did anything change?
The Right cannot change, it’s in their nature.
The right will change, and we'll figure out how. That or their immutability will figure into the great filter of the human species.
It's more that we need to wait for the old ones to die off and let the new generations who have slightly less hate, but are still unwilling to change replace them.