this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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Conservatism means different things to different people. Just not being radical and accepting that some things don't require extreme solutions gets you labelled a conservative these days, despite the fact I've never voted for a right wing party ever.
That's a vague response that I can't really make any reply to.
If you aren't voting for right-wing parties, that's a good thing. You might be a pretty middle-of-the-road liberal, at least statistically speaking that's not unlikely. Which in the grand scheme of things, is still fairly conservative, supportive of the maintenance of the status quo.
So if that describes you, I can see why people would say that's conservative.
How is being middle of the road,conservative in the grand scheme of things unless you're massively overestimating the appeal of the far left? By definition it's not.
This reminds me of when Reddit thought Bernie was a legitimate presidential candidate. Terminally online people have a warped perspective on the political spectrum.
I literally explained it in the comment. You should try reading it again.
Maintaining the status quo, opposing change, is still quite conservative. Hell the right-wing party in some countries are the "Liberals". And note that I said lower-case-c "conservative". Just because the self-described capital-c "Conservatives" are running further rightward and flirting with fascism, doesn't make the middle position not conservative.
ntg but the general kind of surface level spectrum might look more like conservatives, not definitionally, or, in the sense of the origin of the word, conservatives want to regress society back to some previous state. centrists yadda yadda status quo. and then liberals want to progress society, and that's kind of equivalent to progressivism or leftism. Which is partially because americans are not politically literate, or actually literate, and don't understand the differences between different words, but also because america as a whole is so far to the right (so is much of the world), and so stuck in the past, that actual leftism is incredibly fucking radical, and advocating for liberalism, or at least, the identitarian implications of liberalism, rather than fucked up plutocracy and bigotry, is still thought of as a leftist position.
You said in the grand scheme of things it's conservative, which is pretty vague and meaningless and screams of "everyone who is to the right of me is a conservative QED".
There is a reason the left are terrible at building election winning coalitions and shit like this is exactly why.
You can think whatever you like, but that isn't what I wrote.
Why do you assume that liberals just want to maintain the status quo, when actually most of us want change but not the radical economy breaking change the left seem to want?
I think we understand importantly that nothing gets fixed if the economy isn't healthy. The left view the economy very differently.
Lived experience.
And like... Talking to liberals? Having conversations with people. Where whenever we discuss politics, any systemic change is always framed as too radical.
Think about climate change. Think about how many liberals view this as an issue where the solution is... More people buying electric cars. Rather than rethinking cities and infrastructure to allow for more pedestrians, bicycles, and public transport. Or where instead of regulating industries causing the most damage, the solutions is... To rely on consumers, who are already overwhelmed by information in advertising and often low on disposable income, to "make better purchasing decisions" to make the companies change by voting with their wallets. Where the fault for climate change isn't the fact that our economies incentivise the destruction of the environment, but that people just aren't recycling enough.
The system is always found faultless, it's always the individual to blame. Any actual systemic solution is dismissed, precisely because changing the systems we live under is considered radical.
Some liberals might, ostensibly, say they want things to change for the better. But in practice, they tend to oppose any measure to actually achieve that change.
I'm not going to talk about public transport because it ostensibly is an incredibly localised issue.
I will say that most liberals are definitely not opposed to measures to combat climate change, it's just that those measures need to be sensible and realistic and most importantly costed.
I also have never met liberals that are opposed to regulation of fossil fuel industries, but again the measures need to be sensible as the world economy is still reliant on oil and gas.
Causing giant economic crashes is the absolute worst thing you can do to combat climate change. Money, whether you like it or not, rules the world and dictates what we can do. Good intentions can have bad outcomes, this is absolutely what many don't understand.
Please actually read what I'm writing. Because this is fully consistent with what I'm describing.
Liberals often support change in abstract, they like the goals. But then oppose any measures to accomplish it because those measures are not "sensible" to them.
Stop assuming everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. We don't think you're correct, that doesn't mean that we don't understand.
Y'all are always so condescending.
Leftists are the most condescending and smug people around.
They disparage the proletariat as being brainwashed and infantilise them rather than just accepting the fact people think they're dicks.
Whenever you respond to them they just tell you to read theory or gish gallop.
They oversimplify solutions. Left populism is absolutely dangerous to young people in this political climate.
Many are more concerned with out virtuing each other rather than constructing workable movements for change that being people along with them.
Good chat. Bye now.
Step outside of your echo chambers once in a while mate.
Oh piss right off. You ignore what I write and started ranting at me about entirely unrelated nonsense. And this entire conversation has been weirdly accusatory. I engaged with you honestly, but you clearly have a chip on your shoulder about leftists.
Which of course tracks 100% with my previous experience.
Insufferable, self-aggrandizing tool.
You stated it with the ad hominem attacks and the nastiness, just because of what you assumed I believed rather than actually what I believe.
This is what I mean, discourse is dead. I got dog piled for saying I'm less leftist than when I was younger, which is a cardinal sin in threads like this. Because people see things in black and white they think you're basically Trump if you say something like that.
Where? The harshest thing I said was asking you to actually read my comments.
And I'm going to do it again here because you seem to just be making up things that I haven't written.
Buddy I do not want to hear that from you, after you just spat a rant at me about what leftists apparently believe.
The discourse is dead because you aren't reading what is written before responding.
Criticism isn't dogpiling. And exactly what did you expect? You responded to me in the first place with a message implying that leftists lack nuance and pragmatism.
The hell did you want? A pat on the back and a cookie? You picked an argument and you found it.
Why is every message of yours an accusation of a lack of critical reasoning. Like buddy, people disagree with you. It doesn't mean we're incapable of critical thinking.
Maybe you should step out of your echo chamber and consider perspectives other than your own for once.
Dogpilijg is dogpiling. If you don't assume the most leftist position possible in the thread you get dogpiled to fuck. Are you actually blind?
Why are you so threatened by me?
So you accuse me of stuff, I ask where I did that, and you just change the subject? What a waste of my time talking to you has been.
He doesn't assume that, and said the exact opposite.
How has he said the exact opposite? Enlighten me.
Edit: he didn't, for all the reasonable people who happen to be reading.
no it doesn't.
Yes it absolutely does.
jesus you freaks have such a victim fetish
I didn't realise being a left leaning liberal rather than a raging communist makes one a freak. Good to know. Thanks for actually trying to understand what I believe (/s)!
you aren't left leaning, and I'm not a communist. what happened to the nuance you were just prattling on about? abandon it already because you really like calling people communists that much?
College communists will absolutely label the entire democratic party right wing, and will call liberalism a fundamentally conservative philosophy. If you're surrounded by literal communists, accepting that maybe a literal revolution isn't the best idea will absolutely get you called a conservative.
That's not really a new phenomenon, though. The German communist party literally labeled the social democrat party fascists, and thought they were just as bad as the nazis. Turns out they were kinda wrong about that.
I mean. I'm no college communist. But neither of those assertions are particularly out there?
When compared with parties in other democracies, the Democrats are pretty right-wing on many issues. And it's not strange to refer to liberalism as a conservative philosophy, it tends to place emphasis on private property, free-market economics, and capitalism. There are places where the conservative party are "The Liberals".
Liberalism, as in the philosophy, isn't inherently pro-capitalism. There have been liberals that are opposed to capitalism.
That is why I said "tends" to favour capitalism. Which I don't think is unfair. Liberalism has also been built upon for a long time, so one would expect to find a lot of variation.