My mind keeps thinking back to a brief exchange I had with my mother about a year ago. It was sometime in the late fall/early winter of 2020 and my mom was watching some local news channel that was showing a segment on the state of pre trial detention in the U.S., and my mom turned to me and said something along the lines of "That's terrible! Did you know that some people are spending over a year in jails just waiting for their trial?"
(I don't remember the exact words said in this exchange but I remember the jist of it)
"Mom, you know I spent the entire summer yelling at cops. What makes you think that I didn't know about the terrible things they do?"
"Well, this doesn't have to do with cops because this is just the justice system not taking care of these people's cases fast enough"
Now normally I try and educate my mother about the bullshit in the world but that answer was so blatantly intentionally ignorant that I was just fucking speechless. It took me a couple seconds of complete bewilderment before I could ask the very, very obvious follow up question of "WHO DO YOU THINK PUTS PEOPLE IN JAIL???"
At that point my mom just threw up her hands and just gave up. I'm pretty sure she even realized that what she said was completely absurd. But I keep going back to this exchange in my head because it's such an eye opening view into the liberal mind
Anyone else have any good stories like that?
I think realising my brother that I idolised as a kid, was a self-serving lib that is ideologically only out for himself was a pretty watershed moment for me. Despite having a PhD in physics and being incredibly intelligent in a conventional sense, his inconsistency and inherent Thatcherism is just mind blowing.
For instance: he has a degree and PhD in physics, from a time when university was not only free in the U.K., but he received grants for doing so. He now works as a software engineer. He is against tuition free university, as he sees fees as a forcing function to prevent “useless degrees” that don’t contribute to the economy.
He attended state schools prior to university, but has no sympathy for pay levels for pubic school teachers in the Bay Area as, and I quote - “it is a desirable place to live”.
He despises the welfare state, citing the winter of discontent and although he says he doesn’t like Thatcher or Tories, contends that the post-Thatcher destruction of the welfare state that gave him his PMC life is utterly necessary and good.
He thought I was an immature idiot for volunteering for Bernie when I was in my 30s. Naturally if he was coming at me from a left perspective, I would agree with him, but that’s a different kettle of fish!
Like 50% of Physics PhDs are essentially fascist in their uncritical reduction of the social to the quantifiable. They imagine themselves versed in all subjects, and are often enthusiastic about capitalist economics or "the market" even while verbally recognizing the ills of capitalism. Most of them are the children of the wealthy or white collar professionals like engineers. They do not have a proletarian consciousness. Those that do tend to be very alienated. Some are based. But in short, most of them are greedy bastards who want their treats and don't care about the human cost.
I think there is a sense among a lot of engineers that conventional economics are as rigorously researched and tested as for example physics. This oddly only applies to economics though, social sciences are seen as hogwash.
Being on the successful side of the current economic order is probably why. If the current order is benefiting you it surely has to be just.
That's true for many physicists too. They get caught up in the model, but can't actually envision an accurate portrait of real society.
Universities balance their books on the backs of humanities students; the prevalenceof 'useless degrees' is entirely the result of market forces!
If it weren't for government subsidy their would be no physics courses; my university shuttered its physics department after fees were brought in, as it wasn't profitable even with government grants.
I'm sure you know this but it gets me every time this asinine talking point is brought up.
I was talking to a local pastor the other day and he was talking about the town was getting "brighter" and things were getting better and blah blah blah, and he says "you know, a lot of these bad neighborhoods, they're just lacking fathers man. but if we just keep up a good police presence there and keep helping out, we'll get there"
and I was fucking stunned silent for a few moments before asking "who the fuck do you think is arresting the fathers?"
In the "christianese" he was speaking, I know that he didn't know how racist he was being, but yeah.
Too many to list here. Covid has a lot of people telling me that it's okay to let a bunch of ppl die.
Lots of "That's just the way it is" in regards to the problems of capitalism. These same people of course lose their shit at whatever 'problems' they're told China has.
some of you may die but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make :farquaad-point:
Did you know that worms can survive being cut in half? :fidel-bat:
"It's impossible for Afghanistan to have a democracy because their literacy rate is so low."
Like, yeah that's an obstacle, but do you think that the literacy rate in the 18th century was super high? If you build your democratic system with that in mind it doesn't have to be an issue, what's far more important is building a system that has buy in from both rural and urban populations, instead of just trying to force a system onto them from the top down (the results of trying to do that were made pretty clear earlier this year).
Later on in this conversation I tried to explain that not being literate doesn't mean you can't be smart, it just means you didn't get taught how to read. This guy was a Staff NCO in the Marine Corps and I'm pretty sure he was just reaching for anything and everything he could say to dehumanize the Afghanistan population to justify the war being fought there.
Real talk though I think the practice of using written law pre mass literacy was one of the barriers to actual democracy and lead to the authoritarianism we see in the US and even the failure of the Chinese republic.
Oral democracy ala the Soviets and Syndicate governments that emerge during general strikes, or even Iroquois concensus democracy make more sense for non literate populations. Like, there's a reason Allende designed the economic planning infrastructure to be operable by an illiterate person.
"We can't admit Puerto Rico as a state because all they have is unskilled labor"
Yeah dipshit, every brown person speaking spanish is a gardener and incapable of having a useful profession like working for your dad's management consulting firm.
Fucking hell, that might have to be the worst thing I've read in this thread so far. Even ignoring the very racist implications of that, it doesn't even make any fucking sense. "Unskilled laborers" still have a right to be represented in national assembly? Oh, I get it now, it's deeply classist as well as racist
My lib brother told me that the US is closer to socialism than China because the US allows gay marriage. We were drunk on a boat so the best I could do was to pick my jaw off the floor and say they’re literally Communists and he didn’t really have a response.
Sorry if my answer was bad but I seriously didn’t know how to respond to a take like that.
"Socialism is when we do capitalism, but also allow gay people to do capitalism." How to even respond to that? And does that mean that East German state-funded gay nightclubs were literally socialism?
"Poor people are just as responsible for ecological catastrophe as billionaire CEOs and politicians because poor people litter more"
"You can't believe anything Cubans say about their country because they're all brainwashed robots"
"We should preemptively nuke North Korea because they're a rogue threat to world peace"
"We need to keep the Mexicans out for the environment, we can't have them all living first-world lifestyles"
"People in the global south don't deserve vaccines as much as people in the global north because the global north contributes more to medical research"
"Capitalism and communism have both failed, so world leaders need to get together and invent a new political system"
"If you think that all of the German military leadership in WW2 were complicit in allowing the Holocaust to be carried out, then you need to completely cut yourself off from American society and move to the Alaskan wilderness, or you're a hypocrite"
The kicker?
These were all the same guy.
Oh wow, even the fash tendency of demonizing their social fash allies. SPD kills Rosa and sides with the Conservatives over the communist party making Hitler the Chancellor. And the Nazis don't even give them lip service.
Nah they're different: eco fascists recognize the threat of ecological catastrophe, and have a bold plan for confronting it.
Unfortunately, that plan is evil.
“Capitalism and communism have both failed, so world leaders need to get together and invent a new political system”
ASSUME THE THIRD POSITION
Not earth shattering, but I have a lib friend who is a deficit hawk. He still thinks money is real.
my mom, who is EXTREMELY liberal and hates republicans and all that shit literally did not know that current russia is not communist lol i tried telling her that the soviet union fell, which she understands, but thinks they are still communist. she also thinks communism is absolutely 100% linked to authoritarianism, which is def not true, but shes coming around since i got her to get some chiapas coffee and explained their shit in the meantime :cmnd-marcos-pog:
My mom helped Chiapas farmers grow coffee as part of a missions trip(s). Like over several years. I really want to put socialism in that context for her. Any tips? Because even if she becomes an anarchist that's better than whatever republican ideal she represents.
i mean its either gonna be hard or impossible to get someone like that to even get past the words "communist" and "anarchist" but there is literally zero meaning behind it for them. my mom literally thought those words were synonymous with "BAD". best bet i always go for is relating anarchism to the idea of right wing "anti-state" bullshit. oh bro man you dont like "big govt"? well have i got a good one for you!
of course this can also still be impossible if a mfer just dont want it.
I think her background may at least leave a gap for anarchism to get in.
The same libs that kept talking about this grave threat of fascism and inherent flaws and failures of America last year and how America is in what might be permanent decline, just switched overnight back to "we can fix whats wrong with America with what's right with America" mode. I kept asking them "okay, but in any major or systemic way, how has anything actually changed except you don't have to read hysterical articles about the Orange Man anymore?" and I get some version of the Democrats just need time, they will get to work on fixing everything. The kicker is that some were willing to acknowledge real systemic failures the Democrats would never touch and that Biden wouldn't have won without COVID happening under Trump's watch last year.
It just really is so shocking to watch the reality distortion fields change in real time. "No, systemic change in that we never question the system, just vote harder!"
I like pointing to student loan cancellation as an easy example of a Democratic failure. It covers a lot of the kneejerk apologia pretty easily: Biden doesn't need to court congress or a parliamentarian since it can be enacted with an Executive Order (which is already written, meaning he can do it tomorrow). It's good policy and would be effectively buying votes for the Dems, so it's great politics. And Biden ran on (even limited) cancellation so it would be fulfilling a campaign promise as well. The only thing standing in the way of actually doing this is the fact that the Dems have zero will to do this obvious good thing.
And as a bonus, since Biden will probably rerun in 2024, it will be at least 2028 before we could possibly get someone in office who will actually pull the trigger. And that requires a lot more effort than just getting Biden to sign a piece of paper.
I know, they will always deflect when I point to things like this and vaguely gesture at political capital or offending moderates before midterms. Even for things related to immigration like "Biden could just reverse Trumps revoking Haitians temporary asylum or reverse the 'COVID measures' preventing any asylum applications. Remember when Democrats cared about asylum seekers?"
This batch of libs I am talking to are against student debt cancellation because "I had to pay it back, it is only fair that they do". Even after I point out that they had parents help them pay so most of them only had $1-5k. The same people that kept complaining that I never went out with them and was a hermit saving money, because my parents didn't pay so I had significantly more. I got all of it paid off and am still in favor of cancellation, you damn hypocrites.
it appears the stat shared by Warren and Adams is on track. However, it's based on a limited data set with a short tracking period.
fact checkers are so fucking cursed jesus christ
I have a lib friend who seriously refers to me as "brainwashed" anytime I give them any pushback on their shitty opinions and honestly I have to say that sets me off more than anything else I've ever heard!!!
He is the kind of liberal who would respond with a smug sounding "yeah, I am brainwashed -- so what?? Everyone is." lol. He's a software engineer who landed a job out of college that pays enough for his ass to afford a loan/mortgage payment on a house, so he has become increasingly reactionary when it comes to topics like affordable housing and whatnot lol.
The one I knew was such a prick that even as he would insist on not discussing politics with me (because I could talk circles around him there
haha this is exactly our friendship as it stands, but his dumbass usually can't help but feel the need to interject his opinion whenever I happen to say/send something left-leaning lol. Our last argument in which he called me brainwashed was because I sent the Ghislaine court sketch pic to the group chat in response to a text, he immediately goes "why do you care???" and I asked him if he was implying support of Ghislaine Maxwell only to get called brainwashed for "following the trial and caring so much" lol
From a lib close to me: The Soviet Union was so unpopular in Ukraine that "the Ukrainians" sided with the nazis when they invaded.
I had the presence of mind to ask if it was a particular class of Ukrainians that did this collaborating. Anyway, yeah it was my dad, who's married to a Jew (my mom) descended from Ukranian Jews. He's also known for about 35 years a Jewish couple that survived the holocaust in Ukraine. My mom and I have an unknown number of ancestors (definitely >0) that were killed in antisemitic violence in Ukraine.
Unfortunately, he's been marinating in red scarce absurdities since the 50s. Any sort of class analysis is definitely not going to happen. In general, If he didn't see it in the NYT then it ain't true, even if I'm telling him about something I've seen with my own eyes.
The French government was so unpopular in France that 'Vichy France' sided with the nazis when they invaded
That may be true, but you won't hear it on the history channel or in an interview with Anne Applebaum in the NYT unless there's also an insinuation that something sinister was going on. Therefore, it isn't actually true. It could never be that people wanted to stop ethnic violence that helped the rich and get back to the business of building universal prosperity and security. It could never be something so simple and relatable.
The unspecified evil is always more plausible than just considering what a human might actually do. I suppose that's racism doing its work. It'll happen to when my dad is educating me on Venezuela, or Cuba, or the DPRK. I'll point out that everything he said is objectively false, but also implausible because it's things no one would ever have any reason to do, and he'll just say "yeah, well I'm sure (place) is pretty bad."
My dad is in his 70s and has a PHD in philosophy. He's trying to start a dialog with me about being a Marxist. He pointed to modern russia as an example of "communism failing," which anyone with even a basic interest in leftism can see is just not a good take, but im debating just how much I want to engage him on it. He's generally super reasonable about being presented with new ideas, but like...im probably not gonna change any minds here, with him being raised with McCarthyism being like the national default position.
That said, he was recently diagnosed with low grade dementia, so I might try to engage him just on the basis of "this has been the most lucid and coherent that he's talked about anything to me in a number of years."
My roommate told me that we need more civil republicans like John McCain.
