I had a group of friends that I spent most my sophomore year with at a very liberal east-coast college. Most of the friends in the group studied international relations and we frequently discussed politics. As I got to know them, I realized that we differed on a lot of things. Two of them told me that they wanted to join the CIA as analysts. Now I'm not a poli-sci major, but I know enough about history to know that the CIA has done and continues to do some evil shit. Now I do have a bunch of moderate leaning friends, but it felt different talking with this group of friends they had good understand of history and political philosophy. One of these guys, let’s call him Matt, was a huge Aaron Sorkin fan and Blairite (weirdly obsessed with British politics for some reason). Matt also wanted to work in political finance. I thought we were bonding over are mutual interest in the space related stuff until he showed me a Aaron Sorkin mini-series on the Apollo Space Program. And then proceed to tell me that he like the Apollo Missions because of all the political wonkery involved. The tipping point in our friendship was when he told me, at a BLM protest, that he was happy to finally get his "liberal street cred". Liberal wonks are some of the worst people to be friends with if you genuine care about making life better for people.
My girlfriend at the time was a huge Joe Biden supporter, her mom worked at the World Bank. She would often jokingly say that I was a communist and would side with the group of friends on domestic and foreign policy issues. She started fighting with me when I explained to her that the public health think-tank that she was applying to was just a health care lobbying group. This hurt me because I was really in love with her at the time, but I could see that she wasn’t open to critically challenge the world around her. She also got upset that I owned a gun, as many people from the south do. And when I decided to switch my studies from finance to computers science, she wasn’t supportive. Anyway, I broke up with her later and stopped talking with group of friends.
Anyway, I really wish I could meet some cool people with socialist outlook that are down to crack a cold one and do some grilling.
our political views are an expression of our moral values, most of the time
so yea, they do affect my relationships, i have no room in my life for people who have no empathy
I've been slowly coming to this realization over the last year or two, and it's been incredibly difficult to deal with. People who I've known my whole life including my parents who I love dearly, it's jarring to think that their shitty beliefs about politics is actually a reflection of their values and it really makes me re-evaluate things.
Like, the one thing I've noticed about right-leaning friends and family members is when it comes down to it, how much they just fucking hate poor people. No compassion, no empathy. Just... poor people deserve everything they get and we should help them less than we do already.
Those people are thieves and they're guilty and they know it and they believe predation is normal. Are you cool with them not making into the Promised Land when the revolution comes?
edit: not intended as a threat or call to action or anything like it, but going prodigal and estranging yourself from them is an option worth considering, and it seems to me like they're all but asking you to stand by on party night by being so bourgeois.
Even fascists will get exactly what they deserve: four walls and a hot meal. These people are shitty because of their material conditions, socialism won't just be a judgement day for shitty people. We'll just hope living in a better society will make their grandkids better people
I'm in my 50's and the best thing I did in my 40's was to concentrate 99% of my energy and time to friends and family that I got along with politically, ethically, etc.
Half of my adult life I sought to walk on eggshells around assholes with nutty/hateful opinions and one day I realized I didn't ever have to do that again.
Cut idiots out of your life from time to time. Ain't nobody got time to be pretending they agree with assholes.
yeah, i combat liberalism
but real talk? i borderline cannot deal with my white male friends. every single one is obsessed with denouncing china.
Slowly working on scrubbing the China brainwashing out of my lib friends
white male here who’s pro-china views have cost him most of his friends. do you have any openings ?
Not that guy but the best (and usually only) thing you can do is smile (awkwardly, not smugly) and say that maybe that information should be taken with a grain of salt if it's coming from the US.
honestly, i would just avoid it. work as much as possible to center any political discussions on the bourgeoisie of your own country. that still ultimately fails because it gives the other people the opening of "well, i'm smart, and i can care about TWO things". but at least you don't have to entrench yourself in the position of being a china stan.
I've found it helps not to talk about China directly. If folks don't have a basic understanding of how much the US has fucked with every other country on Earth over the last century, it's hard for someone to make the leap that all the propaganda the US puts out about China is wrong. I often start with the Contras, because the US' involvement with them is just so abhorrent and shocking you really can't come to any conclusion other than Reagan was a very bad person, which is shocking to most Americans. And 99% of Americans have no clue why we got involved in Vietnam. They might spout the "to fight communism" line but you can just show folks how it was never really about that. I've worked on people that way. Once people understand America's foreign policy not in term of us trying to make the world a better place for freedom and democracy, but rather the exertion of power in order to preserve hegemony, THEN a proper view on China starts to make sense.
i wish i could be, but i don't know enough to actually critically support them. either way, if you happen to be in the west, i don't know if open support of the CCP is how you find more comrades. there's a lot of work that needs to be done before people can even handle that conversation like a mature adult.
I find that cynicism is the best approach.
“Yeah well their system works. What has democracy done for us?”
“No matter who we vote for, we get the same sorts of policies. May as well just look at who does it better.”
If they bring up human rights abuses, I just shrug and say the USA has the highest incarceration rate in the world, the vast majority from ‘plea deals’, which in any other context would be called forced confessions. Human rights abuses don’t stop being abuses just because you slap a veneer of ‘due process’ on it, especially when only the rich can meaningfully access that due process.
Same approach for the Uighur issue. “Beats the US approach of bombing however many million’.
In this regard it’s actually easier to talk to libs than socialists. Socialists often expect socialist countries to be utopian paragons of morality. Libs on the other hand are used to shrugging and accepting the lesser of two evils.
exactly this. have had results, and at the minumum silence, when using this approach.
Also, freedom . "Are you saying that the popular government of a sovereign nation doesn't have the freedom to rule their country as they see fit?"
sovereign gets good results too for some reason.
never be part of any majority, always get out of it, and consider its shape and form from outside. now, you're in a revolutionary position. it's praxis time or die.
My partner is even angrier and more willing to engage in violence than me
In our house, I am the Lib
It's pretty great though because a standard night basically goes like
"You wanna go for a walk and take down the Trump sign in the middle of town?"
"Nah, let's burn it"
I have much to learn
you're posting here, so you're a lib outside your house too
how long until we open up chapo date house, i need to find a great value hasan piker to bust in my bussy
itll just become "plenty of feds" and we will end up starting families with undercover cops that were assigned to spy on us.
u have no clue how awesome it would be if we made a splinter site that was basically chapo but horny
:geordi-no: building a new site to be horny on
:geordi-yes: being horny on c/main
ahahah jokes... unless... but no... unless ??
Last time I tried to check out a leftist even in my city it was just people yelling at the organizers for an hour.
That's just the opener. You didn't even stick around for the show, eh?
I argue a lot with some friends about stuff like China, Russiagate and the USSR. With China, it's the usual yogurt genocide stuff, HK freeze peach stuff. Russiagate I have a unique take on, in that I absolutely believe it happened, and that the US 100% deserved it as payback for destroying the USSR and the Yeltsin coup(s) in the 90s. We still get on for the most part. I like to think that as long as I hold steady and explain my stance respectfully they can at least challenge their own assumptions.
Yes the US singlehandedly destroyed the USSR. Couldn't have possibly been internal contradictions, or dare i say it, material conditions.
If you know how to navigate buzz words I've had better conversations with working class Republicans than pmc bound liberals
Good natured ribbing is necessary, as well as knowing where to back off when things get too heavy.
Ironic detachment is your sword and shield.
Actually needed to read this because the last 2 months has been stressful between my good friends and I - some serious issues I have with how they look at stuff and it's bummed me out. Just got to get back on staying in the topics/things that made that bond.
I can't say its the only reason really but it was a reason. I had been dating this Cuban girl for 2 years, when we first started dating she and I were both libs. But as time went on I radicalized more, many thanks to one Bernard Sanders, she didn't like his rhetoric. She fully believed he would bring forth the death of her family (or something idk its been 3 years now). Which is literally insane but the crazier thing is we reconnected earlier in this year and she brought up how she had a medical emergency not too long prior and wished the US had something akin to what Cuba has since her grandparents (who are still back in Cuban) dont struggle with having to pay for medicine. Which needless to say I felt gaslit, we didnt talk much after and within another month we went back to being strangers. So yeah that was wild for me.
Edit: I only have one leftist friend I know irl. She's pretty wild and is the only one I don't mind just talking politically freely with. I also have an old friend who's a chud, and I low key believe he'd merc my ass if this country fell apart, but with me he's always been a pretty good dude. Someone I could rely on if I needed something (and I have he once gave me a spare tirewhen I was younger drove like 20+miles out of his way), just definitely could never admit I was to the left of a Democrat
my gf sometimes is cool but she's really been libbin out on my the past couple weeks and i cant manfacture joy for that bullshit. I danced in the streets when Obama won but i was a stupid young lib. If you stay a lib, you failed.
but at least she supports all my gulag and "stopping the counter revolution after the revolution comments."
i cant manfacture joy for that bullshit
This is my wife. She was showing me all these stupid memes from FB about trump losing and I just could not even pretend to care.
What was her lib response? "Well I guess you wanted to TRUMP to win, huh?!"
She is a great mother and wife, but there's a reason why I bring up my politics less and less each day
luckily my gf doesnt say that, but she cried about there being a dog in the white house again. so yeaaaaa. She kept saying "can't i be happy?" and i didnt say she couldn't but im not going to pretend.
You gotta do some work on her. French writing on the Spectacle would be particularly relevant to the moment.
You're right, but I just get so emotional when talking about that it usually just ends up with me accosting her. I've got to get more detached from it, but it's hard to do when it's a loved one that you want to get on the same page as you.
A well-considered, leak-proof case made in a written form might not be quite as threatening. Maybe Simulacra and Simulation?
