It’s amazing how some of the most controversial topics are basically just “let’s try being nice to people”
Left wing ideology in a nutshell
“one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change"
“Why are they nailing him to that cross? What did he do?”
“He said… ‘Be kind to one another’.”
(Sighs) “…Yeeaah, that’ll do it.”
It’s the “forcing people to be what we consider nice” part that’s usually the issue.
Oh you’re so right, those poor people being forced to not be intentionally mean to lgbtq people, women, immigrants, etc. It’s so obvious when you think about it, all the transphobes, misogynists, homophobes, and racists are just being nice from their perspective. They must just come from a culture where having less rights because of your gender or who you’re attracted to or where you were born is a sign of respect. We’ve all been so wrong to suppress them from expressing their love for others in their own unique way. I know I for one will make sure to thank the next person I see being mean to someone now that I understand the true meaning.
Those topics you listed are not really controversial. Pretty much everybody agrees (except maybe for some far-right extremists). Also, “forced to not be intentionally mean” is not something I said in any way. That’s your interpretation.
For example, If I say that I feel like I was born in outer space, should people be forced to refer to me as an alien? You might argue that everyone who claims I’m not an alien is mean to me and force people to “be nice” and also claim I’m an alien, but I personally will not claim something that is false to make someone feel better.
You may frame these all like just “trying to get you to be nice” but actually, they are fundementally ideological disagreements. They disregard the disagreement about what is ultimately fair or true. Similar issues apply for forcing people to call people by their non-biological gender or forcing people to “show solidary” and give away 90% of their income. Wouldn’t that be nice? Do you understand why people could have a problem with that?
Okay, so in your analogy, if alien dysphoria somehow existed and someone was genuinely miserable living as a human in a way nothing else could help with and they somehow had the ability to live as an alien, you would go out of your way to call them a human, knowing that makes them miserable, just because you think it’s right? Does it really matter if you’re right? What does being right accomplish in this scenario other than just making someone unhappy?
Or for a more realistic scenario, if someone was born missing an arm and had a prosthetic one, would you refuse to call it their arm? If they said “there’s a fly on my arm”, would you correct them? Would you tell them that there can’t be a fly on their arm because their arm isn’t a real arm and they’ll never have a real arm? Depending on how you look at it, you would technically be right. But is being right really worth taunting someone about a major part of their life? Why does it matter?
At the end of the day, alien dysphoria probably doesn’t exist, a prosthetic arm is an arm, and a trans man is a man. Society defines the words it uses, and if one definition of a word makes people more comfortable than another and using that definition costs us nothing, shouldn’t we use it?
I wouldn’t go out of my way to call them a human (why would I?) but I wouldn’t go out of my way to call them an alien either. For example, I would find it ridicolous to try to force the captcha boxes to be changed to “I am a human or an alien”.
As for your prosthetic arm example, that wouldn’t be an issue for me. However, a person with two healthy arms claiming their left arm was a prosthetic one would be questionable IMO. That doesn’t mean, again, that I would go out of my way to annoy them with that. But I wouldn’t want to be forced to say “clap your hands or prosthetic hands” by someone who doesn’t even have a prosthetic hand but just claims to have one. This is not inclusion to me; that is, IMO, people purposefully excluding themselves and then demanding to be included back in with extra attention.
But is being right really worth taunting someone about a major part of their life? Why does it matter?
Depends on the matter I guess but forcing people to make factually wrong claims (in a sense) to account for other people’s feelings is not acceptable, IMO. I wouldn’t stop calling the Earth a globe even if flat earthers took issue with that. (I hope you get the analogy I’m trying to make here).
For the prosthetic example, that is literally the opposite of the point. No one wants you to say, for example, “women and trans women”, that would be ridiculous, just like if they expected you to say “women and tall women”. People just want you to call people by the gender they identify with, or if you don’t know what gender they identify with, there’s nothing wrong with just calling them a person, that has been a word you could use the whole time.
The shape of the earth is a terrible comparison. The shape of the earth is a proven fact, gender is a societal construct. There is nothing biological that says people with two x chromosomes must present themselves the way we’ve decided is “feminine” or xy chromosomes should be “masculine”, that’s just traditionally what we’ve done, but there’s no reason that can’t change. You could say that now that we know about sex chromosomes we should use them to define gender, but that isn’t useful in the vast majority of situations. Unless you’ve had some sort of test, neither of us know with 100% certainty what our chromosomes are. It’s unlikely, but either of us could be intersex and have no idea.
I’m not asking you to change the shape of the earth, I’m just asking you to trust people when they say who they are, they’re the only ones who can know. It’s the same level of respect people give you by calling you by your name.
No one wants you to say, for example, “women and trans women”, that would be ridiculous,
Alright, glad we agree here but there certainly are people claiming to be their own gender (“non-binary”) or wanting me to refer to them as xe/xer and there is an ongoing debate about including extra asterisks in German words to signify the inclusion of extra genders.
I’m not asking for anyone to present themselves in any way, dress how you want. However, things like men participating in women’s sports competitions because they identify as a woman is not something I’m okay with. I have a question for you: If a gender is just something I identify with or choose, what meaning does one’s gender even have? Wouldn’t that make gender just some arbitrary group with literally zero meaning behind it?
And: If I claimed to be 100 years old and identified as such, would I be entitled to a senior citizens discount, in your opinion?
It always reminds me of the Bill Burr interview:
The news anchor is going, “Bill, aren’t you being a little hard on those people?” In reference to something like clergymen raping boys.
And Bill is like, “How do you think those boys feel?”
This might be not the right place to ask, but is there a theory or phenomenon that explains why so many people side with the perpetrators/people in power when abuses are being commented on?
Sympathizing with the clergyman in your example, or another pop culture example I’ve seen recently is defending private jet usage.
The easy answer is “brainworms”, but there must be more to it than that, surely?
Victim blaming is so prolific, I find people justifying it in a way that sounds like, “it would never happen to me, so it’s your fault for letting it happen to you.” People either aren’t willing or aren’t capable of understanding a different perspective from their own, so they aren’t able to sympathize.
How we label that deficiency (and it is a deficiency) will be hard to do because the causes can be so varied.
If it isn’t direct victim blaming then it is people who can’t understand that others have different experiences.
“My priest didn’t molest me, so that person must be lying!”
If all else fails some people even resort to supernatural explanations like karma. I’ve seen this with illness, like when someone has a disease that they didn’t cause themselves in any way such as cancer or an autoimmune disease. Somebody told me that I must have “been really bad in a past life” to be chronically ill. It’s like they’re unable to accept that some people are unlucky so they really want it to be the victim’s fault somehow.
With something like celiac, people suggest you have it because you’re misinformed and believe it exists, or they invent reasons that they think you caused it for yourself. Same with type 1 diabetes, another condition for which the cause is entirely unknown other than genetics. People also like to downplay severity, without considering that it varies, and say things like “I know someone with that” (which may or may not be accurate) “and they don’t have such a problem with it”.
This. I would also add that there’s another superficial belief that goes somewhat like ‘if I support it, it will never happen with me’ or ‘if I side with oppressor, I will never be an oppressed one’.
It is actually happening in my country - Russia. Those who were pro-war applauded when the anti-war community was repressed. Well, it’s not been long until the government came for them. Poor idiots.
Right, commonly known as “the leopards will never eat MY face”
I think it’s people not feeling comfortable taking an active position. Condemning child rapists is still taking an active position even if it’s a no brainer. Some people just see someone being condemned or criticised and instinctively defend the target. I’m not sure if it stems from contrarianism or empathy.
maybe people are defensive about their prior ignorance/apathy.
Not just their ignorance or apathy but their perceived tribe or self ideation bias.
They think the person is good because of acknowledging similarities in their personhood and thinking it makes them the same and to hold them as wrong would hurt their ideology that they are wholly good (which is insane cause different people), sometimes through careful messaging you can lead people to wrong conclusions through manipulation of empathy or false logic and conclusions you come up with “yourself” are more likely to be stronger in your mind on conviction and less able to change.We are tribe people that are easily self assured to get through what would be a tough life in the wild. And it’s easily manipulated by people who make it their job to do so.
Hierarchy and social stratification
I’d say half of them have benefitted tremendously under the leadership of these people (Yes I’m talking about Boomers mostly.) so it’s basically blind loyalty at this point. The other half are afraid of what those people in power can do if you try to fight back.
I’d imagine the boys feel 6-8 inches hard up.
“Modern developed countries should not have homeless people.”
“Having a job is not a social obligation.”
“Having a job is not a social obligation.”
“What do you do?” is the first question asked when meeting someone new.
I start with my hobbies and only mention my job if they ask directly.
I noticed a gap in your resume. Why don’t you have an address? Do you have reliable transportation?
Try getting married without a job? Try getting a home, a car, a bank loan without a job? Our whole society runs on jobs.
Asking if you have reliable transportation can be fair, depending on the job.
If you don’t work on a bus route and have to work in-person you need a reliable way to consistently get to work. If that’s your roommate dropping you off, that’s fine. But unless you’re gonna cycle on a gravel road in a thunderstorm a bicycle may not be.
Contributing something to society is a social obligation, otherwise you’re riding everyone else’s labor for free.
Yeah, like those lazy housewives and people with disabilities that keep them from working are just freeloaders!
Don’t get me started on children, they are the worst!
I agree. Landlords and CEOs are parasites riding everyone else’s labor for free.
Yes
“Having a job is not a social obligation.”
Neither is providing you with anything more than you need to live. But most people find it well worth it to have a job.
Calm down, edgelord.
Right wingers think this is an insanely dangerous idea. In my youth someone bought me a copy of Atlas Shrugged after hearing me say things like that.
I realized that they were trying to indoctrinate me, but I was confident in my own judgement and wanted to know my enemy better. Even if I would’ve been susceptible to the brainwashing, that book was insanely long and insanely boring, so they chose poorly. I couldn’t get through even half of it
Wow what an antisemitic bitch /s
Dropped your /s (I hope)
Yeah I didn’t think it would be necessary but looks like I should add it 🤣
PLEASE STOP KILLING
PEOPLEOur survival relies on death, even if it’s just plants. The people gate is an important one, even if you want to expand it wider.
Life itself relies on death.
Yeah, go vegan!
By killing every single living being looking for food that gets remotely close to a farm. All just so that vegans can be malnourished and have to rely on basically drugs in order to live.
Congratulations, you are wearing the suit in the meme.
Also vegans with the stop killing animals sign
Then their signs should read: Stop Breeding Animals.
Vegans are ultimately advocating for the extinction of farm animals.
There are a lot of animals that only exist because they are tasty or useful in some other way. Their species would never survive in the specks of wilderness we have left.
If you can’t finding it naturally roaming Yellowstone or some other national park, it’s reasonable safe to assume that species wouldn’t exist if we didn’t farm them.
It’s not like they would actually go extinct entirely, they would just evolve in a different direction and have much smaller populations. There are wild bovines, turkeys, swines, etc. If chickens were cut loose to live in the wild, they could probably do alright for themselves, but you might see other traits favored than maximum egg-laying capacity or rapid growth that only serves to maximize farmer profit by reducing the time to be able to sell them off, for example. Local populations would likely collapse until they reached a more stable level, too, given they would have more limited food available, absent someone constantly feeding them.
Expecting them to evolve isn’t realistic. Evolution isn’t magic; it takes many generations. These aren’t fruit flies.
Most farm animals are invasive species and it would be highly irresponsible to cut them loose.
Except they wouldn’t evolve in a different direction and have smaller populations, at least not in any useful amount of time.
Left to their own devices livestock will multiply, and multiply, and multiply. Show me a vegan and I’ll show you someone that’s never had to deal with wild fucking pigs.
I lost braincells reading this.
Took me a moment to realize this is anti vegan because, sure, we humans have bred some (sub)species that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Farm animals are anatomically dependent on humans and have body proportions that made no sense from a animal welfare perspective nor from surviving autonomously. Their wild counterparts can stay though.
It’s not meant to be anti-vegan, it’s the logical conclusion of the statement. Rather than playing with the words just say what you mean.
Ruminating on it, lead me to think about the biodiversity in animal husbandry and how that would disappear if we all went vegan. Those are side affected I’ve never seen discussed. The downvotes tell me most people prefer comforting lies and would rather avoid second order thinking.
Maybe it’s not discussed because the handful of domesticated animals isn’t a big deal of biodiversity in the first place. It’s not that people aren’t aware of it, they are more concerned with the real loss of biodiversity in nature.
That’s an unsupported assertion.
Replacing animals with plants is definitely a reduction is diversity. We clone plants. Farmers are not going to replace their dairy farm with a butterfly garden.
Anyway, this will be my last post on this thread.
These downvotes are a clear indication that it’s not something this audience wants to discuss.
I find this to be a common theme with vegans, they are only interested in discussing the benefits and refuse to consider any downsides. But that’s an entirely different topic.
Forgive me but I about to apply this political cartoon to the situation with Palestine and Joe Biden.
Forgoing the political defeat of Trump to send a message is extreme.
The same message that has fallen on deaf ears for the past 80+ yesrs.
Refusing to listen to voters you depend on in order to get elected is extreme. And before you say “Biden would lose the election if he cut off weapons to Israel!!” then those people who would refuse to vote for him are the ones who you should be shaming. Not only are they willing to forgo the political defeat of Trump to send a message they’re doing it because they want to keep supporting genocide.
At some point some amount of blame needs to be leveled at the so called “moderate voters” of the party. They are the majority after all.
This cartoon isn’t about Bidens extremism.
I hate relitigating 2020 but Biden on paper was trash. His voting record and legislative record has some REAL big stinkers. He’s a zionist which we all knew we would eventually pay for. He is also old as dirt. It’s insane that his opponent is worse than this shit.
I will and have put the blame on center right democrats, as if I even knew one personally. Like who are these people? My guess is they are the trust fundies that got shamed by their inner circle once; with some sort of art scene at the core. So now they vote in a way that they can justify to daddy but undermines everything.
Sorry, got me off on a tangent. Not that I care, I purposefully started a controversial thread.
But look. This is where we are at. If for the rest of my days the only thing I can do to prevent oblivion is put my foot out with an authoritarian walks by I am going to do it. Eventually, they will win. With this strategy. I guess my hope is to buy enough time for an mlk to show up. Ghandi where you at?
If this plan sucks, it will fail, and we will get to see what happens. That is the inevitability.
