It should have been enough of an indication of the way that was going to go by the fact that he went out of his way to complain about liberal being used as a term of derision while also insisting that he definitely isnt one.
“You’re using the word liberal wrong. But I’m not a liberal, I just defend liberals, and the parties of liberals, like they personally care about me when they would eradicate me if it meant good polling.”
I absolutely have not been insisting that I’m not a liberal. You are fantasizing statements by me that I never said again. When did I say that I was not a liberal? This is probably the closest thing I said:
Okay, so you think I’m probably a liberal. Noted. … you’re using this label in a very particular way. So I can’t even really say anything about the application of the label being right or not. By some definitions, I am. By some definitions, I’m not. My argument is that the application of the label by a big contingent on Lemmy doesn’t even really have any factual definition, it’s more just a trigger word with a pretty fluid definition which changes around as needed to attack enemies or accuse them of things. Your reaction to me saying most Democrats in government are center-right conservatives for example is super telling to me, where if we were talking about some other topic I feel like it’s likely that you would instantly agree with that.
I just noticed also that a big chunk of my whole discussion with you is violating rule 7. I think it is a pretty stupid practice to mandate that only one side of certain ideological arguments is permitted (“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” -TJ), but sure, rule 7 I guess. I’ll probably make some response in some other community at some point down the road, if you want to continue this whole sprawling debate in a different location; I feel like there is maybe some useful common ground to be had.
Lmao, you are Schrodinger’s Liberal - both a liberal and not a liberal, until the moment you are observed
I don’t care if you are one or not. I care that your utilitarian perspective on ‘minimizing genocide’ heavily skews toward a desired electoral outcome irrespective of the actual platform. You can insist all you want that you believe genocide is a huge problem and that you agree that democrats are complicit, but if at the end of the day your interpretation of others’ behavior is being guided by the one action that quite literally can’t effect whether genocide happens or not, then to me you’re a liberal in the only way that really matters. You are standing in the way of liberation by gatekeeping acceptable forms of protest and criticism that fall outside or antagonize your preferred liberal institutions. God forbid someone be critical of democratic governance that falls short of the radical change that is required to avert catastrophe because they, themselves, have decided to preserve the liberal institutions that created the problems in the first place. You thought people were being uncharitable to Biden’s accomplishments because your judgement of him seems to reflect some arbitrary scale and you assume it’s what everyone else must be using.
The only other way of illuminating the problem with liberalism is to point out just how much the ‘liberal party’ resists changing their policy toward Israel, despite the majority of americans holding negative views on Israel, their war crimes in Gaza, and our continued blanket support for them. Even Sanders and AOC took more than a year and a half to recognize it as a genocide. The primary feature of liberalism that I’m concerned with is it’s prioritization of protecting liberal institutions over addressing the harm and exploitation those institutions are responsible for. Israel being our flagship ally for influence and control over the ME is why liberals (democrats, republicans, and even most progressives) are willing to overlook, ignore, justify, or outright defend the atrocities that happen in the name of preserving that geopolitical cornerstone. That includes people like yourself who care about it in abstract but limit your view on acceptable action to what does or does not work inside our electoral institutions. I don’t care about preserving Israel as an ally - my ideological framework prioritizes liberation politics, not the preservation of liberal institutions. If a liberal institution is responsible for supporting oppressive regimes and genocide, i think that institution should be dismantled, which means that how or if someone chooses to vote is less important to me in achieving that goal than what football team they follow. That is what informs my self image as a leftist. Complain all you want if you think that line of criticism is unfair or ignores what you think is more important, I don’t care.
The more you try justifying your perspective in utilitarian terms the clearer it becomes that any alignment you might think we have is paper thin.
I am not permitted by the community rules to respond to most of this.
All I will really say is this: I obviously know what I believe politically and why. This whole question “Is Philip a liberal to you or not?” hinges on how you define a liberal, so like I say I am asking you define the label by asking that. I am obviously not asking you to answer questions about my own politics for me. If you’re not sure about any element of my politics that you would need to know in order to answer, you are free to ask, but I think I’ve taken quite a bit of time to try to break it down for you.
You are the one introducing the Schrodinger element into it, and that was actually precisely the point that I was making by asking you to be specific. I actually think it’s pretty interesting that when talking with me, we were mostly going back and forth about facts even if I disagree with a lot of what you said (and you were sort of sensibly sticking with that you genuinely didn’t know if I am a liberal), but once you’re speaking to the echo chamber again you immediately revert to just backhandedly accusing me of being a “liberal” using it as a label meaning “enemy of the clique,” more or less. This intense discussion about whether or not you deem it appropriate to fix the label to me (presumably with the idea that it would be horribly damaging and you’re assuming I want to avoid it) is what I was talking about, too. It is how enemy labels like “communist” and “counterrevolutionary” have functioned in the past, and I don’t think you are realizing exactly how you’re using it when you do.
You’re also misrepresenting tons of stuff that I believe or have said. I won’t list the other examples even though there are a bunch and I spent (for whatever reason) a ton of time digging up old comments of mine to illustrate that you were wrong. Most are debatable in some way or another. All I will say is that it’s instantly objectively verifiable that I never repeatedly claimed I wasn’t a liberal, and now you said I did. You are lying so that you will get approval from your echo chamber. I have no doubt that it will work, probably you and the echo chamber will see it as a win and feel happy about the interaction. Like I said at the very beginning to other people, I would really highly recommend that you take time and reflect on why that is and what function that part of it is serving. In the meantime all the best and take care.
All I will say is that it’s instantly objectively verifiable that I never repeatedly claimed I wasn’t a liberal, and now you said I did. You are lying so that you will get approval from your echo chamber.
I love this ‘i never said those words’ game we’ve been playing, but i wasn’t quoting you as making that claim, only that you were insisting that my definition of liberal definitely doesn’t apply to you. The deeper I went into explaining the specific part of liberalism you were dancing around that I took issue with, the greater effort you went to either misunderstand my description to paint yourself out of the picture, or quote yourself talking about a specific issue you held that was undermined in all of your other comment history. I tried telling you repeatedly that it isn’t about a specific policy position or opinion, it’s the way in which liberals abandon those positions when forced to choose between them or their institutions.
You’re also misrepresenting tons of stuff that I believe or have said
Right, like you’ve been misrepresenting things i’ve never said? Like:
‘liberals oppose strikes’
‘it seems like your whole concept of it is as a limiting factor on progressive movements’
‘you’re defining liberalism as “allegiance to the government and rejection of methods of change outside of the formal government structure,” and kind of nothing else beyond that’
I’m not ascribing things you say to you, I’m interpreting your behavior through a liberal lens in an effort to give you examples for how you might fall into that category. Do liberals oppose protests? Decidedly not. Do they abandon their support for protest when those protests materially threaten the institutions they’re protecting? Resoundingly, yes. You’re ‘fine’ with the undecided movement, but make big time noise about people choosing not to vote as a result of those protests, even though that protest and every other always has the same implicit threat. It isn’t the fault of protestors or online agitators for souring the enthusiasm for democratic candidates, and it isn’t even the non-voter’s fault for seeing the lack of response to those protests and deciding that democrats aren’t worth the trouble. Democrats had an opportunity to address those concerns for more than a year before 2024, and they turned their back on their base at every turn. You might think non-voters are responsible for that loss, but it’s still the democrats’ fault for abandoning them.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what you think. You’re right - I am absolutely in good company here.
It should have been enough of an indication of the way that was going to go by the fact that he went out of his way to complain about liberal being used as a term of derision while also insisting that he definitely isnt one.
“You’re using the word liberal wrong. But I’m not a liberal, I just defend liberals, and the parties of liberals, like they personally care about me when they would eradicate me if it meant good polling.”
I absolutely have not been insisting that I’m not a liberal. You are fantasizing statements by me that I never said again. When did I say that I was not a liberal? This is probably the closest thing I said:
I just noticed also that a big chunk of my whole discussion with you is violating rule 7. I think it is a pretty stupid practice to mandate that only one side of certain ideological arguments is permitted (“It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.” -TJ), but sure, rule 7 I guess. I’ll probably make some response in some other community at some point down the road, if you want to continue this whole sprawling debate in a different location; I feel like there is maybe some useful common ground to be had.
Lmao, you are Schrodinger’s Liberal - both a liberal and not a liberal, until the moment you are observed
I don’t care if you are one or not. I care that your utilitarian perspective on ‘minimizing genocide’ heavily skews toward a desired electoral outcome irrespective of the actual platform. You can insist all you want that you believe genocide is a huge problem and that you agree that democrats are complicit, but if at the end of the day your interpretation of others’ behavior is being guided by the one action that quite literally can’t effect whether genocide happens or not, then to me you’re a liberal in the only way that really matters. You are standing in the way of liberation by gatekeeping acceptable forms of protest and criticism that fall outside or antagonize your preferred liberal institutions. God forbid someone be critical of democratic governance that falls short of the radical change that is required to avert catastrophe because they, themselves, have decided to preserve the liberal institutions that created the problems in the first place. You thought people were being uncharitable to Biden’s accomplishments because your judgement of him seems to reflect some arbitrary scale and you assume it’s what everyone else must be using.
The only other way of illuminating the problem with liberalism is to point out just how much the ‘liberal party’ resists changing their policy toward Israel, despite the majority of americans holding negative views on Israel, their war crimes in Gaza, and our continued blanket support for them. Even Sanders and AOC took more than a year and a half to recognize it as a genocide. The primary feature of liberalism that I’m concerned with is it’s prioritization of protecting liberal institutions over addressing the harm and exploitation those institutions are responsible for. Israel being our flagship ally for influence and control over the ME is why liberals (democrats, republicans, and even most progressives) are willing to overlook, ignore, justify, or outright defend the atrocities that happen in the name of preserving that geopolitical cornerstone. That includes people like yourself who care about it in abstract but limit your view on acceptable action to what does or does not work inside our electoral institutions. I don’t care about preserving Israel as an ally - my ideological framework prioritizes liberation politics, not the preservation of liberal institutions. If a liberal institution is responsible for supporting oppressive regimes and genocide, i think that institution should be dismantled, which means that how or if someone chooses to vote is less important to me in achieving that goal than what football team they follow. That is what informs my self image as a leftist. Complain all you want if you think that line of criticism is unfair or ignores what you think is more important, I don’t care.
The more you try justifying your perspective in utilitarian terms the clearer it becomes that any alignment you might think we have is paper thin.
I am not permitted by the community rules to respond to most of this.
All I will really say is this: I obviously know what I believe politically and why. This whole question “Is Philip a liberal to you or not?” hinges on how you define a liberal, so like I say I am asking you define the label by asking that. I am obviously not asking you to answer questions about my own politics for me. If you’re not sure about any element of my politics that you would need to know in order to answer, you are free to ask, but I think I’ve taken quite a bit of time to try to break it down for you.
You are the one introducing the Schrodinger element into it, and that was actually precisely the point that I was making by asking you to be specific. I actually think it’s pretty interesting that when talking with me, we were mostly going back and forth about facts even if I disagree with a lot of what you said (and you were sort of sensibly sticking with that you genuinely didn’t know if I am a liberal), but once you’re speaking to the echo chamber again you immediately revert to just backhandedly accusing me of being a “liberal” using it as a label meaning “enemy of the clique,” more or less. This intense discussion about whether or not you deem it appropriate to fix the label to me (presumably with the idea that it would be horribly damaging and you’re assuming I want to avoid it) is what I was talking about, too. It is how enemy labels like “communist” and “counterrevolutionary” have functioned in the past, and I don’t think you are realizing exactly how you’re using it when you do.
You’re also misrepresenting tons of stuff that I believe or have said. I won’t list the other examples even though there are a bunch and I spent (for whatever reason) a ton of time digging up old comments of mine to illustrate that you were wrong. Most are debatable in some way or another. All I will say is that it’s instantly objectively verifiable that I never repeatedly claimed I wasn’t a liberal, and now you said I did. You are lying so that you will get approval from your echo chamber. I have no doubt that it will work, probably you and the echo chamber will see it as a win and feel happy about the interaction. Like I said at the very beginning to other people, I would really highly recommend that you take time and reflect on why that is and what function that part of it is serving. In the meantime all the best and take care.
I love this ‘i never said those words’ game we’ve been playing, but i wasn’t quoting you as making that claim, only that you were insisting that my definition of liberal definitely doesn’t apply to you. The deeper I went into explaining the specific part of liberalism you were dancing around that I took issue with, the greater effort you went to either misunderstand my description to paint yourself out of the picture, or quote yourself talking about a specific issue you held that was undermined in all of your other comment history. I tried telling you repeatedly that it isn’t about a specific policy position or opinion, it’s the way in which liberals abandon those positions when forced to choose between them or their institutions.
Right, like you’ve been misrepresenting things i’ve never said? Like:
‘liberals oppose strikes’
‘it seems like your whole concept of it is as a limiting factor on progressive movements’
‘you’re defining liberalism as “allegiance to the government and rejection of methods of change outside of the formal government structure,” and kind of nothing else beyond that’
I’m not ascribing things you say to you, I’m interpreting your behavior through a liberal lens in an effort to give you examples for how you might fall into that category. Do liberals oppose protests? Decidedly not. Do they abandon their support for protest when those protests materially threaten the institutions they’re protecting? Resoundingly, yes. You’re ‘fine’ with the undecided movement, but make big time noise about people choosing not to vote as a result of those protests, even though that protest and every other always has the same implicit threat. It isn’t the fault of protestors or online agitators for souring the enthusiasm for democratic candidates, and it isn’t even the non-voter’s fault for seeing the lack of response to those protests and deciding that democrats aren’t worth the trouble. Democrats had an opportunity to address those concerns for more than a year before 2024, and they turned their back on their base at every turn. You might think non-voters are responsible for that loss, but it’s still the democrats’ fault for abandoning them.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter what you think. You’re right - I am absolutely in good company here.