Being a keyboard warrior on a site nobody uses isn’t “doing something.”
I never claimed that it was.
I think I’ll help end the genocide you’ve enabled by sending $25 to ActBlue on your brother’s behalf.
Don’t stop there. I also enabled the Holocaust and helped Hitler gain power by virtue of sitting on my ass instead of inventing a time machine and going back to stop him. If you go back and donate $25 to Mussolini on behalf of the victims of the Holocaust, my horrible crime could be undone.
I will say, by the way, that my brother is by far the most far-right person I know, like OAN and shit. Donating on ActBlue “on his behalf” is funny enough that I kind of want you to just for the bit.
I don’t really care either way. From the moment you defended the war in Afghanistan, I hate you as much as I hate them. An imperialist gives money to an imperialist organization, what’s changed, really? Both of you are my enemies, I would never expect you to do anything different. They kill for you and you pay them for it.
It is kind of strange, though. I wonder if there’s a starving person out there whose life could be saved by a donation. By not donating to them, you’re helping to kill them. Doesn’t that make you an accessory to murder, even by your own logic?
Certainly one of the moral frameworks of all time.
Good point. If my $25 was the only thing standing in the way of a starving person being murdered, and I knew that, I would be a total piece of shit for giving my $25 to someone else instead… does this sound familiar to you?
If you’d prefer, I’ll go grab five tubs of peanut butter and drop them off at the food pantry. That’ll be about $25 if I buy the name brand.
I’d greatly prefer that, yes. Then you’d be actually helping people instead of hurting them.
Failing to help someone in need can be a moral failing, but it much less of one than actively harming a person. Maybe the best thing to do would be to give all that you have to the poor, but I’m not going to accuse people of “murder” based on that, and I don’t think it would be reasonable to.
One of the problems you people have is that you think you’ve found the objective answers to philosophy just by going with your first instinct, without even realizing it’s what you’re doing. You don’t see your assumptions the same way a fish doesn’t notice water. You don’t consider that they could be wrong because you don’t identify them in the first place. And so you wind up with this contradiction of trying to scold me for having morals, because your morals, to you, are not moral beliefs at all, but simply “common sense.”
So long as you see things that way, you will never be able to understand the perspectives of people who disagree with you, or speak their language. And so you will be building a political coalition where, “Don’t murder hundreds of thousands of innocents” is considered an unacceptable imposition, where everyone is expected to put the interests of the party above even their deepest held convictions. It seems like that coalition would be quite small.
In practice of course, it’s only the left that’s expected to make such sacrifices. When a centrist complains that the Democrats are too far left on a particular topic, the party bends over backwards to accommodate their concerns. We are the only ones expected to abandon everything we care about and submit, and we are the only ones the party attacks so openly, denouncing us as “antisemites” whenever anyone says that Palestinians should have rights.
As someone who doesn’t even subscribe to your framework of “Lesser-Evilism,” and who see it as both unexamined and utterly ridiculous, why on earth would I bend the knee to a party like that? But most of you can’t even conceive of someone who doesn’t believe in Lesser-Evilism, because you don’t even realize it’s a belief, again, like water to a fish.
This was an awful lot of words to explain that you don’t understand how your government works. It’s not a “framework of “lesser-evilism.”” It’s just how the system works.
If you don’t think the one of two candidates closer to your side is far left enough, primary them. It’s that simple.
Do you know why we all know this is how it works? The GOP did it 15 years ago. Right leaning voters showed up consistently, and so they dragged the GOP to the right. You (yes you!) could do the same to the Democrats, but you refuse, so the GOP wins and the DNC says “wow fuck these progressives let’s try to win over centrists with Liz Cheney!”
You are the reason the DNC you complain about sucks. Should I buy smooth or crunchy, or a mix? I’m leaning towards smooth.
This was an awful lot of words to explain that you don’t understand how your government works. It’s not a “framework of “lesser-evilism.”” It’s just how the system works.
Thank you for proving my point.
You can put me under any government, and I can understand how it works backwards and forwards, and I still will not support the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, no matter how “pragmatic” it might appear. The idea that I should is a specific moral framework.
How can I get a fish to understand water?
You are trying to derive conclusions of what I ought to do purely by describing what is. That runs into the is-ought problem, and you cannot bridge that gap without making moral assumptions. If my position of putting principles before apparent pragmatism is a moral belief, then your position of putting apparent pragmatism before principles is also a moral belief. Isn’t that just obvious?
Do you know why we all know this is how it works? The GOP did it 15 years ago. Right leaning voters showed up consistently, and so they dragged the GOP to the right.
The right is far more willing to say “my way or the highway” than anyone on the left, myself included. There’s no shortage of people who will break with the party if they don’t take a strong enough position on issues like abortion or gun control.
And, by the way, if you go into conservative circles and demand people give up their convictions and vote for moderate Republicans as the lesser-evil, you will generally get a negative response. The kind of rhetoric you use would be a good way to start a fight at the poker table, to disrespect people’s moral, political, possibly even religious convictions, that shit doesn’t fly in those circles, from what I’ve seen.
The difference is that the party has chosen to be responsive to their demands. The reason right-wingers don’t break with the party is because the party gives them everything they want. If you actually wanted to learn from their success, you would be trying to get the party to respond to the left’s demands rather than trying to get the left to abandon our demands.
Donald Trump himself threatened to run as a third party candidate in 2016 if he did not get the nomination. Did you forget that? Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders bent the knee and actively campaigned for Clinton. Which of those strategies worked? Which of those factions wields more strength today?
Every time one of you talks about “primaries” you’ve already lost. First, we didn’t even have a real primary in the last election, second, the DNC has argued in court (successfully!) that primary elections do not have to be free and fair because they are a private organization, third, any criticism you might make of “one party states” contradicts that because those single parties have primaries. The CCP has primaries, I somehow doubt that you’d tell a dissatisfied Chinese person to sit down and shut up because if they don’t like the party they can change it by trusting the process.
You are the reason the DNC you complain about sucks.
No, you are. Because you fail to hold them accountable in any way. Because you let them get away with mass murder knowing that people on the left will fall in line regardless.
…is what I’d say if you were anywhere remotely near the left. I don’t understand what problem you even have with the Democrats. You agree with and justify their mass murder. Are you just taking a more critical position rhetorically to try to appeal to me?
I never claimed that it was.
Don’t stop there. I also enabled the Holocaust and helped Hitler gain power by virtue of sitting on my ass instead of inventing a time machine and going back to stop him. If you go back and donate $25 to Mussolini on behalf of the victims of the Holocaust, my horrible crime could be undone.
I will say, by the way, that my brother is by far the most far-right person I know, like OAN and shit. Donating on ActBlue “on his behalf” is funny enough that I kind of want you to just for the bit.
I’ll do it for real. I’m already getting 10 texts per day from those assholes so I may as well.
I don’t really care either way. From the moment you defended the war in Afghanistan, I hate you as much as I hate them. An imperialist gives money to an imperialist organization, what’s changed, really? Both of you are my enemies, I would never expect you to do anything different. They kill for you and you pay them for it.
It is kind of strange, though. I wonder if there’s a starving person out there whose life could be saved by a donation. By not donating to them, you’re helping to kill them. Doesn’t that make you an accessory to murder, even by your own logic?
Certainly one of the moral frameworks of all time.
Good point. If my $25 was the only thing standing in the way of a starving person being murdered, and I knew that, I would be a total piece of shit for giving my $25 to someone else instead… does this sound familiar to you?
If you’d prefer, I’ll go grab five tubs of peanut butter and drop them off at the food pantry. That’ll be about $25 if I buy the name brand.
I’d greatly prefer that, yes. Then you’d be actually helping people instead of hurting them.
Failing to help someone in need can be a moral failing, but it much less of one than actively harming a person. Maybe the best thing to do would be to give all that you have to the poor, but I’m not going to accuse people of “murder” based on that, and I don’t think it would be reasonable to.
One of the problems you people have is that you think you’ve found the objective answers to philosophy just by going with your first instinct, without even realizing it’s what you’re doing. You don’t see your assumptions the same way a fish doesn’t notice water. You don’t consider that they could be wrong because you don’t identify them in the first place. And so you wind up with this contradiction of trying to scold me for having morals, because your morals, to you, are not moral beliefs at all, but simply “common sense.”
So long as you see things that way, you will never be able to understand the perspectives of people who disagree with you, or speak their language. And so you will be building a political coalition where, “Don’t murder hundreds of thousands of innocents” is considered an unacceptable imposition, where everyone is expected to put the interests of the party above even their deepest held convictions. It seems like that coalition would be quite small.
In practice of course, it’s only the left that’s expected to make such sacrifices. When a centrist complains that the Democrats are too far left on a particular topic, the party bends over backwards to accommodate their concerns. We are the only ones expected to abandon everything we care about and submit, and we are the only ones the party attacks so openly, denouncing us as “antisemites” whenever anyone says that Palestinians should have rights.
As someone who doesn’t even subscribe to your framework of “Lesser-Evilism,” and who see it as both unexamined and utterly ridiculous, why on earth would I bend the knee to a party like that? But most of you can’t even conceive of someone who doesn’t believe in Lesser-Evilism, because you don’t even realize it’s a belief, again, like water to a fish.
This was an awful lot of words to explain that you don’t understand how your government works. It’s not a “framework of “lesser-evilism.”” It’s just how the system works.
If you don’t think the one of two candidates closer to your side is far left enough, primary them. It’s that simple.
Do you know why we all know this is how it works? The GOP did it 15 years ago. Right leaning voters showed up consistently, and so they dragged the GOP to the right. You (yes you!) could do the same to the Democrats, but you refuse, so the GOP wins and the DNC says “wow fuck these progressives let’s try to win over centrists with Liz Cheney!”
You are the reason the DNC you complain about sucks. Should I buy smooth or crunchy, or a mix? I’m leaning towards smooth.
Thank you for proving my point.
You can put me under any government, and I can understand how it works backwards and forwards, and I still will not support the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians, no matter how “pragmatic” it might appear. The idea that I should is a specific moral framework.
How can I get a fish to understand water?
You are trying to derive conclusions of what I ought to do purely by describing what is. That runs into the is-ought problem, and you cannot bridge that gap without making moral assumptions. If my position of putting principles before apparent pragmatism is a moral belief, then your position of putting apparent pragmatism before principles is also a moral belief. Isn’t that just obvious?
The right is far more willing to say “my way or the highway” than anyone on the left, myself included. There’s no shortage of people who will break with the party if they don’t take a strong enough position on issues like abortion or gun control.
And, by the way, if you go into conservative circles and demand people give up their convictions and vote for moderate Republicans as the lesser-evil, you will generally get a negative response. The kind of rhetoric you use would be a good way to start a fight at the poker table, to disrespect people’s moral, political, possibly even religious convictions, that shit doesn’t fly in those circles, from what I’ve seen.
The difference is that the party has chosen to be responsive to their demands. The reason right-wingers don’t break with the party is because the party gives them everything they want. If you actually wanted to learn from their success, you would be trying to get the party to respond to the left’s demands rather than trying to get the left to abandon our demands.
Donald Trump himself threatened to run as a third party candidate in 2016 if he did not get the nomination. Did you forget that? Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders bent the knee and actively campaigned for Clinton. Which of those strategies worked? Which of those factions wields more strength today?
Every time one of you talks about “primaries” you’ve already lost. First, we didn’t even have a real primary in the last election, second, the DNC has argued in court (successfully!) that primary elections do not have to be free and fair because they are a private organization, third, any criticism you might make of “one party states” contradicts that because those single parties have primaries. The CCP has primaries, I somehow doubt that you’d tell a dissatisfied Chinese person to sit down and shut up because if they don’t like the party they can change it by trusting the process.
No, you are. Because you fail to hold them accountable in any way. Because you let them get away with mass murder knowing that people on the left will fall in line regardless.
…is what I’d say if you were anywhere remotely near the left. I don’t understand what problem you even have with the Democrats. You agree with and justify their mass murder. Are you just taking a more critical position rhetorically to try to appeal to me?