I told you about the most traumatic thing I’d ever experienced, and you responded that it was “funny” and then went on try to to justify the killing of hundreds of thousands of people. I assumed you were trying to provoke me. Responding to that with “hysteria” and condescension seems completely reasonable. I would respond the same way to someone justifying other atrocities, if for example you tried to justify the Holocaust, you would see the same “juxtaposition” of me being “consecending and hysterical.”
Also, I did support my thesis with examples and made rational arguments.
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?
Is this not exactly what you asked for? “Support my thesis with examples?” Are those not examples? Do they not support my thesis? Your only response to those actual, physical examples was to cite a saying, with nothing to back it up except that people say it, except that it is “conventional wisdom.” Maybe you should take your own advice and support your thesis with evidence.
But really, we couldn’t, and can’t, even begin to get into the nitty gritty because of your stubborn refusal to accept that lesser evilism is a specific belief and moral framework, even as I demonstrated logically that it was. If you won’t even allow your beliefs to be defined and identified, then how on earth could we even begin to examine them critically? Before we can really get into examining whether it’s correct or valid, we have to be able to define it clearly and state what it is. So, my arguments were focused on doing that, and I did so quite logically, bringing up for example the is-ought problem. What am I supposed to do when you respond to my arguments like the “that’s not my wallet” meme?
Trump threatening to run as a third party is irrelevant, because he didn’t. He won the nomination. Every tea party chud who dragged the Republicans to the far right did so by winning the Republican nomination, often in noncompetitive districts. This is what DSA and other leftist candidates need to do, and in some cases have done already.
Lesser evilism isn’t a philosophy or belief or moral framework. It’s a strategy. It’s the proven strategy that works. It is the only proven strategy that works because of systemic flaws in our democracy. Do it.
Trump threatening to run as a third party is irrelevant, because he didn’t.
Nonsense. The Republican establishment didn’t want him to be the nominee, and they could have pulled off bullshit to stop him from being the nominee if they really wanted to, because primaries are not legally required to be free and fair. But, if they had done so, and Trump ran as a third party candidate, then they would have lost. Of course, there’s also the fact that many of his supporters were/are passionate and armed, and if they had screwed him over too blatantly, there’s no telling what could’ve happened. So the party establishment bent the knee and acquiested to what their base wanted. Because if they hadn’t, Trump very well could’ve run as an independent and split the vote, at the very least.
As I said, the reason you don’t see Republicans defecting from their party is because the party is responsive to their demands, because the base has already established a credible threat of defection. We can look further back to the last major third party candidate, who also split the right’s vote and gave Bill Clinton the win.
I grew up around these people, in a conservative family in a red state. I understand how they think much better than some “saying” that liberals tell each other about people they’ve never met. They draw all sorts of red lines, and they’re crazy enough to mean them.
When someone says, “You can pry my guns from my cold dead hands,” they’re not likely to fall in line behind a moderate Republican who supports gun control as a “lesser evil” or “the best we can do.” It’s “give me what I want, or else.” My mother, a Catholic, is passionately opposed to abortion, claiming that it’s the same as murder and that it’s worse than the Holocaust in terms of lives lost. When I pointed out the various ways that Trump is a scumbag, she replied, exasperated, “And what am I supposed to do, vote for Clinton, who supports abortion?” I can promise you, if Trump had run third party, and the Republicans had for some reason nominated someone pro-choice, she would’ve followed Trump and voted third party.
A substantial number of these people believe that heaven and hell are literally real and that, as long as they stand by the right principles, whatever happens on earth, win or lose, doesn’t even matter, because they will be eternally rewarded for being on the right side. The right is full of uncompromising fanatics who constantly make demands of their party and who cannot be reasoned with at all, and the party by now knows better than to try and call their bluff.
And it is precisely because of this that they have been so successful! Because the “strategy” of lesser evilism is so stupid, even if they wind up rejecting it for the wrong reasons, not understanding why it’s stupid, they still wind up winning.
The problem is, the left has always been extremely compliant historically, bending the knee and falling in line very consistently, going back generations, and now when we say that something is an absolute moral red line, the Democratic party thinks we’re bluffing and that we’ll just fall in line like always. Which is exactly why it’s absolutely essential to prove to them that we are not.
I mean, look at you, still saying “Do it.” As if there was any possibility of that! If you insist on doing it the hard way, thinking that we’re bluffing, then we’ll just have to see how many elections it takes for you to understand our commitment. Honestly, I don’t care whether you agree with me or not, so long as you understand that I have no intention whatsoever of flinching in this game of chicken. Because, once you understand that, no matter how “unreasonable” you think I’m being, your only option to get my vote is to get the party to respect my red lines. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
It’s the proven strategy that works.
Ha! Is this what you call, “working?”
Even when your so-called “lesser evil” candidates win, they don’t do shit to address any real problems. As mentioned, Obama continued a pointless war of aggression that got hundreds of thousands killed and accomplished nothing. Joe Biden raised military spending to record highs. Neither of them did anything close to what’s necessary to address climate change, or wealth inequality, or any number of other crises. Biden had four years to give voters a reason to reject Trump, and he failed. These “lesser evil” candidates can’t even consistently win against a dogshit opponent and when they do win, they fuck up or do nothing, things keep getting worse regardless, and the worse things get the more prone people are to turn to the far right, because they’re the only ones presenting any kind of alternative to the status quo.
Lesser evilism has been proven not to work, which make sense, because it’s also a completely illogical even in theory.
So your argument is that Trump could have sabotaged the GOP and decreased the power of The Right, therefore someone like Bernie should sabotage the DNC and decrease the power of The Left? Great idea, genius. That’s how we slide further into fascism.
Yes, winning elections and passing progressive legislation is my idea of “working.” We’ve done it before. We should continue instead of pissing our collective pants because it isn’t working as fast as you want it to. I see you: you’re an accelerationist. You want the pain of revolution because you are too comfortable and entitled, and don’t understand what real upheaval feels like. Every accelerationist thinks they will be on the winning side.
So your argument is that Trump could have sabotaged the GOP and decreased the power of The Right, therefore someone like Bernie should sabotage the DNC and decrease the power of The Left?
Are you stupid? My argument is not “Trump could have sabotaged the GOP therefore we should sabotage the DNC.” It’s that the right used a credible threat of defection to advance their policy goals, and that the same tactic can and will work for the left. Making that threat did not decrease the power of the Republican party, because the party flinched. Rather, it increased the power of that faction within the party, because the party flinched. And the party flinched because it considered the threat to be credible.
Why do we punish murderers? It costs us money to do it, and it doesn’t bring their victims back to life. But, the punishment establishes a credible threat to other would-be murderers. Likewise, if a political party engages in mass murder, if it ignores and spits on our demands then, even if it comes at a cost, the party must be punished. For the exact same reason. In order to establish that when they fuck with us (and also slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians), they lose. The same way society establishes that if you murder people, you go to prison.
Threatening the Democratic party by saying that you won’t vote or will vote third party, if they engage in mass murder, only weakens the party if the party chooses to ignore that threat and engage in mass murder anyway. And if they do so, and you follow through, then you have made progress towards making your threat more credible for next time. Even if it leads to a worse result in the short term, it’s completely necessary, because we will be completely and absolutely fucked if we aren’t able to establish any credible threat, even in the most extreme cases of mass murder.
I see you: you’re an accelerationist.
I swear to God. I explain my position very clearly, and you completely ignore every single thing I say and invent motives to assign to me out of thin air, completely unrelated to anything I say. Just pulling shit straight out of your ass and trying to put it in my mouth.
You want the pain of revolution because you are too comfortable and entitled, and don’t understand what real upheaval feels like. Every accelerationist thinks they will be on the winning side.
Completely wrong. If I thought that way, why would I even care? Both parties will ensure that the US is headed towards collapse. I don’t really know which one would get us there faster tbh. And it’s obvious that the right is much better positioned to take advantage of that collapse. Even if the left emerged on top, by some miracle, it would cause enormous amounts of destruction and would carry a serious risk of nuclear armeggedon. I am certainly not in any hurry to “accelerate” towards that future.
“Accelerationism” is a right wing ideology that virtually no one believes. It’s just a meme liberals use to dismiss anyone to their left.
because it isn’t working as fast as you want it to
This is the part that you don’t understand. It is not that it’s “progressing to slowly,” it’s that it’s not progressing at all. Both parties are regressive, both actively contribute to the decline whenever they’re in power.
Joe Biden did not “decrease military spending less than I would want him to.” He increased it to an all time high. Obama did not “withdraw from Afghanistan more slowly than I would’ve preferred,” he doubled down and increased the commitment!
You are the accelerationist, because shit like Afghanistan (which you support), we cannot afford. These commitments, even if they weren’t bloody, imperialist acts of aggression that accomplish nothing, are causing overextension and a debt crisis, which is leading us towards collapse. I am the one demanding the policies that are necessary to actually pull ourselves out of these crises and fix things, to avoid that collapse! The situation we’re in is not sustainable, and you’re taking a strategy that depends on being able to sustain it forever!
Why do I even bother trying to get you people to see reason? All you ever do is make up bullshit accusations based on nothing, whenever your ideas are challenged or scrutinized.
It sure seems like over the last 60+ years, things have progressed, albeit slowly, with Democrats in charge, and regressed when Republicans were in charge. You can draw a line from abolition to women’s suffrage to civil rights to gay marriage that all lines up with Democrats. The long arc of history Dr. King spoke about seemed to bend in the right direction under Democrats. Yet here you are denying history. Odd.
It sure seems like over the last 60+ years, things have progressed, albeit slowly, with Democrats in charge, and regressed when Republicans were in charge. You can draw a line from abolition to women’s suffrage to civil rights to gay marriage that all lines up with Democrats.
And what about the war in Afghanistan? What about the Patriot Act? What about the total removal of our civil liberties with complete bipartisan consensus? What about the fact that Barack Obama maintained that the US has the right to attack any country on earth if it thinks it’s harboring terrorists? What about Guantanamo Bay and the policy of indefinite detention without charge or trial? What about ICE?
When I was growing up in the 90’s, the military budget was still inflated, but nowhere near what it is now. The country was at peace (relatively). There were no masked men raiding workplaces and dragging immigrants away to camps. The idea that the government could see your data was a paranoid conspiracy theory instead of an accepted fact of life. Due process was far from perfect, but couldn’t just be ignored by the government using the word “terrorist.”
I don’t know how old you are, so maybe you’re too young to remember a time when rights existed, but you can’t convince me we haven’t regressed because I was there and I watched it happen, and it was absolutely a bipartisan effort. The Democrats refuse to commit to abolishing ICE, they have always supported the so-called “emergency measures” of the Patriot Act, they support keeping the military budget at an outrageous size, greater than the next 9 countries combined. And you ignore all those facts. Which one of us is “denying history?” Which one of us is “delusional?”
Maybe if you go all the way back to 60 years or more, you can find some progress. Over the last 30 years, what I’ve actually experienced and seen firsthand, things have absolutely regressed, and they continue getting worse no matter who’s in charge.
The long arc of history Dr. King spoke about seemed to bend in the right direction under Democrats.
The long arc of history will see Democrats bend to the left or it will see them break and be replaced.
The only reason you have a problem with me is because you know that the Democrats stand against progress. Because you know that they will resist my demand to not kill hundreds of thousands of people. If you thought they wouldn’t commit mass murder, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
Frankly, even if they did make progress happen domestically, which they don’t, then I would still oppose them because I am not so selfish as to vote for someone who commits mass murder abroad just because they share the plunder with me.
Like, what is gay marriage next to hundreds of thousands of dead civilians? It’s nothing. How many dead Afghans were gay? How many immigrants rounded up by ICE were gay? If we don’t have the right to not get murdered or locked up by the government for no fucking reason, then we have no rights at all.
I am queer, but I have absolutely no interest in some vision of pinkwashed imperialism. We don’t need “more gay drone pilots.” My red line is a red line, end of story. Stop committing mass murder or I will always regard you as my enemy.
I would encourage you to actually read Dr. King, btw. He understood the fact that none of us are free until all of us are free, a fact you seem to be struggling with.
I told you about the most traumatic thing I’d ever experienced, and you responded that it was “funny” and then went on try to to justify the killing of hundreds of thousands of people. I assumed you were trying to provoke me. Responding to that with “hysteria” and condescension seems completely reasonable. I would respond the same way to someone justifying other atrocities, if for example you tried to justify the Holocaust, you would see the same “juxtaposition” of me being “consecending and hysterical.”
Also, I did support my thesis with examples and made rational arguments.
Is this not exactly what you asked for? “Support my thesis with examples?” Are those not examples? Do they not support my thesis? Your only response to those actual, physical examples was to cite a saying, with nothing to back it up except that people say it, except that it is “conventional wisdom.” Maybe you should take your own advice and support your thesis with evidence.
But really, we couldn’t, and can’t, even begin to get into the nitty gritty because of your stubborn refusal to accept that lesser evilism is a specific belief and moral framework, even as I demonstrated logically that it was. If you won’t even allow your beliefs to be defined and identified, then how on earth could we even begin to examine them critically? Before we can really get into examining whether it’s correct or valid, we have to be able to define it clearly and state what it is. So, my arguments were focused on doing that, and I did so quite logically, bringing up for example the is-ought problem. What am I supposed to do when you respond to my arguments like the “that’s not my wallet” meme?
Trump threatening to run as a third party is irrelevant, because he didn’t. He won the nomination. Every tea party chud who dragged the Republicans to the far right did so by winning the Republican nomination, often in noncompetitive districts. This is what DSA and other leftist candidates need to do, and in some cases have done already.
Lesser evilism isn’t a philosophy or belief or moral framework. It’s a strategy. It’s the proven strategy that works. It is the only proven strategy that works because of systemic flaws in our democracy. Do it.
Nonsense. The Republican establishment didn’t want him to be the nominee, and they could have pulled off bullshit to stop him from being the nominee if they really wanted to, because primaries are not legally required to be free and fair. But, if they had done so, and Trump ran as a third party candidate, then they would have lost. Of course, there’s also the fact that many of his supporters were/are passionate and armed, and if they had screwed him over too blatantly, there’s no telling what could’ve happened. So the party establishment bent the knee and acquiested to what their base wanted. Because if they hadn’t, Trump very well could’ve run as an independent and split the vote, at the very least.
As I said, the reason you don’t see Republicans defecting from their party is because the party is responsive to their demands, because the base has already established a credible threat of defection. We can look further back to the last major third party candidate, who also split the right’s vote and gave Bill Clinton the win.
I grew up around these people, in a conservative family in a red state. I understand how they think much better than some “saying” that liberals tell each other about people they’ve never met. They draw all sorts of red lines, and they’re crazy enough to mean them.
When someone says, “You can pry my guns from my cold dead hands,” they’re not likely to fall in line behind a moderate Republican who supports gun control as a “lesser evil” or “the best we can do.” It’s “give me what I want, or else.” My mother, a Catholic, is passionately opposed to abortion, claiming that it’s the same as murder and that it’s worse than the Holocaust in terms of lives lost. When I pointed out the various ways that Trump is a scumbag, she replied, exasperated, “And what am I supposed to do, vote for Clinton, who supports abortion?” I can promise you, if Trump had run third party, and the Republicans had for some reason nominated someone pro-choice, she would’ve followed Trump and voted third party.
A substantial number of these people believe that heaven and hell are literally real and that, as long as they stand by the right principles, whatever happens on earth, win or lose, doesn’t even matter, because they will be eternally rewarded for being on the right side. The right is full of uncompromising fanatics who constantly make demands of their party and who cannot be reasoned with at all, and the party by now knows better than to try and call their bluff.
And it is precisely because of this that they have been so successful! Because the “strategy” of lesser evilism is so stupid, even if they wind up rejecting it for the wrong reasons, not understanding why it’s stupid, they still wind up winning.
The problem is, the left has always been extremely compliant historically, bending the knee and falling in line very consistently, going back generations, and now when we say that something is an absolute moral red line, the Democratic party thinks we’re bluffing and that we’ll just fall in line like always. Which is exactly why it’s absolutely essential to prove to them that we are not.
I mean, look at you, still saying “Do it.” As if there was any possibility of that! If you insist on doing it the hard way, thinking that we’re bluffing, then we’ll just have to see how many elections it takes for you to understand our commitment. Honestly, I don’t care whether you agree with me or not, so long as you understand that I have no intention whatsoever of flinching in this game of chicken. Because, once you understand that, no matter how “unreasonable” you think I’m being, your only option to get my vote is to get the party to respect my red lines. Funny how that works, isn’t it?
Ha! Is this what you call, “working?”
Even when your so-called “lesser evil” candidates win, they don’t do shit to address any real problems. As mentioned, Obama continued a pointless war of aggression that got hundreds of thousands killed and accomplished nothing. Joe Biden raised military spending to record highs. Neither of them did anything close to what’s necessary to address climate change, or wealth inequality, or any number of other crises. Biden had four years to give voters a reason to reject Trump, and he failed. These “lesser evil” candidates can’t even consistently win against a dogshit opponent and when they do win, they fuck up or do nothing, things keep getting worse regardless, and the worse things get the more prone people are to turn to the far right, because they’re the only ones presenting any kind of alternative to the status quo.
Lesser evilism has been proven not to work, which make sense, because it’s also a completely illogical even in theory.
So your argument is that Trump could have sabotaged the GOP and decreased the power of The Right, therefore someone like Bernie should sabotage the DNC and decrease the power of The Left? Great idea, genius. That’s how we slide further into fascism.
Yes, winning elections and passing progressive legislation is my idea of “working.” We’ve done it before. We should continue instead of pissing our collective pants because it isn’t working as fast as you want it to. I see you: you’re an accelerationist. You want the pain of revolution because you are too comfortable and entitled, and don’t understand what real upheaval feels like. Every accelerationist thinks they will be on the winning side.
Are you stupid? My argument is not “Trump could have sabotaged the GOP therefore we should sabotage the DNC.” It’s that the right used a credible threat of defection to advance their policy goals, and that the same tactic can and will work for the left. Making that threat did not decrease the power of the Republican party, because the party flinched. Rather, it increased the power of that faction within the party, because the party flinched. And the party flinched because it considered the threat to be credible.
Why do we punish murderers? It costs us money to do it, and it doesn’t bring their victims back to life. But, the punishment establishes a credible threat to other would-be murderers. Likewise, if a political party engages in mass murder, if it ignores and spits on our demands then, even if it comes at a cost, the party must be punished. For the exact same reason. In order to establish that when they fuck with us (and also slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians), they lose. The same way society establishes that if you murder people, you go to prison.
Threatening the Democratic party by saying that you won’t vote or will vote third party, if they engage in mass murder, only weakens the party if the party chooses to ignore that threat and engage in mass murder anyway. And if they do so, and you follow through, then you have made progress towards making your threat more credible for next time. Even if it leads to a worse result in the short term, it’s completely necessary, because we will be completely and absolutely fucked if we aren’t able to establish any credible threat, even in the most extreme cases of mass murder.
I swear to God. I explain my position very clearly, and you completely ignore every single thing I say and invent motives to assign to me out of thin air, completely unrelated to anything I say. Just pulling shit straight out of your ass and trying to put it in my mouth.
Completely wrong. If I thought that way, why would I even care? Both parties will ensure that the US is headed towards collapse. I don’t really know which one would get us there faster tbh. And it’s obvious that the right is much better positioned to take advantage of that collapse. Even if the left emerged on top, by some miracle, it would cause enormous amounts of destruction and would carry a serious risk of nuclear armeggedon. I am certainly not in any hurry to “accelerate” towards that future.
“Accelerationism” is a right wing ideology that virtually no one believes. It’s just a meme liberals use to dismiss anyone to their left.
This is the part that you don’t understand. It is not that it’s “progressing to slowly,” it’s that it’s not progressing at all. Both parties are regressive, both actively contribute to the decline whenever they’re in power.
Joe Biden did not “decrease military spending less than I would want him to.” He increased it to an all time high. Obama did not “withdraw from Afghanistan more slowly than I would’ve preferred,” he doubled down and increased the commitment!
You are the accelerationist, because shit like Afghanistan (which you support), we cannot afford. These commitments, even if they weren’t bloody, imperialist acts of aggression that accomplish nothing, are causing overextension and a debt crisis, which is leading us towards collapse. I am the one demanding the policies that are necessary to actually pull ourselves out of these crises and fix things, to avoid that collapse! The situation we’re in is not sustainable, and you’re taking a strategy that depends on being able to sustain it forever!
Why do I even bother trying to get you people to see reason? All you ever do is make up bullshit accusations based on nothing, whenever your ideas are challenged or scrutinized.
It sure seems like over the last 60+ years, things have progressed, albeit slowly, with Democrats in charge, and regressed when Republicans were in charge. You can draw a line from abolition to women’s suffrage to civil rights to gay marriage that all lines up with Democrats. The long arc of history Dr. King spoke about seemed to bend in the right direction under Democrats. Yet here you are denying history. Odd.
(By odd I mean delusional.)
And what about the war in Afghanistan? What about the Patriot Act? What about the total removal of our civil liberties with complete bipartisan consensus? What about the fact that Barack Obama maintained that the US has the right to attack any country on earth if it thinks it’s harboring terrorists? What about Guantanamo Bay and the policy of indefinite detention without charge or trial? What about ICE?
When I was growing up in the 90’s, the military budget was still inflated, but nowhere near what it is now. The country was at peace (relatively). There were no masked men raiding workplaces and dragging immigrants away to camps. The idea that the government could see your data was a paranoid conspiracy theory instead of an accepted fact of life. Due process was far from perfect, but couldn’t just be ignored by the government using the word “terrorist.”
I don’t know how old you are, so maybe you’re too young to remember a time when rights existed, but you can’t convince me we haven’t regressed because I was there and I watched it happen, and it was absolutely a bipartisan effort. The Democrats refuse to commit to abolishing ICE, they have always supported the so-called “emergency measures” of the Patriot Act, they support keeping the military budget at an outrageous size, greater than the next 9 countries combined. And you ignore all those facts. Which one of us is “denying history?” Which one of us is “delusional?”
Maybe if you go all the way back to 60 years or more, you can find some progress. Over the last 30 years, what I’ve actually experienced and seen firsthand, things have absolutely regressed, and they continue getting worse no matter who’s in charge.
The long arc of history will see Democrats bend to the left or it will see them break and be replaced.
The only reason you have a problem with me is because you know that the Democrats stand against progress. Because you know that they will resist my demand to not kill hundreds of thousands of people. If you thought they wouldn’t commit mass murder, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
Frankly, even if they did make progress happen domestically, which they don’t, then I would still oppose them because I am not so selfish as to vote for someone who commits mass murder abroad just because they share the plunder with me.
Like, what is gay marriage next to hundreds of thousands of dead civilians? It’s nothing. How many dead Afghans were gay? How many immigrants rounded up by ICE were gay? If we don’t have the right to not get murdered or locked up by the government for no fucking reason, then we have no rights at all.
I am queer, but I have absolutely no interest in some vision of pinkwashed imperialism. We don’t need “more gay drone pilots.” My red line is a red line, end of story. Stop committing mass murder or I will always regard you as my enemy.
I would encourage you to actually read Dr. King, btw. He understood the fact that none of us are free until all of us are free, a fact you seem to be struggling with.