this post was submitted on 04 Apr 2025
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There is nothing in a liberal democracy that prevents people from voting in their own self interest and that’s how it is in general as a consequence of combining liberal democracies with selfish ideologies like neoliberalism. Given this reality we can’t use politics to enforce ethics because people will vote you out and a politician should be accountable to his voters, otherwise they start to vote for whackos like Trump out of spite which makes things even worse. That’s just the rule of the game unless you’re for some kind of progressive autocracy or worse.
This probably sounds like I think we should dump women and LGBT folk under the bus but I truly believe that if we improved livelihood for people they wouldn’t need to look for people they can abuse to feel better about their own situation. Left should be emancipating groups of people to give them the power for self determination so that they can organise against the oppression. Given systemic constraints left can’t fight this fight for them.
Importantly, left should never abandon wins they scored for women but things like abortion became like a political Afghanistan (unwinnable fight that burns resources but there’s one more analogy later on). In my country left „fights” (very feebly) for this right despite women not being for it. More young women vote for the far right than any left wing party. Why make them happy by force? It’s not what they want and moralising left detracts from real goal of emancipating new groups and allowing them self-determination.
People who know me long would chuckle seeing me write this but this is a result of wasting too much time with nothing to show for it. And I think there are people who agitate conflict across this line because they know it won’t achieve anything. They also know that keeping this conflict going makes their wealth safe.
I know this is incredibly depressing way to think about things. I understand now that we tried to go to the finish line via shortcuts and we left people behind. Took me years of trying different things, mostly failing, refusing to listen to some people who always turned out to be right while I hated them for it. I feel like I had to try everything else before coming to those conclusions but realistically we’re out of options.
I don’t get attached to details on the account of ADHD-like condition but also a track record of details not mattering over long spans of time. Our plans and expectations turn out to be silly all the time.