Political Memes

Very good take.

I complained to a partner once about something they'd done that seemed vaguely unethical (by my understanding of their ethics). After they apologised, I was still upset, and they said "maybe I'm a little bit shit, just like everyone else."

That really stuck with me. People (including myself) are often OK with accepting imperfections in other people in some spaces, but not in others. It's pretty weird.. Life is messy, even the bits that seems straightforward. And no one has a perfect understanding of any situation..

“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents*, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

--Matthew 25:14-30

• A talent was a monetary unit worth about twenty years' wages for a laborer

That's Right with a hard R. No thanks

The only thing more important than "do nothing wrong" is to loudly correct those who are doing "almost right" and "in the right direction."

Go away troll bait bot.

I had an interaction once where I thought I used double quotes around a word to imply something obvious related to the posted article. A random person got mad at me and claimed I knew nothing about solidarity.

I felt insulted, they didn't know my life experiences up to that point. I chose to ignore my feelings and pressed them to teach my why I was so wrong. They eventually disappeared from replies because they had nothing behind that image of righteousness. Rare win but I'll take it.

If someone put themselves in harms way to punch an authoritarian follower in the face in my defence and also uses slurs I could find offensive to myself, that's not my enemy. That's someone awesome who could use a little more education. Later. When the current situation isn't so wild.

Words are just words. That's not as effective as punching a fascist in face.

I haved discussions with others here where its people are just not happy with baby steps and want full change right away. Problem is we need to make more friends not enemies with each other.

I spent a bunch of time in such spaces before the election and was shocked how much time and energy was squandered with virtue signaling and purity testing. There was literally no room for anything else in some of them.

obviously a trap set by bougie liberals to try and get me to vote for a Democrat.

but i'm too smart for them

I would say largest problem with leftist spaces is a little more challenging to identify; it's that leftists are broadly intellectuals or at least identify as intellectual because of effort they put into honoring nuance. And the primary opponent of leftists are conservatives, and they are proudly not intellectual and view people who use the lens of intellectualism and nuance as weak or elitist.

Because it's incredibly difficult to have any kind of meaningful intellectual debate with your opponents, we have all retreated to our safe-spaces and online bubbles, our discord groups and algorithm-driven feeds. We don't even walk in the same environments or view the same media anymore,

So in order for people on the left to feel any kind of satisfaction and feel like their mental strength actually has a use, they find someone else who is ostensibly on the left and attack something that person said or did which they feel does not represent their own leftist values.

Our eternal, infernal infighting problem is because we have an army of head-warriors who have no heads to butt against. Even if there were people on the right willing to have intellectual debates, they're not even in the same talking-space anymore. The only place you can go to have debates are contentious battleground where nobody is even arguing in good faith and just screaming their talking points for audience upvotes. So leftists, being humans, take the easy path and turn on each other to feel like they're making any progress or are involved at all in making things better.

On the right it's much easier to feel like you're part of the movement or doing something for your group, all you have to do is buy a gun or stockpile trumpcoins and canned food or harass someone or get drunk and scream about minorities. It's mindless and pointless but it feels like action. And sadly, more and more people are being turned away by this kind of mental effort and emotional labor of "doing the right thing" so they're getting sucked in by the mindless orcs who have more fun and have easier victory conditions.

This one is fun because it could be both about tankies and actual leftists depending on what you believe in.

and then people didnt vote in the 2024 election

Yes let's start a 3rd party

wave of downvotes and idiots screaming about RCV even though that's not a disqualifier

The problem is they keep dissagreeing on details and forget, they'll never agree on everything.

I have referenced this post so many times but was never able to find it so thanks

online leftist

Important things happen offline, online is more or less a distraction.

That's not only a problem of online leftists spaces. The left has always been pretty busy with discussing what page of the capital is more beautiful written...

Leftist thought is predicted on dialectical materialism. That means that when someone presents you with material facts which conflict with your ideology, you plug your ears and call them a liberal.

Not to ironically quibble, the sentiment is there, but I think "more important to do nothing correctly than something incorrectly" is closer to the mark

I wonder if the protest-non-voters support this message.