LiberalRetvrn
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User ID: 1892
LiberalRetvrn
2mo ago
There is absolutely nothing "immoral" about sodomy.
LiberalRetvrn
2mo ago
Well, my holy lands are in Europe, not the middle east. I don't care what happens in the middle east as long as we're not too heavily involved. The Abrahamic religions will be fighting each other until they destroy themselves. America should be aspiring to greatness, not religious barbarism.
LiberalRetvrn
2mo ago
Well like I said, I really don't know what Trump's intentions are. Given how easily he seems to be swayed by people around him, I'm definitely worried about Hegseth's influence. I don't know why Trump would appoint him if not to take his opinions seriously. Other than starting a nuclear war, I think putting boots on the ground in the middle east is one of the most catastrophic decisions he could make.
LiberalRetvrn
2mo ago
I was referring to Hegseth's book, "American Crusade", where he justifies the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
LiberalRetvrn
2mo ago
If he wanted to expand the American empire in an advantageous way, that would be one thing. But based on his appointments it seems like we'll be going on a crusade in the middle east rather than actually annexing any valuable territory or defending the West. The fact that he railed against the Iraq war in 2016 makes me think he has no coherent foreign policy or vision. I don't see how someone can flip-flop on that particular issue.
LiberalRetvrn
2mo ago
The irony is that we're getting the worst of both worlds with Trump's brand of isolationism. On one hand, we have Bush lackey Pete Hegseth who thinks Iraq was a great idea. And then we're defunding basic, uncontroversial medical aid and possibly leaving Ukraine defenseless against the mongrels. There's no coherent policy other than doing the opposite of whatever Biden supported.
LiberalRetvrn
2mo ago
More like his "hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory" moment.
LiberalRetvrn
2mo ago
I disagree about the lack of an immune response, the issue is that wokeness thrives off that immune response. The reason classical liberalism didn't take off virally is the absense of the religious purity culture component. Classical liberalism says "let's all be equal and respect each other and let everyone do what they want." Which is too inoffensive of a message. Wokeness says "you're privileged and inherently a bigot, now pay me for my emotional labor." That's a message that provokes a response. Either you convert, apologize for your original privilege, and accept equity as your lord and savior, or you become an uncouth MRA chud who supplies exactly the examples of oppression that can be used to justify future wokeness.
LiberalRetvrn
4mo ago
eugenics being associated with the right is itself Cthulhu swimming left
because cthulu swam past eugenics and now it's toward the right? Or are you saying that doing more eugenics is directionally leftward?
LiberalRetvrn
4mo ago
I think Freddy's argument here, and the cthulu swims left meme are both examples of extending the left/right political model way beyond its usefulness (to the extent that it is ever useful in the first place). Reducing all of politics to a single axis in modern times is already suspect, but the model only gets worse in the past. If we're only talking about social issues, maybe you can define "right" as adherence to traditional values and "left" as rebellion against those values, but when the values completely change multiple times over, that doesn't really mean anything. Today, traditionalist christians might be considered right wing, but in the Roman empire they were the weird commie leftists who wanted womens' rights and equality under god. But is that inherently more right wing or left wing than paganism? Is banning abortion right wing because it upholds the sanctity of life, or is it left wing because it's dysgenic? The "left" and "right" have flip-flopped on this even in the last 50 years, let alone centuries.
LiberalRetvrn
4mo ago
I do find it very frustrating that before assisted suicide has even been legalized for terminal cancer, we're already talking about 30 year old women with psychosomatic illnesses. I think assisted suicide is obviously a good thing, because nobody should be forced to endure the last 3 months of a terminal illness if they don't want to. We can immediately recognize that it's cruel to let a dog suffer until the bitter end, but we can't extend that compassion to 90 year old humans in excruciating pain?
If the anti-suicide people are responsible for steering the debate away from the situations where euthanasia is obviously good and just, and toward the most ridiculously favorable ground for their side, I have to tip my cap to their genius. It's some kind of reverse Motte and Bailey that seems to happen with a lot of social issues. Moderates support allowing adults to be transgender if they want to, and then suddenly we're arguing about womens' sports and 9 year olds transitioning, and the moderates are stuck either defending indefensible and irrelevant nonsense or being called bigots by the radicals on their side.
LiberalRetvrn
4mo ago
Lately I've noticed a Muslim talking point that Islam appreciates Jesus more than any other religion, and that Christians are essentially slightly misguided Muslims who Allah will save anyway. I get the impression that for a lot of these gen Z trad groypers, it's the anti-degeneracy part of religion that they care about, not the specifics of the theology. Hating on Muslims also seems to have become a little uncool in the alt-right, since it would put them on the same side as Israel.
LiberalRetvrn
4mo ago
Nick’s audience is separate from the groups that actually successfully control women’s bodies
Is it? Nick has said he supports the Taliban's gender policies. I think he probably has a significant Muslim fanbase nowadays.
LiberalRetvrn
5mo ago
Just what the democrats need, more waffling and apologizing for their beliefs. I guess with a platform this boring and incomprehensible, nobody can be offended.
LiberalRetvrn
5mo ago
It may be poetic justice for democrats to storm the capitol and refuse to certify the election results, but it wouldn't accomplish anything except guaranteeing that democracy ends. Somebody has to stop defecting.
LiberalRetvrn
5mo ago
I meant that if someone thinks things like the national debt and money supply are important, they wouldn't vote for the candidate who wants to print more money and triple the deficit.
LiberalRetvrn
5mo ago
I think the president has basically nothing to do with the economy. Regardless, Trump is planning to print money like never seen before, so I'm not sure why anyone would vote based on that.
LiberalRetvrn
5mo ago
Well I guess it's just a shift in which side I feel is closer to me, and more possible to convince. It used to be that if I tried to talk about free speech or the issues with identity politics with leftists, I would get shouted down and called a bigot. Now they seem more open to listening. Whereas the LibsOfTiktok style right-wingers seem completely unapproachable nowadays. I don't get the impression that they want to return to the good old days of pre-woke liberalism like I do.
LiberalRetvrn
5mo ago
I wouldn't consider sex-segregation to be liberal, I would consider it a form of identity politics. The liberal approach to sports would be to give everyone equal access to the facilities, and let everyone compete in the same division. Of course, that would only mean everyone has equal opportunities, not equal outcomes. A 5 foot male probably wouldn't be winning at basketball, and no women would probably win at any sport involving any kind of athletic ability. Sports are unfair like that. Things like sex-segregation and weight classes are a nice form of affirmative action that let more people have a chance, but they still don't make sports 'fair'. You can have a womens' division for sprinting, but the winners in that division will be the most male-like women who can qualify (Caster Semenya, for example). Deciding where to draw that cutoff is messy and there's no clear solution.
Luckily, I don't consider any of this to be an important political issue, so I don't have to form a strong opinion, except that I don't want the government spending its time on it.
LiberalRetvrn
5mo ago
Well personally, I don't think MtF trans people should compete against women either, but it's not a political issue. It should be decided by individual sports leagues.
LiberalRetvrn
5mo ago
Having a government which supports clamping down on dissent also gives those institutions the excuse they need to clamp down on dissent
You might think so, but as far as I can tell, Trump did absolutely nothing to protect free speech or slow down cancel culture. The most egregious cancellation of all time imho (James Damore) happened under Trump. And the biggest cancellations under Biden have been by right-wingers (e.g. the ivy league presidents).
you should be recommending to all your Democratic friends that they vote for Trump because voting for Trump helps the Democrats
I don't think voting for Trump helps democrats win elections, I think it helps woke leftists gain power within the democratic party. Which I think is very bad for democrats longterm. The best thing for democrats would be to campaign hard for a reasonable, principled liberal candidate in the primary, and then vote blue no matter who in the general.
LiberalRetvrn
5mo ago
Maybe you should try cutting a deal with the Right instead?
Well I might have thought that was possible back in 2016. But the right are moving away from liberalism, not towards it. In 2016, Trump held up a rainbow flag, and now in 2024 his campaign is at least 25% about how transgenderism is destroying womens' sports. There was a brief time during G*mergate when we had a liberal backlash against wokeness, but the anti-SJW movement has long been replaced by unironic family values christian conservatism. On the other hand, it seems like more and more democrats are waking up to the flaws in the idpol system.
LiberalRetvrn
5mo ago
I would assume that Vance at least has a plan to dismantle Grievance Studies programs
That's the problem, though. Vance isn't opposed to Grievance Studies programs for the same reasons I am. I oppose them because they're illiberal and divisive and force an absolute moral framework onto me. I'm fairly certain that Vance would replace them with something I dislike just as much.
LiberalRetvrn
5mo ago
Well from my point of view, things did dramatically de-escalate with Biden. But I think what I'm trying to say is that it's easier to critique idpol leftism when idpol leftism is explicitly in power. Trumpism is a backlash to idpol leftism, and is therefore perfectly optimized for providing it endless outrage to feed on. Trumpists and SJWs are having a conversation that I have no interest in participating in, I want to have a different conversation. If I'm over here arguing with a leftist that we should strive for equality rather than equity, it really doesn't help if a Trumpist starts yelling about how both equality and equity are for cucks. That just causes the leftist to stop listening to me.
His critiques about Afghanistan were pretty unsubstantive. Obviously the Afghanistan war was unwinnable, but he didn't acknowledge whose fault it was that we were there in the first place. He didn't acknowledge the fundamental problem with Bush era foreign policy that got us stuck in those wars. And going further back, why were we ever so involved in the middle east that Bin Laden wanted to attack us? All of this could have been avoided by simply leaving the middle east to sort out its own problems. But Hegseth has an emotional bias at play here - he views the middle east as his holy land. His loyalties are not to the American people, or western civilization, but to his god and Jesus. The title of the book is all you have to read to understand his philosophy, and why he's dangerous.
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