LiberalRetvrn
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User ID: 1892
LiberalRetvrn
11d 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
14d 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
14d 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
14d 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
14d 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
14d 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
15d 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
15d 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
15d 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
15d 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
15d 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
15d 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.
LiberalRetvrn
15d ago
I think Trump winning is a huge victory for wokeness and a huge loss for liberalism, just as it was in 2016. Trump in office will give institutions the excuse they need to clamp down on dissent. Speaking on issues like free speech and meritocracy will become impossible, since the #Resist movement will occupy 100% of the airtime for the next four years, and anyone making the slightest criticism of leftist idpol will be labeled a Trump-supporting fascist. Young white men will be demonized at levels never seen before. Meanwhile Trump/Vance will likely erode civil rights and liberal values from the right, with things like porn bans, social media IDs, religion shoved into schools, etc. Basically, it's joever.
The level of vitriol I'm already seeing from my boomer democrat family members is even bigger than 2016 or Jan 6. Living in the blue bubble for the next 4 years is going to be hell.
LiberalRetvrn
15d ago
On twitter there are already videos of ballot boxes being carried into the precincts. So us Kamala supporters have our evidence ready when she loses. Stop the steal!
LiberalRetvrn
15d ago
Muslims didn't vote for a woman
Absolutely shocking, I say. Maybe the democrats will finally learn their lesson about pandering to this particular demographic
LiberalRetvrn
20d ago
Wokeness has explicit power hierarchy from birth wherein some groups are sinless throughout life
I don't know about that. Unless you're a gay black trans disabled palestinian poor nonbinary woman, there's still something for you to feel guilty about. Within every group there are people being made to feel guilty about the more oppressed members of that group. Pride parades themselves have been relentlessly attacked for not including POCs, being too corporate, being sexist, etc. For every article about black men being sexist, there's an article about white women calling the cops and demanding to speak to the manager.
I agree that the woke version of original sin isn't as egalitarian, though I think it still takes advantage of the same psychological mechanisms that Christianity does. Christianity and wokeness are both puritanical religions, in which the goal of being free of sin/privilege is always slightly out of reach. This is good for perpetuating the religion, because it turns people into either evangelists who relentlessly attempt to convert others, or villains who lash out at the religion and provide an example of what not do do. A simple civil religion that says "Thor is great, be like Thor" or "love is love" isn't going to divide people as effectively.
LiberalRetvrn
20d ago
It's interesting that Vance can see the parallels between pride parades and civil religion, but I wonder if he can see how christianity and wokeness fit in. Pride parades are positive rites - they celebrate the existence of LGBTs without demonizing straight people. Then wokeness came along, and its core thesis was original sin: you are born racist, sexist, and homophobic, and only through listening to marginalized voices, unpacking your racism, and de-toxifying your masculinity can you ever hope to be saved.
LiberalRetvrn
20d ago
I'm not exactly saying that bureaucrats shouldn't be fired if they disobey the president. Just that the process of firing them and finding replacements would serve as a buffer against a totalitarian president implementing his agenda. If only a few bureaucrats object, it's obviously not much of an obstacle. But their act of civil disobedience can still raise awareness of what's going on.
LiberalRetvrn
20d ago
There is actually a hidden veto by the bureaucracy and the deep state
I disagree that this is a "hidden" veto, I think it's an obvious feature of liberal democracy. A president can't govern without the lower level bureaucrats' cooperation. If they find his proposals so hideous that they're willing to blow up their careers by defying him, he'll have difficulty implementing anything. To become an actual totalitarian, the president would have to replace all the bureaucrats with yes-men, and that takes time. If he just fires them all immediately, he won't have the infrastructure to govern. I find this very comforting, and it makes me less scared of a Trump presidency than many of my family members and friends. But when a politician talks about "draining the swamp", that's a clear sign that he's not willing to work within the system. We need to protect the swamp.
LiberalRetvrn
1yr ago
I think the opposite is true. The current anti-woke movement has strayed too far into pushing a "positive vision," and that's why it's starting to falter. Wokism itself started as a counterculture, and it only became insufferable once it gained real power in the mid 2010s. Most people are against wokeness because it is illiberal, and America is still a liberal society at its core. Americans don't like being controlled, and they felt controlled by wokeness in the mid 2010s, just like they felt controlled by fundamentalism in the previous era. And now conservatives are making the same error that the wokes made, they are mistaking opposition to wokism as support for traditionalism.
LiberalRetvrn
1yr ago
41% memes aside, I haven't seen much evidence that the suicide rate is higher for trans people. And how do I know I won't take the drug and then eventually regret not transitioning when I had the chance? For suicide reduction to be a convincing argument, I would have to know that the drug reduces suicide longterm. But what if the drug just makes you happy enough not to kill yourself, but not really fulfilled either? A lot of people wouldn't take that choice. I would still be tempted to YOLO and transition anyway.
LiberalRetvrn
1yr ago
through painful, expensive, difficult treatments
Only some of the treatments are painful, expensive, and difficult. SRS certainly is, but very few trans people actually get that. HRT is dirt cheap and painless, and that's the core of what most people would consider trans healthcare. I think for many of us taking HRT nowadays, it's not really such an imposition that we would be willing to risk a lobotomy to get rid of the desire to do it.
LiberalRetvrn
2yr ago
But Elon never mismanaged his other companies to this degree, for whatever reason. I don't recall ever seeing him publicly squabbling with Tesla employees, issuing ultimatums, recklessly making huge changes, micromanaging things he doesn't understand, etc. It seems to me like either he is intentionally tanking twitter, or has suffered some kind of head injury recently causing him to lose all executive function.
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.
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