this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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Good luck to you then. The more I learn about the world, and the more different people I meet, the more repulsive conservatism becomes.
"Leftist" means very different things to different people. It's not a very well-defined term, and really never has been.
Some people will insist that leftist means socialist, and that Nordic-style Social Democrats are actually right wing because Social Democracy is capitalist and anything that involves private ownership of the means of production is right wing.
Others will insist that somehow CNN is the "Communist News Network", and that anyone left of Trump is a leftist.
So the better question is really what they mean. Did they go from being a college communist to a Social Democrat, or from a Joe Manchin supporter to wanting Charlie Baker to run?
That's a vague response that I can't really make any reply to.
If you aren't voting for right-wing parties, that's a good thing. You might be a pretty middle-of-the-road liberal, at least statistically speaking that's not unlikely. Which in the grand scheme of things, is still fairly conservative, supportive of the maintenance of the status quo.
So if that describes you, I can see why people would say that's conservative.
I literally explained it in the comment. You should try reading it again.
Maintaining the status quo, opposing change, is still quite conservative. Hell the right-wing party in some countries are the "Liberals". And note that I said lower-case-c "conservative". Just because the self-described capital-c "Conservatives" are running further rightward and flirting with fascism, doesn't make the middle position not conservative.
ntg but the general kind of surface level spectrum might look more like conservatives, not definitionally, or, in the sense of the origin of the word, conservatives want to regress society back to some previous state. centrists yadda yadda status quo. and then liberals want to progress society, and that's kind of equivalent to progressivism or leftism. Which is partially because americans are not politically literate, or actually literate, and don't understand the differences between different words, but also because america as a whole is so far to the right (so is much of the world), and so stuck in the past, that actual leftism is incredibly fucking radical, and advocating for liberalism, or at least, the identitarian implications of liberalism, rather than fucked up plutocracy and bigotry, is still thought of as a leftist position.
You can think whatever you like, but that isn't what I wrote.
Lived experience.
And like... Talking to liberals? Having conversations with people. Where whenever we discuss politics, any systemic change is always framed as too radical.
Think about climate change. Think about how many liberals view this as an issue where the solution is... More people buying electric cars. Rather than rethinking cities and infrastructure to allow for more pedestrians, bicycles, and public transport. Or where instead of regulating industries causing the most damage, the solutions is... To rely on consumers, who are already overwhelmed by information in advertising and often low on disposable income, to "make better purchasing decisions" to make the companies change by voting with their wallets. Where the fault for climate change isn't the fact that our economies incentivise the destruction of the environment, but that people just aren't recycling enough.
The system is always found faultless, it's always the individual to blame. Any actual systemic solution is dismissed, precisely because changing the systems we live under is considered radical.
Some liberals might, ostensibly, say they want things to change for the better. But in practice, they tend to oppose any measure to actually achieve that change.
Please actually read what I'm writing. Because this is fully consistent with what I'm describing.
Liberals often support change in abstract, they like the goals. But then oppose any measures to accomplish it because those measures are not "sensible" to them.
Stop assuming everyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. We don't think you're correct, that doesn't mean that we don't understand.
Y'all are always so condescending.
Good chat. Bye now.
Oh piss right off. You ignore what I write and started ranting at me about entirely unrelated nonsense. And this entire conversation has been weirdly accusatory. I engaged with you honestly, but you clearly have a chip on your shoulder about leftists.
Which of course tracks 100% with my previous experience.
Insufferable, self-aggrandizing tool.
Where? The harshest thing I said was asking you to actually read my comments.
And I'm going to do it again here because you seem to just be making up things that I haven't written.
Buddy I do not want to hear that from you, after you just spat a rant at me about what leftists apparently believe.
The discourse is dead because you aren't reading what is written before responding.
Criticism isn't dogpiling. And exactly what did you expect? You responded to me in the first place with a message implying that leftists lack nuance and pragmatism.
The hell did you want? A pat on the back and a cookie? You picked an argument and you found it.
Why is every message of yours an accusation of a lack of critical reasoning. Like buddy, people disagree with you. It doesn't mean we're incapable of critical thinking.
Maybe you should step out of your echo chamber and consider perspectives other than your own for once.
So you accuse me of stuff, I ask where I did that, and you just change the subject? What a waste of my time talking to you has been.
He doesn't assume that, and said the exact opposite.
no it doesn't.
jesus you freaks have such a victim fetish
you aren't left leaning, and I'm not a communist. what happened to the nuance you were just prattling on about? abandon it already because you really like calling people communists that much?
College communists will absolutely label the entire democratic party right wing, and will call liberalism a fundamentally conservative philosophy. If you're surrounded by literal communists, accepting that maybe a literal revolution isn't the best idea will absolutely get you called a conservative.
That's not really a new phenomenon, though. The German communist party literally labeled the social democrat party fascists, and thought they were just as bad as the nazis. Turns out they were kinda wrong about that.
I mean. I'm no college communist. But neither of those assertions are particularly out there?
When compared with parties in other democracies, the Democrats are pretty right-wing on many issues. And it's not strange to refer to liberalism as a conservative philosophy, it tends to place emphasis on private property, free-market economics, and capitalism. There are places where the conservative party are "The Liberals".
Liberalism, as in the philosophy, isn't inherently pro-capitalism. There have been liberals that are opposed to capitalism.
That is why I said "tends" to favour capitalism. Which I don't think is unfair. Liberalism has also been built upon for a long time, so one would expect to find a lot of variation.