I can’t solve your levels. [note I don't know what I meant by this]
If you’re tripping and you care, you will find great media to advance you. For me it was “thelastpsychiatrist” who is the best. Slatestarcodex, to the left of TLP, attests it. The real, though finished blog, successor is Hotelconcierge. But. as “thelastpsychiatrist” says, “if you’re reading it, it’s for you”. Corollary, if not, then not yet or not, simply. The “trappings” thing is the most important thing I said to you. I’m saddened you jumped to “get better trappings” but I can’t expect you otherwise. It’s okay.
Now let’s get to the meat.
No fake friends. This is useless. Gross and counter productive.
We can discuss honestly the effect of social power on people without being evil manipulators. The rightwing does it internally, we do it academically, we should be able to do it here on CFC without it meaning we’re baaaaaaaad guuuyys. Duh. (I hope you all get the reference).
No ruling people. When I say guns for fear, respect, and being liked, that’s it. They have guns, and they are in charge but that doesn’t mean they rule us. Similarly, we aren’t trying to rule them. This is about
democracy. The opposition parties (republicans for a while, the leading party while being opposition given the system) have largely not been shady on an electoral level for most of the time since the civil rights act. But starting in the 2000s and ramped up in there 2010s they have been. Why is this? Many reasons, when you have conservatives, culturally later than progressives hitting post modernity and cultural nihilism you could blame it all on that.
But I believe having been more than up to date on our side (most of the past decade of cutting edge discussion is 70s social justice which as a left-even-for-Berkeley-born-and-raised is good but incomplete old hat) so I spent the recent years gobbling up the low hanging fruit of our political opponents.
Brief interlude: think about it, they have different discussions but they still exist, so from a simple biologic understanding of survival they know some useful things, so they figured some things out that are useful and important. So *obviously* they have wisdom outside our immediate purview even if it’s not too alien.
They don’t care what we say. They care what we do. We have our sky falling issues, except ours are real: climate change chief among them. They have a more proper use of the sky falling dear idiom, they fear a loss of Americanism. We can assure them, while also making them less comfortable talking about fighting us (if we lose 2020 then my #1 choice WILL be president in 2025 that’s Ocasio-Cortez but they’re already civil war anxious and if you’ve read CFC for years, yes America has been on brink for civil war since the civil war but that’s the first president since Lincoln that could trigger them), if we are worthy enemies.
Okay fine, you don’t want to own an armalite. It’s cool, I have back taxes and student loans, it would be irresponsible of me too. And if you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. One thing right wingers know better on average than left wingers (per person, but the long tail of getting it goes to the rare left winger who is that cool) is that you let people sort themselves.
Anyway there’s a car I’ve brought us to, but not answered. [I don't know what word I meant instead of car]
We don’t need to change their minds, we do need to chill them out. They want to own to libs. That’s not chill. They don’t like Donald trump in a vacuum. They like him in context of not liking us. It’s pretty easy to understand why! You, gorbles, you trigger me into wanting to spite you for your nonsense. Seriously, let’s breathe together before I continue this line of thought.
Okay hold on.
Okay.
You were like “I unmasked you”. no!!! That’s such garbage. But I know where you came from so we can move forward.
But right wingers, from old school fundamentalists to new school gamer gate weirdos, they lack my same-team tolerance. So they will as cloud points out shoot their foot to hurt us.
We need to chill them out. There are many ways.
I offer a super amazing shortcut. Unfortunately too many democrats are emotionally and egotistically tied into gun banning. Fine, your mistake.
I had
@Commodore upset with me in the gun thread for being knee jerkedly I favor of gun control because I pointed out that the only three countries with constitutional rights to bear arms are the neighboring three USA, Mexico, Guatemala. Our three plus neighbors, relative to development, have obscene gun violence. I’m not ignorant to these facts. Pointing them out to commodore made him think I had a position I didn’t. This is not unlike your own cognitive dissonance I thinking I have positions I do not, but I will leave that at this point of acknowledgement and no further for now.
But, for example, if you want gun control, republicans will be against it if only them own guns. They will never support mandatory buybacks of armalite ar-15s unless they are willing to—we outnumber them so...—see us lose 2 for each they own.
Anyway I’m black label, beer, and Belvedere deep so if I managed to tie this all together I rule. Hah. Not likely.
I care deeply about our future. The right wingers are here to stay. There is no pol pot, Maoist solution that is okay. They’re here to stay. We need to get them to play ball again and we need to make some smaller sacrifices for some bigger gains to save the world from a multi degree temperature rise and other problems. We’re America. We’re the free for all. We’re the gnarly not completely safe place where we uphold freedom at our own personal cost. The rest of the world respects us for it, don’t heed their smack talk.
Let’s chill out some conservatives by reminding them the libs they want to own are their own friends. They won’t bother if they like us. They voted more than we do but not 100% either. Right now they don’t want to please us. But imagine they did.
I understand their frame. You don’t. That’s not an insult: think about it, I’m comfortable wading through their language and you are not so, it’s evident. And deeper, I know you don’t because you declared me one of them which is suuuuuuper ridiculous. The furthest right person in this thread sort of agreeing with me is Manfred. Dude. We haven’t even gotten them started.
@Tristan_C be quietly like Hygro shut up. He’s hoping you all succeed in shutting me down. At least for the sake of the hegemony of his politics. But also Tristan and I could kick it just fine. No pressure TC.
Anyway im rambling, and there’s a lot i haven’t addressed.
But long story short: this thread is about actionable ways of advancing progressivism/deomcratic-leftism. The disagreements have thus far been pretty simple: their advantage is electoral (not an argument against my proposal), they are not acting in good faith (not an argument against my proposal), and they lack empathy (not true although they are supporting some evil things that are reasonable to make someone consider that). I acknowledge all of these things. Also, I knew these things in high school when I joined this site. None of it invalidates a good idea: let your larger numbers and friend groups work for you, include conservatives and less lefty people, and if you want to maximize this, do it in part through owning the means of the underpinning monopoly on ensuring a single society: violence. And do it through their fetishized weapon just to Yankee Doodle them, the armalite. Yes, the secret side element that I think many of you fear is that you might ease up on some of your criticism of them but some of that is good and as for the est, there are more of us than them so we’re not gonna move, they will.
