Why Can't The Left Win?

[Old Hippy]

And I think people forget how much and how quickly its changed.
Here in the UK we had a Chief Constable who in 1986 said people who had AIDS were "swirling in a human cesspit of their own making" and in 1987 said "The law of the land allows consenting adult homosexuals to engage in sexual practises which I think should be criminal offences. Sodomy between males is an abhorrent offence, condemned by the word of God, and ought to be against the criminal law."
From 1988-2003 Clause 28 enabled persecution of LGBT groups and campaigners. It was that dangerous extremist Tony Blair who got rid of it.

I'm genuinely surprised Tony found the time between all the effort he put into helping get rid of '' weapons of mass destruction'' with the first gulf war... I remember labour activists going to Iraq to act as human shields
for context where I grew up the South Australian Don Dunstan was our labour state premiere... often best remembered for wearing pink hot pants into parliament back in the 1970's and reforming laws around the persecution of gay activists and for transforming the state ( and i would say ultimately the whole countries attitudes) towards such issues as multiculturalism drug law reform and ending the death penalty... focussing public attention on police homophobia with the death of a prominent gay University professor eventually leading to the reform of institutionalised discrimination.
he certainly had a lot of influence on one young guy in the late 60's.. this old hippy back then... getting me arrested for protesting the vietnam war and i would say ultimately being at the forefront of the changes that swept the whole country back in 1972 giving us universal health care with the election of his fiend and mentor Gough Whitlam finally ending our part in the Vietnam war...

 

[Ajidica]

his fiend and mentor Gough Whitlam

Interesting typo.

 

[AmazonQueen]

I'm genuinely surprised Tony found the time between all the effort he put into helping get rid of '' weapons of mass destruction'' with the first gulf war... I remember labour activists going to Iraq to act as human shields
for context where I grew up the South Australian Don Dunstan was our labour state premiere... often best remembered for wearing pink hot pants into parliament back in the 1970's and reforming laws around the persecution of gay activists and for transforming the state ( and i would say ultimately the whole countries attitudes) towards such issues as multiculturalism drug law reform and ending the death penalty... focussing public attention on police homophobia with the death of a prominent gay University professor eventually leading to the reform of institutionalised discrimination.
he certainly had a lot of influence on one young guy in the late 60's.. this old hippy back then... getting me arrested for protesting the vietnam war and i would say ultimately being at the forefront of the changes that swept the whole country back in 1972 giving us universal health care with the election of his fiend and mentor Gough Whitlam finally ending our part in the Vietnam war...

He had 6 years as PM before the 2nd Gulf War. During that time he did manage to do a few decent things (probably for the wrong reasons) as well as quite a few bad things.

 

[Old Hippy]

He had 6 years as PM before the 2nd Gulf War. During that time he did manage to do a few decent things (probably for the wrong reasons) as well as quite a few bad things.

never said he did not do anything good... but its just my nature to examine peoples sainthood before adopting the approved official reports

 

[Akka]

It's not comparing pigs to minorities, because they're separate equations. Teaching to solve X + Y < 10 so that someone can later solve A + B < 40 isn't comparing A to X. They're internal placeholders for internal formulas. We're using them to explain the underlying formula, not to compare the two variables. A statement about A says nothing about X. If you cannot understand why you fail your obligation to pigs, you're never going to understand why moderates fail their obligations to their fellow humans.

I'm always agape when I see the need to explain such basic concepts. That's literally middle school thinking mechanics. But it certainly illustrates the core problem.

I feel the constant purity testing and long-winded circular-logic moralizing (as can be seen in this thread) points toward an answer to OP's question.
But he's also kind of motte-and-baileying the Left, considering center-left politics have largely dominated the west under neoliberalism.
The right has simply been more effective in recent years in appealing to people's basest emotions (fear, anger, disgust, hatred)

Yeah, pretty much.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm always agape when I see the need to explain such basic concepts. That's literally middle school thinking mechanics. But it certainly illustrates the core problem.

Yeah, pretty much.

More of a left wing voter frustrated when they throw away elections on stuff that doesn't effect the majority of people.

Consider impeaching Trump. Guess what's gonna drone out the messaging from candidates to remove Trump over the next year or so.

Trump's a repulsive toad hopefully that's enough. To put out a fire you cut off the oxygen.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Moreover, every time an explanation is provided to explain how the two aren't being compared, El Mac goes out of his way to specifically tell me how they are being compared. Pigs are not minorities, but how I treat pigs refers to how moderates treat minorities. Yet to take this at face value it requires us to assume minorities are distinctly "other," which is bogus on delivery.

Quoted is where logic is unraveling. Taking that at face value does *not* require an assumption that minorities are "other". That's your own projection, it's not implied logic of the analogy. If anybody is doing mental gymnastics, it's the person fabricating extra connections where none were asserted.

If my views correspond with supporting their unnecessary suffering, then yeah, I should be called out on it. At what point in this discussion was it implied or said that only political moderates are accountable for their beliefs? That other people, or even me, are exempt from taking action or not? I own up to my views and don't see an exceptional need to blame the response on others. I'm already treating Rah how I would want to be treated if I held untoward beliefs towards a demographic.

You could, per this paragraph, be "called out" regarding an enormous quantity of issues that are important to somebody, but aren't important to you in particular.

There isn't a gotcha or an illuminating thought being presented in this analogy. Everyone has an internal cost-benefit analysis going on regarding most of everything. Some go unnoticed or ignored, others get called out. This is being called out.

Yes, and an calling out "moderates" is necessarily hypocritical for the reason highlighted above. It's silly to give moderates credit for change when they're largely defined by inaction/not caring one way or the other too much, on that I agree. But calling moderates "enablers" and attributing blame to them is the kind of "logic" that merits self-reflection.

Utah only just repealed theirs this year. So to summarize, if by some chance the Supreme Court reverses Lawrence v. Texas (and keep in mind, sodomy laws were ruled by the USSC as constitutional as recently as 1986) then homosexuality instantly goes back to being illegal in those 16(!!!) states.

Speaking of hard to parse, I have no idea how the SC managed to come to this conclusion in any era. Cultural tendencies/people looking the other way is one thing, but SC ruling on that in '86 was flagrantly unconstitutional even at the time. Same goes for "obscenity" laws...an open and arbitrary loophole in the first amendment. Even Republicans that blather about 1st amendment rights any time it's convenient for them won't bat an eye at passing/enforcing that kind of law. But what stops us from randomly declaring anything we want as "obscene" and thus "unprotected by the first amendment"? What happens if ruling government declares fake news as obscene, but decides to use a standard for fake comparable to the Chinese government's?

But yes, deciding whether moderate buy-in was essential to starting the war is basically the same question I'm asking . Or was it all done by True Believers and moderates just forced to accept the outcome?

Which Iraq war? I was too young to have a sense of the first one, but the fighting there in 2000's and later didn't even bother much with "moderate buy-in". They basically made sure that the moderates wouldn't go out of their way to oppose it and just did what they wanted after that.

The ones suspected of being gay got harassed. One did come out of the closet and had his testicles jumped on, 3 days in hospital.

Then got suspended for sexual harrasment (came out by rubbing his junk on another dude). That was 1994, last saw him 96 outside a bar dressed in skin tight PVC type stuff.

Rubbing genitals on people IS sexual harassment if there isn't consent. Sending someone to the hospital that way is worse and the people committing that assault should have seen significant jail time.

 

[aelf]

No, you can claim it, because it might be true. And that feedback is valuable. Sure, it might be worth castigating if it improves things. But the goal here isn't merely to be 'correct on the internet'.

If he marched for people he liked more, what really mattered was that there were people he liked more. If it changed his votes, they mattered. If anything, they mattered.

Yeah, and after all this hand-wringing effort to please the moderates, all it might take is for them to hear criticism they don't like from someone, and they're back to thinking the left is too mean to get their support.

This is like arguing that any violence automatically negates the moral position of a mass movement. It's basically setting an impossible goal for the express purpose of having people fail at it so they can then claim that they have no legs to stand on. It's intellectually dishonest and fake.

 

[Zardnaar]

Quoted is where logic is unraveling. Taking that at face value does *not* require an assumption that minorities are "other". That's your own projection, it's not implied logic of the analogy. If anybody is doing mental gymnastics, it's the person fabricating extra connections where none were asserted.



You could, per this paragraph, be "called out" regarding an enormous quantity of issues that are important to somebody, but aren't important to you in particular.



Yes, and an calling out "moderates" is necessarily hypocritical for the reason highlighted above. It's silly to give moderates credit for change when they're largely defined by inaction/not caring one way or the other too much, on that I agree. But calling moderates "enablers" and attributing blame to them is the kind of "logic" that merits self-reflection.



Speaking of hard to parse, I have no idea how the SC managed to come to this conclusion in any era. Cultural tendencies/people looking the other way is one thing, but SC ruling on that in '86 was flagrantly unconstitutional even at the time. Same goes for "obscenity" laws...an open and arbitrary loophole in the first amendment. Even Republicans that blather about 1st amendment rights any time it's convenient for them won't bat an eye at passing/enforcing that kind of law. But what stops us from randomly declaring anything we want as "obscene" and thus "unprotected by the first amendment"? What happens if ruling government declares fake news as obscene, but decides to use a standard for fake comparable to the Chinese government's?



Which Iraq war? I was too young to have a sense of the first one, but the fighting there in 2000's and later didn't even bother much with "moderate buy-in". They basically made sure that the moderates wouldn't go out of their way to oppose it and just did what they wanted after that.



Rubbing genitals on people IS sexual harassment if there isn't consent. Sending someone to the hospital that way is worse and the people committing that assault should have seen significant jail time.

High school/under age to be charged

 

[TheMeInTeam]

High school/under age to be charged

At least in the US, people committing serious acts of violence can be tried as adults, especially if they're in their teens.

Also some seniors in HS turn 18 before graduating, so just given the story and not having knowledge of law in your country I couldn't assume that.

Regardless, serious acts of violence need to see correction. I'm not convinced that the adult version of correction is particularly functional even for adults, so maybe something different than just tossing kids in jail, but still serious consequences. We're not talking about some mean words or something, we're talking about assault.

 

[Zardnaar]

At least in the US, people committing serious acts of violence can be tried as adults, especially if they're in their teens.

Also some seniors in HS turn 18 before graduating, so just given the story and not having knowledge of law in your country I couldn't assume that.

Regardless, serious acts of violence need to see correction. I'm not convinced that the adult version of correction is particularly functional even for adults, so maybe something different than just tossing kids in jail, but still serious consequences. We're not talking about some mean words or something, we're talking about assault.

It was 93/94 age 15/16 something like that.

I can't remember what age it used to be but police couldn't prosecute assuming a complaint was even laid in the 1st place.

But assault wasn't really a big deal unless

1. Someone went to hospital
2. It was in public or in the street
3. Someone went to the cops.
4. Weapons got used
5. Adult hits a kid that's not theirs (exception teachers).

You could get expelled from school for hitting a teacher but not another student.

Several teachers had nervous breakdowns, one got punched, one got assaulted with a chair and another had his goldfish stapled to the blackboard.

I say one guy get thrown out a second story window into a tree, mentally disabled guy thrown into a diving pool, a cross dresser stripped down to his bra and panties and thrown in the pool. Another kicked into the urinal and rucked like a rugby ball. One of the guys who didn't make it was sexually assaulted with a vacumn cleaner.

I remember jokes as a kid about being able to kill someone and get out if jail in 7 years.
You could get the cane at school until 1986.

And going to a bar and getting in a fight or being assaulted in a bar was almost normal. Some bars you didn't go to. The dive bars are most gone now.