Why Can't The Left Win?

[Farm Boy]

moral righteousness isn't your goal.

Now that's a pretty bad misread.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

Yes but he's giving aid and comfort to the people he purports to fight El_Mac and i'm tired of people being unwilling to critique that fact.

 

[AmazonQueen]

All he has to do is not vote for a party that actively does all it can to harm me, El_mac, that is all i ask, to not enable these people.

I'm not asking him to do something as potentially unreasonable as abstain from an entire group of food.

You don't think it counts for something that Rah no longer votes Republican at a national level?
It certainly isn't all I'd like him to do, but it isn't nothing either. It puts him in a different boat to people who are voting for Trump.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

You don't think it counts for something that Rah no longer votes Republican at a national level?
It certainly isn't all I'd like him to do, but it isn't nothing either. It puts him in a different boat to people who are voting for Trump.

I understand that, but what good is it if he still enables the basic aparatus of the party? He should essentially boycott it, if he dislikes the implications and consequences of voting for the GOP, even if it's not at a national level.

I understand he has valid reasons to do so, but voting for them and then claiming you wholely support LGBTQ are two contradictory positions that must be reconciled.

 

[Synobun]

You don't think it counts for something that Rah no longer votes Republican at a national level?
It certainly isn't all I'd like him to do, but it isn't nothing either. It puts him in a different boat to people who are voting for Trump.

Ordinarily, yes, but the Republicans have proven themselves to meddle in local-level governance and media. Republicans nationally exert their will on Republicans locally, so doing your part to vote in a Republican locally isn't really a laudable objective. You're still inevitably propping up their national agenda, which is decidedly anti-minority and especially anti-LGBT.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

It would be like someone claiming they hate austerity and are doing what they can to fight it in the UK and then voting for the Conservative party.

 

[El_Machinae]

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. Cheney's family member was able to come out because of all the people who fought battles before her. But it also mattered because he loved her.

Dogs are vastly more protected than pigs in society. But none of us can think of a single reason why we shouldn't be protecting pigs (at least) the same amount we protect dogs. We all have very excellent moral thinking on this topic, and would even vote in certain directions if the ability to do so aligned. But very few of us are significant advocates. We cannot be bothered, despite knowing what's right.

Logically, and morally, we know it's about deserving. But look in your own life, and those of 'liberal' allies. How far did deserving go? Compare that to how effective charisma is. Don't think that I am poo-poohing 'deserving', but also recognize that I'm losing you by mentioning it too caustically.

 

[Synobun]

I respect your penchant for serving as devil's advocate but comparing support for minorities to support for livestock and animals isn't the best route you could have taken, given its prior use in rights debates by people who wield the comparison seriously.

 

[Farm Boy]

You should listen to him, because the "single reason" "he can't find" is because doing so would mean we can't eat them.

Details, details.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

I refuse to accept that i should be glad that the moderates have finally come around to knowing what LGBTQ people have always known and i refuse to pat them on their heads for finally discovering that fact.

 

[El_Machinae]

Yes but he's giving aid and comfort to the people he purports to fight El_Mac and i'm tired of people being unwilling to critique that fact.

I'm going to stop the conversation. I think we've swayed from the earlier conversation of "how to sway the moderates", which I think was more valuable. This is a bit of thread-mixing we doing here.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

I've been very polite, okay?

 

[Synobun]

Well, you haven't. But there's a question of whether or not you have to be in order to not be legislated into torture or execution, and the answer to that is a pretty obvious no.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

I've actually held back and been quite reserved

 

[El_Machinae]

I respect your penchant for serving as devil's advocate but comparing support for minorities to support for livestock and animals isn't the best route you could have taken, given its prior use in rights debates by people who wield the comparison seriously.

You're right, I knew my audience instead of bothering to couch everything in neutral phrasing. If you have alternative metaphors, I'm all eyes, since you know the gist*! I have an advantage with y'all because you guys know that I am actually concerned about the animals' rights. I'm not comparing dogs to pigs because I'm dismissive of pigs, but because we know that we're very much failing our responsibilities towards them.

Everyone here knows that we're failing on that front, and also why we're failing.

*Since, obviously, the underlying gist needs to be useable in other audiences.

 

[Cloud_Strife]

So wait, am i to infer that i should refrain from criticism of moderates?

 

[Synobun]

I don't know if there is an alternative, in the long run, since ultimately the analogy falters when you consider that both dogs and pigs exist to serve a purpose while humans just exist and need not serve the purpose of another. You could argue that dogs and pigs shouldn't exist in that way, but that feels like a sideshow to minority rights unless we're lending serious consideration to the idea that hostile actors may be onto something with considering their minority of choice to be beneath human.

In a sum of individual efforts, rah's marching was a net benefit. A result is a result, regardless of intent or lack thereof. But this gets murkier when you start considering a vote, especially if you can tangibly trace that vote to a result that counteracts their initial effort and then some. Rah isn't on the wrong path with wanting to vote in a politician that might reverse the economic devastation being wrought in his state. Where he is on the wrong path is where he's willing to bargain with minority rights in order to get that. At some point, he, or any hypothetical moderate in this scenario, made a cost-benefit analysis and decided that tangible fewer rights, less safety for minorities was worth the potential gain of a better economy.

Cloud is actually onto something with "just don't vote Republican." We can see that the Republican apparatus nationally meddles locally. We know that a local politician's views in the Republican party get overwhelmed and hijacked by those at the top. The expectation isn't for moderates, or whoever, to march, and march, and march, and fight, and fight, and fight. It'd be nice if they did, but it's tough to do that and even victims on the ground floor can't often commit to that. Moderates just shouldn't act in a way that restricts minorities from acquiring or maintaining basic equality within society. A vote is something done in seconds but has significant ramifications, and it's troubling if someone's existence can be bargained with in the pursuit of a dollar.

When considering how to convince a moderate, you also have to consider whether or not that moderate is worth convincing. You're fighting a losing battle if they can dismiss your cause so easily, and it doesn't make for a good partnership if even after you secure their alliance you have to worry about their defection if something happens to personally inconvenience them. A result is a result, a vote is a vote, but fighting for that gets a sour taste if the people you're relying on are also the people who will be the first to stab you in the back when it becomes convenient to do so. It doesn't sit well if you're a minority and you look to your right and you see an individual openly saying, "Make me a better offer." when it's the minority's life on the line.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You can't really brand yourself as an independent free thinker, immune to the whims of left/right dogma, and then cite "someone was mean to me" as a justifiable cause for revoking support for a minority's rights. And it's doubly unreasonable to then point to the person who was mean (debatable, but let's go with it) as the cause for the person's lack of support for basic human rights. If your support for someone's rights can be compromised by whether or not they're nice to you, you weren't all that much in support to begin with.

What kind of "rights" are being "revoked"? Disengaging with one or two unreasonable positions is not the same thing as stopping support for every group those particular individuals might identify themselves with.

Basically, if someone's a jerk it's an unsurprising consequence if people who are targeted by that hate throw their hands up and say "screw this person in particular, I don't care what happens to them". It doesn't necessarily change the stance towards others beyond that individual. Doubly so when the individual in question who is complaining has already made statements to similar effect many times over.

Doesn't make sense to declare people enemies then whine when they don't seem to care about the suffering of their self-proclaimed enemy lol.

 

[El_Machinae]

I don't know if there is an alternative, in the long run, since ultimately the analogy falters when you consider that both dogs and pigs exist to serve a purpose while humans just exist and need not serve the purpose of another. You could argue that dogs and pigs shouldn't exist in that way, but that feels like a sideshow to minority rights unless we're lending serious consideration to the idea that hostile actors may be onto something with considering their minority of choice to be beneath human.

Thanks, but I clearly didn't make the comparison I was trying to make effectively. I'm not comparing pigs to minorities. I'm comparing why dogs were able to get protections that pigs weren't. The comparison is important, because the pig's inability to sway you is instructive as to why you might fail to sway the moderate.

My broader point is that the moral onus should be sufficient, but practically it isn't. Every liberal I know knows that pigs deserve better than their current lot. They know that any specific piece of personal hedonism cannot justify the environmental damage and the suffering that their next purchase justifies. And yet, we barely lift a finger. Oh, we might vote if it aligns with a variety of other factors. But maybe not. With regards to this issue (where most people know that I am actually correct), everyone is a 'moderate'.

So, then we ask 'why do dogs get more protections than pigs'? I'm not asking the question in order to draw attention to liberal hypocrisy or to castigate you for helping ruin the planet to the detriment of the truly poor. I'm not making a comparison between animal rights and minority rights in any fashion.

I'm asking 'why aren't pigs able to sway the moderates from actively participating in their harm?' Moral correctness is insufficient. Thinking about the future is insufficient.

 

[Synobun]

You've completely lost me, El Mac. You're not comparing pigs to minorities but then your final paragraph silently asks us to replace the word "pig" with "minorities." Dogs are useful companionable slaves and so they get a better life than livestock that is born solely to be eaten. Why can't pigs be more like dogs? Why can't minorities be more like...? More like what? Who? How does this comparison work? Why are minorities and white straight men put into this thought experiment?

Your second paragraph parses. That makes sense. But everything else just... doesn't. Perhaps I'm not intelligent enough to grasp the deeper meaning.