this post was submitted on 30 Jun 2023
263 points (100.0% liked)
Reddit Migration
145 readers
1 users here now
### About Community Tracking and helping #redditmigration to Kbin and the Fediverse. Say hello to the decentralized and open future. To see latest reeddit blackout info, see here: https://reddark.untone.uk/
founded 1 year ago
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Little guys lapping up right wing propaganda sure make it extremely difficult to fight the elite, tho.
They become merely another instrument of the "up" of suppressing the "down" when you're feeling frustrated, helpless, and hopeless all the time.
As opposed to the clearly smarter, enlightened little guys on the left. You're going exactly what they're describing.
You're just upset that your right wing hatred constantly gets called out.
You're implying that the left and right suppress each other equally, but frankly it's only the right trying to fuck over their fellow man for profit and power. Got nothing to do with being more enlightened or smarter. Compassion though... Ye, the left are more compassionate.
Of course feel free to prove me wrong...
Lets just take this to the extreme and see where shit lands.
Take the common leftist view. What happens to the country if we "got" our way. Everyone has healthcare coverage. Everyone with regard to their gender, orientation, race are treated equally and with dignity/respect. Everyone has a living wage. Everyone that wants to go to college can go to college without huge debt. Oh, we have to figure out how to pay for it.
Man that sounds fucking awful.
Now take it where the common right wing idiot that is consumed by the culture war wants to take it. Gay marriage outlawed. Transpeople wiped from the face of the earth. Fuck minorities. No minimum wage. Lower taxes for the 1%. Privatized social security, privatized medicare. No federal minimum wage. Gov't restriction of free speech.
And yes, I say right wing dipshits want to restrict free speech because they are the morons removing books. To quote Rage Against the Machine, "They don't have to burn the books, they just remove them" That is exactly what the right wing morons are doing.
The right getting their way leads to a dystopian shithole where only the wealthy have decent lives.
I would actually be ok arguing economics with a conservative. But the conservatives lost that fight when they embraced the religious right and decided to economically spend just as much as the liberals. Both parties are big spenders. So economics aren't a talking point anymore. It is purely a culture war that the right started.
Maybe you need to step back from the first order effects that your bias is saying and look deeper.
What is the cost of free health care? Where is it paid for?
What is the result of lower taxes (the right wing is for lower taxes for everyone, not just the rich - your 1% claim is an outright misrepresentation of their views): more money that can be used to invest.
there is a lot more to both. I'm countering your left wing bias by doing the same as you: cherry picking results that fit my narrative.
Going to take an easy one for you.
"What is the result of lower taxes (the right wing is for lower taxes for everyone, not just the rich - your 1% claim is an outright misrepresentation of their views): more money that can be used to invest."
We have the data over the past 70 years to show that is 1000% false. Straight up false.
Go look at economic investment in the 1950s to now. Seriously, go look it up. When we had the highest tax rates, especially corporate tax rates, we had the highest level of investment into research and salaries.
When you have the lowest tax rates, what you get is stock buybacks and huge salary payouts to executives. You obviously have done very little research in how low tax rates work in reality. Hint, it doesn't trickle down. And we know because we have hard facts and how the markets have worked over time.
EDIT: And I want to give you the reason why high tax rates lead to more investment. If you have a choice between lowering your tax burden by using it for research and salaries, you would rather do that than give it to the gov't. That is why high tax rates work.
The US currently has one of the worst cost-to-outcome ratios for healthcare of any developed country. So if anything, the cost would decrease.
"lower taxes for everyone" helps the 1% the most, and harms the bottom whatever% the most
trickle down economics isn't a thing
Taxes.
Except that you guys are paying retail + markup + profit for the investors + "we have a monopoly" fees + "lol, your other option is dying" surcharge.
We just buy healthcare at-cost and wholesale.
I pay like $2K a year in taxes towards healthcare. $2K invested in a socialized healthcare system buys services, service time, and supplies that would cost an American hundreds of thousands of dollars when paying for them as an induvial in a for-profit healthcare system.
Yeah. Sometimes I pay for healthcare I don't use. Sometimes there are inefficiencies in the system. It is not a perfect system. But it's also not making anyone go bankrupt due to a medical emergency.
Paying $100K just to save $2K is never going to be good math, no matter how creative we get with the accounting.
Definitely smarter than the group that thinks Trump should be a president and tries to deny science at every turn. You don't need me to tell you which group it is that denied global warming, denied the existence of covid-19, denied universal healthcare, host the Nazis and white supremacists, and so on, do you?
And when confronted with these kinds of questions the typical reaction is to ignore it or make excuses rather than looking at their own group with insight. Any conservatives who think it's okay for Nazis and extremists to house themselves in their group might as well join them. Otherwise, stop making excuses and look at the problems.
I’m trans and I will provide a safe space for kids even if you won’t. And you can’t stop me ^^
it's important to see that both sides have extremes and to assume that anyone who tips the scale "left" or "right" is somehow more right or more wrong is what keeps us from being able to find common ground. turning the words "conservative" and "liberal" into slurs is equally damaging. we both have ways of lashing out at each other when we are not the enemy. I bet we can agree that extremism is dangerous regardless of which side of the fence it resides on.
Ha, you're being downvoted for being reasonable and speaking basic truths. Has this place already become what made reddit such a shit show?
They're probably being downvoted because presenting the political divide as an arbitrary choice between two equally valid options is a perspective that many would find naive at best and actively malicious at worst.
Politics is mess, I don't want to pretend that there's no nuance (I certainly don't agree with quite a lot of online leftist orthodoxy), and I won't pretend to have an answer for our increasing polarization, but the simple fact of the matter is that we are not dealing with two equally valid sides. "Did Joe Biden win the 2020 election?", "Are vaccines a conspiratorial attempt at government control?", "Is climate change a severe and man-made phenomenon?", and "Are LGBT people basically just evil perverted pedophiles?" are not subjective questions one can have a casual opinion on. They are objective questions with objective answers, and to pretend otherwise is simply wrong.
Again, I'm very much not saying that the vague left is perfect by any means, but you only see one side start shooting at beer cans because a trans person had the audacity to exist.
let me start by acknowledging that I merely wanted to express that it's not just "extreme right buffoonery" that's a problem. to claim that there is no such thing as "extreme left
buffoonery" is misleading.
my comment clearly stated that the extremes on both ends are to be despised. politics is a game I don't wish to be judged on because I'm seriously apolitical. we do need to meet in the middle. I'm not saying we need to forgive the "buffoonery" but cut out the rotten fruit and make a fucking jam. ideals are not arbitrary in any way. our ideals are built through life experience. I'm seeing a whole lot of each side trying to dehumanize the other for not agreeing with their politics. The "right" has rational, reasonable, kind humans who believe in human rights. but the fact that they may have a stance on the nanny state that the country is becoming somehow makes everyone who's not a professed Democrat evil.
regarding hate speech, frankly I've experienced more than my fair share. but that doesn't count, right?
I get your point, really, and I don't even strictly disagree. As I said, I disagree with a fair bit of your standard Online Left positions. I unironically like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton and have the audacity to generally listen to economists; suffice it to say I've gotten more than fair share of online political hatred lol. Leftists will call me a shit liberal and conservatives will call me an evil gay communist.
But what must be realized is that the Republican party as it exists today is simply not an equally viable and rational alternative group of people who simply have some different thoughts on tax policy and the scoped of government. I direly wish it was, but it simply is not that. Polarization sucks, and I don't really have a clear answer for it, but the answer must not be taking the questions like "Are gay people secretly grooming your children?", "Is climate change a hoax?", "Was the 2020 election stolen from Trump?", "Should we legally impose Christianity at every level of society?", and "Is Hillary Clinton secretly a bloodthirsty cannibal that feeds off the youthful vitality of children?" and deciding that there are valid points on both sides.
I get that politics is exhausting, but being "apolitical" is a political choice. It's the decision that you're okay with the status quo and that you don't think it's worth making a fuss about. I'm originally from deep rural Missouri, and while it has since been voided by the Courts, I have (adult) trans friends who began developing suicidal thoughts because the state was going to ban hormone therapy. This was a regime that ostensibly claims to be for limited government arbitrarily inserting itself in the private medical decisions of consenting adults for no reason other than to appeal to a base of bigots. Things like this matter, whether you choose to pay attention or not. Being able to ignore them is a luxury not everyone has.
Good. If the concept of not tolerating hate speech bothers you, get out.
I don't tolerate hate speech, on either side of the fence.
God I am so curious as to what you consider hate speech "on the other side of the fence".
Yeah, me too.
We won't get any examples, though. At least not any examples of things real, relevant people actually said. The best they'll do is drop a dumptruck's worth of strawmen before flouncing off in a huff.
Yeah it's /r/Politics levels of "if you don't agree with you YOU'RE HITLER!!!!!!1!"
Reddit is just an empty framework that got filled by communities of humans. The shape of the framework did have some impact, but ultimately human nature is the biggest influence on the form that those communities took.
The Fediverse is a different framework, shaped a little bit differently but still basically the same. The same basic humans are building communities in it. I think all the smug "we're better than Reddit" stuff is going to look rather silly once the Fediverse gets anywhere close to being as big as Reddit is.
I hope it's not.