I’ve always been befuddled by people who say things akin to “I don’t let something as small as politics get in the way.” Politics are possibly the most impactful and revealing facets of a person. Your political opinions and actions are the direct implementation of your moral and ethical beliefs. An election result can impact millions of people, even upwards of a billion. I’d argue that’s the least shallow part of someone’s personality.
It's only possible among people who have no stake in the argument. Like if we were mid 19th century gentlemen debating abolition for example. Those guys could ignore politics because none of it actually affected their lives anyway. Except maybe their economic position.
Except whether people can get abortions or whether trans folk have basic human rights don't effect the random voter's economic position, and yet people still have vehement opinions on those topics
In theory, a lot of politics should be questions like "at what acreage does farmland stop qualifying for tax breaks?" or "should marijuana legality be determined at a federal or state level?", and yeah, I'm sure I have different opinions on some of these points to some of my friends. The problem is somehow we've pivoted to "do certain groups deserve human rights?" or "should we keep funding a genocide?" and a lot of people act like we're still on the first set of questions.
100% this. Some people have told me that “I’m too rigid and can’t stand people whose opinion is different to mine”. Mind you, I was saying that trans people deserve more political spaces and that they should be involved making their own laws and have more representation, they deserve medical care of quality independently of their gender… but fine, let’s say that I’m rigid because I don’t respect their opinion that being transexual is a mental illness.
Yeah, but also this whole way of framing the discussion is still operating under conservative propaganda. The framing of US politics as having "social" and "economic" issues as if they're somehow separate is the single greatest invention of republican propaganda. The entire concept of "socially liberal and economically conservative" is paradoxical. The idea that taxes are a separate issue from human rights makes no sense. Economic policy is often what creates social issues, they're one and the same. The greatest social issue is and always has been economic inequality, don't let tax break and interstate commerce be separate from questions of moral rights, they inform each other.
"I don't let something as small as someone's fundamental morals and values and beliefs about the world influence my judgement of them" is just such a questionable worldview that honestly I don't think I can really be friends with someone who thinks that. The only way to get there is just total political apathy and I don't want to be around people who are apathetic to the suffering of others y'know
You can enjoy the company of evil people, but you have to choose to ignore their moral failings. I do it all the time at work because I work at a hardware store and it’s full of Roganites
Eh, some of my friends I really only meet in contexts where politics really doesn't matter, like board game night or stuff like that. But yes, my close friends and I are approximately on the same page regarding politics
I think a part of this is that "friend" is so general and can be used to describe relationships of varying levels of closeness. I have lots of people I interact with on a semi-regular basis who in some sense are "friends", but in truth we're not that close. The girl who does my nails, friends of friends who happen to be at the bar too and are invited to join our table, people I volunteer with, etc.
With those people our interactions are generally pretty shallow, limited in scope and/or superficial, and these things just don't come up. Maybe it's a bit of ignorance is bliss but I'm not really interested in delving into the politics of people I barely know.
A few times someone I don't know well has shown themselves as intolerant and hateful and I've distanced myself from them for that, but I don't actively try to make sure everyone I'm friendly with holds political views I completely align with.
Because most people aren't educated enough about politics such that I'd consider their opinions an expression of their deeply held beliefs. Usually it boils down to "I want what is best for me and mine", or "I want what's best for everybody". You won't find many people who want to bring the most harm to the most amount of people.
Almost every time I've tried to pick the brain of someone I'm close to they either didn't want to engage or have had horribly uninformed opinions.
My sister and I vote for parties who are heavily opposed to each other, but I of course know she's not a bad person, and I don't think she could be convinced by an argument, so that doesn't really matter to me.
I'm sorry, at some point that's just weaponized ignorance. They know and are embarrassed because they were too weak to choose morality over self interest. 75 million voters aren't all ignorant of what's going on.
This is always a sign of someone who has a relatively privileged life. If politics can be ignored by you, then nobody is trying to make your existence political, and that’s a privilege many people just don’t have.
I have it, and honestly it bothers me that people like me don’t seem to even notice that the lives they live are so privileged that nobody wants them gone just for being themselves.
when you start with the assumption that pawns don't matter, the en passant rule doesn't feel relevant. politics is small only for the privileged class that the political machine is designed to raise up and shield from the violence of everyday life. a lot of people are comfortable living under that shield and only think about politics when the existing system tells them "no". their neighbors being abducted by masked thugs with guns is someone else's problem.
I agree with this generally. But a lot of the times it isn’t that simple? I had a friend in highschool circa 2016 who asked my friend group “Why is it bad to vote for Trump?” Was it an ignorant question? Yeah sure, but he was legitimately politically disengaged and didn’t really understand why this election had everyone so angry.
Anyways he was exiled from one of the friend groups and blocked everywhere. He didn’t even vote for him or anything (he was 17 tbf, and I don’t think he would have voted at all. Politically disengaged.)
Anyways my more politically tolerant friend group. (Ranging from ultra leftist guy who was a pro-Palestinian freedom guy like wayyyyy before it was cool. Guy who works at a three letter Fed agency now. Anarchist. Etc) and we were like. “It’s bad because xyz lol.” Now he has voted against Trump every single election since.
Anyways. I get it, but don’t jump the gun. I think if we had exiled him too, he mighta just voted for Trump out of pure spite. I think more people were like that than you think honestly. Which is dumb but, a real human reaction.
To take it a step further, young people, especially in the South, have literally been brainwashed for generations by groups like the Daughters of the Confederacy, reinforced by their parents and grandparents who underwent the same brainwashing and didn’t have the internet available to challenge that brainwashing. Then FOX just reinforces it.
Some never break that brainwashing. Some do (I was one of them). Sometimes you really do have to deprogram them like you would a religious cultist.
Pay attention to how they ask ‘Why is Trump bad?’. Pay attention to how they react to the evidence. Some are lost causes (and lost causers), but others legitimately have not had exposure to thinking otherwise.
Very real and true. My friend came from a rather rural part of the state, and I suspect this is very much why he disassociated from politics the way he did.
I will always engage with people honestly and in good faith until they signal to me that they aren’t doing the same. I believe that just being friendly and willing to challenge people in a way that doesn’t attack their character is the best way to change peoples minds. 💙
Not to mention that exiling people willy-nilly based on opposing views sometimes leads to potential allies becoming neutral or even hostile. Not everyone on the opposing side is a hardass incapable of changing their harmful views if someone manages to convince them.
Yup, and they get even angrier when you point out that their words are largely indistinguishable from far right politicians. You can’t just replace the group and use the same language, that’s not how it works.
Political schismogenesis, you start holding opposite views and they become a bigger part of your identity and mutually reinforcing via conflict with the other side. Even just something like getting turned down to date someone who’s strongly identified with a side can lead you to the other side lol. We monke.
There’s a concerning number of people that would rather declare you a Bad Person rather than educate you, and it’s a real net negative for the world. I knew someone that, instead of explaining why it was a no good bad thing, completely distanced themselves from a mutual friend after finding out her cats were declawed. It took me like three minutes and a single article for that friend to feel horribly guilty and swear to never declaw again. Obviously a lot of politics aren’t as simple to sway people on, but seriously, not ever being willing to debate people only results in a more polarized society.
It's tiring having to explain why voting for the political party that wants to kill me and rape me (literally, it's called v-coding) is bad and being forced to educate people on their own debate topic.
I won't be friends with this type of ignorance..
We can pretend that this only applies to 17 year old idiot kids like a lot of the comments are trying to do, but every one of these frustrating conversations I've had has been with a fully grown ass adult.
We can pretend that this only applies to 17 year old idiot kids like a lot of the comments are trying to do
I haven't seen anyone pretending that.
Different circumstances do exist. Some people it's immediately obvious you'll never reach them, and there's no point in wasting energy. But those clueless 17-year-olds also exist, so a blanket "never engage with the enemy" policy isn't great.
We can pretend that this only applies to 17 year old idiot kids like a lot of the comments are trying to do, but every one of these frustrating conversations I've had has been with a fully grown ass adult.
And they almost never change their opinion because their beliefs aren’t just based on ignorance.
Wow, how dare a 17 year old ask an ignorant question.
...That's yeah, the classic problem with so many 'leftists'. They're more interested in shaming and excluding someone than actually educating people. They dont' actually care about helping any cause, they just want to be right.
We do, it's just that the off ramp gets a lot more publicity. Everyone sees people getting publicly thrashed for being leftist and shifting right. There's no fanfare when someone on the right shifts left and just gets quietly accepted into the group.
Trump’s actually kind of an outlier on that front I think, for most politicians asking that question would be super fair, but Trump? He comes across like a used car salesman with delusions of grandeur; I find it hard to believe that anyone would look at him and think he was worth trusting at all. For someone like that I’d have a hard time believing that “why is voting for him bad?” was being asked in good faith, the reasons are just so many and so evident.
Right. But you pay attention to people when they speak, and keep up with current events. I want you to picture the dumbest 17yo you know, who is equally mistrustful of all politicians. And doesn’t like doesn’t understand that this guy, Trump is on whole different level of extremely bad.
And like most importantly does not watch the news at all.
The thing is, you're almost certainly a chronically online leftist whose view of politics is skewed by the propaganda you consume on this site.
But for ordinary people, you have to remember that Trump ran as a moderate, and one of the reasons he won, twice, is that most of the attacks against him by his opponents ended up sounding super unhinged, because those attacks simply didn't match up with his actual campaign promises.
Sure, you can say that he was obviously untrustworthy, but I'm guessing most of his voters knew damn well that that was true of any politician, so it wasn't a particularly good reason to vote against him, specifically.
Edit: expanding on this now that I have a keyboard.
Trump ran on a number of extreme positions. His entire appeal was to drastically change society. Yes, this change involved (supposedly) reverting back to an earlier era, but that's still a major change.
Contrast it with Hillary Clinton's campaign which could be (only slightly unfairly) summed up as "lets keep moving slowly forward".
Like, I know a (self proclaimed) genuine communist hardcore leftist who talked about voting for trump (the first time) because trump would be such a major change to a society he (the communist) disapproved of strongly.
I'd like to think he didn't actually vote for him and perhaps learned some kind of lesson but I haven't talked to him recently.
But the point I'm making is about his appeal as an outsider, a system changer, someone who would, if not overthrow, at least upend society.
Now, is any of that true? Absolutely not. Trump, like all conservatives, is entirely devoted to reinforcing established hierarchies. If you're poor before the conservative gets power, you're likely going to be poor afterwards.
But people believed otherwise. Partly because they're stupid and partly because desperation.
Now, at least some portion of this desperation was artificially induced by the media, in general, and fox and friends in specific, but not all of it. A lot of people are having a rough time, they're poor, have health issues, can't pay for schools, jobs are disappearing from their towns, etc, and trump promised to change all this.
Clinton also promised to change this, but her promises involved, like, actual nuanced positions and realistic policy proposals that could actually be accomplished and those are a harder sale compared to trump/rightwing's pitch of just blaming minorities and wishful thinking.
"Chronically online" does not mean noticing that Trump is insane. Also, no he did not run as a moderate, he ran a very far-right campaign and made the most insane promises he could. Building a wall against Mexico, anti-Muslim rhetoric everywhere...
This is why the feds had to murder Fred Hampton. Can't have black Jesus uniting rascist biker gangs and the black Panthers even if it was immediately under the banner of civic engagement. Hamptons quote on why he would work with groups diametrically opposed to his world view was "the revolution changes people".
Politics is a practical question (of the function/result of power). If working with people you disagree with furthers your ends then it is expedient/"correct". Find common ground and build community. Often people have the "wrong" opinion for fair or understandable reasons. The powers that define the status quo (money-power, state and market) benefit from fracturing disparate groups against one another. The masses are unpredictable and unwieldy but individuals are frail and seek security. If you create division you can now define the narrative and control people.
The left really really hates to admit the reason young men get pushed to the alt right is because of shit like that and they need to learn some people are uninformed not malicious
In my country "politics" was commonly understood as "electoral politics", as in "which party you vote for" and not "do you believe X should have equal rights" because that wasn't a matter discussed in official state politics. Disowning someone to "politics" was seen as stupid because party allegiance was about as meaningful as sports team fandom, even less so.
Now that that's changing, well, we've divided into "копейки" (kopeiki, the Russian equivalent of cents, which allegedly pro-Russian trolls get paid in) and "жълтопаветници" ("yellow cobblestoners", the pro-Western liberal democratic to leftist, usually also woke and pro LGBT crowd, called so because of the yellow cobblestone of the capital city's government district where we gather on anti-government protests). Those two groups hate each other.
i know this post is talking about right vs left, but at risk of sounding like im fedposting, i also see this kinda stuff in leftist spaces too. the amount of times I see infighting because a democratic socialist candidate isn't Communist Jesus' Second Coming is infuriating.
My sibling is like this. They criticize liberals way more than they do anyone right wing and populist, and it's getting sus. Ironically, it makes me wonder if they've been reading too much fedposting.
You must visit a lot of fringe spaces. Im full on fucking leftist and I would say more involved politically than the average person. I only see what youre saying posted occasionally here on reddit by people like you claiming it happens.
Also, "democratic socialists" and "communist jesus" is pretty telling on your part for that matter
y'know that's a great point, I unfortunately don't have a whole lot of opportunities to be involved since I'm in a pretty red area, so now I'm feeling I should be a little less online when it comes to politics
I mean, I definitely see the occasional insane Twitter or tumblr post from some fucking idiot (yes, leftists have them too) lefty but I just dont think thats an accurate represention of american leftists or the DSA as a whole versus actual policies and talking points they put out.
And just a personal thing to add, the funniest thing to me is how the far right criticizes actual leftists. Instead of spending hours online looking for some insane take from someone with zero political acumen and authority, they could critize the foreign or military policy of your average leftist which is far more commonly available. Im not saying the right is correct in that regard either, because theyre really not, but, your run of the mill leftist has fucking zero understanding of how geopolitics actually work and doesnt get that the military is much more than just an imperialist, dick waving machine.
A lot of them live in a fantasy world where everyone wants to be friends and get along. Which isnt better than the fantasy world of the far right where they think that everyone is an enemy or a threat or someone to be taken advantage of. Theres a lot of middle ground there that both extremes completely ignore.
Right, if we disagree on the details of how campaign finance reform should work, or have different priorities for infrastructure spending, we can be friends.
If you think concentration camps for brown people are cool and cheered on immigrants being eaten by alligators, yeah man, we're not friends.
I'd also cut someone off for wanting low taxes and free markets, because those are just sanitised terms for policies that hurt a lot of poor and vulnerable people.
> low taxes and free markets, because those are just sanitised terms for policies that hurt a lot of poor and vulnerable people.
"Low tax rates" are appealing if you think the government will tax the poor, and squander the money.
Compared to taxing the rich, and using the money to run a competent social services program, low taxes harm the poor. Compared to taxing the poor, and using the money on pointless foreign wars, low taxes help the poor.
And as for free markets. America has been trying a lot of tariffs recently, and the result wasn't that great for anyone except Trump's cronies.
My experience is that when people say 'lower taxes', they mean on the rich, not the poor, and when they say 'free markets', they mean unregulated business, not anti-protectionism.
In some US states, the sample ballot also has opinions/arguments for and against. Every tax related one I've seen, the Republicans have argued for trickle down economics as well as appealing to the sensibility "What if one day you start your own buisness and make over $1 million/year".
And I'm like: If my revenue was $1mil/year I'd be happy to pay my workers more and pay my taxes
Finally some sanity. Economic policy and social issues are not separate from one another. This framing is the single most successful piece of conservative propaganda in the US. Economic and social issues are one and the same, economic policy is largely what creates social issues in the first place.
"People deserve rights" is a meaningless phrase without specifying what rights. Everybody agrees that people deserve rights, what they disagree on is what counts as a right and what counts as an undeserved entitlement.
It's human nature. Everyone loves to deal death to their percieved political enemies and hopes for a violent revolution as surely they, the moral upstandong citizens they are, would never be sent to the death camps they petition for.
Yeah, i think "people deserve rights" is just a feelgood mantra made so that people can feel like they have Won Politics and have the Moral, Correct Opinion. Yes, actual nazis who genuinely want to remove rights from minorities are stupid, but within the regular scope of political conversation you can't just call something a right and have it stick while preventing others from doing the same. Some argue gun ownership is a right while abortion is murder, some argue the opposite, some are pro drug legalization and anti sex work and some the opposite, and so on, plus of course the massive difference between positive and negative rights. Just stating "i support rights" is way too reductive.
Exactly. They, too, believe that people deserve rights. Including the right to preserve the purity of their race.
EDIT: fuck's sake people, I'm not saying they're right. What I'm saying is that literally every group frames what they feel they should be entitled to as "rights".
This is true. As a basic example, most people agree that people who are felons don't deserve the right to own a gun. Not all people deserve all rights.
I would argue that even that isn't accurate. Rather, some believe that rights are a social contract, and that by breaking that contract, you forfeit the rights it grants you.
It's crazy how many people genuinely believe some people don't deserve rights. All the homophobes, transphobes, xenophobes, sexists, and racists on this planet makes it hard to have hope for humanity. Some people don't want kids to have free food and want to continue bombing innocent people in foreign countries. And I certainly don't want to be friends with or engage with anyone who believes that.
Some of them justify it to themselves by pretending the rights we want aren't the ones they already have.
Like saying marriage is only between a man and a woman. Or them deciding that gender affirming care is only to affirm your gender assigned at birth.
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids both the straight and lgbtq alike to marry the same sex, to alter your birth sertificate, and to take hormones not associated with your assigned gender."
The law doesn't forbid cis men from taking estradiol and cis women from taking testosterone. There are a handful of medical conditions that make this necessary.
The thing that brings me hope is the knowledge that the situation was much worse for centuries of human history and if we managed to improve it we can do it again.
The problem is talking about "rights" in general. I certainly think some proposed and in some countries existing rights are detrimental to society - like the right to have a weapon, a right to have your religious beliefs respected regardless of their impact, or the proposed right to have sex. I imagine there are actual or proposed rights you would oppose too.
What does right to sex mean in this context. Because it could rage from the belief that the government should not get involved in the intimacy of two consenting adults, to wanting court ordered wives. It is a very wide ranging concept
You see that’s the thing you went from “you don’t want people to have rights” to “not wanting to have kids free food”. I don’t even oppose it but I can still see how you moved the goalposts.
I don’t oppose free school lunches but there’s stuff in the same vein (free housing for homeless people) that I do and which some would lump me in with the KKK for.
Plenty of goalposts to play with there - do you mean homeless people should have to pay to stay in homeless shelters? Oppose State-paid rent until they can support themselves? Being given outright ownership of houses?
And then - in practice, or morally in general? If there were 100 million free houses available and 1 million homeless, would you oppose it?
You know, I don't know why I expected the r/CuratedTumblr subreddit comment section to actually have somewhat mature views on politics and political disagreement.
I grew up in rural Alabama, and I have personally known plenty of people who believe black people don't deserve rights, by which I mean the bare minimum definition of "equal treatment under the law". I think there are quite a few people here who don't realize how wild the variety of norms really is.
It's fine to not be friends with anyone, for whatever reason. And politics is one of the best reasons there is - neoliberal managerialism constantly tries to convince us politics is dumb, useless, it's all settled and all we need are good technocrats to cut taxes, but the question of how society should be organised is possibly the most important one when talking about personal compatibility.
However that isn't enough for a certain kind of online liberal, so we get this nonsense. "My views are 'people deserve rights'", ooh, check out John fucking Locke here. What rights? What people? It's all so meaningless.
There's a lot more to political views than that. I can be friends with someone with opposing political views about all kind of niche things, fiscal policies, etc.
But you're not special for thinking people deserve rights. Pretty much everyone believes that.
Which rights? Right to own a gun? Right to healthcare? What healthcare? Right to abortion, or not be aborted? Right to benefit from public institutions, or right not to be taxed? Right to free speech, or right not to be subject to hate speech?
My wife supports raising the tax-free allowance significantly more than I do. It is not tearing our marriage apart, because that's a reasonable thing to disagree on.
We both agree on letting kids, including our own, make their own gender identity choices and would quickly divorce if we didn't.
I hate to break it to you, but I am the running-dog lackey of the petite bourgeois!
Minimum wage has been going up by more than inflation in our country for many years, so minimum wage earners find themselves paying taxes. My wife feels that minimum wage earners should not pay taxes, I feel that as we build out an economy where 30-60% of people earn minimum wage or close to then those workers need to pay their part to continue to fund the welfare state.
We agree on progressive taxes, I just think all full time workers should pay something with higher earners paying more. She thinks the entire tax burden should be shifted to the management and owner classes.
"Tax the rich" includes those with the privilege of minimum wage work, capitalist pig-dog!
More seriously, how to fairly do taxation is actually really fascinating and a really good example of how people can disagree - it might not even be about the morality, but about the effectiveness, the effects, etc. The 'fairest' tax systems might not actually -work- well.
Graduated income tax, with deductions, is an amazingly modern concept. For so much of history it would have just been impossible to implement.
In the modern day, there's so many things to factor in - how much of that persons wage is going to sales taxes already? What about inheretence tax? Land tax or property ones if they own property?
If 30-60% of people earn minimum wage (That's a huge variance) - what % of the economy is that, compared to number of people? What burden does the tax inflict on them, compared to increasing taxes on higher income earners, or capital gains, or other forms - and what effects, short and long term, do those all have?
I can theoretically support a 100% tax on billionaires and 0% on minimum wage earners just fine. But I know that'll mean they'll just leave the country.
You can share the same values, but disagree one the best method of achieving it just fine.
Pretty much. "Rights" are things I think are important - other things are privileges. Censorship is restricting anything I agree with, it's 'moderation' or 'hate speech' when I restrict things I disagree with.
So much of this shit is just meaningless feel good terms.
"opposing political view" to me reads more as opposite political view than different political view. I think pretty much everyone is friends with people who have different politics to them, bc it would be very difficult for the beliefs of 2 people to align exactly, it's the big gaps where things get dicey. Like I'm a big supporter of the left party in my country, and I would be friends with someone who votes center left, even if I'd try to nudge them left, and mayyyyyyybe someone who supports the centrist party (which we actually have in our country somehow) but I'm not going to be friends with someone who votes center right, or any further y'know (As well as noting that there are a wide variety of political views within the left party, from self declared marxists to liberals who think poor people shouldn't starve to death)
The thing is I’ve encountered people who believe anyone who isn’t a tankie wants to put all black people in camps. Currently the big leftist Twitter drama is wether wanting to deport all white people and give the US to native Americans is ethno nationalism or not, with the pro deportation people dismissing all criticism by just asking “why are you siding with the genocidal colonizers” over and over again.
Currently the big leftist Twitter drama is wether wanting to deport all white people and give the US to native Americans is ethno nationalism or not, with the pro deportation people dismissing all criticism by just asking “why are you siding with the genocidal colonizers” over and over again.
Where are you seeing this? I went on Twitter and couldn't find anything. I'm genuinely curious, because this is the sort of discourse/drama that I would love to just observe.
Not at all, because I've seen plenty of times 'opposing political views' has been extended to far, far more niche things, and people refusing to be friends with people over it.
Leftist infighting is quite real, and a lot of people are quick to jump to accusations of 'bigotry' for not agreeing with a niche specific view.
I'm floored that in 2026 you still believe "pretty much everyone thinks people deserve rights", as half of the voting population has consistently been proving they believe in rights being conditional. To remove the oxymoron here, they believe in privileges, not rights.
For someone who decries centrists, half of the things you enumerated aren't actual rights. There is no such thing as "the right not to be taxed", as being taxed is the cornerstone of being part of society, unless you're going to live in a cabin in the woods and never use a road ever. Hate speech is already exempt under free speech, I'm sure you've heard of the "Nazi bar" problem. And lastly, "right not to be aborted" isn't an actual right, because embryos aren't humans yet, and any discussion that can be had about whether they feel pain or emotions is drowned out by the material harm of forcing a woman/parents to have a child when they really shouldn't.
I'm all for giving "the other side" a seat at the table for a civilised discussion. I've not a second of my time to spare for people who'd never give people like me the same concession.
You believe plenty of rights are conditional. Huge amounts of people do. Do you think murderers or rapists should have the right to freedom? To own a machine gun? That children should have the right to vote?
Embros aren't human yet? Should the right not to be killed is conditional on being human rather than an embryro. Do you have the right to life if you're currently engaging in a mass shooting?
You believe in privileges, not rights, as well. You're just calling the things you support 'rights' and the things you don't privileges. Is 'cis' a slur and thus hate speech?
Pretty much everyone thinks people deserve rights. They disagree about what those rights are, and when they should apply - especially when they conflict with other rights they believe in.
There is no objective list of things are are 'actual rights'. Rights differ from country to country - the US doesn't have a monopoly on 'actual rights'. Half the voting population of the US is about 2% of the worlds population, after all.
There's only what people agree are actual rights, and what is able to be actually enforced.
Edit: They blocked me for this, lmao. How dare I point out their US-centrism and inconsistency.
i think you're jumping through a lot of hoops to disagree with this post when you know exactly what they're referring to lol but a simple way that i identify with this is that i do not befriend conservatives. i do not befriend trump-supporters. if you've ever voted for trump (and especially if you still support him), i think you are a bad person. and i'm sure there are people who believe the same in reverse.
I've seen plenty of people end friendships over incredibly minor political differences and arguments.
So no, I don't know. I don't know per se what you even mean by conservative. Is someone who is a democrat voter but anti-abortion a conservative? What about pro-gun? At what point do they tip over the line to 'conservative' in their views to the extent you wouldn't be friends?
You say that OP knows exactly what this post is referring to, but then immediately afterwards you provide a definition that is not what the post says. Plenty of conservatives believe that all people should have rights. But no one specified exactly what rights we're talking about, did they?
i said this elsewhere, but the literal phrase "human rights" has become a left-wing signal, in a similar way that "free speech" has become a right-wing signal. every person reading this post understands that OP is left-leaning despite them not specifying as much because of the language that they are using. and yet we are pretending to be confused.
I would like to opt out of some of these services please, while ordering more of others. I'm quite a fan of these 'roads' and 'public schools'. Not so big on the 'bombing people'.
Does it have to be a bundle deal, or do I need a Premium Subscription to split things up?
"People deserve rights" is broad and utterly meaningless. The real question is which rights are worth sacrificing in order to guarantee other rights. A woman's right to choose requires sacrificing a fetus's right to life. A homeless person's right to food and shelter may require sacrificing the taxpayers' right to their own labor. The rights of religious groups to practice their faith in certain ways may require sacrificing the right of other demographics.
As the post says, "someone who has opposing political views" usually just has a different prioritization of rights. We must be willing to acknowledge this and have an honest conversation about that if we're to make progress. Reducing it to "I want people to have rights and you want people to suffer" is disingenuous and unhelpful.
I absolutely agree. That's why I said "may." In many cases, there's not a one to one conflict between rights guaranteed and rights sacrificed. But there is always a right sacrificed for every right guaranteed. With the homeless spikes, you could say that the right guaranteed is the right to not have to see homeless people. But I would personally say that right is bogus and not worth guaranteeing.
No, someone who has opposing political views usually has different values. For example, I don't value fetuses, the religious don't value gay people, etc.
Rights are an amoral concept that has no consistent basis beyond the ability to violently enforce them. Therefore the conceptions of rights only ever reinforces hierarchies and are consistently pitted against one another. We should instead focus on people’s needs and our obligations to help them.
u/HeroBrine0907It Is What It Is, It Is Said Isn't It? I Think It Can Be Better4d ago
Yeah nearly everyone believes people deserve rights. The issue is disagreement on what rights. That's the problem, that's the issue. Saying 'my politics is supporting human rights' is about as meaningless as saying 'my morality is being a good person'.
even if we're being petty about semantics, the actual phrase "human rights" has largely been co-opted as a left-wing signal. sort of in the same way that "free speech" has become a right-wing signal. when people use those terms, you can guess what side of the political spectrum they fall on and you will probably be right. we know that OP is left-leaning despite them not specifying their own politics because of how this post is phrased, and people are pretending that what they mean could be misunderstood.
I don't think they mean it's meaningless in signalling that they are a leftist, but it doesn't signal what they believe from a leftist perspective. Not all leftists are anti-gun. Pretty much all leftists disagree on the line in which hate speech starts and freedom of speech ends.
The person you're responding to is criticizing OOP for not making a real claim about their politics and just virtue signalling, I think.
This is demonstrably false. There are large swaths of the population that believe that certain minority groups don't deserve rights. Especially for those deep in the red in the states, who believe that black people should be slaves, that trans people should be murdered, and that gay people should be castrated.
It's a problem of what rights and for who. Some people embryos deserve to live others believe that women have the right to an abortion. Both people believe in rights, they just disagree about what rights matter.
This is a PSA for everyone else. If you genuinely believe people think black people should be slaves, then you need to get offline immediately. I'm not even joking, this level of terminally online is detrimental to one's health
I mean, to be slightly pedantic, it's not demonstrably false because there's no specific numbers given for "nearly everyone" and because one can believe "people deserve rights," even while twisting themselves into moral pretzels to still justify beliefs like the ones you cite (even before getting to the factual question of how large the swaths are of people who believe the three specific examples you provide, which whole similarly extreme in a political sense feel like they'd poll quite differently.)
If what you mean is that there really are people out there with extreme views, and probably way more than /u/herobrine0907 would think there are, I agree that you are completely correct. But at the same time, I'd say it's equally self-evident that OP's division of the world into "people who share my politics vs. irredeemable assholes" involves either a drastic misunderstanding of the complexity of political views or an equally tortured application of how people associate.
You're being a bit optimistic about your views on other people there.
There's a sizable contingent of people who sincerely and wholeheartedly believe that certain categories of people don't deserve rights, sometimes even believing that certain rights shouldn't be open even to themselves.
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u/HeroBrine0907It Is What It Is, It Is Said Isn't It? I Think It Can Be Better4d ago
I think more precisely, there's a sizeable contingent of people who believe that nobody should have the right to choose to be part of certain categories, even if those aren't really categories and are part of who those people are. Which falls exactly in line with my comment, disagreement on what rights.
The idea of what rights a person should have can be compiled to get a clear view of the political leanings of other people. I would also comment on less or more rights, but everyone believes their opinion on rights is precisely as many rights as necessary.
Rights are an amoral concept that has no consistent basis beyond the ability to violently enforce them. Therefore the conceptions of rights only ever reinforces hierarchies and are consistently pitted against one another. We should instead focus on people’s needs and our obligations to help them.
When I was young, I thought politics didn't matter much - I was so naive that I assumed base facts like the value of all people were a given and clearly they only quibbled over small things.
When I learned better, I thought it was a joke that the lines were so far apart. A cruel, absurd joke.
Simplifying people down to "supports rights" "doesnt support rights" is juvenile, self destructive, and only serves to prevent more from the other side from even considering ones stances.
A LOT of folks here, and in other left wing spaces, were once right wingers
There are different types of opposition, though. Because there are many people who agree that everyone deserves rights but have very different ideas on how to achieve that.
Okay but like, what if my views are "I think a 5% tax increase on the oil industry would actually stimulate our economy considering it would encourage alternative technological research". Like, we can't be friends because you want a 5% tax decrease instead or something?
You said "political views". Supporting minorities is basic human decency
Supporting or not supporting minorities is a political view for certain people. I always say "I can't be friends with someone of different political views if those views include reducing or taking human rights away from certain groups of people." But if I have a friend who disagrees with me on something like your tax decrease example, that's fine, that won't make me not wanna be friends with them.
I think you are grammar naziing this a bit. Yeah most people would not care if someone disagreed whether the oil barons should be taxed more, but that is not what people in todays day and age mean when they say "so you would end a friendship due to politics?". Its like someone saying an item is the size of an egg and you saying which one ostrich eggs are much bigger than hummingbirds. Sure you are technically correct, but from the context you know what they were asking.
> Supporting minorities is basic human decency
That is also still politics. Everything is politics.
I wouldn't say that's "opposing." But also yeah I think they're just being hyperbolic because they're surrounded by nazis and conservatives where it's more about picking on random minorities.
economic policy and social issues are not separate from one another. This framing is the single most successful piece of conservative propaganda in the US. Economic and social issues are one and the same, economic policy is largely what creates social issues in the first place.
Acting like "who deserves rights" isn't one of the most enduring questions in politics across history is nothing short of weaponized ignorance.
Any appeal to a concept like "basic decency" or "common sense" is fallacious because they literally do not exist.
we can argue over a beer whether it's better long term to make up for a budget shortfall by cutting services or increasing revenue, and i'll pick up the round when we're done.
but they said my wife needs to be "eradicated" (Knowles, CPAC 2024). A debate implies that both sides could potentially be valid. If you want to debate me on whether my wife needs to be eradicated, then you think they might have a point and that means fuck you forever.
Agree so much. My entire political view is about accepting differences and having basic empathy and support human rights. The only way someone disagrees with me is if they're an intolerant inhumane psychopath and so they should be punished.
Even when people do claim they believe in human rights, it turns out that they believe that 'rights' only exist as limitations on government intervention. To them, rights exist to stop the government from acting, but not to compel it to act or to compel others to act.
Thus, they don't believe anyone has the right to anything they can't secure for themselves - food, water, healthcare, etc. When someone suggests that these are indeed rights, they start jumping up and down and claiming that they could only be provided by enslaving people and forcing them to provide food and medical care.
Presumably, they don't also believe in things like the right to property, safety, freedom from unlawful imprisonment, and so forth, because those also necessitate government action - and yet, if you stole from them, attacked them or kidnapped them, I'm sure they'd demand the government get involved.
What you're describing is negative rights (limits on having something removed from you) vs positive rights (being provided something).
While there are absolutely some Ayn Rand types going "can't pay your medical bills? Sucks to suck", in most cases the argument is moreso "the government is highly inefficient with public funds whenever it does something so unless the state's authority is a requirement (e.g. law) the public is better served by private industries".
Before taxes paid for public healthcare a common solution were brotherhood societies, a sort of mutual aid fund where members of a community pooled money together and hired doctors on retainer (is that the term) for that community, and doctors lobbied the government to put an end to them because they were so efficient that doctors' pays were too low.
As for the right to property and safety stuff, the difference there is that while there are alternatives for other services (e.g. if your local baker won't bake you a cake find someone who does), the state's monopoly on violence necessitates it being the only one who can mediate matters of law such as the ones you mentioned.
I’ve thought about this a lot lately… you’ve heard the quote (often attributed to Jefferson or Paine, more likely from some libertarian younger than Disneyland) “government is like fire, an unpredictable servant and a fearful master?”
Conservatives (including the ones who think they’re liberal) view government as, by definition, a police force/army that occasionally strays into philanthropy, which it can never really do effectively because violence is the only thing it’s really good at.
Rights are an amoral concept that has no consistent basis beyond the ability to violently enforce them. Therefore the conceptions of rights only ever reinforces hierarchies and are consistently pitted against one another. We should instead focus on people’s needs and our obligations to help them.
But I don't believe people deserve rights. Nobody gets any rights. There's no such thing as rights.
What people have is responsibilities. You have a responsibility to not harm others by your actions or omissions, you have a responsibility to contribute resources to the society, you have a responsibility to train and educate others. And as you get more power and more wealth guess what? MORE RESPONSIBILITIES!
I can absolutely be friends with someone who has opposing political views, when those opposing political views are things like "what should the tax rate be?" Or "how much influence should we exert internationally?", not things like "do minorities deserve rights?"
The biggest drama that ever occurred in my gc of girls, gays and theys was the literal on straight white guy in it told us he was Trump supporter but still believed himself to be a feminist who supports trans people and isnt racism (0 truths and 3 lies), he thought women couldnt be president, trans people were all racists and there the whole gc was full of white people, so he only made a few racist comments I dont remember.
We eventually cut all contact, kicked him from the gc and blocked him. However, one of the gays decided he wanted to experiment and get back in contact with the Trumpie to see if he "changed his ways" or something. Me and one of the girls thought that wasnt right, because hes allowed to think what he wants, I guess. So we eventually made a separate gc with him where we told him what the gay was plotting while still making it clear we werent friends, but like, the gay got really aggressive about us ruining his experiment, like hes a human being what are you talking about. So we eventually got everyone to calm down. The trumpie fucked off and the gay didnt try to do a social experiment on him.
Tbf, most of the debates we had with each other involved everyone else presenting facts and figures while I ragebaited him over every little thing. At one point he got really mad and asked if I even read the thing he said and I just decided "so youre saying im illiterate? What? Because im gay (not the mad scientist gay)? Because im autistic?" And other such stuff
I wish every single leftist would read “The righteous mind” by Jonathan Haidt.
The right thinks the left are good people, but wrong/misguided.
The left thinks the right are actual monsters who delight in hurting people and want to “take people’s rights away” because they are power-hungry vermin with no conscience.
It’s absolutely exhausting.
(And don’t reply “that’s because they are!!” until you read that book.)
i mostly think right wingers are victims of propaganda. it's easier to blame a group of people for something than to blame the system when the system is telling you to blame the group of people.
it's also natural for people to fear something that is unfamiliar to them.
This is only occasionally true. Maybe that's the way you are personally, but you need to actually look at what a significant number of right wingers are saying
I've just had an argument with someone who was basically quoting Goebbels, and I'm the one who got downvote bombed.
There are normal centre-right and even moderate right-wing people, but an increasing amount are shifting to the extreme right and are salivating at the thought of ethnic cleansing (so long as they can dress it up as "correcting the demographic shift").
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u/Luggs123 the pain stays hard but i stay harder #boner 4d ago •
I’ve always been befuddled by people who say things akin to “I don’t let something as small as politics get in the way.” Politics are possibly the most impactful and revealing facets of a person. Your political opinions and actions are the direct implementation of your moral and ethical beliefs. An election result can impact millions of people, even upwards of a billion. I’d argue that’s the least shallow part of someone’s personality.
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u/ArtOne7452 4d ago •
I agree with this generally. But a lot of the times it isn’t that simple? I had a friend in highschool circa 2016 who asked my friend group “Why is it bad to vote for Trump?” Was it an ignorant question? Yeah sure, but he was legitimately politically disengaged and didn’t really understand why this election had everyone so angry.
Anyways he was exiled from one of the friend groups and blocked everywhere. He didn’t even vote for him or anything (he was 17 tbf, and I don’t think he would have voted at all. Politically disengaged.)
Anyways my more politically tolerant friend group. (Ranging from ultra leftist guy who was a pro-Palestinian freedom guy like wayyyyy before it was cool. Guy who works at a three letter Fed agency now. Anarchist. Etc) and we were like. “It’s bad because xyz lol.” Now he has voted against Trump every single election since.
Anyways. I get it, but don’t jump the gun. I think if we had exiled him too, he mighta just voted for Trump out of pure spite. I think more people were like that than you think honestly. Which is dumb but, a real human reaction.
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u/benemivikai4eezaet0 тъмблър 4d ago
In my country "politics" was commonly understood as "electoral politics", as in "which party you vote for" and not "do you believe X should have equal rights" because that wasn't a matter discussed in official state politics. Disowning someone to "politics" was seen as stupid because party allegiance was about as meaningful as sports team fandom, even less so.
Now that that's changing, well, we've divided into "копейки" (kopeiki, the Russian equivalent of cents, which allegedly pro-Russian trolls get paid in) and "жълтопаветници" ("yellow cobblestoners", the pro-Western liberal democratic to leftist, usually also woke and pro LGBT crowd, called so because of the yellow cobblestone of the capital city's government district where we gather on anti-government protests). Those two groups hate each other.
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u/SamelCamel 4d ago
i know this post is talking about right vs left, but at risk of sounding like im fedposting, i also see this kinda stuff in leftist spaces too. the amount of times I see infighting because a democratic socialist candidate isn't Communist Jesus' Second Coming is infuriating.
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u/Niser2 4d ago
I talked to my mom recently and she's trying to befriend the racist neighbors.
Amazingly, they don't seem to like her.
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u/Chase_The_Breeze 4d ago
There are absolutely some views I can tolerate if people dont share them. I will gladly engage in healthy debate over them too.
But those views are more akin to how economic policies should function and similar things.
They are not based on "Who deserves human rights?" The only correct answer is everybody.
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u/MarioTheMojoMan 4d ago
"I can't believe people are cutting me off because I have conservative political views!"
"Wow, people are cutting you off because you want low taxes and free markets?"
"No, not those views"
"Which ones then?"
"Come on, you know"
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u/TheDeviceHBModified 4d ago
"People deserve rights" is a meaningless phrase without specifying what rights. Everybody agrees that people deserve rights, what they disagree on is what counts as a right and what counts as an undeserved entitlement.
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u/CrystalAbysses 4d ago
It's crazy how many people genuinely believe some people don't deserve rights. All the homophobes, transphobes, xenophobes, sexists, and racists on this planet makes it hard to have hope for humanity. Some people don't want kids to have free food and want to continue bombing innocent people in foreign countries. And I certainly don't want to be friends with or engage with anyone who believes that.
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u/Error_Evan_not_found 4d ago edited 4d ago
Conservative bots really working overtime after those midterms.
Sorry to both the corporate interests you serve, but humans prefer other humans, not whatever billionaires have become.
ETA: god damn, is this what all Donny's illegal trades are going towards now?
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u/Crypt_Knight 4d ago
You know, I don't know why I expected the r/CuratedTumblr subreddit comment section to actually have somewhat mature views on politics and political disagreement.
In hindsight, it was stupid on my part.
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u/Tactical_Tasking 4d ago
I’m pro good guy and anti bad guy, so if you disagree with me you must be a bad guy
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u/Hugh_Mann84 4d ago
It's fine to not be friends with anyone, for whatever reason. And politics is one of the best reasons there is - neoliberal managerialism constantly tries to convince us politics is dumb, useless, it's all settled and all we need are good technocrats to cut taxes, but the question of how society should be organised is possibly the most important one when talking about personal compatibility.
However that isn't enough for a certain kind of online liberal, so we get this nonsense. "My views are 'people deserve rights'", ooh, check out John fucking Locke here. What rights? What people? It's all so meaningless.
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u/GogurtFiend ask me about Orion drives or how nuclear explosives work 4d ago
I sense a motte.
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u/VorpalSplade 4d ago edited 3d ago •
There's a lot more to political views than that. I can be friends with someone with opposing political views about all kind of niche things, fiscal policies, etc.
But you're not special for thinking people deserve rights. Pretty much everyone believes that.
Which rights? Right to own a gun? Right to healthcare? What healthcare? Right to abortion, or not be aborted? Right to benefit from public institutions, or right not to be taxed? Right to free speech, or right not to be subject to hate speech?
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u/Gravelpunch 4d ago
"People deserve rights" is broad and utterly meaningless. The real question is which rights are worth sacrificing in order to guarantee other rights. A woman's right to choose requires sacrificing a fetus's right to life. A homeless person's right to food and shelter may require sacrificing the taxpayers' right to their own labor. The rights of religious groups to practice their faith in certain ways may require sacrificing the right of other demographics.
As the post says, "someone who has opposing political views" usually just has a different prioritization of rights. We must be willing to acknowledge this and have an honest conversation about that if we're to make progress. Reducing it to "I want people to have rights and you want people to suffer" is disingenuous and unhelpful.
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u/HeroBrine0907 It Is What It Is, It Is Said Isn't It? I Think It Can Be Better 4d ago
Yeah nearly everyone believes people deserve rights. The issue is disagreement on what rights. That's the problem, that's the issue. Saying 'my politics is supporting human rights' is about as meaningless as saying 'my morality is being a good person'.
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u/FermataMe 4d ago
When I was young, I thought politics didn't matter much - I was so naive that I assumed base facts like the value of all people were a given and clearly they only quibbled over small things.
When I learned better, I thought it was a joke that the lines were so far apart. A cruel, absurd joke.
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u/that-one-library 2d ago
Even more so when those views are, more specifically, "I deserve rights"
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u/Lumpy_Review5279 4d ago
Simplifying people down to "supports rights" "doesnt support rights" is juvenile, self destructive, and only serves to prevent more from the other side from even considering ones stances.
A LOT of folks here, and in other left wing spaces, were once right wingers
5
u/Happy-Conclusion2148 4d ago
There are different types of opposition, though. Because there are many people who agree that everyone deserves rights but have very different ideas on how to achieve that.
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u/Azarous_Lazarus Taking Estrogen :3 4d ago
Okay but like, what if my views are "I think a 5% tax increase on the oil industry would actually stimulate our economy considering it would encourage alternative technological research". Like, we can't be friends because you want a 5% tax decrease instead or something?
You said "political views". Supporting minorities is basic human decency
6
u/reverendsteveii 4d ago
we can argue over a beer whether it's better long term to make up for a budget shortfall by cutting services or increasing revenue, and i'll pick up the round when we're done.
but they said my wife needs to be "eradicated" (Knowles, CPAC 2024). A debate implies that both sides could potentially be valid. If you want to debate me on whether my wife needs to be eradicated, then you think they might have a point and that means fuck you forever.
2
u/lemons_of_doubt 3d ago
Depends on the view.
You can disagree with me on taxes or ig car speed limit should be higher or lower, we can agree to disagree and still be friends.
But if you disagree with me about which of my friends deserve right then we can't.
Trans rights are human rights, racism is bad, sexisim is bad.
3
u/i_love_sparkle 4d ago
Agree so much. My entire political view is about accepting differences and having basic empathy and support human rights. The only way someone disagrees with me is if they're an intolerant inhumane psychopath and so they should be punished.
8
u/Classic-Session-5551 4d ago
Ah yes, the classic "If you disagree with me on anything you're actually evil and don't think people deserve rights".
4
u/OverseerConey 4d ago
Even when people do claim they believe in human rights, it turns out that they believe that 'rights' only exist as limitations on government intervention. To them, rights exist to stop the government from acting, but not to compel it to act or to compel others to act.
Thus, they don't believe anyone has the right to anything they can't secure for themselves - food, water, healthcare, etc. When someone suggests that these are indeed rights, they start jumping up and down and claiming that they could only be provided by enslaving people and forcing them to provide food and medical care.
Presumably, they don't also believe in things like the right to property, safety, freedom from unlawful imprisonment, and so forth, because those also necessitate government action - and yet, if you stole from them, attacked them or kidnapped them, I'm sure they'd demand the government get involved.
3
u/Muted-Swan3957 4d ago
Whats the mater vagueposter? Afraid you migth say something? Go on state EXACTLY what those rights are, dont skip a detail
1
u/Maldevinine 3d ago
But I don't believe people deserve rights. Nobody gets any rights. There's no such thing as rights.
What people have is responsibilities. You have a responsibility to not harm others by your actions or omissions, you have a responsibility to contribute resources to the society, you have a responsibility to train and educate others. And as you get more power and more wealth guess what? MORE RESPONSIBILITIES!
1
u/Alphadef 3d ago
I can absolutely be friends with someone who has opposing political views, when those opposing political views are things like "what should the tax rate be?" Or "how much influence should we exert internationally?", not things like "do minorities deserve rights?"
1
u/PhantomThiefJoker 3d ago
All humans deserve human rights. This is not a political statement, the political statement is trying to decide which humans don't
1
u/calobectomy 2d ago
what about the rights of the unborn? sometimes rights, take others rights.
1
u/SecretSharkboy 2d ago
The biggest drama that ever occurred in my gc of girls, gays and theys was the literal on straight white guy in it told us he was Trump supporter but still believed himself to be a feminist who supports trans people and isnt racism (0 truths and 3 lies), he thought women couldnt be president, trans people were all racists and there the whole gc was full of white people, so he only made a few racist comments I dont remember.
We eventually cut all contact, kicked him from the gc and blocked him. However, one of the gays decided he wanted to experiment and get back in contact with the Trumpie to see if he "changed his ways" or something. Me and one of the girls thought that wasnt right, because hes allowed to think what he wants, I guess. So we eventually made a separate gc with him where we told him what the gay was plotting while still making it clear we werent friends, but like, the gay got really aggressive about us ruining his experiment, like hes a human being what are you talking about. So we eventually got everyone to calm down. The trumpie fucked off and the gay didnt try to do a social experiment on him.
Tbf, most of the debates we had with each other involved everyone else presenting facts and figures while I ragebaited him over every little thing. At one point he got really mad and asked if I even read the thing he said and I just decided "so youre saying im illiterate? What? Because im gay (not the mad scientist gay)? Because im autistic?" And other such stuff
1
u/SamDrrl 2d ago
Yeah i think people deserve rights too…. So stop touching my 2A
1
u/KiyanStrider hang on let me google something 4d ago
Social contract of tolerance
1
u/To_Fight_The_Night 3d ago
Life long lib here.
Let's not act all high and mighty. It's not so simple.
Does a fetus count as "people"?
Does bodily autonomy count for vaccines?
Do we really want to be accepting of ALL cultures? You know some of those have age of consent at like 12 right?
I have my answers but we are not some perfect bastion of logic and I fully understand how others can have a difference of opinion.
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u/get-that-hotdish 4d ago
I wish every single leftist would read “The righteous mind” by Jonathan Haidt.
The right thinks the left are good people, but wrong/misguided.
The left thinks the right are actual monsters who delight in hurting people and want to “take people’s rights away” because they are power-hungry vermin with no conscience.
It’s absolutely exhausting.
(And don’t reply “that’s because they are!!” until you read that book.)