And sometimes those people will even destroy active progress because it doesn’t meet their definition of perfect.
I think this “do nothing wrong” tendency has something to do with intragroup power dynamics. I’ve often seen it used as a cudgel to knock down others within a group and stop mild dissent even though everyone is on the same team. Usually the most prolific wielder of the “do nothing wrong” cudgel rises to a position of some authority in the group, after which the group fragments because the person is insufferable but unassailable due to their moral superiority.
Very good take.
I complained to a partner once about something they’d done that seemed vaguely unethical (by my understanding of their ethics). After they apologised, I was still upset, and they said “maybe I’m a little bit shit, just like everyone else.”
That really stuck with me. People (including myself) are often OK with accepting imperfections in other people in some spaces, but not in others. It’s pretty weird… Life is messy, even the bits that seems straightforward. And no one has a perfect understanding of any situation…
The only thing more important than “do nothing wrong” is to loudly correct those who are doing “almost right” and “in the right direction.”
I think it’s a tossup between “loudly correct” and “vilify as a disappointing libshit.”
I haved discussions with others here where its people are just not happy with baby steps and want full change right away. Problem is we need to make more friends not enemies with each other.
I’ve started to make a habit on the internet to make amends and give grace to people who get upset in the comments as fast as possible. Textual online spaces are seemingly quite prone to disagreement, so it’s a huge help just to mindfully counteract that tendency.
Well easy for you my brave little Hitachi wand! Who can stay angry at you!
It helps if you’re fun.
Ball big. Need lots of hands. Take long time move. Come. Help. Roll big ball with us.
Also, we don’t actually know which way we need to roll it. Some people have strong ideas, other understand the vague direction but there’s lots of invisible obstacles strewn across the landscape, and whenever we hit one there are a hundred different people with a thousand different explanations about what the fuck just happened.
It bothers me that I see genocide trivialize so often, like implying it’s a full step that needs to wait. The problem is that they would rather take the steps that help Israel commit heinous acts then start with small steps that benefit their constituents.
Stopping the sale of weapons to a apartheid state committing genocide and condemning them is now seen as too much? I can’t expect anything good to come from them if that’s the kind of slack we insist on giving.
They had the same foreign policy every administration since Israel became a country did but some people chose now to get upset about it.
The world is a worse place now because Harris didn’t win.
Biden second term would have be heaven compared to this.
It’s almost like if blatant genocide changes the equation. Honestly, Israel should have lost our support a long time ago. It’s easy to see how deep corruption and most likely black mail had a big role to play.
Yes, the world would be a better place with Harris at the helm. It’s a shame she tried her hardest to lose. FYI, I voted for her but I’m also mature enough to realize that she basically gave all her voters the finger and that’s why she lost.
Keep blaming the evil voters who couldn’t stomach genocide and we will get the exact same play next election. You are enabling, not helping. It’s their job to get votes and care about our opinion ffs.
Single issue voters always make the world a worse place.
I find it crazier that the dems decided to make genocide a voting issue in the first place. Weaponized incompetence, I swear. They could have told Israel to pound sand, but they chose a foreign state over us. They screwed you too man, have a spine.
Nah, people who didn’t vote for Harris screwed the world.
Glad to hear you’re not one of them.
I had an interaction once where I thought I used double quotes around a word to imply something obvious related to the posted article. A random person got mad at me and claimed I knew nothing about solidarity.
I felt insulted, they didn’t know my life experiences up to that point. I chose to ignore my feelings and pressed them to teach my why I was so wrong. They eventually disappeared from replies because they had nothing behind that image of righteousness. Rare win but I’ll take it.
If someone put themselves in harms way to punch an authoritarian follower in the face in my defence and also uses slurs I could find offensive to myself, that’s not my enemy. That’s someone awesome who could use a little more education. Later. When the current situation isn’t so wild.
Words are just words. That’s not as effective as punching a fascist in face.
Reminded me of an old meme I saw in like 2009.
CW homophobic slur
We are really lacking in fascist faces punched these days, no one can have a civil conversation without them screeching and throwing shit
I spent a bunch of time in such spaces before the election and was shocked how much time and energy was squandered with virtue signaling and purity testing. There was literally no room for anything else in some of them.
I would say largest problem with leftist spaces is a little more challenging to identify; it’s that leftists are broadly intellectuals or at least identify as intellectual because of effort they put into honoring nuance. And the primary opponent of leftists are conservatives, and they are proudly not intellectual and view people who use the lens of intellectualism and nuance as weak or elitist.
Because it’s incredibly difficult to have any kind of meaningful intellectual debate with your opponents, we have all retreated to our safe-spaces and online bubbles, our discord groups and algorithm-driven feeds. We don’t even walk in the same environments or view the same media anymore,
So in order for people on the left to feel any kind of satisfaction and feel like their mental strength actually has a use, they find someone else who is ostensibly on the left and attack something that person said or did which they feel does not represent their own leftist values.
Our eternal, infernal infighting problem is because we have an army of head-warriors who have no heads to butt against. Even if there were people on the right willing to have intellectual debates, they’re not even in the same talking-space anymore. The only place you can go to have debates are contentious battleground where nobody is even arguing in good faith and just screaming their talking points for audience upvotes. So leftists, being humans, take the easy path and turn on each other to feel like they’re making any progress or are involved at all in making things better.
On the right it’s much easier to feel like you’re part of the movement or doing something for your group, all you have to do is buy a gun or stockpile trumpcoins and canned food or harass someone or get drunk and scream about minorities. It’s mindless and pointless but it feels like action. And sadly, more and more people are being turned away by this kind of mental effort and emotional labor of “doing the right thing” so they’re getting sucked in by the mindless orcs who have more fun and have easier victory conditions.
it’s that leftists are broadly intellectuals
I used to think this. Then everyone came out about how Kamala didn’t get them excited, aka appeal to their emotions. When I pointed this out and that they weren’t thinking logically and instead relying on emotions they frankly agreed, saying something something not a robot. And there were proud of it.
Is being an intellectual mutually exclusive with having emotions? Because as far as I know all people have emotions…
If you let your emotions dictate your thoughts and actions, I have bad news for you.
Bro, you do it too, you just don’t admit it to yourself.
I wonder if the protest-non-voters support this message.
obviously a trap set by bougie liberals to try and get me to vote for a Democrat.
but i’m too smart for them
I have referenced this post so many times but was never able to find it so thanks
and then people didnt vote in the 2024 election
Yes let’s start a 3rd party
wave of downvotes and idiots screaming about RCV even though that’s not a disqualifier
But you’ll continue to support democrats in higher offices until your third party has support in lower offices and a functioning party structure, right?
No!!! The lesser of two evils is still evil so I’d rather vote for a weak 3rd party candidate to help secure the win for the more evil candidate
At first I didn’t think you were left enough but you just proved me wrong.
Welcome to the salty spitoon. How left are ya?
This one is fun because it could be both about tankies and actual leftists depending on what you believe in.
Oh it’s definitely leftists in general
The problem is they keep dissagreeing on details and forget, they’ll never agree on everything.
