politics

This is something that really bothered me about the recent election. It was clear that Cheney was only campaigning with Harris because she wanted to stop Trump not because she agreed with the policies of Harris. She was still a believer in "Republican" policies but understood the danger of Trump winning and did what she could to make him lose.

The left then said that because she was being put out there by the Harris campaign as someone who would help get people to vote for her that must have meant she agreed with all of Harris's policies. Which means Harris must have been a Republican and had all Republican policies despite her having multiple rather progressive policies that the majority of people support.

Instead of having the completely rational thought that if a shitty Republican like Cheney refuses to vote for Trump and says we should all vote against him then that's a positive and should help convince independents and non voters that this was such an important election, they ignored that and made BS assumptions and accusations about the entire Harris campaign. It fucking sucked.

Dems never learn. Republicans will not abandon their hatred no matter how nice you are to them. They only understand cruelty. Republicans want nothing to do with Cheney and have zero respect for Democrats, and anyone to the left of George Bush hates Cheney. Mythical moderate Republicans were the only people who could have embraced Cheney im a meaningful way but they do not exist. Move left and embrace populism or lose forever on behalf of corporate donors who are happy under fascism.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/liz-cheney-electoral-fiasco-kamala-harris/

They do not respect your opinion. They could care less what the mainstream thinks of them. If you are a Democrat what you actually believe has no impact on any Republican. They will make up whatever they want about you and believe that instead. Just fight already

And the fact that it’s basically playing into Russia’s hands, who has worked to divide us and destabilize us as much as possible

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

• Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States and Canada to fuel instability and separatism against neoliberal globalist Western hegemony, such as, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists" to create severe backlash against the rotten political state of affairs in the current present-day system of the United States and Canada. Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social, and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectariangroups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics".[9]

And is also the goal of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Enlightenment

Which seeks to accelerate the collapse of all countries so they can be run as fiefdoms by billionaires

Yeah, fuck them. They have access to almost all of human knowledge at their fingertips. They have access to the exact same information we do. And yet they still choose to be shitheads. Fuck them, they should be buried too.

Well, do you want to be right or do you want things to change for the better?

I don't think anyone should have to engage with these people if they don't want to, but something like 40%+ of the population are more or less OK with the way things are going. Humiliating someone, even if they had it coming and it's entirely justified, tends to make them very defensive and double down on their position.

Is it fair? No. I hate it. They do not deserve grace in a lot of cases in my opinion, but when dealing with people and human nature I often find I have to decide between being right or being constructive. I am no saint. If the stakes only really involve myself, I'm probably more inclined to be a self-righteous sanctimonious jack wagon more often than not, but at these scales I think we need to be realistic. Acknowledge that it's not fair we have to do this work, and then do it anyway.

I’m not saying you have to forget what they did or advocated for, directly or indirectly, but ffs if someone is genuinely struggling with a belief/ideology, would you rather offer them a soft landing into a much more normal and moderate position, or that they get burned publicly and are lost forever to the echo chambers?

Do we ostracize the people who may be on the boundary of genuine evolutionary self-discovery, and exploit their moment of public vulnerability for what - smug hubris for the in group who were always on the right side? Or do you accept the Klansman’s contrition and disarm that hate via genuine dialogue, and maybe potentially you too might understand their base motivations that got hijacked by political grifters. And maybe in the future their problems aren’t ignored and don’t grow to the point where it becomes a political wedge issue…?

Or y’know don’t; farm those internet karma points. Post that hot take, then shy away from the follow up dialogue and comments. Block the people you mildly disagree with, whilst chiding everyone else’s echo chamber. Pontificate without praxis in friendly spaces. Downvote the dissenter, instead of dissecting their ideas. I know I’m guilty too and it’s hard to keep yourself in check - but it’s essential to keeping both yourself intellectually honest, and your arguments firmly based in reality.

This is a pretty toxic opinion

Why do they deserve that?

How does it benefit you?

They are worthless animals not fit to be called humans

That's the kind of attitude towards fascists that leads to complacency and a belief that it couldn't happen here or we're better than that. The most important thing to understand about a fascist is that they're a person like you. No one is immune to the risk of falling into it. All it takes is the right circumstances to incentivize a person, and there's a decent chance they will take up fascism.

If we hold that Nazis were monsters, or subhumans, or some other kind of beast entirely unlike us, we will never dig deep to understand what makes fascism appealing or what needs it serves, and we will miss the warning signs in ourselves and those around us should we start sliding towards it. I think most Americans missed their own country's capacity for fascism until it was right on top of them, because they had spent decades imagining the Nazis as some special kind of inhuman monster. That attitude is dangerous. Fascists are ordinary people like us.