To be fair “centrist” in the USA is “extremely rightwing” everywhere else, the USA is super consumed by rightwing retoric
Thanks McCarthy and the red scare! You did a real long-lasting number on rhetoric here in the states.
When genocide and no genocide are both too extreme, maybe a little genocide? Or a genocide far away? Or maybe killing a group that doesn’t qualify the definition of genocide?
Or maybe killing a group that doesn’t qualify the definition of genocide?
yeah let’s kill a group of people that is not a group of people
Killing the rich wouldn’t be genocide.
But it would be pretty based.
Just shoot madly into a crowd with a low rate of fire. Totally ethical since it’s absolutely random.
congrats you have invented terrorism
We’ll kill everyone born at 1pm
yeah fuck those guys
Just kill 50% at random. Perfectly balanced
I understood that reference.
Which niche, obscure, underappreciated work of art is that comment referring to?
Half Baked
In a strict reading, killing LGBTQ wouldn’t be genocide because they aren’t all related. On the other hand, they do form a (sub) culture. You can argue both ways but they technically don’t tick all the boxes. So it’s as bad but not jurisprudentially genocide so maybe a compromise we can convince our centrist friend of?
it depends how pedantic you are about the exact definition but I think (or hope) most people agree that would be genocide
I feel like true neutral means:
Just watching the world burn because too lazy to care.
Bro wants to play Undertale or any other game that lets you do pacifist runs
bro then proceeds to do a genocide run and conplains that it’s boring.
I don’t know how it could be boring when the payoff to such a run is this song. Even so, that path is fucking dark.
toby fox knew what he was doing
Reddit be like
It’s important to consider all points. It’s also important to analyze them and throw out the ones that are wrong, whether they’re incorrect or inhumane. Blindly accepting all opinions as equally valid is stupid.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. - W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming (1919)Centrists are just lazy at this point. They’re basically “I thing treating people bad is bad, but I don’t want rules and taxes either, so I’ll settle for treating people-not-me badly if I don’t have more rules and taxes.”
The centrists I meet have an extremely infantile view of how politics work— assuming there’s an evenly distribution of representation and power for the left and the right. The reality is that this country has always been right-leaning and is now pushing into far-right fascist territory. To be a centrist in America is essentially a European conservative.
As a rationalist I think any idea should be evaluated for at least longer than it takes to react to a meme. Ideas should be accepted or rejected on their own merits or lack thereof, and not because you notice a similarity with something clearly heroic or terrible and you want to quickly decide which way to mentally swipe so you can scroll on to the next thing in your feed. People do too much of that kind of superficial thinking. [And I’m not defending any particular political point here, I’m talking about rationality vs superficiality.]
as a rationalist, i believe its important that we consider maybe Antactica is actually a great ice wall holding in the worlds oceans. i think we should at least evaluate that fact before making such superficial descisions.
Bullshit
I’m a centrist
The Israeli government and Hamas leadership should both be put in front of a wall and shot
Trump is a lying narcissistic sack of shit, just like Elmo Musk
None of that should be on any political side, those are obviously human choices
Oh my. An actual centrist and not a far-right nutjob claiming it to seem intellectually superior. What a sight for sore eyes
They forget that centrists don’t mean being in the middle of each extreme. If one side is calling for genocide and the other is calling for the prosecution of those advocating for genocide, a centrist perspective isn’t about endorsing a little bit of genocide or putting a few people in prison.
Instead, it involves investigating how we reached a situation where people are calling for genocide, apprehending the group that could actually commit genocide, and dismantling the institutions that made it possible for people to join that group. This process is resource-intensive and often anticlimactic.
You don’t win by persecuting people, you win by making it difficult to commit crimes. It is a slow process that requires swift action.
The left’s search for idealism is what doomed them in the 2024 election.
You don’t win by persecuting people, you win by making it difficult to commit crimes.
Well provided you accept that you need to prosecute the people who’ve already committed crimes. You can’t just go ooh well it’s society’s fault so let them be
Of course you have to prosecute criminals, what is an alternative for that?
Making them president, apparently
If one side is calling for genocide and the other is calling for the prosecution of those advocating for genocide, a centrist perspective isn’t about endorsing a little bit of genocide or putting a few people in prison.
This is not the situation. Both the fascist Republican and the Democratic Party, that’s supposed to be the opposition to Fascism, unconditionally supported arming a state that has not only been committing genocide for over 15 months, but has committed ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and settler colonialism for over 76 years.
Instead, it involves investigating how we reached a situation where people are calling for genocide, apprehending the group that could actually commit genocide, and dismantling the institutions that made it possible for people to join that group. This process is resource-intensive and often anticlimactic.
This is an incredibly far left position to the Democratic Party, which denounced the ICC arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant and the ICJ case against Israel. Nor is it anticlimactic when we know genocide is already underway because of how incredibly well documented it has been.
The left’s search for idealism is what doomed them in the 2024 election.
Do you mean the Democratic Party here? Because what doomed them is ignoring the demands of their constituents. “The Left” in the US is entirely grassroots and had no effect on the policies of the Democratic Party during the election.
Driving 3 million people into a concentration camp and restricting food, water, and medicine is with the intention to ethnically cleanse them is bad, but have you considered that using violence to escape that concentration camp is also bad?
conservatives are culturally inferior. we should make exceptions.
God I hate the current political discourse. You have extremists vs extremists, and now both sides are vilifying everyone that doesn’t blindly adhere to all their positions.
What positions of the two provided (being against facism, and protecting women) don’t you “blindly” adhere to?
And there’s the idiotic extrapolation I’m referring to. I’m talking about the discourse in general, not the specifics.
That’s a way to say you don’t want to say which specifics you are against because people will see your shitty morals
Wrong again. I’m trying to point out that it’s exactly this type of conversation that has been driving people away and making the left wing half of the US political spectrum completely impotent.
Seems like a great way to say “I bought into the right wing populist bullshit, and don’t want to be held accountable for the results we’re now seeing. So I’ll blame the left that the right wing populist bullshiit told me to blame for everything.”
As dumb as it is to claim the left and right are only having minor disagreements, or are equally valid, your comment is not helping because this behavior is exactly what Anteater is referring to.
And what would you have the left do?
Meet the right in the middle. Again?
So that in 4 years, asking that political prisoners be treated with the slightest amount of human decency is just too damn extreme for the right to take seriously?
There is no extremist left in the american political discourse. Theres hardly even any left at all. And yes you really are the villain if you dont want women and minority groups to be equal with cishet white men or for israel to stop genociding.
I’ve had people try to tell me that basic healthcare and corrections to income equality are “extremely progressive” viewpoints. I’m done with letting others’ definition of extremism into the conversation.
Which minor policies are you being vilified for supporting?
Found the enabler. ⬆️
Found the source of the problem.
No two humans are going to agree on every point. If you vilify everyone that differs from you in the slightest, you are a detriment to your own cause.
But of course, no one actually wants to fix everything. They want to just make snarky comments online to feel superior.
If you vilify everyone that differs from you in the slightest, you are a detriment to your own cause.
“In the slightest” being centrist code for “who counts as a human being” and “does bombing hospitals and starving children count as genocide”
Nobody is vilifying someone because they have different opinions on the importance of reading Shakespeare in high-school, or if they think, big centralised public libraries are a better option to lots of smaller public libraries.
This is just the quintessential enlightened centrist argument, reducing down serious issues about basic fundamental morals into just “disagreement”
Nobody is vilifying someone because they have different opinions on the importance of reading Shakespeare in high-school, or if they think, big centralised public libraries are a better option to lots of smaller public libraries.
No, but they are dumping people into that category in their mind, and then making all kinds of assumptions and conclusions about that person based off the one false assumption. And then because it’s the internet, the name calling starts and all constructive conversation ends.
Just look at this thread. I started it with “the current American political discourse sucks” and no-one commenting was able to take that statement at face value. Everyone replied with assumptions on what my stance was on issues I didn’t mention. It’s that exact reflex that I have a problem with. Essentially, I agree with the message, but I disagree with the delivery method.
no-one commenting was able to take that statement at face value
People can smell the tepid liberalism and pretty reliably guess what else you believe because they’ve seen it before. The modlog indicates they were right. You are exactly the person they’re talking about when they mock someone bothsidesing genocide.
Hamas doesn’t equal the entirety of the Palestinian population in the same way that the Israeli government/military doesn’t equal the entire Israeli population. Why is that so hard for you .ml tankies to separate? There’s a reason why I specifically make sure to phrase the discussion as “Hamas’s actions” not “the Palestinians’ actions”
Israel is fighting to eradicate the entire Palestinian people, Hamas is fighting to protect the entire Palestinian people, and even groups whose members Hamas murdered to obtain power are supporting them at this point in time. When you adopt the zionist framing that Israel is justified in fighting Hamas because they’re just so evil, you are carrying water for Israel.
If you’re old enough to remember Iraq, they did the same shit; the right wanted to murder as many Muslims as possible, the tepid liberals tried to say they only opposed Saddam and the Baathists and terrorists as if the two positions weren’t equivalent in practice.
