What do you believe that most people of your political creed don't?
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I think we need to figure out how to make leftism more appealing to centrists, and particularly to the cis/straight/white/male demographic.
Leftism is unpopular by definition, especially to the privileged classes. Leftism seeks to upend the status quo, and loss aversion is a problem.
Not that efforts can't be made.
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Donald Trump isn’t stupid.
There's plenty of evidence that he actually is very stupid, and that he may even have a learning disability. To be honest, once you accept the thought that he may be mildly retarded, you can't unsee it. For example in the recent talk about rare earth minerals, it seems to me that Trump thinks rare earth is actually soil in the way he talks about it and it drives me nuts that the media doesn't point this out:
“We’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earth and other things...They have great rare earth. And I want security of the rare earth, and they’re willing to do it."
But he makes up for it politically with great skill in appealing to people's base emotions.
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Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain't dead. Remember, don't downvote for disagreements.
Protests do more harm than good to a cause, especially annoying protests.
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Protests do more harm than good to a cause, especially annoying protests.
Protests aren't always for the "benefit" of nonparticipants, as much as for those taking part. Being surrounded by people with the same concerns as you who are also willing to take some kind of action is very heartening. Not only does it bring joy to people who may otherwise feel powerless or overwhelmed, it presents opportunities for making connections for further organizing.
Without public protests, you may have a lot of individuals that believe they are alone in their outrage. Feeling this, nobody will ever act and so be defeated without ever fighting at all.
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Fundamentally, what Centrists want is stability, for people to get along, to find solutions that the majority on both sides would agree with. For the status-quoish state of stability.
A Centrist would be a Liberal (as its defined today, and not how it was defined in the 70's/80's) before they would be a Leftist. They perceive Capitalism as a stable foundation of the society.
To get a Centrist to believe in Leftist ideals you'd have to try and show that Leftism is also stable, AND describe how the transition/change to Leftism on its own would not be an unstabilizing thing. And also how Capitalism is a dead-end alley for the species ultimately, and how its ultimately hurtful to a society by incouraging fighting and competition between its members.
You'd also have to show that Rightism would understand that Leftism works. Centrists want both Leftists and Rightists to be 'happy' (loaded word I know, but you get the gist of what I'm trying to opine on).
No idea how to do all that, but IMO that's what would need to be done. You'd have to get the Right on board with Leftism, and you'd have to show Centrists that moving to Leftism won't be destabilizing to their current way of existing.
Best guess would be to appeal to common belief systems (fairness, freedoms, respect) that all three pillars would have in common.
An overall generic example would be to prove to a Rightist that a hand-out to someone is not being unfair, but its just helping someone out until they get on their feet, and can't be exploited, to try and "raise all boats" in society. And you'd have to tell some Leftists to stop trying to exploit the system, that they're now back on their feet, and that they need to put in as much effort as everybody else does.
For Leftists/Rightists stop yelling across the divide at each other, and start talking to each other, trying to understand what is important to them, and see if both sides can meet in the middle on those things that are important to both. Centrists will be happy that the fighting has stopped, and then you'd have to be extra careful not to destroy that non-fighting in trying to move the center to the left.
Oh, and do all of this while we have freedom of speech and people purposely trying to shape the narratives towards what they just want and to F with everybody else. A.k.a., "Free Will is a Pain in the Ass".
Thank you for coming to my 🧸-Talk.
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Centrists want the status quo, yes, but mostly just for themselves. This is why fascism starts with minority groups. Centrists will accept fascists "coming for the" communists/trans/migrants/etc, since it mostly isn't effecting their status quo.
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Abortion is not a moral hazard at all. Most people who might exist don't. The whole "everyone agrees abortion is awful..." shit is obnoxious. I legitimately do not care. I am far more concerned about the lives of actual children. Once we seriously tackle that issue, we can move downstream.
I am unsure about when it stops being moral to terminate a foetus/baby. I think it's somewhere between 6 and 14 months, but that's just my gut feeling. Some people are astonished that I would even consider that it could be after birth, but it's not like any sudden development occurs at the moment of birth.
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I don't seem to have a political creed anymore.
I believe in honesty and being honourable.
I suspect that most people, including those who don't align with any particular political creed, believe in honesty and honour too. So I don't think you answered the question correctly.
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Leftism is unpopular by definition, especially to the privileged classes. Leftism seeks to upend the status quo, and loss aversion is a problem.
Not that efforts can't be made.
Where in the definition of leftism is it said that leftism is unpopular?
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When you're coming from a position of extreme privilege and you're either a bit stupid or lack empathy or general social awareness being treated equally with "lesser people" (like women, brown people or people from particular religious backgrounds) can seem an awful lot like you're being discriminated against.
I think you're missing the point a bit. Liberal/centrist values are already to treat everyone equally, but not equitably. So when leftism comes in with suggestions for change, it looks to centrists like inequality. If you listen to centrists objections to leftism, this is what they say repeatedly, so I'm inclined to believe that is how they legitimately feel. This is why I think we need slightly different messaging/branding/whatever, or to talk about these issues in a different way, so that centrists actually understand what we're getting at. It's also not hard to find instances of leftists who, when angry, lash out at the majority -- which while relatable, doesn't help make leftism look appealing.
(By "majority" I mean the average joe, not billionaires.)
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The white nationalist movement preys on alienated young white men (more than other groups). Creating avenues for including these people in our movement means less people we have to fight.
I'm not saying everyone is able to fit into our movement, or they may require so much education that we just don't have the resources to depropagandize them, but as a mass movement, more is generally better.
100% agree. I honestly think that in ~2015, the left's failure to appeal to young white men caused them to turn to the alt right. I think we scared them off with things like "check your privilege" etc., and should have focused more on getting them amped about class warfare.
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Are you active in any socialist parties?
I would like to be, but I just can't figure out how to get involved in my area.
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That is a controversial opinion here.
(And I agree with it. I don't know what the way is, but I hope it can be found)
I think the first thing to do is to shift sentiment toward solving the problem of how to make things appealing to centrists and the apolitical. Let's get "I agree -- but that has bad optics so let's focus on something else first" into our lexicon. Once the left is able to be more strategic about this, then I think we'll gain a lot more strides. I have some thoughts about what that might look like, but it's outside the scope of this post.
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Just wanted to prove that political diversity ain't dead. Remember, don't downvote for disagreements.
As someone who was in a supportive relationship with a transgender person for 3 years and who personally struggles associating with my own gender, I never really got into the stating my gender pronouns.
I get why it's done for the times it matters and can do so in a sensitive space, but I get the sense it's usually done as public compliance (like a cis neolib as an email sig), which can lead to shallow support or worse, resentment. What we ultimately need is more genuine contact with people different from ourselves because that helps reduce "othering" a group.
Oh, but I do tend to default to "they" out of old internet habits. Always disliked the assumption all gamers are men.
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Abortion is sometimes the less monstrous alternative in a horrible situation, and it should never be seen as less than that.
Women should have enough social safety nets that abortion would never even cross their minds.
It is mostly Capitalism with its focus on productivity and selling youth and beauty that pressures women into it, women are "freeing" themselves into Capitalistic slavery.From: "leftist" privileged cis het white guy, feel free to ignore or bash me
No sane person is going to bash you because you are privileged, cis, het, white, and male. Rather, it is being privileged (etc.) that seems to cause people to say ignorant things. Mind you, I disagree with you about abortion -- if I got pregnant by accident I'd have an abortion in a heartbeat, despite having a safety net. But I appreciate you being brave to share your dissenting view in this thread.
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Protests do more harm than good to a cause, especially annoying protests.
Protests are only good if they're annoying. They're meant to be annoying. They're meant to make other people notice, to stop traffic, to cause delays and ideally an economic hit to the city. If nobody felt the protest, how do you expect it to have an effect?
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The animals we create are morally entitled to the exact same unconditional love and protection as our own children.
I agree, animal rights are important. I am not sure that animals are worth as much as humans morally, but even so, the argument for shrimp welfare is extremely moving. Well worth reading. It's easy to imagine shrimp's lives are meaningless because they are small, have tiny brains, and have a silly name.
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Law enforcement is one of the last careers that still offers a pension, has a union that fights for its members, and is a good source of income without going into massive college debt.
Seems like something the left would be in love with, but systemic issues have demonized the entire profession. I think an influx on left-leaning officers would be great, but like politics- people who would be good at the job stay away from it.
Teen Vogue (I know, right?): Police Unions: What to Know and Why They Don’t Belong in the Labor Movement
Police unions have always been outliers among organized labor, and there are many reasons why the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) union has long refused to allow cops (and prison guards) into its organization. […] Actually, police unions themselves used to be illegal, because local governments worried about the consequences of allowing armed state agents to organize. And historically speaking, the police have been no friend to workers, whether officers were shooting at the families of coal miners during the Battle of Blair Mountain, crushing the ribs of immigrant garment workers during the Uprising of the 20,000, or teargassing working-class protesters in Minneapolis after police killed George Floyd.
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The animals we create are morally entitled to the exact same unconditional love and protection as our own children.
Can you elaborate a bit more? I don't seem to understand what you mean.
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I think we need to figure out how to make leftism more appealing to centrists, and particularly to the cis/straight/white/male demographic.
I think you should read J. Sakai’s Settlers. It explains this (in a US context) quite well and I think that it refutes the concept of just making leftism “more appealing” isn’t a valid concept.
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This question is difficult to correctly answer, as anyone can define their own political boundaries. They can be wrong about those boundaries and they can define many different ones that are all valid. Is my "political creed" to be a communist? Which subset might that mean? Am I friendly with certain subsets despite disagreeing with them (yes) and if so would they potentially count as the majority? Am I a (de)famed Western leftist or part of a worldwide effort in terms of having a less popular view of a subject?
I would say that among the people with whom I have the most general agreement, my least popular opinion is the potential for imperial core workers to become radicalized and organized for the left. A very large amount of organized resources is constantly poured into efforts to prevent this from happening, including those that reinforce settler, white supremacist, and chauvinist attitudes that permeate our cultures. That means that our struggle is very challenging right now but also means that if those flows are ever cut off or undermined, there will be immense opportunity and we have to be ready to channel the inevitable accompaniment to the conditions (austerity) that got us to that place away from neoliberal fascistic movements.
Basically, there is a common pathway in understanding that goes from hope for revolution from within the imperial core (no successful precedents) to attempts to understand this and explain why it's least likely to happen there. This can lead to a self-defeating cynicism towards all imperial core organizing or to curb vision. But I think it is our duty to continually reformulate as needed to discovery organizable enclaves, to grow with current and upcoming conditions. We owe that to each other.
I think I agree with your unpopular opinion. It might be an unpopular opinion because it's conditionally-expressed, and conditionals are hard to reason about ("I think if X happens then Y would be a good idea" really sounds a lot like "I think Y is a good idea.")
Reading this reminded me about another unpopular opinion: I think "settler" and "colonizer" are poor terms for non-indigenous people broadly.
