The “there is no perfect solution so therefore there is no solution good enough” crowd. Usually a republican mantra when it comes to any social program.
this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2025
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Also when there needs to be a choice made and they rabidly choose the obviously bad one: “It’s a just a pick your poison thing, ya know?”
If I were to pick between two poisons I would certainly not choose the one labeled “100% for sure death” that was surrounded by an aura of death and decay but they just can’t stop themselves slurping that shit down like it’s juice.
Antivoters slowly dying, somehow voting never works except when gestures about
Dr King said it best 60+ years ago
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.” Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I'm immediately reminded of the people who complain about protests closing roads or streets, "they should protest where it doesn't inconvenience me". Realizing that people don't want to be informed, don't want the world to be a better place - who see others with real problems and can only see a lane of traffic being closed.
I wish we had another MLK now. The man had quite the way with words
some things never change eh?
This is what ppl do when I suggest linux
When steam os finally drops for regular PCs I think that could become more mainstream. Most people are afraid of breaking their system by installing something else.
IMHO [Fedora Kinoite] (https://fedoraproject.org/atomic-desktops/kinoite/) is this for people who don't want a gaming-focused OS.
So, the typical centrist/liberal, then?
Oooh, no. You see the same thing from conservatives and especially conspiracy theory people. It's fundamental to their worldview.
"They" somehow have complete and total control over their lives. "They" make them make bad decisions, eat poorly, drink and drive, make them vote for dickbags - you name it. It's an emotional crutch used to negate accepting responsibility for actions, the need for critical thought and planning, or one's own agency as a human to do anything to change their situation.
Back around 2010 when my family would say "They" were going to take their guns away or put them in FEMA camps, I asked who "They" were. Did this for a few years and it eventually stopped being a Boogey man because it forces putting a name to the evil, which most folks like that can't do.
Maybe from the other direction, too. A lot of people who think anything short of smashing shit up is unproductive. Which isn't correct, either.
Violent and non-violent methods go together. Peaceful protest needs to be more sustained than the bursts of activity we've had. But jumping right into smashing shit won't work, either.
A lot of the people I know who want to jump straight into smashing shit have neither the desire or ability to help rebuild anything. They want the social media attention of being a smasher but would quickly sell out all of their positions if they had to do the silent work in the background to improve things.
Wait, librul bad?? Try not to drown in the meaningless upvotes
The typical leftist sitting on their ass and whining online while they wait for a Glorious Revolution to usher in a golden age. If you want things to be better, you do what you can with what you have.
Bullshit. You take what you’re owed.
“The typical liberal sitting on their ass and waiting for ‘the next election’ to usher in Bush-era America (AT BEST).”
They don't make excuses for power, though.
Yup
Well on one side dismissing obvious ways to make something better is not very bright. On the other side the "obvious way to make something better" could itself not be very bright either.
I am very wary of explanations of the world which emphasize "the people who disagree with this are evil" or "the people who disagree with this are stupid". If only people weren't deliberately trying to do harm or remain ignorant, they would of course agree with the speaker. This leaves no room for different (but reasonable) priorities, different tolerances for risk, different trusted authorities, etc. Plus, when evil and stupid do exist, they always think that their opponents are actually the evil, stupid ones. So an individual ought to remain humble: if he's sure that he's on the side of God fighting a clear battle against evil, that itself is evidence that he isn't.
the tao that can be spoken is not the true tao.
On the other side the "obvious way to make somrthing better" could itself not be very bright either.
One way to make something better could be not very bright, but are all ways to make something better not very bright? When someone keeps rejecting everything and offering nothing workable, good chance they just don't want progress.
Yes I agree. What I meant was not all revolutionary ideas being discarded by someone mean that person is a reactionary. That idea may just simply be bad. That doesn't mean we should reject good ideas, it just means that someone rejecting an idea literally doesn't mean anything by itself.
AKA: a critic.
Do not split and no cracks. You don't have to agree with how they are fighting the system, but keep your thoughts private and instead, explain how your system is awesome.
But what is happening in Hong Kong is they come up with a slogan, which is translated as Do Not Split, which is, we know that some people are willing to be confrontational with riot police.
And when they are, that’s going to cost the state in terms of not only resources, but it’s going to cost the state in terms of political capital and support. And we know that there are some people who are not willing to do that. And we are going to abide by the protocol of Do Not Split, which means that we’re not going to criticize them openly, and they’re not going to criticize us openly.
If we’re the pacifists, we’re not going to have them criticize us for being sort of like, I don’t know, limpid or flaccid or not courageous or whatever. And we’re not going to criticize them for being more confrontational. And the thing is that the support is also tacit.
You don't have to agree with how they are fighting the system,
This only applies if they're fighting the system in the first place.
So what is so great about your way of fighting the system? I seriously want to hear it.
I mean, my country of origin is a military dictatorship so I'll answer with the way I'd like to fight the system if I had something resembling political rights: worker organization and dual power. The problem with the modern Western left is that it's forgotten its more militant (and, uncoincidentally, more effective) roots; even if you only want to reform the system, in any negotiation you need leverage, and leverage is how you can help the other party if they accept and how you can hurt them if they refuse. Both the carrot and stick are necessary to turn leftwing ideas into leftwing policy. For example, would ICE be running amok like this if a significant number of Americans had went on strike and shut the country down back in April or even June? I sincerely doubt it. What's great about my preferred way of fighting the system is that there's a clear and realistic path from idea to action to victory (however you define that) with real precedent. Aside from being a good thing on its own, this means it'll be much easier to get people on board who are dissatisfied with and hurt by the system but don't see anybody fighting for them.
That aside, though, I'm not saying it's my way or the highway; there are plenty of possible ways to fight the system, but liberals (as in establishment Democratic leaders and pro-establishment Democratic rank and file) aren't doing any of them. Liberals only sabotage the people who are actually fighting the system while doing no fighting of their own. I mean is Schumer fighting the system? Is Jefferies? These people have only ever perpetuated the same system we want to fight and sabotaged or destroyed opposition to it. Unity with your allies is good strategy; unity with your enemies is folly.
Can we not?
~~The problem with the modern Western left is that it’s forgotten its more militant (and, uncoincidentally, more effective) roots; even if you only want to reform the system, in any negotiation you need leverage, and leverage is how you can help the other party if they accept and how you can hurt them if they refuse.~~
Both the carrot and stick are necessary to turn leftwing ideas into leftwing policy. ~~For example, would ICE be running amok like this if a significant number of Americans had went on strike and shut the country down back in April or even June? I sincerely doubt it~~. What’s great about my preferred way of fighting the system is that there’s a clear and realistic path from idea to action to victory (however you define that) with real precedent. Aside from being a good thing on its own, this means it’ll be much easier to get people on board who are dissatisfied with and hurt by the system but don’t see anybody fighting for them.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the bolded part. I think the "No Kings" protest was extremely successful. It was huge and peaceful. Trump was itching to send the national guard to LA to take over the city and kill people. The peacefulness of the protest was what kept a lot of people alive.
Also, I strongly believe in the 3.5% rule
Liberals only sabotage the people who are actually fighting the system while doing no fighting of their own.
Yes, stop doing that by shitting on everyone.
Did you... did you just ask me to explain my ideas only to completely ignore them? Like do you think that's a funny thing to do?
I didn't ignore them at all, I spoke to them. I crossed out any complaining and I thought the bolded part was amazing. I don't agree with a lot of them, so I'm taking my own advice.
There's two sides to this I think:
On the one hand, there are those that actually don't want anything to change, but don't want to be seen as such for one reason or another, or don't want to think of themselves as preferring that.
On the other hand, the world is complicated, and most proposed ideas that haven't been tried at the relevant scale before probably legitimately would not work very well at least without adjustments (because after all, it would be unrealistic to expect one person to understand it all well enough to come up with a well functioning system on the first try).
It would seem highly unlikely that what we have is the best possible system, and therefore there should be something that will work, or at least work better. Probably quite a few different somethings that could. But at the same, when dealing with the complex dynamics of human society, an answer that can be phased as "but what if we just..." is unlikely to ever be sufficient by itself, and if something does have some obvious flaw, it shouldn't shut down the whole effort to find something better to point that flaw out, so that a better idea can be found or the flaw with the original one can be addressed.
most proposed ideas that haven’t been tried at the relevant scale before probably legitimately would not work very well
Before you can even get to those, you have to stop all the people who are proposing ideas that have been tried, over and over, and didn't work every one of those times.
Even that has nuance. When someone is proposing something that has been tried before, which is common enough, one can point to the relevant historical examples. But sometimes someone is trying to propose a variant on something that hasn't worked, with the intent on fixing whatever the problem with the idea seemed to be, which depending on if that variant has also been attempted or if there are obvious problems with the proposed fix, may or may not be worthy of further discussion.
It doesn't help that a lot of labels used to describe political or economic systems are extremely broad, a bit vague or have contested definitions, or are commonly misunderstood, because you can get an idea with some merit dismissed by virtue of sharing a broad label with something unsuccessful, or conversely, someone insisting that this is the case for their idea even though their suggestion really has been tried or clearly doesn't address the issues with whatever they're basing it on.
It should be taken into account that some amount of trial and error is probably inherit to developing new systems or laws, and the nature of trial and error is such that anything that works is likely to be preceded by similar things that did not, or at least not as well.
There is no "best possible system". Every system will be corrupted with time, because there will always be people who seek power and once they have some they'll be able to use that power to get more.
Instead of fantasizing over some perfect system, focus on the problems that society faces in the here-and-now and on the tools you have to solve those problems in the here-and-now. Do that continuously and things will get better. Sitting on your hands while you argue about systems just lets the rot spread.
What I meant by that is that there is definitely room for improvement and therefore a stance of "we should change nothing" does not make sense. Saying that all systems are corruptible does not change that, it just would mean that even the best possible ones still are susceptible. I think you must be misunderstanding what I meant there, or else your response does not make sense to me. "Solving a problem in the in the here and now" is a modification to the system, because the system is just the sum total of the way that society functions, to include the way problems are created for people and the way people react to them. Whatever solution you come up with to whatever problem, the fact that the circumstances to the people around you are now slightly different represents a small but nonzero change in the way things are done, in your society.
In order to solve a problem, it is first necessary to identify how to solve the problem. That step is not "sitting on your hands", its a necessary component to any useful action.
the anti-vegan.
BoTh sIdEs SaMe!!1!
If I had a nickel for every time people on lemmy discredited voting 3rd party or progressive candidates under the excuse of "muh RCV" or "vote blue no matter who", I'd have enough money to bribe the DNC into splitting into multiple parties.
It's so insane. They'll yell about the genocide all day but then vote for the candidates supporting the genocide.
Who do they hate the most? Jill Stein, the candidate who opposes the genocide! Make it make sense.
If you actually want to make things better then you have to use methods that have a chance of actually working. We have overwhelming historical evidence showing that voting third-party doesn't.
It really hasn't been tried.
No, Pakistan does not have RCV. Hell they don't even have a qualified election system with the amount of falsified ballots, yet the third party still defeated that system.
It can work, but the most important part in making it work is building the movement so that everyone votes for the third party in the same election. There's no point in just voting third party and complaining that no one else is doing it.
That would take a monumental amount of effort. Much more than it would take to un-fuck one of the existing parties.
I don't think it's a question of amount of effort. Both undertakings would be monumental. It's more so a question of what skillsets you have and what you're more capable of doing.
In Canada, we had a third party nearly come into power a while back until we lost the leader to cancer.
In Canada, we had a third party ~~nearly come into power~~ catapult a far-right government into power for nearly a decade a while back until we lost the leader to cancer.
Are you sure about that? We've been trying to unfuck the Democrats for decades, and look what it's gotten us.