BobQuixote

Trump and his supporters have Congress by the short and curlies, unfortunately.

This hasn’t been an issue for climate science at all. People have done separate studies and come to the same results.

No, I didn't mean climate science hasn't been replicated. It's also not a straightforward distrust of science, but that's not far off. Republicans will generally trust their doctor's recommendations, but for COVID they also needed to trust a wider apparatus that included government.

How much of this distrust a prospective member of the tent would share, I have no idea.

This is conflating trust in the institutions with trust in the people. I’m sure most people would be happy to change the individuals in charge of the systems.

If someone trusts the institutions only while their party holds them, they cannot be said to trust the institutions.

But I doubt those same people would be interested in radically changing those systems.

Yes, I think the main objection lately is only who controls them.

The US needs majority rule democracy.

Agreed.

The US needs socialism. We need a welfare state for the people who fall through the cracks. It’s too easy for businesses to fire the poorest customers on essential services like housing, even when a person works multiple jobs.

Do you mean something beyond my "safety net"?

We need to regulate businesses to prevent conflict of interests, malpractice, and oligopolies.

As far as I know, tech is the main area we don't already do this, just because it's relatively new.

We need to have a wealth tax on billionaires and millionaires to reinject the wealth that is not larger circulating in the economy.

I'm partial to a "death tax" (estate tax) myself. Even then, I think there is a risk of capital flight that needs to be mitigated somehow.

We need to redirect the owner class’ source of wealth. The workers need to own the means of production.

I don't trust that you can actually do this without triggering a catastrophe. I would be more interested if it were structured as incremental reforms.

I mean if we could get rid of those while keeping all the benefits the technologies give us that would be pretty cool right?

Eh... You might as well say it would be cool if we could all be Vulcans.

I see a stateless society like that as an ideal to strive for by removing unnecessary or theoretically redundant layers of hierarchy in our society.

I might fight you on the particulars... I like efficiency and simplicity, but redundancy can be valuable in critical systems.

I’m a social democrat. Some people would say I’ve taken from market socialism, but it’s not my fault if they only have one idea.

Market socialism is the only socialism that seems remotely plausible to me, and I have absolutely no objection to cannibalizing someone else's system. I'm a software developer, so that's pretty close to what I do.

The US is a federal presidential constitutional republic. I’m fine with federalism as long states’ rights are about governmental separation of concerns. When states’ rights become states have the right to be a dictatorship where people have no rights, that is where I have a problem.

Yes, that behavior is one of the main reasons the system as designed didn't have enough guard rails. That argument against the states only works so long as the federal government is trustworthy, though. We may be about to see the opposite scenario play out.

I would like to see a radical change with how we fund government agencies. We should get rid of the debt ceiling. Congress will still need to budget for the year. But if agencies need additional funding they should be able to pull from Congress who could choose to approve or deny funding as needed. Like a US military model of pulling resources as opposed to a Soviet military model of pushing resources. Government agencies shouldn’t be in a position where they aren’t fully funded or think they won’t be fully funded if they don’t use all of the allotted funding. But there should be transparency to the process of funding.

If we can find a way to make Congress take money seriously, I'm fine with all of that. Running a deficit should exclusively be an emergency measure, and the debt should then be promptly paid down when times are good.

I'm not including the debt that is important for the weird-ass way the global economy works now.

Single payer health care

Does anyone do it like you want? I agree that we need healthcare reform, but I don't generally see glowing reviews of other systems either.

free college tuition

This is mostly a budget thing IMO. If you can set aside funds for it, go ahead. If you can't, that's society deciding this is not worth doing.

decomodify housing

I'm not familiar with this one, and a brief search makes me think it may be HOAs on steroids. Do you have an explainer you can link?

public drinking fountains

? You mean just more of them? We have them in like every park around here.

Defunding the police by having them focus on solving crime and giving the excess funding to agencies that specialize in jobs we don’t want police doing like mental health or animal control, etc. Cops shouldn’t be making wellness checks on patients or wasting their time catching stray dogs.

I would at least give various levels of police support for the wellness check, ranging from a police radio to backup close at hand.

I recommend talking to people from this generation. The people I have met in person are all well adjusted people.

Yes, it's worth noting that was based on recent reports from teachers that I have seen on Reddit, in center-aligned politics subs. I am expecting that if it's a real problem there will be press on it soon.

We will need a massive and sustained cult deprogramming effort for people who have been watching Fox News for nearly three decades. The alternative is continued political unrest and domestic terrorism even if we manage to educate the rest of the population out of neoliberalism and fascism.

How do you even go about that?

Based on what you wrote I’m going to guess that the cult deprogramming position is going to be the most disagreeable with you.

My own parents are the best possible argument for it, but it would still need to pass muster in terms of the Constitution.

I definitely have a distaste for media that attempts to proselytize, though.

You’re likely to come across people and communities that are prone to fed posting, if you haven’t already.

I had to look that up. That is irresponsible at a personal level as well as a societal one.

On the other hand I don't think we're getting out unscathed from this trap we've set for ourselves.

(I had this name several months ago but apparently Lemmy pruned me? I am increasingly uncomfortable with Reddit, but my re-registration was actually prompted by a temporary problem that made me think the Reddit app was demanding notification permissions on my phone to continue functioning.)

I would say if you're using an address from a dox, you're probably in the wrong. Doubly so if you consider the person an adversary.

How in good faith does a neoliberal doubt the science? They definitely incorrectly doubt the magnitude of change to our society that is required to fix climate change, sure. But the science itself?

I think they are suspicious of the institution of science and the scientists within it. The replication crisis gives some validity to their concerns. I think political motives are also suspected.

It doesn't help that these people are by and large not scientists and don't have the training to read the science. The suspicion is a boulder that is not too difficult for Republican propaganda to tip down the mountain.

How you break through that, I have no idea. And I think basically this same suspicion was turned on the government to produce MAGA.

It's a smaller jump to convince neoliberals to change the people in society than it is to convince them to change institutions they believe are infallible.

Ha! I don't think you would easily find anyone to defend the institutions as infallible right now, least of all the trumpers. The Courts, Congress, the Deep State (career workers in the executive branch), it's all suspect for them. I myself was counting on SCOTUS to hold until it didn't.

No, I think the slide into fascism has been about lack of trust rather than an overabundance of it. I can imagine getting there the other way too, though.

Not if we have to comprise our positions to get them in the tent. We need full speed ahead on climate change action. If we have to go the speed we are now, slower, or backwards like we will be in a few months, then that isn't a useful alliance.

I think you are significantly overestimating the pull granted by simply being in the tent.

I think you're referring to harm to other living, breathing people. You want to be a part of the big tent? Time to spill the beans on your positions. Whether they're considered political or otherwise. A bulleted list is fine.

How very broad. I didn't have anything particular in mind. The government exists to mitigate harm, yet I don't believe in equipping it to solve every conceivable problem because I fear centralized power. I suspect you would more eagerly expand its power.

Several regions of government need to be reformed in order to halt harm primarily to black people. I'm thinking of the prison pipeline and similar.

I support several federal agencies such as the FDA, USDA, EPA. This support is somewhat reluctant; if I could devise an alternative that didn't accrue power to the federal government I would prefer that.

I support anti-trust. I think multinational corporations are a threat to the individual to rival the government. I think the government is at risk of losing relevance, leaving only the corporations, and this future is a dystopia.

I want to find a way to drain generational wealth without killing the economy. I don't think democracy can survive an unhindered class of trust-fund babies (nobility in all but name).

I support a "safety net" that allows for the most meager existence - enough to survive and to be employable. I don't want to spend more than we must on freeloaders, and I don't want to make this a better deal than being productive is.

Uh, what else? I am adamantly opposed to abolishing money or ownership of real estate. I'm interested in seeing further experimental results from worker co-ops; so far they are not looking advantageous.

I think social media may have ruined education for Generation Z, as if we had given them all really bad drugs. My aversion to government action is making me uncomfortable with what we may need to do.

Your turn.

But if a person isn't a fascist or isn't at least brainwashed by their propaganda, why would someone believe climate change is not real? There is a large body of research that demonstrates climate change is real and is caused by humans. Not to mention Exxon knew this as early as 1977.

Are you supposing that any scrap of unscientific propaganda in a person's opinions makes them functionally a fascist? I posit that someone can doubt the science and believe in liberalism. Hell, I think some of the people who voted for Trump still believe in liberalism (not that they would call it that) even as they enable fascism. This descent into madness has been really hard to watch. If any of them were to renounce Trump, I'd welcome them eagerly.

The time to advert key tipping points in the Earth's climate is the next five years. Either we advert these tipping points or catastrophic damage will be done to the environment. There's no time to delay. Let alone time to be actively making things worse by increasing fossil fuel emissions as much as possible. Why is your argument's meter not picking this up?

I think you risk not being able to solve anything because you're so picky about allies. I think improving climate policy remains possible with a minority of climate deniers in the tent. And if someone opposes Trump I am not terribly concerned about their thoughts on the climate.

Sorry, what harms are those? =/

I don't know, do you really want to compare comprehensive political positions?

Wow, you're really going at it on the whole "not thinking" thing. 10/10.

We should not cooperate with fascists especially when they don't believe in climate change.

Not believing in climate change does not make someone a fascist. Murphy was talking about accepting people who don't want to be aligned with MAGA. That is plainly a strategic imperative.

I agree that we need to watch out for cryptofascists, but your meter is too sensitive.

Similarly, men's concerns about loneliness etc. are worth hearing out. I wouldn't say that has much at all to do with "rights," though.

Good, so you agree then?

As far as I can tell, yes. I suspect I would be more hands-off about correcting some harms, but I strongly agree with no second class of citizens.

We should move the Democratic Party to the left. Democrats should champion systemic change and wealth redistribution.

I don't object. I'm an ex-Republican long since committed to riding the Democratic wagon wherever it goes. I would take FDR 2.0 if that's what can defeat MAGA, but I don't have confidence that it's a good approach. I do think the wealth/income gap is a threat to liberty and stability.

The people who don't agree with climate change don't believe it exists.

Uh huh. Are you only able to cooperate with people who agree with you in every way?

Your argument is focusing on the bait and ignoring the switch.

And yours is going out of its way to manufacture enemies.

That's how we're framing it.

Again, sure. Not worth fighting over the phrasing.

On climate:

But here's the thing - then you need to let people into the tent who aren't 100% on board with us on every social and cultural issue, or issues like guns or climate.

He doesn't say anything else on climate, and this is not "abandoning action on climate change." The people already in the tent don't agree on everything, and they have not "abandoned action" because of it.

On men's rights:

Meanwhile, men tumble into a different kind of identity crisis, as the patriarchy, society's primary organizing paradigm for centuries, rightly crashes. The right pushes an alluring dial back. The left says "get over it". Again, a refusal to listen/offer responsible solutions.

This is not "uncritically supporting men's rights."

But it is probably worth understanding how patriarchy harms men because inequality harms us all.

Sure, if that's how you need to frame it to fit your worldview go ahead. Just please try to find agreement when feminist framing is not used, because it usually won't be.

You mean this?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1855616243039916152.html

That doesn't fit your description.