Ok what’s your suggestion? To keep going with “worse”? To what end? What if I told you that not everyone wanted Bernie Sanders? What if I told you we live in a world where we need to live with each other and we all have different opinions and values?
Since you can’t get everything YOU want you think you’re morally superior to others around you.
Would you say that James Buchanan and/or Andrew Jackson are better or worse than Obama?
History is full of horrible presidents, kings and leaders. Progress isn’t a straight line.
it’s not about what you or i want; it’s about having basic human decency and standing up against red lines like genocide; ethnic cleansing; and especially bombing innocent people from orbit or separating children from their parents to trying them individually in obama’s case.
pretending that these are little more than wish list item minimizes these nazi level atrocities and reflects your character as a human being.
basic human decency, listen, I agree with you. But this is an assumption that you’re making. There is a percentage of the population (some think up to 4%) that are absolute sociopaths. We also have to live with them. Even if they would be ok living without us.
It isn’t about a wish list. People will always be people. Until we somehow cure sociopathy or whatever drives people to be ignorant and cruel (my opinion on conservatives is they are probably borderline sociopaths).
Our options are to work with these people or go to war and exterminate them.
I don’t see how you holding everyone to your standard of morality (even if I wholeheartedly agree with you) is of any use in this. We HAVE to ALL live with each other and do the best we can. Aiming for your absolute unyielding moral compass doesn’t help.
you’re offering a false choice: work with sociopaths or kill them; that’s surrender.
don’t beg killers to be nicer – make their cruelty politically impossible.
you say “we have to live with each other.” fine. but living together doesn’t mean accepting drone strikes on kids because 4% of people are sociopaths. that’s not pragmatism. that’s cowardice with a philosophy degree.
the goal isn’t to pick the lesser evil. it’s to build a world where bombing children isn’t a debate – it’s unthinkable. that’s not moral purity. that’s the whole damn point.
the plan isn’t a secret recipe i’m hiding from you. it’s happening right now, whether you notice it or not.
mutual aid networks. rent strikes. union organizing. boycott campaigns. community defense. abolitionist projects that starve the carceral state. international solidarity that makes imperialist violence costly.
you want a ten-point plan handed to a president? that’s not how this works. leftists don’t wait for permission from power – we build counter-power. we make the old world unmanageable and the new world unavoidable, piece by piece.
the question isn’t “how?” as if it’s some untested theory. the question is whether you’ll get off the sidelines and help.
It’s why the overton window keeps shifting, because the level of evil you accept keeps looking better in comparison to worse.
… would you like to outline the past ~70 years of the Overton window shifting to allow more evil instead of less? Or were we voting for saints back in the 50s?
Why does it have to be 70 years? Can we do 10 20 30? Then I don’t believe the overtone window is that obvious 30-40 years ago you were considered bad if you bought a right wing newspaper, people would stop talking to you. (Well at least where I am from)
Coincidentally that is the period where workers had the most rights, which has slowly become worse with time in every western country.
At that time they thought right wing people where against them having rights and quiet evil, they had been thought by their parents, who worked hard for those rights. Our generation has not learned the importance and given more room for the right wing to control our media, which then controls the narrative. Why is there so many articles about trump or Elon musk, I mean we have two idiots who cares, do we have to know that trump misspelled coffee?
Why does it have to be 70 years? Can we do 10 20 30? Then I don’t believe the overtone window is that obvious 30-40 years ago you were considered bad if you bought a right wing newspaper, people would stop talking to you. (Well at least where I am from)
Yeah, sure, let’s do 10, 20, 30.
30 years ago Black folk were being called ‘superpredators’ and blamed for a ‘crime wave’, the push to dismantle the meager welfare state in the USA was wildly popular, immigration law was reformed to militarize the border and deportation, being gay was illegal in about half of US states… do I need to go on?
You are making an argument against your own point of lesser evils, we are debating if the overtone window has shifted. Which is obvious that it has. As I stated before media is owned by the wealthy even state owned media is controlled by the wealthy, they set the narrative, why do you think that they write and talk about super predators, so that becomes the agenda. And not that coperate america is fucking over the working class, and the politicians aren’t doing jack shit about it.
Bad is bad. Just because you weren’t personally affected by the bad doesn’t make it less bad, just exposes how little solidarity with the oppressed you actually have.
no, saying “i miss obama” is the same as those republicans who whinge that they voted for trump three times but NOW trump is bad because it effects them.
they remember Obama fondly because that time was good FOR THEM. and not because obama was a good president. it’s gross because it’s selfish and akin to saying “i wish it was like the 20’s - 50’s, times were better then…” you automatically know the type of person who said that and why
I remember Obama fondly because Obama’s actions were less bad. People who say “I wish it was the 20s-50s” are wishing for a time when things were worse on matters that they find less-compelling.
Would you like to outline any of Obama’s policies which were worse than the current shitshow in the fascist merry-go-round?
“Things were bad in the past, therefore, things can never get worse” is fucking childish and asinine and something that should’ve been educated out of folk in the 1st-2nd grade.
i remember the cop who beats people fondly because cops now a days just shoot people.
…
“People who say ‘I wish it was the 20’s-50’s ‘ are wishing for a time when things were worse on matters that they find less-compelling”
that was my exact point. it speaks to the character of a person who determines that the bad things that happen are not their problem, and shows a lack of empathy, and signals where its ok to stop trying to push things to being better. that is why its gross.
I wouldn’t trust you at all making any judgements about history or anything else, because you are so scared about not passing your own purity test, that you think making any kind of concession about a grading scale of the difference of various historical characters makes your peers denounce your own political purity.
Remember noone said anything about supporting anybody, but they definitely said something about Obama is not the same as Trump.
Having family members concerned about the level of uncertainty involved in their immigration proceedings was bad, as no one, but especially not people who’ve been in the country and established lives, should be treated as illegal for their region of residence. Having family members fucking deported for it because of changes in Federal immigration enforcement policy is fucking worse.
Inflicting more suffering on the oppressed so you can feel ‘pure’ isn’t solidarity, it’s solipsism.
We get it, you weren’t affected personally, so you don’t give a shit about the lives of those that were already being affected. We get it. You have no solidarity.
And FYI, we aren’t the ones inflicting the suffering so nice try shifting that blame.
We get it, you weren’t affected personally, so you don’t give a shit about the lives of those that were already being affected. We get it. You have no solidarity.
Typical of the low level of reading comprehension you’ve displayed, in my experience.
And FYI, we aren’t the ones inflicting the suffering so nice try shifting that blame.
“We didn’t INFLICT the suffering, we just were useful idiots for the Nazis that did! You can’t blame us for THAT!”
Yeah, that tracks with your myopic privileged suburbia style takes.
Sorry that those of us dealing with oppression have to live in the real fucking world, I know it’s so much more comfy to engage in online circlejerks.
That’s a very weird way of saying we are the only ones actually trying to organize against the very systems and institutions that aren’t enabling and empowering the fascists.
Continuing bending over for the lesser evil while the rest of us actually try to fight the evil.
Because there are people who don’t have a shortsighted, reactionary mentality.
The degrees of how bad is entirely contextual. And part of the context of seeing the lesser evil as “better” involves limiting the scope to a false dichotomy.
Being stabbed is better than being shot, but regardless of which option you’re still fucking being injured.
Nice bad faith interpretation. Nothing about what I said implies that I can’t recognize that degrees exist. In fact, I explicitly recognized that degrees exist and the contextual nature of them.
Your inability to have contextual understanding of the wider picture and not limit yourself to the immediate, reactionary perspective is the handicap here.
One step forward for every two steps back is “technically” better than no steps forward and three steps back. Yet, if you understand the full picture, you realize that both are still resulting in backwards progress; so, another choice needs to be made if one’s goal is to go forward.
If all you ever do is react to the “greater evil” by giving power to the “lesser evil”, you simply allow evil to hold it over you as a threat to coerce your obedience and consolidate power while dangling performative concessions to keep the people distracted by the illusion of progress.
Sure but it also makes me understand that people lack solidarity if they miss a time when their comfort came at the expense of the oppressed simply because they weren’t the one personally being oppressed.
Just because life was more comfortable before doesn’t mean I miss it, because I have solidarity with those who were oppressed for that comfort to have been possible. I would never want those times to return just because I personally benefit from it, thus I do not miss those times.
I also do not miss those times because I understand that those times are what allowed the ones we are currently living in to manifest. The systems, institutions, and cultural norms of those times are what led to today.
I do not miss those times. I yearn for times where those things did not come at the expense of others while enabling evil to continue to consolidate power and disenfranchise my brothers and sisters of the working class.
Ha ha, and it only gets worse from here. Not just in the US, across the west. Respective of party, every new administration worse than the last. Unless we organize.
Obama bombed children, that will never seem great in any way, shape, or form.
If someone worse than Trump comes along, are you happy to say “I miss Trump?”.
Have a line and hold it.
I mean that’s the reason we have the words: “better” and “worse.”
If something is “better than”, then yes, I believe it is better.
Y’all act like anyone said Obama was a saint. Hell, some saints have been worse than Obama.
It’s why the overton window keeps shifting, because the level of evil you accept keeps looking better in comparison to worse.
Ok what’s your suggestion? To keep going with “worse”? To what end? What if I told you that not everyone wanted Bernie Sanders? What if I told you we live in a world where we need to live with each other and we all have different opinions and values?
Since you can’t get everything YOU want you think you’re morally superior to others around you.
Would you say that James Buchanan and/or Andrew Jackson are better or worse than Obama?
History is full of horrible presidents, kings and leaders. Progress isn’t a straight line.
it’s not about what you or i want; it’s about having basic human decency and standing up against red lines like genocide; ethnic cleansing; and especially bombing innocent people from orbit or separating children from their parents to trying them individually in obama’s case.
pretending that these are little more than wish list item minimizes these nazi level atrocities and reflects your character as a human being.
basic human decency, listen, I agree with you. But this is an assumption that you’re making. There is a percentage of the population (some think up to 4%) that are absolute sociopaths. We also have to live with them. Even if they would be ok living without us.It isn’t about a wish list. People will always be people. Until we somehow cure sociopathy or whatever drives people to be ignorant and cruel (my opinion on conservatives is they are probably borderline sociopaths).
Our options are to work with these people or go to war and exterminate them.
I don’t see how you holding everyone to your standard of morality (even if I wholeheartedly agree with you) is of any use in this. We HAVE to ALL live with each other and do the best we can. Aiming for your absolute unyielding moral compass doesn’t help.
you’re offering a false choice: work with sociopaths or kill them; that’s surrender.
don’t beg killers to be nicer – make their cruelty politically impossible.
you say “we have to live with each other.” fine. but living together doesn’t mean accepting drone strikes on kids because 4% of people are sociopaths. that’s not pragmatism. that’s cowardice with a philosophy degree.
the goal isn’t to pick the lesser evil. it’s to build a world where bombing children isn’t a debate – it’s unthinkable. that’s not moral purity. that’s the whole damn point.
Ok. How?
What’s your plan?
the plan isn’t a secret recipe i’m hiding from you. it’s happening right now, whether you notice it or not.
mutual aid networks. rent strikes. union organizing. boycott campaigns. community defense. abolitionist projects that starve the carceral state. international solidarity that makes imperialist violence costly.
you want a ten-point plan handed to a president? that’s not how this works. leftists don’t wait for permission from power – we build counter-power. we make the old world unmanageable and the new world unavoidable, piece by piece.
the question isn’t “how?” as if it’s some untested theory. the question is whether you’ll get off the sidelines and help.
… would you like to outline the past ~70 years of the Overton window shifting to allow more evil instead of less? Or were we voting for saints back in the 50s?
Why does it have to be 70 years? Can we do 10 20 30? Then I don’t believe the overtone window is that obvious 30-40 years ago you were considered bad if you bought a right wing newspaper, people would stop talking to you. (Well at least where I am from)
Coincidentally that is the period where workers had the most rights, which has slowly become worse with time in every western country.
At that time they thought right wing people where against them having rights and quiet evil, they had been thought by their parents, who worked hard for those rights. Our generation has not learned the importance and given more room for the right wing to control our media, which then controls the narrative. Why is there so many articles about trump or Elon musk, I mean we have two idiots who cares, do we have to know that trump misspelled coffee?
Yeah, sure, let’s do 10, 20, 30.
30 years ago Black folk were being called ‘superpredators’ and blamed for a ‘crime wave’, the push to dismantle the meager welfare state in the USA was wildly popular, immigration law was reformed to militarize the border and deportation, being gay was illegal in about half of US states… do I need to go on?
You are making an argument against your own point of lesser evils, we are debating if the overtone window has shifted. Which is obvious that it has. As I stated before media is owned by the wealthy even state owned media is controlled by the wealthy, they set the narrative, why do you think that they write and talk about super predators, so that becomes the agenda. And not that coperate america is fucking over the working class, and the politicians aren’t doing jack shit about it.
What.
You need to revisit politics in the 90s. Shit was mainstream that would make your milk curdle in the fridge.
… who do you think controlled the media in the West before 1990?
The absurd ‘superpredator’ line died with the lingering effects of the 1980s crime wave. I don’t know where you’re hearing it today.
Sure, but that’s not fucking new.
I get your point and I don’t disagree, but surely you get your relatives too?
Nope. I don’t really get that shortsighted mentality of missing the lesser evil.
Evil is evil regardless and it should never be missed just because you weren’t a victim of their evil deeds. That’s how you abandon your solidarity
“I don’t understand why someone might miss when things were less bad!”
Tracks.
Bad is bad. Just because you weren’t personally affected by the bad doesn’t make it less bad, just exposes how little solidarity with the oppressed you actually have.
It does not expose anything of the sort. You are just applying strawmen in your purity test.
no, saying “i miss obama” is the same as those republicans who whinge that they voted for trump three times but NOW trump is bad because it effects them.
they remember Obama fondly because that time was good FOR THEM. and not because obama was a good president. it’s gross because it’s selfish and akin to saying “i wish it was like the 20’s - 50’s, times were better then…” you automatically know the type of person who said that and why
I remember Obama fondly because Obama’s actions were less bad. People who say “I wish it was the 20s-50s” are wishing for a time when things were worse on matters that they find less-compelling.
Would you like to outline any of Obama’s policies which were worse than the current shitshow in the fascist merry-go-round?
“Things were bad in the past, therefore, things can never get worse” is fucking childish and asinine and something that should’ve been educated out of folk in the 1st-2nd grade.
i remember the cop who beats people fondly because cops now a days just shoot people.
…
“People who say ‘I wish it was the 20’s-50’s ‘ are wishing for a time when things were worse on matters that they find less-compelling”
that was my exact point. it speaks to the character of a person who determines that the bad things that happen are not their problem, and shows a lack of empathy, and signals where its ok to stop trying to push things to being better. that is why its gross.
it was never about who was worse
I wouldn’t trust you at all making any judgements about history or anything else, because you are so scared about not passing your own purity test, that you think making any kind of concession about a grading scale of the difference of various historical characters makes your peers denounce your own political purity.
Remember noone said anything about supporting anybody, but they definitely said something about Obama is not the same as Trump.
Bad is bad. Less bad is less bad.
Having family members concerned about the level of uncertainty involved in their immigration proceedings was bad, as no one, but especially not people who’ve been in the country and established lives, should be treated as illegal for their region of residence. Having family members fucking deported for it because of changes in Federal immigration enforcement policy is fucking worse.
Inflicting more suffering on the oppressed so you can feel ‘pure’ isn’t solidarity, it’s solipsism.
Miss me with your uneducated, centrist bullshit.
We get it, you weren’t affected personally, so you don’t give a shit about the lives of those that were already being affected. We get it. You have no solidarity.
And FYI, we aren’t the ones inflicting the suffering so nice try shifting that blame.
Typical of the low level of reading comprehension you’ve displayed, in my experience.
“We didn’t INFLICT the suffering, we just were useful idiots for the Nazis that did! You can’t blame us for THAT!”
Yeah, that tracks with your myopic privileged suburbia style takes.
Sorry that those of us dealing with oppression have to live in the real fucking world, I know it’s so much more comfy to engage in online circlejerks.
That’s a very weird way of saying we are the only ones actually trying to organize against the very systems and institutions that aren’t enabling and empowering the fascists.
Continuing bending over for the lesser evil while the rest of us actually try to fight the evil.
There’s always degrees to it. I dunno why so many online forget about this
Because there are people who don’t have a shortsighted, reactionary mentality.
The degrees of how bad is entirely contextual. And part of the context of seeing the lesser evil as “better” involves limiting the scope to a false dichotomy.
Being stabbed is better than being shot, but regardless of which option you’re still fucking being injured.
Not being able to see degrees to things seems more like a handicap than anything good tbh.
Nice bad faith interpretation. Nothing about what I said implies that I can’t recognize that degrees exist. In fact, I explicitly recognized that degrees exist and the contextual nature of them.
Your inability to have contextual understanding of the wider picture and not limit yourself to the immediate, reactionary perspective is the handicap here.
One step forward for every two steps back is “technically” better than no steps forward and three steps back. Yet, if you understand the full picture, you realize that both are still resulting in backwards progress; so, another choice needs to be made if one’s goal is to go forward.
If all you ever do is react to the “greater evil” by giving power to the “lesser evil”, you simply allow evil to hold it over you as a threat to coerce your obedience and consolidate power while dangling performative concessions to keep the people distracted by the illusion of progress.
What happened to the concept of better?
Nothing.
Better is contextual. The lesser is technically better, sure, but it still falls below the minimum standards.
Being stabbed is “better” than being shot but regardless of which, you’re still fucking injured.
But if you understand “better” then shouldn’t that help in understanding how people miss better times?
Sure but it also makes me understand that people lack solidarity if they miss a time when their comfort came at the expense of the oppressed simply because they weren’t the one personally being oppressed.
Just because life was more comfortable before doesn’t mean I miss it, because I have solidarity with those who were oppressed for that comfort to have been possible. I would never want those times to return just because I personally benefit from it, thus I do not miss those times.
I also do not miss those times because I understand that those times are what allowed the ones we are currently living in to manifest. The systems, institutions, and cultural norms of those times are what led to today.
I do not miss those times. I yearn for times where those things did not come at the expense of others while enabling evil to continue to consolidate power and disenfranchise my brothers and sisters of the working class.
Did that oppression stop or why is missing those times so bad?
Irrelevant. The oppression didn’t stop beforehand either, and what came before enabled what we have today.
Did you just not read the comment at all? That’s literally what was being explained.
Trump has bombed children. And he has RAPED children.
Ha ha, and it only gets worse from here. Not just in the US, across the west. Respective of party, every new administration worse than the last. Unless we organize.