libs don’t give a shit about truth. they literally can’t understand the idea. telling a liberal the truth is like reading poetry to your dog. it’s a sweet romantic idea, and maybe it makes you a good person, but only the tone actually matters.
i guess you’re wrong about that. what you’re referring to is the fallacy that all liberals are extremely short-sighted and can’t make reasonable decisions, which is why they’re constantly manipulated and that causes them to be liberal in the first place.
if they could see reason in 2025, they wouldn’t be liberals anymore, I don’t think. the only thing liberalism ever had going for it was a big tent that could at least get its distasteful monkey paw version of good things done, and now they don’t even want to do that.
“Liberal” means different things in Europe vs America, and that confusion has been specifically exploited by propagandists as well, just making things worse.
I myself am a stupid american. I cannot say that I’ve read any great works of philosophy that discuss the espoused ideals of political movements.
What I have read are dictionary definitions. I have observed how people behave, what people think these words mean, and how almost everyone who gives themselves a label is either a liar or just wrong. Obviously, this is about the american versions of the words.
Liberals: “everything sucks, but it could suck less if we put in a tiny amount of effort to fix things. You may be mildly inconvenienced by these efforts.”
Conservatives: “everything sucks and it’s the libs’ fault! They changed things and now everything sucks! Fuck {insert racial slur here}!”
Communists: “everything sucks and it’s the libs’ fault! They’re just as fascist as the conservatives because capitalism!”
Democrats: “We’re liberals!” (some of them are, but most of them are conservatives. Also spineless failures, but that part isn’t important to this conversation.)
nevertheless, “liberalism” used to have an actual definition. it meant somebody would would say “things are allowed unless they are forbidden”, which is contrary to the anti-liberal (sometimes identified as conservative) view that “things are forbidden unless they are allowed”, which means, liberals don’t bother with things that don’t matter.
now, if you’re a trans girl shitting in a public toilet, that doesn’t matter because it doesn’t really change anything. that is why liberalism says “ok, it shouldn’t be forbidden, so by default it’s allowed” while anti-liberalists claim “i don’t see why these people are doing this, therefore they are faking it (being trans) and also it should be a crime until proven innocent”.
This confuses a lot of Americans whose political understanding is largely dictated by cable news, because since 1980 or so, conservatives started using liberal to mean “far left” as a pejorative due to Reagan calling Carter’s policy too liberal. Later on, the American “left”, social democrats, started using it to mean the same thing, but in a positive context.
I’ll read that, but not today. For the sake of responding within the current month, I had chatgpt summarize it for me. The gist I get is that “liberalism” is a lie, and it’s secretly fascism (I’m paraphrasing the summary pretty hard), benefiting the in-groups and oppressing everyone else. Would you say this is an accurate, if oversimplified, description of what you want me to understand?
Not really, it’s more that liberalism contains contradictions between various freedoms it supports, and even contradictions between how the same “freedom” is practiced by different groups, and when those contradictions become unsustainable, the right to property by the dominant group always takes precedence.
It’s important to understand any political philosophy as not an idea floating in a vacuum but as a social tool used by a group in society; liberalism is the philosophy the bourgeoisie use to justify their power.
I mean kinda since fascism is a tool used to buttress capitalism when it’s own contradictions become unsustainable, but that’s not really in the book.
I wouldn’t say that’s entirely wrong, fascism being a failure mode of liberalism. The phrase “scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds” or Trotsky’s “Not every exasperated petite bourgeois could have become Hitler, but a particle of Hitler is lodged in every exasperated petite bourgeois” come to mind.
libs don’t give a shit about truth. they literally can’t understand the idea. telling a liberal the truth is like reading poetry to your dog. it’s a sweet romantic idea, and maybe it makes you a good person, but only the tone actually matters.
i guess you’re wrong about that. what you’re referring to is the fallacy that all liberals are extremely short-sighted and can’t make reasonable decisions, which is why they’re constantly manipulated and that causes them to be liberal in the first place.
there are liberals who can see reason.
if they could see reason in 2025, they wouldn’t be liberals anymore, I don’t think. the only thing liberalism ever had going for it was a big tent that could at least get its distasteful monkey paw version of good things done, and now they don’t even want to do that.
lemmy has convinced me that neither conservatives nor communists know what a liberal is.
life has convinced me that liberals certainly don’t. I guess if we’re both right, only we anarchists can see the truth. as if my ego needed that.
“Liberal” means different things in Europe vs America, and that confusion has been specifically exploited by propagandists as well, just making things worse.
I myself am a stupid american. I cannot say that I’ve read any great works of philosophy that discuss the espoused ideals of political movements.
What I have read are dictionary definitions. I have observed how people behave, what people think these words mean, and how almost everyone who gives themselves a label is either a liar or just wrong. Obviously, this is about the american versions of the words.
Liberals: “everything sucks, but it could suck less if we put in a tiny amount of effort to fix things. You may be mildly inconvenienced by these efforts.”
Conservatives: “everything sucks and it’s the libs’ fault! They changed things and now everything sucks! Fuck {insert racial slur here}!”
Communists: “everything sucks and it’s the libs’ fault! They’re just as fascist as the conservatives because capitalism!”
Republicans: “We’re conservatives!” (they’re actually fascists)
Democrats: “We’re liberals!” (some of them are, but most of them are conservatives. Also spineless failures, but that part isn’t important to this conversation.)
Am I on to something here, or am I just stupid?
fuck yeah, invisible, like the ring of power. that’s… that’s what this is, right?
yeah, that seems to me how people use these words
nevertheless, “liberalism” used to have an actual definition. it meant somebody would would say “things are allowed unless they are forbidden”, which is contrary to the anti-liberal (sometimes identified as conservative) view that “things are forbidden unless they are allowed”, which means, liberals don’t bother with things that don’t matter.
now, if you’re a trans girl shitting in a public toilet, that doesn’t matter because it doesn’t really change anything. that is why liberalism says “ok, it shouldn’t be forbidden, so by default it’s allowed” while anti-liberalists claim “i don’t see why these people are doing this, therefore they are faking it (being trans) and also it should be a crime until proven innocent”.
Yeah in europe liberals are liberals, while in america liberals are liberals but it must not interfere with capitalist interests
Here’s a work going through every major liberal philosopher and what liberalism meant to them, and how they dealt with the contradictions. It’s the same definition used in every serious work for the last 200 years or so.
This confuses a lot of Americans whose political understanding is largely dictated by cable news, because since 1980 or so, conservatives started using liberal to mean “far left” as a pejorative due to Reagan calling Carter’s policy too liberal. Later on, the American “left”, social democrats, started using it to mean the same thing, but in a positive context.
I’ll read that, but not today. For the sake of responding within the current month, I had chatgpt summarize it for me. The gist I get is that “liberalism” is a lie, and it’s secretly fascism (I’m paraphrasing the summary pretty hard), benefiting the in-groups and oppressing everyone else. Would you say this is an accurate, if oversimplified, description of what you want me to understand?
Not really, it’s more that liberalism contains contradictions between various freedoms it supports, and even contradictions between how the same “freedom” is practiced by different groups, and when those contradictions become unsustainable, the right to property by the dominant group always takes precedence.
It’s important to understand any political philosophy as not an idea floating in a vacuum but as a social tool used by a group in society; liberalism is the philosophy the bourgeoisie use to justify their power.
I mean kinda since fascism is a tool used to buttress capitalism when it’s own contradictions become unsustainable, but that’s not really in the book.
chatgpt’s summary didn’t compare liberalism to fascism, I made that comparison myself based on what I read.
I wouldn’t say that’s entirely wrong, fascism being a failure mode of liberalism. The phrase “scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds” or Trotsky’s “Not every exasperated petite bourgeois could have become Hitler, but a particle of Hitler is lodged in every exasperated petite bourgeois” come to mind.
I may have to stop calling myself a liberal. This does not align with my opinions.
If you don’t support capitalism, you aren’t a liberal.
We’re not “confused”, we have a different variant of English and a different definition for “liberal”.