• 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    8 months ago

    You can claim a million billion people think liberalism is sunshine and roses, that still wouldn’t make it true

    Words mean what people think they mean. The vast majority of Americans use “liberal” and “conservative” interchangeably with Democratic and Republican policies, so in that context (which is the context of the r/politics thread) “liberal” is fairly read as “aligned with Democrats.” That’s a valid definition because it’s how most people actually use the word.

    Claiming that your preferred definition is the only real definition, and the hundreds of millions of people who use the most common definition are all wrong, is nonsensical and will get you nothing but endless semantic slapfights.

    • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      Words mean what people think they mean.

      Yeah if those people had power, a political education and sustained control over the levers of knowledge production

      so in that context (which is the context of the r/politics thread) “liberal” is fairly read as “aligned with Democrats.” That’s a valid definition because it’s how most people actually use the word.

      Except our non-hexbear friend asserted those liberals in that thread aren’t liberals because they sound like “garden variety conservatives” but they’re not (according to the colloquial definition), they’re “democrat aligned” Biden supporters pissing and moaning about people upset over Biden’s anti-immigration stance (oh look anti-immigration from the liberal dems, another violation of the vaunted colloquial definition)

      So that tells us not only were you not paying attention to what op was saying, but that the definition that you’re holding up as the gold standard (because millions of American don’t have a political education) can’t even hold up in the thread you gave as an example cat-confused

      Which is why political education is important and colloquial understanding that isn’t even colloquial is not

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        I’m not seeing many liberals in these comments. When I look at their comment histories they seem to be garden variety conservatives. The liberals I do see defending Biden are more doing the standard “Trump is worse, stop attacking Biden” which is shitty but not mask-off racism imo

        This is very plainly drawing a difference between “liberals defending Biden” and “garden variety conservatives.”

        If you have examples of Biden supporters in that thread endorsing the racist term “illegals,” citing those would have been infinitely more productive than pretending the common definition of “liberal” doesn’t even exist.

        • CyborgMarx [any, any]@hexbear.net
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          8 months ago

          This is very plainly drawing a difference between “liberals defending Biden” and “garden variety conservatives.”

          I’m well aware what they tried to do, I’m saying they failed because they don’t know what liberalism is because they have a bullshit mangled colloquial understanding of it that doesn’t accurately describe reality

          Aaaand he caved in to the hysterical activists. Wonderful. +10

          The ones that had a fit because he used a word. I’m guessing. +19

          Biden gets a ton of shit for this even though Trump uses Nazi rhetoric to discuss immigrants. +3

          “Biden appoligizes to murderer for being not politically correct, while Trump visits and helps the family of the victim mourn”. Quite a great headline to garner support, makes Biden seem like a complete asshole that cares about being Politically correct over the death of an American.

          Calling the murderer an illegal shouldn’t be considered a mistake

          Biden just delivered an all-time state of the union address, and bozos from his own party are getting worked up about a word that most Americans are comfortable using, but pissed off the progressives. +8

          If Biden’s team was smart, they’d name a bill after her to control the border by hiring more agents and installing border surveillance in the hot spots. Let republicans shoot the bill down…again. I’m not a Trump supporter. I hate him. The border does need to be controlled better though. I’m not preaching hate. I’m just saying we all lock our doors and cars at night. It’s the same thing. We’re just trying to keep bad people out, not everyone. +6

          Nah bro these totally aren’t Biden supporters, absolute “garden variety conservatives”, lmao hey happened to the fuckin colloquial definition, I can’t seem to find it?

          • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            8 months ago

            Nah bro these totally aren’t Biden supporters

            I’m not arguing about this. I’m saying you should have brought up this actual substantive stuff right away rather than posting multiple paragraphs about the definition of a word

            • NewLeaf@hexbear.netOP
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              8 months ago

              …the original post was a link to the content. You shouldnt have commented unless you clicked the link to see what we were even talking about.

              • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                8 months ago

                You don’t have to know shit about the underlying post to point out that dogpiling someone for using the most common definition of “liberal” is a poor way to communicate with them.

                I read the underlying post, anyway.

    • Kaplya@hexbear.net
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      8 months ago

      Look, you’re not going to find any support here with this take.

      I once made a thread asking Hexbears to tone down their rhetoric so it’s more welcoming to the vast majority of the outside people, and 99% of the responses were a firm no.

      People here aren’t going to give up using the materialist definition of liberalism just to pander to the libs.

      • 420blazeit69 [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        I see the same thing happening – it’s a fast track to an ultraleftist dead end.

        It’s also worth noting that recognizing what non-leftists mean when they speak is not pandering, but a prerequisite to effective communication. We’re abandoning talking to people out of eagerness to dunk on anything that moves.

      • MayoPete [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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        8 months ago

        This thread shows how we need more accessible, as in memes, political education for left-curious folks. This stuff has to meet people where they are if we ever hope to build a popular revolutionary movement.