If I ignore/block them, it allows them to continue unchallenged. I hate getting into it with them, since they are a baseline idiot.
I guess that’s it. I saw a person with a 6 month account spouting garbage, was gonna block but thought perhaps that wasn’t morally responsible. Wondering what the options were.
Guy, you literally said: “No, their politics are unwanted.”
Which means they are different than yours. I mean, hey you are free to stop reading. Def nothing says we have to have a conversation.
But unwanted politics means they are different than yours. Not sure why you found that so controversial.
I’m not gonna change your mind. You’re not gonna change my mind. And that’s ok. Carry on your way, and I’ll go mine.
Looking back, I didn’t realize what I said could have been misinterpreted, if one isolated it from the next paragraphs. Sorry for the snappy response.
To clarify, and as discussed in that following paragraphs, I’m saying it’s absurd to treat someone’s politics being unwanted as equal to someone themselves being considered unwanted.
What I found so controversial was that your post misframed my position as if I thought people should be treated differently simply because their politics are different. That’s not true. My politics are different to a M-L’s, and to an anarchist, and I get along alright with them. No, my problem isn’t that people have different ideas, my problem is that bigots and the like (many call themselves ‘conservatives’) aim to have innocent people oppressed and killed through their political beliefs and actions. Politics isn’t some civil abstract philosophical discussion. Politics isn’t distinct from material reality. It’s not harmless and innocent to just have a political position. When a neo-Nazi org tries to spread their propaganda in public (yes, there are people in my city who try this. and yes, I mean “quotes the NSDAP and means it” neo-Nazi), they aren’t simply just expressing an idea, this isn’t some isolated discussion in a vacuum, they’re attempting to build a political movement that promises to get my friends, co-workers, and a whole bunch of my community killed just for how they were born. And we have a duty to protect the people we care about from being killed by fascists.
So when we “ban” that Nazi from feeling safe to express those politics in public, it’s not because we’re ‘triggered’ that they dared to have different politics, we’re responding appropriately to a credible, albeit not imminent, threat. Same with the non-nazi bigotry regularly seen among self-proclaimed “conservatives”, it’s people trying to make others excluded from society based on how they were born. That’s a threat to our safety.
So, again, like I said before, it’s absurd to equivocate people being banned for posting bigotry and reactionary ideologies, to people being considered “an undesirable”, a subhuman.
I couldn’t care less - I hope Biden and Kamala get shot alongside Trump and Vance. ¯_ (ツ)_/¯
Obviously. The US electoral system is undemocratic garbage and which party people identify with isn’t an indication of their political worldview - the Democrats are repulsive and harmful to the social justice movements they pretend to campaign for, I can’t blame anyone for opposing them. There is no good or even adequate option until you get into the minor parties, who most probably don’t know much about.
But, the party leadership has plenty of people who, for all intents and purposes, mirror the policies and tactics of the NSDAP circa 1933. They even managed to get the ultranationalism started (see Canada, Greenland). Nazi is an appropriate label for them, including Trump and Musk, to be clear.
If one wants to say all the supporters and footsoldiers aren’t Nazis because they’re too ignorant to understand what they’re supporting or think it’s the lesser evil, I say it’s pointless semantics. The minority of Germans who voted for the NSDAP pre-takeover are known to history as Nazis. The Wehrmacht who “fought for their country” instead of fighting their government are known to history as “Nazi soldiers”. Complicity is not innocent, people were hanged for “just following orders”. So, if you’re not a Nazi (and I don’t think you are one) you’re going to have to make your actions speak.
To be honest, I don’t take any politics very seriously. I realize that Lemmy has a more tech slant that attracts peoples who’s brains work, um, a little different. And more on here are apt to get fixated on something.
But i’m not one of those. So many here make politics their entire identity. I don’t.
It’s fun to discuss here and there. But my real life is just about fucking women, chilling with friends, fucking around with AI stuff and enjoying life.
I think Lemmy takes politics WAY too seriously and way too personally.
Most politicians suck. Most aren’t really looking out for us. So I just do my own thing.
But, you must understand, to many people politics is very personal, whether they like it or not.
You are very lucky to be able to do your own thing, to have the privilege of politics being fun and not very serious. But to millions of people, this is, literally, a life and death matter.
And there it is, that’s exactly what I meant. You’re proving my point. You’ve taken politics so personally that you’ve elevated it to “life and death” status in a country where, by law, no politician has the power to arbitrarily sentence people to death.
If you’re in the U.S., “politics” doesn’t decide whether you live or die—laws, courts, and due process do. We’re not in a dictatorship (regardless of what Lemmy says) where a party can declare entire groups of people to die based on politics.
So unless you’re saying elected officials are legally executing people outside the justice system, the “life and death” framing is emotional exaggeration, not fact.
Maybe someone feels like politics is life and death to them, but feelings aren’t proof of reality. And reacting to politics with that level of personal emotional investment tends to just polarize people more and cloud their ability to think critically.
That’s what I meant when I said people take it too seriously–and more pointedly, I was referring to Lemmy posters taking it too seriously.
I’ve seem post reacting to totally non-political information with politically-charged responses and accusation. Even if the topic didn’t start out political at all.
What does that have to do with anything? Politics isn’t just elected politicians, it’s not some entity distinct from society and the economy. And you don’t have to directly force someone’s death to cause it and be responsible for it.
In my country, the construction union forces their employers to follow safety procedures on site which the government does not legally enforce. Deaths of these construction workers due to workplace accidents has dropped because of workers using their political power as a trade union, while the government (due to pressure from construction employers) aims to dilute this power. In your country, unions have gradually lost a lot of their historic power and the rate of fatal workplace accidents is around double or more than most European countries, and close to that of Russia and Thailand. Workplace health and safety policy is, literally, life and death politics for many people.
In both our countries, there is a housing crisis which threatens more and more people and families with homelessness. This has huge impacts on their ability to work and even survive. Government policy impacts affordability of property, how much residential property is being built, the affordability of basic needs (like food and utilities), how much employers must pay for jobs, the rights of landlords and tenants (e.g. here there is an upper limit to how much a landlord can increase prices per month), social support to homeless people or those seeking work, and the legal concerns of homelessness (e.g. anti-camping laws, jail time for seeking shelter in vehicles, food disposal policy that promotes starvation). More and more people are dying because of homelessness and its effects. Housing policy is, literally, life and death politics for many people.
Political policy in the US has infamously enabled widespread, normalized police brutality. This especially (but not exclusively!) affects minorities such as black peoples, queer people and autistic people, regularly and consistently leading to deaths from shooting, unjustified physical assault and sadistic negligence while imprisoned. Law enforcement policy is, literally, life and death politics for many people.
The 9/11 attacks killed thousands of innocent civilians. That was politics, al-Qaeda is a political organization who were responding to the direct results of US foreign policy. Hundreds of thousands more were killed overseas in the US “War on Terror”, but even for its own domestic citizens, international geopolitics is, literally, life and death politics for many people.
Those are just a few example across a range of well-known political topics, not even getting into more indirect aspects like deciding where government funding goes to (e.g. heart disease research - heart disease being the single biggest cause of death), and not even diving into non-government political organizing. Politics includes the more extreme anti-abortion activists working to make even life-saving abortions illegal. Politics includes insane mass shooters targeting minority groups. Politics includes the assassination of Brian Thompson.
So you are arguing with me about US politics, and you aren’t even in the US?! There’s more to us that you see in the news.
This conversation is over. You don’t even live here, bro! lol
@DonaldJMusk @comfy Well, there are just things that are worse than death, aren’t there?
Lately, it’s reading Lemmy comments. The ultimate punishment.