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Joined 3 years ago
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Cake day: July 4th, 2023

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  • If you vote Democratic, you’re getting a far better version of leftist politics than the GOP. No, it’s not ideal leftist politics, because Dems are still beholden to US megacorps, and that is definitely a problem. But you can’t assert that because voting options are limited, political will is restricted to those options. The U.S. is undergoing a major political problem right now, which may well result in the dissolution of both parties and a broader multi-party system. You can’t just point to a country’s political parties and say, “well, they have only those two options, so they’re locked in forever, and those two options represent the entire country’s political will.” That’s ridiculous. There’s much to be said about the rise of far right politics in Europe right now, but you wouldn’t endorse opinions that the EU is trapped between far-left and far-right politics, would you? No, most people have views that register in-between. The same is true in America. We’re not so different from you. Stop pretending otherwise. We’re all human and we’re all part of a global civilization.














  • In order to truly understand this, you have to tear yourself away from the Republicans and start looking at conservative ideology itself.

    At the core of conservative ideology is the very American idea of “pulling oneself up by their own bootstraps.” This is essentially the idea that, no matter the circumstances of one’s birth, one can achieve anything. Historically, this was a rebellion against the classism of old Europe, which was structured around a class system. So, in that context, it was a very liberal idea. The problem comes in when you start to recognize that people are not actual born on a level playing field, financially, culturally, educationally, etc. Today, the idea that everyone can “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps,” foments the lie that we are all born into equal opportunities in life, which is demonstrably false.

    So, the core of conservative ideology is based on an untruth, and it has never reconciled this. Conservatives thus blame disparities in achievement in society on lack of individual effort, and don’t take into account differences in opportunity by birth circumstances. As such, when they see people who haven’t done as well as others, they attribute that to personal failings rather than circumstantial inequalities. When you see all outcomes as a result of personal effort, you can dismiss bad outcomes as the result of a lack of effort, and thereby justify denying the less fortunate help under the notion that it is unfair to the more prosperous because it rewards those who didn’t try as hard with the same outcomes who had to work for them.

    Conservative ideology is simply outdated and uninformed by modern sociological research.