abbenm

Did people forget what divisive means? I would say it's exactly the opposite of divisive, it's a comment that is produced as much singular unified reaction as you could possibly get.

Don't worry, it's 76 and counting.

In Tolkien stories, all the good guys are liberals. Saruman and his uruk-hai are perhaps the most leftist things there are in those stories. Elves are moderate conservatives with some questionable histories.

I hope everyone here appreciates what a special moment this is. This has potential to be the most downvoted comment on Lemmy.

Thank you for demonstrating my point without the slightest hint of irony.

Do you really not understand that there's a conceptual distinction there at all? You started out by saying it's a proud leftist tradition to call out other lefties for not being left enough. Which, honestly, fair enough.

But you think even the very idea of a conceptual distinction between liberals and leftists is an example of that? That's fucking nuts, and it's not the nuanced point you think it is.

It's like what Aristotle said about the differences between the Rash, the Courageous, and the Cowardly.

The Rash person thinks the courageous man is too cowardly, and the cowardly person thinks the courageous one is too rash. So everyone will declare that they the others are extreme, and in so doing they build their biases in.

This is the problem with unqualified statements about who's to the left of who, and especially the problem with both-sidesism. The act of making that kind of statement doesn't happen in some platonic realm of innocent and honest self-reflection, and is every bit as poisoned by politicization as every other political activity.

It doesn't mean there's no truth or you can't say stuff like this, but it does mean that we're all within our rights to dismiss you as a bullshit artist if you don't show your work.

I love this, nobody can actually defend this as a healthy way of engaging with politics.

Oh phew, I was worried. Okay okay, what year is it? Do you have any plutonium? I need to get back to my dimension and you've been so helpful so far

I love the implication that reading books is bad

It's just shallow and disappointing.

Your idea of what politics is about has to be bigger than shitposting and trolling.

(Psst it's not actually the socratic method)

I don't think so? The Socratic method wasn't necessarily a strategy intended to carefully persuade someone by bypassing psychological blockers. If anything, Socrates' counterparts were often antagonized and angered by his questions because he exposed contradictions.

I think the ethos behind it was that Socrates presumed he knew nothing, other people seemed like they knew things, so he asked them what they knew, since others were so bold as to make knowledge claims.

I just logged in to two smaller instances where I have accounts, anticapitalist.party and mastodon.xyz. I found them in one step and I could see their posts and replies on both of them.