ID: Xtremely Transbian, Online @ThisACoolPerson posted:
“i imagine being a liberal is much like having a cat on your lap, in that you have a comforting distraction from misery and can’t stand up for anything”
E: before people derail the conversation to offer me the fallen arm from the title - I’ve tried many different combinations, and they all result in a wrong looking shruggy face. Deal with it lol
In most developed nations, “Rising up against those in power” conjures images of revolution that would make things drastically worse for everyone in that nation, for at least a generation. It’s not hard to see why that’s a tough sell.
@FrowingFostek - this. This is the comfort, and the wilful ignorance of what a revolution entails or aims for, and fear of losing privilege and perceived superiority, that go with it.
Fascism openly in power? People being genocided? Rounded up in to camps? Stripped of their human rights for how their were born? Deprived of their bodily autonomy? Losing entire communities to climate change? Having to exist as slave labour in a “developing” (read: colonised and pillaged) country to maintain the capitalist overconsumption machine? The widest wealth inequality ever to exist? Or even “just” - your neighbours can’t afford rent even with working 3 jobs? Have to choose to heat or eat because they can’t afford both? Die because an insurance company refused their claim? Die because the government refused their benefits claim? Get sick and die due to pollution? And on and on and on and on and on and on…
And then, the idea that everyone will have to work together for the benefit of everyone else? Building communities from the bottom up, and under the guidance and leadership of its most vulnerable, rather than its most privileged? Equity? Equality? Justice???
Fuck all that.
The liberal wants their individual privilege and comfort maintained! At whose and what cost is completely irrelevant.
I could agree with that.
Anything other than the cat is an externality. The fire in the room won’t be a problem until the cat jumps off.
Yup, only the cat can’t jump off - liberals whole shtick is that they’re grasping on to it in deep desperation to avoid even acknowledging the fire, and the harm it is causing. As long as they remain (relatively, and in their own skewed view) untouched, they will never act, and sometimes even then not.
Those ideals are lovely. Very few people would argue against any of that as an end goal. The problem is the transition. Most people (myself included) just don’t have enough faith in people to believe that it will happen peacefully. It will require violence. And even people who hardly know anything about history know that civil war is not something they want to have happen to themselves or their children. And so the bread and circuses still work, just as they always have.
Lmfao, all you’re doing here is continuing to prove the point op is making
No. The problem I have is the label “the liberal”. Not wanting to die in a civil war isn’t exactly a unique political position. There are people of every single political persuasion who aren’t going to be willing to die, or have their children die. That’s just part of being a living being.